The Submissions Men Don't See

Lots of screaming in the SF/F genre lately about "data" suggesting far more women are being published in genre magazines than men. The problem with that analysis, though, was it only looked at a small group of magazines. Add in all the other professional SF magazines out there and the numbers change, making the controversy choke on a big mouthful of nothing pie.

Don't believe me? Check out this excellent examination of gender submission and publication statistics in the SF/F short fiction field, which Susan E. Connolly published in Clarkesworld in 2014. Her examination spanned multiple articles and is incredibly detailed with a strong data set. Her conclusion? "Authors who are women are less well represented in terms of submissions and publications than authors who are men." 

However, there was an interesting item to come out of the recent controversy. In an interview with Neil Clarke about Clarkesworld's submissions, Jon Del Arroz quoted the editor as saying "men were also slightly more likely to submit multiple stories per month." After talking with Neil about the magazine's overall submission and publication track record, Jon added:

"What I take from this, despite his not analyzing the breakdown of why stories fail through submissions by gender, is that men are more prone to submit stories which don’t fit with Clarkesworld’s style of science fiction, and submit them anyway just hoping they make it in a crap shoot."

There's truth for the SF/F genre: Men are indeed much more likely to take a "crap shoot" attitude toward submissions than women, with male writers being far much more likely than women to not read submission guidelines and to submit inappropriate stories which don't fit what a magazine publishes.

One reason I reacted so strongly to Jon's words is they match what I saw when I edited storySouth. Men would spray submissions at my magazine as if marking their territory, assuming their brilliance would overcome not reading our magazine or following our guidelines. Yes, a few female authors also did this, but the numbers were really skewed toward men.

While I haven't edited storySouth in many years, it appears this trend is still going strong. For example, a professional genre magazine whose editor I know revealed their September submission stats for this essay. The stats provided didn't include author names or any submission information aside from demographics and if the editor felt the submission was appropriate/inappropriate for their magazine and/or didn't follow guidelines.

So far this month this magazine has received 182 submissions, with 54 of them being by female authors (matching the analysis linked above which said far more men submit genre stories than women). Of these 182 submissions, the editor felt that 11 were totally inappropriate. Of those 11 submissions, ten came from men and only one from a woman.

By inappropriate submissions, the editor is very specific and means a story which by no stretch of the imagination would fit with what they publish, meaning the author didn't read their magazine or their guidelines. Some of these submissions also didn't follow standard manuscript format, although the editor said their magazine is generous on SMF and they only get irritated when authors deviate massively from it.

This editor also added that those 182 submission included five male authors who submitted a total of 11 stories. Only one woman submitted more than a single submission in the same time frame.

Again, this matches what I saw years ago with storySouth. And while stats about this are difficult to find, editors I've spoken to over the years have told me a similar pattern exists in many publications, even outside the SF/F genre.

When I consider why this happens, I keep coming back to the famous story "The Women Men Don't See" by James Tiptree, Jr., where the male narrator can't see women as real people and so misses the truth of what's going on around him. As Triptree said of her story, its message is the "total misunderstanding of women's motivations by narrator, who relates everything to self."

In the case of why male authors are far more likely to not read a magazine or their guidelines before submitting, and are more likely to submit multiple stories in a short time frame, I think it ties in with them not seeing the motivations of others and believing all that matters is what they want. 

But if you're submitting your stories to an editor, what you want isn't what lands the acceptance. It's what the editor wants. Otherwise, an author is merely wasting everyone's time.

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz is SF punk for a new generation

Ever since the publication of William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer, which helped jumpstart the cyberpunk subgenre, there's been a tendency to "punk" each new exciting science fiction trend or book. Biopunk, steampunk, nanopunk, bugpunk — the punk designation is as much tied in with the attitudes represented by these subgenres as it does with the stories' subject matter and new takes on traditional SF themes.

One of the best debut novels I've read this year is Autonomous by Annalee Newitz. The story, which focuses on a future in which biotech and artificial intelligence and corporate control of patents rule all our lives, is begging for a SF punk label. There are more exciting ideas and possibilities in Newitz's novel than in an entire year's worth of works released by more traditional SF publishers. The story is also fast paced with interesting characters ranging from the traditionally human to AIs enslaved in war-fighting bodies.

William Gibson called the novel "genuinely and thrillingly new," which is extremely accurate. The world created in Autonomous is so interesting and unique that I could see this novel inspiring a new subgenre. Maybe AI-punk, or a reworking of what biopunk is currently about. Either way, Autonomous is an excellent new science fiction novel which fans of the genre's "literature of ideas" will love and will be on my short lists for next year's award nominations. Check it out.

Measuring the slow Hugo Award death of the rabid puppies

Congrats to this year's Hugo Award winners. Plenty of great works won Hugos at the 75th Worldcon in Helsinki, including a Best Novel for The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin. This means the first two novels in Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy have won the Hugo Award. I'm really looking forward to reading the final book in the trilogy, The Stone Sky, which comes out in a few days. The Broken Earth trilogy is now one of the most acclaimed and honored series in SF/F history, so if you haven't read the novels do so.

It was also exciting to note the crossover between this year's Hugo and Nebula Awards, with the novella "Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire and the short story "Seasons of Glass and Iron" by Amal El-Mohtar winning both awards.

One of the most interesting aspects of this year's Hugos was to see how the new voting rules revealed the overall weakness of the rabid puppies slate. Under this year's Hugo rules, designed to reduce the impact of bloc and slate voting, people were able to nominate up to 5 works or people in each category. However, the top 6 works or people in each category become finalists, ensuring slate voting can't stuff all slots on the final Hugo ballot.

In addition, nomination votes were tallied by both the total number of nominations received and by points, with a single point assigned to each individual voter’s nomination ballot. That means if you nominated works in all 5 slots within a category, each of those nominations would receive 1/5 of a point. If you nominated only a single work in a category, that nomination would receive a full point.

Because of these new rules Vox Day, who organizes the pup slate each year, urged his followers to only make a single nomination in most categories, ensuring their slate would receive the maximum number of points. While this strategy placed a single one of their slate in many of the categories, it also revealed exactly how small their movement is.

For example, in the nomination tally released last week by Worldcon (PDF download), eventual Best Novel winner The Obelisk Gate received 480 ballots with a final points tally of 295.97 (out of 2078 total ballots cast for 652 nominees). Most nominees on the nomination tally received similar ballot to point spreads, indicating the people nominating those works were also nominating 2 or 3 or more works in each category. Since their points were spread across multiple works in each category, the points for most nominees were far less than the number of ballots those nominees received.

Not so with the pup slate. For example, in the Best Novelette category the pups' joke nomination "Alien Stripper Boned From Behind By the T-Rex” received 77 ballots and 76.50 final points, meaning almost every person who nominated that "story" didn't nominate anything else in that category. 

In the Best Short Story category, "An Unimaginable Light" by John C. Wright received 87 ballots and 87 final points out of 1275 ballots cast, suggesting no one outside of the pup slate nominated his story. In the Best Editor (Long Form) category, Vox Day received 83 ballots with 83 final points out of 752 total ballots cast. As with Wright, this suggests no one outside of VD's slate nominated him.

These numbers back up previous estimates of the weakness of the rabid puppies and give more evidence that at most 80 to 90 Hugo voters support Vox Day's ballot stuffing. These are extremely small numbers compared to the more than 2,000 people who cast nominating ballots this year, or the 3,319 people who voted during the final Hugo ballot.

The reason the rabid puppies were able to cause so much trouble with the Hugo Awards in recent years is because the awards were easily gamed by a small group of slate voters. Only cultural constraints within fandom prevented this from happening previous to the rabid puppies.

The results of this year's Hugo voting shows that making an award resistant to slate voting is a must in today's genre.

Perhaps the Dragon Awards, a new SF/F award now being ravaged by slate voting from the pups, will learn from the Hugo experience. Or perhaps not.

Translation of "Toppers" is featured story in XB-1

View fullsize

A translation of my story "Toppers" is featured in the August 2017 edition of the Czech SF magazine XB-1. The story, originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, looks at the passage of time as seen through one person's time-scattered life.

I love the mind-blowingly great cover art by Maurizio Manzieri. As an added bonus, I share a table of contents with one of my literary heroes, Michael Swanwick.

Oh writing advice which I loathe, let me count the ways I've ignored you

Thinking about all the writing advice I don't follow. This should mean I’m a literary failure. Instead, my stories are published around the world.

So what writing advice have I failed to follow? Let’s count down the greatest hits of advice I’ve ignored.

1. “Write what you know.” Didn’t do that. I write science fiction and fantasy set in imaginary worlds I’ve never known. I create what I know!
2. “Don’t shift points of view too often.” Ooh. Done that many times. If your story needs a POV shift just do it.
3. “Show don’t tell.” I’ve shown many a thing in my stories and also told many a thing. No one path here is correct for every story.
4. “Write every day.” Nope, don’t do that either. I write when I want to and live my art exactly how I desire. Don't dare tell me otherwise.
5. “Write for yourself.” I write my stories for others. Sure, I’m the first person to read my stories so they must always please me. But I still write for other people.
6. “Begin your stories with action.” Except when you don’t. Or don’t want to. Or don’t care to. Whatever floats your storytelling boat.
7. “Write novels instead of short stories because no one reads short fiction.” Nope, failed that advice and still doing great as a writer.
8. “Avoid clichés.” Please, every aspect of life and language can be a cliché under the right circumstances. Instead know when to use and subvert clichés.

My point with all this is there’s no one set of writing advice which works for everyone. Plus for every “rule” there’s a rule breaker. And by “rule breaker” I mean writers who defy all the common writing advice and still create captivating stories.

Instead of blindly following writing advice, try finding yourself. Find your voice. If your voice leads you to be a writer, then write away. The rest will come.