Unabashed

There are lessons to be learned over at Whatever. John Scalzi announced the winning entrants (two runners up and one grand prize) for his Zoe’s Tale ARC contest this morning and it occurred to me, as I read the entries (many of which were really good), that it might be better to be published on the Whatever than in a publication dedicated to the exact same type of material. There are a lot of creative types who read Scalzi regularly, so it just makes sense that they’ll write some really good material in response to his request. And this is where it gets kind of interesting: When the contest started out it seemed like it was just a fun little thing; you might even go so far as to call it gimicky. Someone send in something funny, entertain me, and I’ll give you this book. But then I started reading the entries. I saw mostly what I expected to see: nothing you could really call a submission, just little anecdotes and humorous quips people were writing on the fly. But a few of them are good, very good, as you can see by the winners. I began to realize that these weren’t just little humorous quips, these are stories.

As it is, they are published–on Whatever, which is one of the most-read personal blogs on the internet. Not a venue where you’d expect to find good fiction unless the author published something himself, which he rarely does.  What’s interesting to me is that, even though it was a very informal forum, we got to see the whole process unfold right there in the comments section. Every entry (or submission, as it were) is readable by anyone. The three best, as judged by the site owner, got their very own dedicated post right on the front page of the site. There is a curious lack of linkage to their websites, at least for those who provided websites to be linked to. I would have thought a winning entry would get a link on the front page too, but you have to dig back through the comments of the ARC contest post to find out where their websites are (JS must be greedy with his Technorati ratings handouts). (JS advises me this was just an oversight and has been corrected). But even without the link, that’s a lot of great exposure for a writer or blogger.

These entries may not be a fit for SF&F or Strange Horizons, but they’re no less entertaining, and I would come back and read more if I thought more would follow. This is a serious feat that I’m wondering if anyone else will pick up on. It would be interesting to see more contests like this one, basically asking for fiction (I know there have been some of these before, I just haven’t seen many done so well). Most of the time if someone asks for fiction, even if they provide the theme, they’ll get a lot of 3k-word stories that are basically just more of the same. This time, the stories responding to the theme “The evening of August 19, 1994. What can you tell me about it?” were actually interesting (for the most part). And I generally don’t like to read short fiction.

I didn’t write an entry myself, but I did keep checking back to see what was being written. Maybe next time I’ll give it a try. And yes, I’ll go ahead and say that it would be nice to see Whatever do this as a regular feature. I’d do it here if I had half his readership and, you know, some stuff to give away. The results could be looked back upon one day as visionary.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: blog, blogger, Contest, Fiction, John Scalzi, markets, stories, Zoe's ARC

Okay; who else is excited about this? I’m getting free e-books in my email, free artwork, and, if you read the fine print in those emails or visit Tor.com nowadays you get this little message:

Something new is coming.

For days I’ve been watching this site. What’s it going to be? Is it going to redefine the SciFi presence on the web (something that is in dire need of redefining, if you ask me)? I’m tantalized beyond words. I am ready, Tor.

Make the internet better for us.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: science fiction, scifi, scific, Tor

I don’t do many of these, but the folks at GUD were kind enough to send me an advance copy of their first second (they started at #0–whoops) issue to review. I printed it off and set about reading it with a very critical mindset, to be critical in the very definition of the word. But it’s hard to be overly critical with something you love, and I find myself loving this magazine.

The entire magazine is entirely readable, for starters, which is an accomplishment in itself. There’s not a single throw-away story from the first page to the pleasing end, and it’s packed with stories which I feel can appeal to every reader, whether they prefer speculative fiction in its many brands or mainstream contemporary literature or even slice-of-life non-fiction. It’s rare for a magazine to be put together so well, to be attractive and enjoyable from start to finish, but that’s exactly how I found GUD. I’m a subscriber to a few magazines currently, and I read a good many more than I subscribe to, and I can’t think of another single issue of any magazine that didn’t have at least one story that I didn’t like. Not so with GUD. It’s 200+ pages of fantastic fiction, some humorous and some dark, a bit of scifi, a touch of fantasy, a spackling of horror, poetry and art and tons of great reading.

And the writing? Well, from my point of view it’s exceptional. It’s a veritable how-to document for a new writer trying to come to grips with the “show don’t tell” mantra that’s so often repeated in critiquing circles. And, even better, it’s edited to near perfection. There’s not much to dislike in this magazine in which, when trying to put together a list of my favorite stories from it, every single title leaps off the page and begs to be included, and they are all worthy.

But of course, I set out to be critical and here’s the only God’s-honest critique I can come up with: They’ve set the bar too high. This may be the best single issue of a magazine I’ve ever read. If they keep this up, I’ll be a subscriber forever. And I should add that I’m not being paid to say this: this is my honest opinion. Regardless of how the magazine progresses from here, they’ve put together a work of art with this first issue that I’ll no doubt be reading again and again. It’s rare that I’ll put a magazine on my bookshelves, much less keep one for any length of time in anything other than a box in the attic, but this one is special. This one’s a keeper.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: GUD

Publication alert:

Southern Fried Weirdness Online has published a story of mine called “Mermaid.” It’s a short short which might require all of a minute and a half to read. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

written by Matt Mitchell

Warren Ellis on the state of the big three of fantasy and scifi magazines:

ASIMOV’S, ANALOG, F&SF; they don’t think they need saving. I mean, they haven’t changed for years, have they? They’re not designed to be wanted because they don’t want to be wanted, not really. They want to be left alone to do their thing, and they don’t want any loud new people in the room. They serve a dwindling audience, and they have to be aware of that so they have to be in it to simply serve that audience, to provide that presumably cosy experience to their people until the last light goes out. Otherwise they would have done something different years ago. This is why those three magazines have a web presence that can charitably be described as vestigial.

The man has a point. I look at the covers of some of these magazines and I see images too similar to what I saw in 1985, or even earlier, cover art that wasn’t even progressive when Omni’s covers looked roughly the same in 1979. It’s sad to me, as a writer, because those are the shining three beacons of publishing success–at least in the short fiction market–for a speculative fiction author. Mr. Ellis is speculating on writing another article on what might be done to save them and I’ll be very interested to see it. For my own part I subscribe to both Asimov’s and F&SF, but I’m not particularly happy with either. Of course, I always believe they’d do much better if they’d publish some of my stuff :-)

Also see this article by the same man, and this one by someone else entirely (Cory Doctorow).

And I’ll end this in the same way Warren ended his article:

And then someone else asked me why there’s still an sf magazine called “Analog.”

Update: 10-24-07
John Scalzi has thrown his voice into the fray on this topic which has attracted a lot of attention. He’s given this useful quote, a bit of positive spin for a guy like me, who (so far) has no large readership or SFFWA publishing credits to his name:

I suspect it’s not that hard to raise consciousness of new work online to the level you’ll find in the pages of the Big Three, given their current circulation numbers. That gives emerging writers a way to build careers outside those magazines, and it means the Big Three run a further risk of isolating themselves, both from where science fiction literature is going, and from the audiences building around these new writers.

And Warren has added to his original thought with another post.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: markets, SFFWA, short fiction