by Neil Clarke
We see magazines come and go, both in print and digital, and there are those magazines that have been around for decades. You started BCS in 2008. What do you think are the most important factors for magazine survivability; how do you achieve those things?
I think the most important factor for magazine survivability is commitment. Any magazine is going to get deluged with submissions; I think an unflagging commitment to replying in a timely manner, treating all writers with respect no matter their level of experience, publishing on schedule, maintaining consistent quality—basically, being professional in everything the magazine does—is huge in magazine building and maintaining a reputation as a worthy and trusted venue.
I think for indie zines, having workable finances is key for survivability. The financial setup for each zine is different; I think it’s important to have a setup that works for your zine, that’s realistic, and that you have set up well enough in advance that the magazine will be financially stable for at least a year, so that you can use that first year to establish your editorial vision and professional reputation. Fundraising opportunities after that point, like subscriptions or crowdfunding, in my opinion hinge on the magazine having a consistent vision and clear professionalism, which makes readers want to pay money for ebooks or donate or become a crowdfunding backer.
In your 2015 interview with S. C. Flynn you said, “The openings that do hook me seem to have a spark of individuality to them.” Many publications go through massive slush piles and will reject stories on the first page; some editors used to even have a “red line of death.” Are there some fairly common reasons why stories don’t make it out of slush; what does it take to get out of slush at BCS, and what does it take to make the sale?
The most common reason why a story doesn’t make it out of the BCS slush, although this is a bit flip as an answer, is that the story isn’t a BCS story. The complexity underlying that flip answer comes from the question of just what is a BCS story. I and our slush readers, Kerstin, Deirdre, Rachel, and Beth, have a good idea of what is a BCS story, but sometimes writers don’t quite have a handle on that yet. For example, we don’t publish classic-style swords & sorcery or D&D-type fantasy, but we still get sent a lot of it. (Which is why I think that a crucial thing for submitting writers to do is read multiple issues of any magazine that you’re submitting to.)
What it takes to get out of the slush, in my opinion, is a story with voice and/or with heart. The “spark of individuality” I mentioned in that 2015 interview is to me about voice: a story or an author having a voice that feels interesting or unusual in some way, often a subjectivity in the voice. I see a lot of stories that have a very objective voice, which for me can feel like the sterile perspective of a camera or of a character who has no investment, or stories whose voice reads to me very similar to the generic or writerly prose I see in the work of aspiring writers, who’ve absorbed prose tics from the fiction that has influenced them, but haven’t yet developed their own voice.
And heart. For me as a fan of character-centered fiction, I need for a story to move me emotionally. It’s not enough for me for a story to have a sympathetic character in an interesting setting who has a motivation and overcomes obstacles as they pursue their goal; I also need to care. I need the story to make me feel something. If I don’t care or the story doesn’t make me feel something, that story might be mechanically perfect, but it’s not going to engage me.
It’s rare, in my experience, for submission stories to have heart or to move me, and for me, all those stories stand out. Heart or spark is a thing I think new or emerging writers don’t always consider as much as they should. I think that was one of my problems when I was an emerging writer—most of my stories didn’t have heart, and so it didn’t matter that they might have been well put together. I was focused on nuts and bolts like POV and motivation and conflict rather than digging deep for something moving and writing a story that could make the reader cry. My story “Excision” that you mentioned above, which was in Ann VanderMeer’s Weird Tales, I found out years later from Ann that she remembered where she was when she first read it, and it had made her cry. That for me is what a story needs to do in order to stand out and get published. Every submission to BCS that has made me cry, I have bought. :)
When I teach writing classes, like for the Odyssey Workshop, one of my mantras for students and new writers is to dig deep into your own emotional experiences and write something that will make the reader FEEL something. That to me is the key to fiction that will engage readers; that will stand out in the slush pile and get bought and published.
A well-known editor once told me that he felt editorship should last seven years, and that after seven years the editor burns out, they get stuck in their habits, and the work they run gets stale. Do you feel like this applies to you or BCS? Or do you feel like running a magazine is still an endeavor of passion, that it’s still a place of discovery and innovation?
I’ve heard that too, in a talk by Gordon Van Gelder; the shelf life he mentioned was ten years. I definitely think there’s a core of truth in that idea. The commitment of running a magazine, that I mentioned earlier, is huge and incessant and definitely has the risk of burning the editor out.
At the time I heard that point from Gordon, I was in year eight or so of BCS, and his point made me stop and think and consider ways I could deliberately try to avoid getting stuck in my editorial sensibilities or having the work in BCS get stale. To me, the work that ends up in a magazine is a product of what stories the writers are submitting, and that in my opinion gives the editor the opportunity or the resources to keep the work fresh.
But I deliberately started trying to stretch myself out of my regular zone and to open myself to approaches or sensibilities that I had been less open to thus far. I published some stories that weren’t quite as tightly secondary-world setting as any I had published before, and I broadened my sensibilities in some areas of voice and tone that I had previously been a bit more narrow about. Basically, expanding my parameters a bit for what a BCS story is. The readership embraced those stories the same as all the others, and I really enjoyed stretching myself and publishing those great stories, so I’m glad that I heard that idea about editor shelf life, and that it inspired to me to take those actions to prevent BCS getting stale.
At the same time, I do feel that running a magazine is an endeavor of passion, even if you have to take steps to make sure the passion stays strong. For me, there’s always passion in the glee and delight of discovering a gem in the slush, or getting a story by a writer who’s subbed before and this new story is a leveling-up from their previous work. Those for me are the moments as an editor that make me feel alive, and they make editing for me feel very much still a place of discovery.
About the Author
Arley Sorg is co-Editor-in-Chief at Fantasy Magazine. A 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate, he writes SF/F/H, reviews for Cascadia Subduction Zone Magazine, and is also associate editor at both Locus and Lightspeed magazines.
Editor’s Desk:
Warning, May Contain Marketing
Neil Clarke
It’s hard to believe that I’ve been editing The Best Science Fiction of the Year anthologies for five years now. Under normal conditions, volume five—covering 2019—would have been published by now, but 2020 has been anything but normal and I fear that it’s not quite done with us yet. But that’s a path I’d rather not look down right now . . .
Recently, my editor at Night Shade Books sent me the new cover for volume five. If the artist’s style looks familiar to you, it might be because Pascal Blanche’s work has graced a few of our covers. As you’d expect, I’m a fan of his work and very pleased that he could be a part of this year’s edition.
As you probably know, I don’t particularly enjoy writing editorials or introductions. It’s a slow and painful process for me. However, the introductions for the last two volumes of The Best Science Fiction of the Year have flowed much more naturally
after I made a significant change to my approach. To me, Gardner Dozois’ introductions to his year’s best series were essential reading and included valuable history of the short fiction field. With his passing in 2018, I endeavoured to pick up the torch and merge some of those aspects with the analysis I had already been doing. I made it my own and by doing so, it became a very different experience for me. I’m sure I’ll continue to tweak the formula, but between this and the reader feedback, I’m much more comfortable with the direction it’s heading.
Of course, the real reason to read a “best of” anthology is the stories and 2019 provided some wonderful options from a variety of sources.
“The Painter of Trees” by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld Magazine, June 2019)
“Emergency Skin” by N.K. Jemisin (Amazon Original Stories, September 17, 2019)
“In the Stillness Between the Stars” by Mercurio D. Rivera (Asimov’s Science Fiction, September/October 2019)
“Sympathizer” by Karin Lowachee (Do Not Go Quietly, edited by Jason Sizemore and Lesley Connor)
“Knit Three, Save Four” by Marie Vibbert (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November/December 2019)
“Moonlight” by Cixin Liu (Broken Stars, edited by Ken Liu)
“By The Warmth of Their Calculus” by Tobias S. Buckell (Mission Critical, edited by Jonathan Strahan)
“Deriving Life” by Elizabeth Bear (Tor.com, January 31, 2019)
“The Little Shepherdess” by Gwyneth Jones (Current Futures, edited by Ann VanderMeer)
“Such Thoughts Are Unproductive” by Rebecca Campbell (Clarkesworld Magazine, December 2019)
“The River of Blood and Wine” by Kali Wallace (Asimov’s Science Fiction, November/December 2019)
“One Thousand Beetles in a Jumpsuit” by Dominica Phetteplace (Lightspeed Magazine, August 2019)
“Permafrost” by Alastair Reynolds (Tor.comPublishing)
“The Work of Wolves” by Tegan Moore (Asimov’s Science Fiction, July/August 2019)
“Song Xiuyun” by A Que (Clarkesworld Magazine, October 2019)
“Mother Ocean” by Vandana Singh (Current Futures, edited by Ann VanderMeer)
“Cratered” by Karen Osborne (Future Science Fiction Digest, June 2019)
“The Justified” by Ann Leckie (The Mythic Dream, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe)
“Old Media” by Annalee Newitz (Tor.com, February 20, 2019)
“At the Fall” by Alec Nevala-Lee (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, May/June 2019)
“The Ocean Between the Leaves” by Ray Nayler (Asimov’s Science Fiction, July/August 2019)
“Rescue Party” by Aliette de Bodard (Mission Critical, edited by Jonathan Strahan)
“Close Enough for Jazz” by John Chu (The Mythic Dream, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe)
“On the Shores of Ligeia” by Carolyn Ives Gilman (Lightspeed Magazine, March 2019)
“The Empty Gun” by Yoon Ha Lee (Mission Critical, edited by Jonathan Strahan)
“Kali_Na” by Indrapramit Das (The Mythic Dream, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe)
“Painless” by Rich Larson (Tor.com, April 10, 2019)
“Give the Family My Love” by A.T. Greenblatt (Clarkesworld Magazine, February 2019)
And of course, there are always the stories I couldn’t get or wouldn’t fit in an anthology like this. You’ll find the best of those listed in the recommended reading list at the end of the anthology . . . because you can never have too many good stories to read.
Anyhow, I couldn’t think of a better way to follow up last month’s editorial on the value of short fiction than with an anthology that I think makes the case. And yes, I have a vested interest in my own anthology, but I made sure you could easily track down the stories on your own if you decided to detour around it. Oh and the anthology, it’s available in hardcover, trade paperback, and ebook editions. So far as I can tell, it’s the only “year’s best” anthology available in hardcover this year. Ok, ok, I’m done now.
Go read some stories!
About the Author
Neil Clarke is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine and Forever Magazine; owner of Wyrm Publishing; and a eight-time Hugo Award Nominee for Best Editor (short form). His anthologies include Upgraded, Galactic Empires, More Human Than Human, Touchable Unreality, The Final Frontier, Not One of Us, The Eagle has Landed, and the Best Science Fiction of the Years series. His next anthology, The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 5, will be published later this year by Night Shade Books. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two sons.
Cover Art: 51
Rodion Shaldo
About the Artist
Rodion Shaldo is an artist from Tomsk, Russia. He originally studied architecture, but at age 21, he decided to pursue his life-long love of painting. His main passion is bizarre robots discovering the post-human world and he always tries to find some distinctive pieces of human legacy to include in his work. His robots’ design has been inspired by antique heritage and modern mechanics. He conveys both a knowledge of history and aesthetic feelings through his art. For him, those are the keys to happiness and our future.