Is Worldcon Dead?

In the current issue of the SFWA Bulletin (Oct./Nov. 2009), Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg rip into Worldcon. As Resnick says, Worldcon used to draw 6,000 to 7,500 people all the time, but now brings less than half that. Add in poor planning--recent Worldcons like Denver and Montreal spread attendees across 7 to 10 hotels over a mile apart--and the fact that so many of the conventions are held outside the U.S., and what results is a cycle of death and incompetence which pushes editors and publishers toward friendlier venues like Comic Con, the World Fantasy Con, and DragonCon.

And where editors and publishers go, so go the writers.

Resnick made similar statements in his editorial for Baen's Universe earlier this year. And while I haven't been to a Worldcon before, I'd love to go some day. But since I'm raising a family and working full-time, my money and time are closely guarded. Next year I plan to attend the World Fantasy Con, and after that I'd like to go to DragonCon. But Worldcon? Not on the radar screen. I don't see where it brings enough bang for the buck, even if it would be fun.

According to Resnick, more and more it's the older writers who go to Worldcon, a demographic which is obviously trending only one way. So I wonder: Is Worldcon truly dead? Or is a new generation ready to embrace the convention and breathe new life into it?

Avoid Nebula embarrassment next year by nominating The Windup Girl for the final ballot

Nominations for the 2010 Nebula Awards are trickling in. I've already made a few, and plan to finish them up in the coming weeks by adding more stories and novels to the mix. However, I worry that a major embarrassment may be building for the Nebula Awards in that there's a chance The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi won't be on the final ballot.

I've praised The Windup Girl at length in my earlier SF Signal review, and I've heard from many people that this is the most amazing novel they've read in years. In addition, Time Magazine recently named it to their top ten fiction list for 2009, while Library Journal and Publisher's Weekly both gave it starred reviews and also added it to their annual best books lists (see here and here). Finally, BookPage said The Windup Girl "will almost certainly be the most important SF novel of the year."

I'll take that a step forward and say this is easily one of the best SF novels of the last decade, and one which will be recognized as a literary classic for many years to come.

But to my surprise, the novel has only four Nebula nominations so far (with one of those being mine). Under the new rules, the top six stories in each category make the final ballot. While four nominations is nothing to dismiss, I'd expected so many more.

Part of the problem may be that The Windup Girl is not an easy novel to read.  Niall Harrison addressed this issue recently in his Strange Horizons review as he described the novel's disturbing aspects. This caused one reader to comment "Your excellent review has convinced me I won't be missing much if I skip The Windup Girl." Niall's response: "Damn! That wasn't my aim. I was hoping to convey that it's a tough read in a number of ways, but a fascinating, worthwhile one. Ah well."

I hope the fact that The Windup Girl tackles disturbing topics isn't why so few people are nominating it.

The complaint about the old Nebula rules was that deserving stories and novels rarely made the final ballot. For me, whether or not Bacigalupi's novel makes the final ballot will be a key test of the new rules. If we see the same old same old up there, while a break-through novel like The Windup Girl misses out, well, so much for improving the Nebulas.

Maybe I'm being a bit premature in my worry since the nominating period is open through Feb. 15. But I want people to read this book and consider it for a nomination while there is still time. 

SFWA members can read the novel online here through the member-only website. Or better yet, buy a copy. And prepare yourself for the best new SF novel out there.

Interview with Larry Eisenberg

In case you missed it, my interview with author Larry Eisenberg is up at SF Signal. In response to the interview, a number of people have asked where they can read Larry's stories. Unfortunately, his only collection is The Best Laid Schemes, published way back in 1971. Since Larry wrote a large number of stories after that date, that means to read most of his work you have to track down the original magazines he was published in.

My hope is that a publisher will notice this need for a new collection and approach Larry about one. If anyone wants to get in touch with him, drop me a line.

Interzone and Black Static stories eligible for the Nebula Awards!

As someone who regularly publishes in Interzone, and loves the other authors and stories they publish, it has been an irritation that Interzone stories weren't eligible for the Nebula Awards. I could understand this exclusion if the Nebula Awards focused solely on print publications from the United States. However, their rules state "Works first published in English on the Internet or in electronic formduring the calendar year shall be treated as though published in the United States." That has meant a story published in a minor British online magazine was eligible, while a story published in one of the top print SF magazines in the world wasn't.

However, the good news is that stories published in Interzone (and its sister publication Black Static, which I'm less familiar with) are now eligible. Since both are reprinted in an electronic edition through Fictionwise, their stories can now be nominated for the Nebulas. Aliette de Bodard checked and the SFWA Awards Rules Committee said yes, stories published in the Interzone and Black Static Fictionwise edition are eligible. This is great news!

It appears all 2009 issues of Interzone are eligible except for the current Nov./Dec. issue, which has yet to be uploaded to Fictionwise. This also means my novella "Sublimation Angels" (available at that link as a PDF download) is now eligible since the Sept./Oct. 2009 issue of Interzone is already available on Fictionwise.

I plan to soon add a few more selections to my 2009 Nebula nominations. And you can bet Interzone stories will figure in the mix!

Why is World Fantasy Convention 2010 avoiding the 21st Century?

There was an interesting Twitter conversation today between Jay Lake, Michael Curry, Elizabeth Bear, and others. Seems World Fantasy Convention 2010 not only hasn't gotten around to setting up an online payment system for registrations, they possibly don't intend to ever have one. According to this tweet, one MKKare spoke with a convention staffer and was told it's only those "decadent coastal elites who want online reg."

Okay, this is BS. I'm really excited WFC is coming next year to my current home of Columbus, Ohio. But I also agree with Jay Lake that "Given the essentially wired nature of our community, not supporting online reg is deeply counterproductive." Last week I mailed my check for the WFC 2010 membership, but it was irritating that I had to physically mail the registration. I'd assumed the issue was WFC 2010 needing more time to get their website up to speed. But if they don't intend to accept online registrations, that is a major issue which will definitely hurt turnout.

My suggestion: Fix this ASAP, and embrace the 21st century.

My nominations for the 2009 Nebula Awards

At 4:30 am this morning the SFWA sent out the voting instructions for the Nebula Awards. Basically, until February 15th SFWA members can nominated eligible stories online through the SFWA website. Here's a direct link to the ballot, but you'll have to log in to see it. You can also see the running tally here.

Because the nominating rules were recently changed, there is a bit of a holdover in that stories "which received at least five (5) recommendations under the previous Nebula Awards rules and were published after July 1, 2008, but didn't make the 2008 Preliminary Ballot get to have those nominations added to their total for this year." This means "The Political Prisoner" by Charles Coleman Finlay now has 6 nominations for best novella (see note below) and "I Remember the Future" by Michael A Burstein has 5 for best short story.

For anyone interested in what other stories and books might be up for the Nebula awards, check out the Nebula Suggested Reading. Many thanks to the unknown people who suggested my short story "When Thorns Are The Tips Of Trees" (available at that link as a PDF download; originally published in Interzone, but eligible for the Nebula by being reprinted in Apex Magazine, May 2009).

Since I have several months to make my nominations, I will likely add to the following list. But until then, here are my nominations. And yes, I think everyone should vote for these stories and novels.

Short story

Novelette

Novella

  • "The Political Prisoner" by Charles Coleman Finlay, F&SF Aug. 2008. Please note that I nominated this novella last year; under the rules, I can't nominate it again since last year's nomination still counts. But I still urge others to consider it. Update: It turns out this novella was on last year's final ballot, so isn't eligible for this year's. SFWA is correcting this error.

Novel

  • The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. See my review here.
  • Green by Jay Lake.
  • The Walls of the Universe by Paul Melko.

As you can see, I made no nominations for the Bradbury or Norton awards. I'll try to fix this in the coming months.

Guest posts at Jeff VanderMeer's blog

I'm one of the guest posters for Jeff VanderMeer's blog while he's on a book tour. So check out these recent posts of mine:

Mark Pexton's art for my new Interzone story

FallingShadows One of the things I love about Interzone is they publish your stories with amazing art. So far several top-notch artists have illustrated my Interzone stories, and this trend continues with my new story "Here We Are, Falling Through Shadows."

As you can see from Mark Pexton's art, the story is rather dark and, without giving too much away, straddles the line between science fiction and horror. What impresses me most, though, is how Mark so perfectly captures the story's family dynamic.

Many thanks to Mark for the great art. To see a larger version of the artwork, go here.

Circulation of online SF/F/H magazines

In response to my recent post Online Genre Magazines: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, I received several emails asking about my circulation estimates for these magazines. Now circulation is a dated term, only truly applying to print magazines. But the question is still valid. How many people actually read online genre magazines?

As I said in that post, it's difficult todetermine the readership of online magazines. If online magazines even report the number of visitors they receive, there is a tendency to inflate their numbers. I've seen this happen several times over recent years, where an online magazine proclaims one public set of readership numbers but have admitted to me in private their traffic is actually much lower.

Based on my experience with online magazines, I believe top online genre publications like Strange Horizons likely have between 1,000 to 2,000 unique visitors per day. Most other top markets will have 400 to 1000 visitors a day, and obscure markets will have 10 to 100 visitors a day at most. For a site like Tor.com, which has an active online community and an extensive offering of unique content, their numbers will obviously go much higher. But I'd still bet the number of people who access the Tor.com fiction each day is no more than 1,000 to 2,000 unique visitors. If that.

While these numbers may pale beside high traffic websites like Boing Boing, the numbers aren't too bad. If an online genre magazine averages 1,000 visitors a day, that means they have 30,000 readers a month, which is more than the biggest SF magazine in the United States, Analog.

Still, the weak point in my analysis is I don't have access to much current data. I'm looking for a few  editors of online genre magazines to share their traffic data with me. I'll keep quiet about the who and where, and if enough places share the info, I'll use it to more accurately update my estimates above. You can find my contact information here.

Don't Panic: 42 Reasons Not to Read the New Hitchhiker's Book

I've read all of Douglas Adam's original Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. They rank among my favorite novels, with the first 3 being some of the most influential SF books of all time and ones you should read before dying. But the new "authorized" sequel And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer, err no. No insult intended to the author, who has created some great works of his own, but here are 42 reasons not to read this book.

  1. It's not funny.
  2. Why pay $25.99 to read (in the author's words) "very authorized fan fiction"?
  3. "Why bother letting a CLASSIC piece of work stand on it's own merit when there are dollars to be made for retailers." (fan comment from SciFi Wire)
  4. No one should "hitch a ride to a sci-fi legacy."
  5. Even Douglas Adams wouldn't tempt the literary gods with the sixth book in a trilogy. (Okay, maybe he would, but let's pretend otherwise.)
  6. I don't want to live in a world where an author ends his series by killing all the characters and destroying every possible earth that exists, and someone can still find a way to revive the franchise.
  7. Because we don't want to replace Douglas' clipped and precise humor with humor that "is more rounded and anecdotal, and a little warmer."
  8. "I'd rather have a lightly grilled weasel on a bun, please." (One Amazon review)
  9. I don't like "extraterrestrial purple prose."
  10. Because naturally the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the most amazing electronic book to ever come out of the editorial offices of Ursa Minor Beta, isn't available on its wanna-be cousin the Kindle.
  11. If you can't make a decent movie off an amazing franchise, don't expect a second chance with a new book.
  12. "Give it a chance" isn't a reason to read a book--it's a plea for literary attention.
  13. The book is "Almost, but not quite, entirely UNLIKE Douglas Adams."
  14. Because I have no desire to breathe "a sigh of relief" when I finish a book.
  15. When you expect a book to be bad, having it be "20 percent better" than bad would still be ... bad.
  16. Imagine the uproar if someone besides Stephenie Meyer wrote another Twilight novel. Actually, that would be a selling point to me, but I digress.
  17. DON'T PANIC must be the catch-phrase of corporate publishers these days, who are milking every cash cow to death (along with their industry).
  18. When Time magazine proclaims a book "good," intelligent readers should run the other way.
  19. Because obviously we live in a world where good stories can't simply have an ending.
  20. Mostly Harmless should be a book title, not a review summary.
  21. Because this book feels like a cheap shot. It would be like me promising 42 reasons not to read a book, then delivering only 21 and telling people to double the number to reach 42. It's a shame when people do cheap stuff like that.

Best American Short Stories 2009 Lives Down to Its Old Reputation

So the other day I was in the bookstore flipping through the new Best American Short Stories 2009, edited by Alice Sebold—and notice I said flipping, not buying, a distinction which will become clear in a moment—only to discover the stories were from the usual suspects. You know, The New Yorker, The New England Review, The New Yorker again, The Southern Review, and again and again with The New Yorker.

Detecting a pattern?

None of the stories interested me, so I didn't buy the edition. However, more surprising than the low quality of the stories is that the selections were only from well-known literary magazines. No genre or online magazines were represented (except for Narrative Magazine, which is fully embraced by the old-guard literati as the only online journal worth including with the usual suspects). Still, these selections didn't bother me too much until I looked at the list of the "100 Other Distinguished Stories of 2008." Once again, no genre magazines listed. Almost no online magazines.

Guess these places didn't publish any stories last year which were worth noting.

This is shocking because in recent years the BASS series had been much improved by its guest editors widening the net, so to speak, to include stories from outside the usual suspects. Michael Chabon began this process with his brilliant 2005 edition of BASS, and the trend continued with guest editors Ann Patchett, Stephen King, and Salman Rushdie. By widening the net, these editors once again made BASS both relevant to the discussion of short fiction in this country, and fun to read.

Thanks to the 2009 edition of BASS, the series is back to being the laughing stock of anthologies.

Scoring (in the used book sense) at Barnes and Noble

Here's something I discovered the other day: select Barnes & Noble brick and mortar stores are selling used books. According to the clerk I spoke to at their Easton branch, this is a pilot program in a few places which isn't doing too well.

But from my point of view, the program is great! By way of background, I'm a bit of an amateur book scout, which is probably why I wrote a story about people who love to hunt for used first editions. Well, at this Barnes & Noble I recently found a number of hardback first edition books in great condition, including:

  • Strange Horizons by Sam Moskowitz, a 1970s collection of his SF essays
  • City of Glass by Paul Auster, volume 1 of his famed New York Trilogy as originally published by Sun and Moon Press
  • The Best Laid Schemes by Larry Eisenberg, a SF collection from a tragically forgotten author which includes his well-known story from Dangerous Visions "What Happened to Auguste Clarot?"
  • and Anthony Burgess' groundbreaking translation of Cyrano de Bergerac.

I also picked up some first editions by David Brin and Hal Duncan. Because B&N wanted to get rid of these used books, they were only a dollar each. Unfortunately, they each have a small remainder ink mark on the bottom pages, but that's minor and who cares. The Paul Auster book is almost impossible to find in a first edition and sells for hundreds of dollars in most used bookstores (at least, the bookstores which know anything about used books).

My suggestion: Get to a B&N and see if they are taking part in this used book program.

Is the term SciFi still derogatory?

I was asked today why I use the term SciFi--as in my posts about SciFi Strange--when "most" people in the science fiction community find the term derogatory. That was a bit of a shocker to me. I mean, I understand the history of all this. That SciFi was once used to put down the genre for perceived low-quality and cliched literature, and that's why many writers and others use the shorthand of SF. But to me, that's an ancient battle which is over and done.

I personally like the term and use it quite a bit. I also like the term SF, but that lends itself to an imprecise meaning since SF can also refer to speculative fiction. When I want to specifically reference science fiction, I use SciFi.

I also believe SciFi works better as a marketing tool than SF, as demonstrated by the success of the SciFi Essentials book program. In fact, that's why the SciFi Channel's much mocked move into Syfy land was so wrong-headed. Their original name resonated because people immediately understood it. It's also why readers responded to the SciFi Essentials book program. Readers weren't buying those books merely because they were slapped with the logo of a cable channel--readers responded to the books being labeled as essential science fiction reading.

Am I wrong here?

UPDATE: It appears I am wrong. A number of people contacted me via Twitter or email to say that they either dislike SciFi or avoid its use because it ticks people off. Most of this later group said they personally saw nothing wrong with the term, but wanted to avoid making people mad. One person even warned me that my use of the term would mark me as an outsider to the genre. Right. Nevermind that I've read almost every science fiction novel out there, have been reading in the genre since age 10, and love the genre to death.

My view is there's nothing wrong with the term SciFi, especially since the general public uses it. People in the science fiction community continually talk about how they want to bring in new readers to the genre. Well, one way to do that is to use a term which resonates with the general public. Just my 2 cents worth.

UPDATE 2: Many thanks to K. Tempest Bradford for writing about this. And if the Crotchety Old Fan's comments on the SF/SciFi Generation Gap can't bring a smile to your face, you take life far too seriously.

Response to Jeff VanderMeer on SciFi Strange

Jeff Vandermeer comments on my noticing of SciFi Strange. Basically, he's not convinced there's anything to SciFi Strange and that my description of this type of science fiction lacks "an understanding of how style and texture help determine the weirdness of a story." He specifically mentions this in relation to my story "The Ships Like Clouds, Risen by Their Rain," saying "There’s nothing strange about Sanford’s story on a style level--theindividual paragraphs are, if anything, straightforward, invisible, serviceable, and a little bit mundane. (The story’s better than the style used to tell it, but I still didn’t find it at all strange.)"

I should note that Jeff isn't mocking SciFi Strange. He's simply kicking the tires--seeing if there's anything to this, which is a fair question, especially from one of the leading supporters of the New Weird. On the issue of style and texture, the SciFi Strange stories I've noticed and loved are, by and large, not an attempt to be avant-garde simply for the sake of literary pretentiousness. This isn't to say they don't employ a literary style of writing (they do), or experiment with language where dictated by the story (they sometimes do). But stylistic mannerisms simply aren't the sole focus of SciFi Strange.

To me, the New Weird is similar to SF's New Wave movement from decades ago--both movements revitalized and opened new frontiers on how language could be used in genre storytelling. But while fantasy and horror only recently began coping with these issues through the New Weird, these battles were long ago fought in the SF genre. Writers of SciFi Strange don't have to prove themselves by writing avant-garde prose, and only use such a style if the story demands it.

For example, Nnedi Okorafor's story "From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7" is as post-modern and experimental as any fiction out there. It's also a great example of SciFi Strange. Eugie Foster's "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast" is another SciFi Strange story where an experimental storytelling approach is needed, and pays off. But not all SciFi Strange stories use such experimental styles. Ted Chiang and Paolo Bacigalupi write lyrical stories, but rarely employ avant-garde prose. As for Jeff's mention of my story, it is not an experimental story from a stylistic point of view. Instead, the story demanded an ordinary style of prose so the strangeness of the story's worldview could be felt more intensely by the reader.

What makes SciFi Strange "strange" isn't necessarily the style of writing. Instead, it's the focus of the writing. It's how these authors explore today's rapidly changing multicultural world and the basic human values and needs which bind us together. And at the heart of these stories is the basic strangeness, the basic uniqueness, the wide-eyed "gee-whiz" wonder and/or sense of horror which the golden age of SF displayed when it knocked upon the doors of reality back in the '40s and '50s. Except now this sense of awe is being told with the full range of writing styles and cultural understandings embraced by the New Wave movement of the '70s. And where golden age SF writers dealt with a worldview which was white-bread and analog, SciFi Strange deals with an every-changing scientific understanding of life and the universe--an understanding which is unnervingly close to being philosophical in nature.

I'm not sure if any of this addresses Jeff's concerns. I trust he'll let me know if it didn't. But I do agree with a point he made--SciFi Strange as a movement or subgenre or whatever you call it only exists if writers and readers are the driving force behind these types of stories. If they start identifying stories as SciFi Strange, it will exist. If they don't, then the term is simply the rambling of this writer's fiction-addled brain.

The noticing of my noticing of SciFi Strange

Since my original post about how I noticed a new trend in SF I named SciFi Strange, others have chimed in with their views on this. Among the comments:

I could go on. Obviously there is something to this whole SciFi Strange idea. It'll be interesting to see where all this goes.

The Noticing of SciFi Strange

Note: Below is my original essay on SciFi Strange. I've also arranged the following links for anyone wanting more information and resources on this emerging subgenre.

Original Essay:

I hate manifestos. They sound so pretentious, and often strike me as merely an ego trip for the manifestor. Sort of an "I'm so important whatever I say goes for everyone from this point on." Please. So don't call this a manifesto. Instead, it is the noticing of a trend.

Today on Twitter, British science fiction author Gareth L. Powell asked, "We've had New Weird and Steampunk. What's going to be the 'next big thing' in science fiction?"

What's the next big thing? I think it's already here. We simply don't have a name for it.

I've actually been thinking about this topic for a few months, ever since reading the introduction David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer wrote for my short story "The Ships Like Clouds, Risen by Their Rain" in their Year's Best SF 14. They said of my story, "If there is such a thing as new weird SF, this is it."

That set me to thinking. Why do I write stories like this? Why do I react so positively to certain types of SF, while other types leave me cold. The SF stories I love are by authors like Ted Chiang, Paolo Bacigalupi, Ian McDonald, and Nnedi Okorafor, to name only a few. As I reflected on the term new weird SF, I realized this label covered all the authors and stories I loved. Except new weird SF simply doesn't work as a name. It sounds too much like a rip-off of the New Weird.

Perhaps we should call this trend SciFi Strange.

Like SF's earlier New Wave movement, there is a lot of experimentation with SciFi Strange, along with high literary standards. But where New Wave stories focused excessively on sexual expression and the drug-influenced residue of the 1960s, SciFi Strange simply accepts the different viewpoints which were once so shocking and novel to the '60s generation. In addition, SciFi Strange writers live in today's multicultural world, where diversity and difference are the norm, even as we explore the basic human values and needs which bind all of us together.

SciFi Strange also flirts with the boundaries of what is scientifically--and therefore realistically--possible, without being bounded by the rigid frames of the world as we know it today. But don't mistake SciFi Strange for fantasy. This is pure science fiction. It's merely an updated version of the literature of ideas. A SF equipped for a world where the frontiers of scientific possibility are almost philosophical in nature.

Examples of SciFi Strange include Gareth L. Powell's "Ack-Ack Macaque," Eugie Foster's "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast," Daryl Gregory's "Second Person, Present Tense," Aliette de Bodard's "Butterfly, Falling at Dawn" (along with many other stories), Mercurio D. Rivera's "The Scent of Their Arrival," and most of the stories by Paolo Bacigalupi, Ted Chiang, Ian McDonald, and Nnedi Okorafor. In fact, I would rate Ted Chiang as the father of SciFi Strange. I know his amazing short stories have truly influenced me.

It is also worth noting that the writers of SciFi Strange appear quite frequently in the magazine Interzone and the webzines Clarkesworld and Strange Horizons.

Am I merely shooting off at the mouth with this? I hope not. SciFi Strange is what I see happening around me. This is the type of SF which truly excites me these days. It will be interesting to see if anyone else agrees.

Three of my stories, free for the reading

I finally got off my butt and created PDFs of my three SF stories published last year in Interzone and Analog so people can read them online. The stories, with promotional notes, are:

Thanks for all the support everyone has given my stories!

Several suggestions for Nebula Awards

Last night I submitted a few works as "suggested reading" for the Nebula Award, which under the new rules is the quasi-unofficial first step in the award process. My initial suggestions are:

  • "The Art of the Dragon" by Sean McMullen (F&SF, Aug-Sept. 2009)
  • "The Shangri-La Affair" by Lavie Tidhar (Strange Horizons, Jan. 2009)
  • "The Radio Magician" by James Van Pelt (Realms of Fantasy, Feb. 2009)

I'll no doubt have more suggestions as the year goes on. I also regret that I can't suggest several stories from Interzone, but the SFWA rules specifically forbid that since Interzone is a British magazine. Anyway, the official nomination period for the Nebulas opens on November 15. Any story I list on my blog as suggested reading will definitely be among my official nominations.