My story "Duller's Peace" is now online
The other day K. Tempest Bradford named my short story "Duller's Peace" among the five best stories so far this year.
Result: A number of people asking to read the story. Which turned bad, because the issue of Asimov's Science Fiction containing the story is no longer available. Which turned good because Asimov's said I could go ahead and post the story online for everyone to read.
Here's "Duller's Peace" to download. Enjoy.
- Download "Duller's Peace" as a MS Word document
- Download "Duller's Peace" as a RTF document
- Download "Duller's Peace" as a PDF
- Download "Duller's Peace as a ePub book
- Download "Duller's Peace as a Kindle .mobi book
Many thanks to Asimov's editor Sheila Williams for both accepting the story and allowing me to reprint it online. In case you need more convincing to read "Duller's Peace," here's a sample of reviews and feedback.
A "moral indictment of other nations trying to control a people or a country" and "a powerful story that is extremely relevant in the world today, yet is clearly true SF as well. Well done, Mr. Sanford, well done." — Bob Blough, Tangent Online
"Duller's Peace" is "another well-crafted story from Sanford" with a real chilling ending. — Sam Tomaino, SFRevu
Highly recommended "An intense distopian world in which a government achieves control through nanotechnology that reaches into everything, including your thoughts. The concept is creepy, mostly because it’s not far fetched. I can see people balking at the ending, I say it’s perfect." — K. Tempest Bradford, io9
To double-space or not to double-space in the age of e-subs
Forgive me oh ye mighty editorial gods because I have sinned. I know the rules of proper manuscript formatting, as set in stone by your prophet William Shunn in the glorious days of snail-mail submissions. And I try to follow the rules. I really do. I've been an editor. I know proper manuscript formatting improves readability and editing.
But despite this knowledge, I sinned in recent years with double-spacing the lines in my manuscripts. It started innocently enough — I'd heard that with electronic submissions being read on computers and e-readers and iPads, double-spacing was no longer necessary. That editors actually preferred single-space. And my friends were single-spacing. So, regrettably, I lapsed into sin. I submitted to editors using single-space.
But my sinning days are over. Because despite double-spacing being born in the days of print submissions, most editors still prefer it over single-spacing. Below are comments from some of the SF/F genre's top short fiction editors confirming this belief. And even those who prefer single-spacing or don't care either way still want authors to actually read and follow their publications' manuscript guidelines!
So don't believe double-spacing is no longer part of proper manuscript formatting in the age of e-subs — it absolutely is. Don't be a submission sinner like me.
SF/F editors on double-spacing
The comments below also share insight into how the editors read submissions. This is all extremely inside-baseball, but maybe people will enjoy the discussion even if it doesn't veer into more controversial formatting issues like two spaces after a period.
John Joseph Adams, editor of Lightspeed Magazine and many anthologies
"I prefer single-spaced submissions, because I do read submissions exclusively on either my Kindle or my iPhone--and for me, single-spaced just works better for that. Our guidelines currently say that it's fine to just submit using standard manuscript format, with the exception that we actually prefer single-spaced submissions, but it's not a strictly enforced thing--we don't want to make folks jump through a lot of different particular hoops to submit to us, so we just note it as a preference. "
Maurice Broaddus, editor of anthologies such as Dark Faith and Streets of Shadows.
"I prefer double spaced submissions. It's easier on my eyes frankly. Then again, I tend to print stuff out and read hard copies for stuff that makes it past the easy reject stage. I consider it standard format, so it's usually written into the guidelines, but I'm not especially hard-nosed about (other than noting that the writer can't follow directions). It's all a couple button pushes away from me formatting it to the way I want to read it."
Jennifer Brozek, editor of anthologies such as Bless Your Mechanical Heart and Human for a Day.
"As an editor, I tend to prefer double-spaced manuscripts but I can read single. That particular formatting doesn't matter nearly as much to me as other formatting bits. It's so easy to switch between single and double-spaced, that it's a non-issue. Now, if we're talking tabbed indents versus paragraph formatting indents, I'm going to go with paragraph formatting indents 100%. Do you know how annoying it is to remove tabbed indents from a manuscript? Try doing that multiple times for an anthology."
Sean Wallace, editor of Clarkesworld and founder of Prime Books.
Sean says he prefers double spaced. He adds that "In most cases, with Clarkesworld or The Dark I read submissions from my desktop or laptop, because it's often quicker. For The Dark I use gmail's preview feature, which allows me to quickly peek at the contents, and then move it the considering pile or automatic rejection with a form letter. The default reply feature in our gmail account is a rejection, which speeds things up even faster."
Edmund Schubert, editor of InterGalactic Medicine Show.
"Regarding single vs double spaced, I greatly prefer double spaced, to the point of occasionally finding myself getting irritated when one shows up single spaced. I do all my reading either on my computer or as a printout, and double spaced makes for the easiest reading, especially if I like a story and want to start making notes."
Sheila Williams, editor of Asimov's Science Fiction
Sheila says to definitely follow Bill Shunn's advice. "I read most stories on my computer in word or it's equivalent. If I think there's a chance I might take the story, I edit as I go along. Manuscripts MUST be double spaced. I'm not going to take the time to convert the stories to double spacing at this point. It's true that I read some stories on the Kindle, but those are the ones that automatically reformat to single space, so there's no contradiction there. Also, any story I buy needs to be double spaced for copyediting. Much better to arrive already formatted properly than for us to have to redo the formatting. Later, we will use macros to convert to single spacing for formatting into Quark, but writers don't need to worry about that stage. Tabbed indents are fine at Asimov's. Macros get rig of them automatically when the story is flowed into type."
Ann VanderMeer, editor of anthologies such as The Weird and former editor of Weird Tales.
"It really doesn't matter to me as I can change it if I wish. And when I do make those kinds of changes before printing out a manuscript, I usually change the spacing to 1 1/2 lines (ha! between single and double 'cause that's how I roll). It is only an issue when I get a PDF instead and can't edit it. More important than the spacing is the font. I need a clear readable font with serifs. A san serif font will keep me from reading a book, too. (although that is rare, some smaller publishers haven't learned this rule yet)."
Story of the Week: "No Rez" by Jeff Noon
Last week I praised Priya Sharma's short story "Blonde" from Interzone's Sept./Oct. 2015 issue. Well, Interzone must be on a roll because the same issue contains another of the year's best stories, "No Rez" by Jeff Noon.
The rez in the title refers to resolution, as in the number of pixels available for seeing in this futuristic world. Thanks to artificially enhanced eyes humanity can access not only our own limited field of vision but also the countless cameras and devices recording everything in life. This creates an overwhelming range of what you can see, a high-rez view of the world which both overwhelms and subsumes what it means to be human.
The main character in "No Rez" is Aiden, who earns his living bicycling around the city uploading what he sees to the world's ever-flowing net of life. His dream is to actually see in "high rez," a dream impossibly out of reach for poor people like him whose eyes see only low resolution views of reality.
"No Rez" is frakin brilliant. This is what science fiction short stories should be. The closest I can come to describing this story is to say it combines the narrative urgency of Samuel R. Delany's "Aye, and Gomorrah..." with the all-encompassing world creation of William Gibson's Neuromancer. But "No Rez" is also totally different than these examples, a story like no other. "No Rez" is a primal scream of a story swallowing the reasoned insanity of today's ever connected world.
Unfortunately, I fear few people will read "No Rez." The story is told in a unique stream of consciousness style which will turn off many readers, not the least among them the editors of the year's best anthologies and some of the people who vote on the various genre awards. If the story is reprinted in any of these anthologies or makes the award shortlists it will be a miracle. But that doesn't change the fact that "No Rez" is a SF story you should immediately seek out and read.
The new issue of Interzone proves that the British magazine remains on the cutting edge of SF/F short fiction. Seek out this issue today. You can purchase it through Amazon for their Kindle or through Weightless for other ebook formats. Print issues are also available in the UK and, in the near future, should be in select US bookstores.
By the gods it's another Jason Sanford ego post
Lots of ego notes in this post, so skip if you need.
- The Oct. 2015 issue of the Czech SF/F magazine is a special horror issue, featuring translated fiction by Brian Hodge, Lucy A. Snyder, Joe R. Lansdale, and Gary Braunbeck. The issue includes my column "Horror is a Place Close to Your Heart," which examines how true horror reveals the unknown in the places we all think we know.
- Marcheto has translated my story "Here We Are, Falling Through Shadows" into Spanish. The story can be read on this blog and will also appear in the forthcoming anthology Cuentos para Algernon: Year III. Many thanks to Marcheto for translating the story.
- Karen Osborne loved the recent Escape Pod podcast of my story "Heaven's Touch." She offers a very nice review examining the religious aspects of the story, including what destiny is and isn't.
Story of the Week: "Blonde" by Priya Sharma
I dislike fairy tales, which long ago lost any worthwhile cultural resonance. Due, no doubt, to the ceaseless commercialization a la Disney princesses and a million other Hollywood sins, all of which removed the bloody edge of birth and death from what were once tales imparting life lessons across generations. When I see a fairy tale these days I run the other way unless convinced otherwise by someone whose judgement I trust.
And I trust the storytelling judgement of Priya Sharma. Which is why I read her new brilliant new short story "Blonde" in the Sept./Oct. 2015 issue of Interzone.
"Blonde" is a retelling of the traditional Rapunzel fairy tale. Yet instead of being trapped in a mythical tower in a forest, here the titular character is thrown into a dystopian modern world of poverty and criminals and starvation and life among the ruins. In Sharma's retelling — which can be read equally as science fiction or fantasy — Rapunzel's ever-growing locks are valuable solely because they're blonde, an almost mystical hair color which has nearly passed from the human gene pool. But humanity's fixatation on blond hair is in no way healthy, as Rapunzel discovers to her horror.
"Blonde" is a gripping, eerie, well-written tale with the most compelling Rapunzel I've ever read. And unlike any Disney reworking of the fairy tale, this story retains its razor-slice edge as it presents a thought-provoking examination of the stereotypes and beliefs which influence the world around us.
I've long loved Sharma's stories — for my money she's one of the most underappreciated short fiction writers in the SF/F genre. She's also one of the few writers who could convince me to take a chance on a fairy tale retelling. In this case I'm glad I did.