Bull Spec Issue Number Four

I am interviewed, along with Orson Scott Card and Clay & Susan Griffith, in the current issue of Bull Spec magazine. This is a brand new speculative fiction magazine, beautifully presented, that you can buy in print or PDF (and, I'm told, ePub format soon). Check it out, and "like" Bull Spec's Facebook page as well.

Why I Love Beneath Ceaseless Skies

The other day a good friend and fellow anthologist asked me if I had a home or new of one for a good, literary heroic fantasy. From the description, the story in question sounded like exactly my cup of tea, but, alas, I'm not currently editing any short story anthologies. I recommended that the writer-in-question check out the online zine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

"Isn't that just a minor, second tier website?" my friend replied.

I quickly set him straight. Not only does Beneath Ceaseless Skies pay pro rates, and not only is it an SFWA-qualifying market, but work from it has been favorably reviewed in Locus magazine, and several of its authors have gone on to have novel sales (most recently Erin Hoffman to me and Saladin Ahmed to DAW).

I've been a fan of Beneath Ceaseless Skies for some time. Although my pleasure reading time is severely curtailed (anytime I read something that isn't a manuscript for Pyr I am essentially either taking my company's money to not work or taking time away from my family), I do make a point of reading BCS when I can. And I have yet to read a bad story there.

Now, I am an old school sword and sorcery fan. But I'm not interested in Conan pastiche, and I do have an appetite for elegant prose. Enter Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which offers "the best in literary adventure fantasy." Hey, look at those two adjectives: "literary" and "adventure." Not two words that are often strung together, and yet exactly what I'm looking for.

I'm also a great fan of the way that Scott H. Andrews runs the magazine, making every issue available not only on the site itself, but also as a free PDF, Mobi prc, and ePub file and a $.99 Kindle file. It's the ePub format that's particularly of use to me, since I can click the link and have it load directly into Stanza on my iPad. It's getting ridiculously easy to generate quality ePub files these days, with even more conversion options coming (Scrivener 2.0 and, I believe, the next generation of Microsoft Word will both do this). Some of the older, more established magazines could benefit by being up in ePub like this themselves, and I have used it as an example of what to do write in conversations with other new magazines.

They also have an e-only anthology out, The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies: Year One, which I bought in the iBook store the minute it was released. It's up in all these formats (and only costs $2.99):

Smashwords.com, in five ebook & computer formats

Amazon Kindle Store, in Kindle/Stanza format

KoboBooks.com, in EPUB format

Apple's iBookstore, for iPad users

BarnesandNoble.com 

Sony Ebook Store 

I highly recommend checking out the website, supporting them by buying the ebook anthology, and the downloading the latest issue. Plus, they are celebrating their 2nd Anniversary. BCS has published 45 podcasts and over a hundred stories in just two years.  This Thursday will see the release of their Anniversary Double-Issue, with stories from featuring Richard Parks and Tony Pi. I'll be there!

Heliotrope # 5: Michael Moorcock Tribute

Issue # 5 of Helioptrope is out. It's available online and as a downloadable PDF, and is entirely devoted to the genius of Michael Moorcock. It opens with Neil Gaiman's "One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock," and then a piece from Yours Truly, "Michael Moorcock: Behold the Man," wherein I talk about Mike's collosal influence on sf&f, "serious" literature, rock and roll, RPG and computer gaming, and quantum physics. Fortunately, Bryan Talbot is onhand to address my one serious omission. He discusses Mike's colosal influence on comic books in "The Moorcock Effect." Chris Roberson talks about his personal interactions with Mike the person in "Moorcock the Author, Mike the Man." Also included are appreciates by Paul S Kemp, Hal Duncan, and Catherynne M. Valente, and Rhys Hughes. There's a lot of Mike love in the issue, but that's something there can never be enough of.

The Future of Science Fiction

The New Scientist is devoting an entire issue to the Future of Science Fiction. They write:

With the death earlier this year of Arthur C Clarke, the last of science fiction's Golden Age giants, and with mainstream literature becoming increasingly speculative and futuristic, is science fiction as a genre dying out?

We plan to explore this question in a special edition of New Scientist out on 15 November – as well as reviewing the best new science fiction books and talking to some of the world's leading writers.

They have a page where you can vote for your favorite science fiction book. Naturally, I might have a few suggestions of folks who should be on their radar.

My New Favorite Quote

Sims and Spore creator Will Wright, in the September 2008 issue of Fast Company, from an interview with Clayton Neuman:

"I'm getting to the point where it's almost disappointing if people don't push back, because if it sounds like a great idea, that means either it's obvious or other people have tried it. Typically, if you tell somebody, 'I have this idea,' and they start telling you how horrible it is, at least you know it's unexplored territory."

Murky Depths: The New Kid on the Block

I don't check my various social networking sites' emails and comments as often as I should. I'm torn between attempting to manage them better, and agreeing with Cory Doctorow's recent piece on "How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers will Kill Facebook." So my apologies for not noticing this very non-creepy, polite email until 12 days after it was sent. I haven't seen Murky Depths yet myself, so I can't make any qualitative judgments about it, but I am very happy to pass the word of its debut and welcome them to the short story publishing field:

Lou

Wondered if you might oblige new kid on the sf block, Murky Depths, with a mention on your blog (I mean, Bowing to the Future).

We're UK based but have editors in the States and currently sales between UK and US are virtually running neck and neck.

You can see what we're up to at the website www.murkydepths.com.

Best
Terry Martin
Publishing Editor

Marketing the Big Three, Part 2

So, to recap: Warren Ellis posts the SF Magazine Sales for 2006, asking how (and if) the speculative fiction magazines can be saved. "Someone recently said to me, 'Well, what could you do to save them?' And I said, well, no-one’s asking, but there’s probably about twelve things that could be done. And they said, 'Well, maybe, but what I really meant was — why try? Why not just bury them and start anew?'

Cory Doctorow responds with SF magazines' circulation numbers in sad decline, in which he says: "If I were running the mags, I'd pick a bunch of sfnal bloggers and offer them advance looks at the mag, get them to vote on a favorite story to blog and put it online the week before the issue hits the stands. I'd podcast a second story, and run excerpts from the remaining stories in podcast. I'd get Evo Terra to interview the author of a third story for The Dragon Page. I'd make every issue of every magazine into an event that thousands of people talked about, sending them to the bookstores to demand copies -- and I'd offer commissions, bonuses, and recognition to bloggers who sold super-cheap-ass subscriptions to the print editions."

Then John Scalzi's "The Big Three" comes along to suggest it may not matter. "The big three can still be relevant, mind you; I suspect Asimov’s was essential in bootstrapping Charles Stross into being the decade’s pre-eminent SF writer when it published the short stories that would eventually become the Hugo-nominated novel Accelerando. Likewise, Tim Pratt’s Hugo win this year is going to do great things for him moving forward. That said, I can think of more prominent SF writers published since 2000 who have gotten along without the benefit of exposure in the 'Big Three' than who have been helped by them."

All of which prompts Paolo Bacigalupi to weigh in with five posts:
Science Fiction Magazines Part I - Why are the "Big Three" Dying?
Science Fiction Magazines Part II - Marketing in Meatspace
Science Fiction Magazines Part III - Online Marketing
Science Fiction Magazines Part IV - Starting from Scratch
SF Mags V - An SF Magazine for Girls?

Along the way, Paolo proclaims, "It says something about the state of the written sf market when we sf writers have a hard time connecting with the users of something as wildly popular as Halo. Technically, these users should be our bread and butter — and don’t tell me they don’t read. YA is doing just fine, and manga, too." Which leads him to propose a new magazine aimed at young male readers.

Then Homeless Moon offers "An Open-Source Speculative Fiction Magazine Model," which shifts the focus from marketing alone to online marketing which builds community. "What the Big Three have done effectively, and what constitutes a tribute to their longevity (which, in the big scope, is noteworthy), is build community. That is ultimately what online marketing exists to do, and represents a shift in the technology and approach to marketing as a whole. Saturation advertising has a provable low turnaround; high precision viral marketing is exponentially more effective (and I strongly believe that anyone running a small business today really needs to read that book I just linked). Get the viral going and use it to carefully cultivate a sustainable growing community and you generate an engine that feeds itself, markets for you, and brings in both business and revenue. The Big Three have lasted this long because of that construction of brand identity and community, to which subscribers develop loyalty and emotional attachment."

And then Homeless Moon lays out a very interesting plan for building a magazine from scratch, several excellent suggestions of which I'll consider further to see if they have any relevant applications for me and mine.

Meanwhile SpecLit weighs in with "Digest Blues: The Lament of the Big Three," which takes us back to the start a little bit when they argue that the digests have lost their relevance and make a case for a need to update their design. "What were once vital and important arbiters of taste in speculative fiction have descended into myopia. They are no longer the touchstones of the genre community. Instead, they are read by a decreasing number of entrenched fans."

While not as indepth as the discussions on Windupstories.com and Homeless Moon, the follow up post, Digest Blues, Part Two," is very interesting, in that SpecLit has done actual mock-ups of three alternatives to current Asimov's, Analog, and F&SF covers. The results, though hastily done and not meant as anything but examples, certainly demonstrate how effortlessly the look and feel of the Big Three could be brought forward without sacrificing their sfnal elements or going to great expense.

Of course, as all of this discussion is raging across the blogosphere the way things do, I can't help but feeling a little bit like everyone at the party is talking about someone who is standing right there in the middle of the room and didn't ask for the advice, thank you very much. Maybe the Big Three are fine with the way they are running things. (In fairness, two of the above discussions, again Windupstories and Homeless Moon, either shift focus to or focus exclusively on new models for new magazines, rather than strategies for the Big Three.) And F&SF publisher Gordon Van Gelder does pop up in Paolo's comment sections to make these points: "1) As far as I can tell, in all the discussions predicated upon the assumption that the SF digests are doomed, no one has actually addressed the question of whether the magazines are profitable. Everyone simply seems to have assumed that if circulation decreases, profits decrease. Not necessarily so. 2) I note also that everyone has lumped all three digests together, even though all three of us have differing markets and differing approaches. Some of the problems facing F&SF are different from the problems facing Analog. Naturally, the marketing approach for one digest might not work for another."

Which, interestingly, makes me think of this Newsweek article on Amazon's newly-unveiled Kindle, "The Future of Reading," in which Steven Levy makes the following point:

"Talk to people who have thought about the future of books and there's a phrase you hear again and again. Readers will read in public. Writers will write in public. Readers, of course, are already enjoying a more prominent role in the literary community, taking star turns in blogs, online forums and Amazon reviews. This will only increase in the era of connected reading devices. 'Book clubs could meet inside of a book,' says Bob Stein, a pioneer of digital media who now heads the Institute for the Future of the Book... Eventually, the idea goes, the community becomes part of the process itself."

Which, at the very least, means the party is going to go on talking. If Homeless Moon is correct, the Big Three are even enjoying a great deal of Viral Marketing right now, just by standing there amidst all this discussion pointed back at them. After all, as Mae West says, “It is better to be looked over than overlooked.”

Fast Forward 1: An Encouraging Glimpse of the Future

Aaron Hughes, over on Fantastic Reviews, has some thoughts on my anthology, Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge.Aaron begins by rounding up some recent notable anthologies, and then says that Fast Forward 1, "...may prove more important than any of these, because it is the first in a planned series of unthemed original anthologies - something that has not been done effectively since Patrick Nielsen Hayden's Starlight series from 1996 to 2001. It is nice to see Pyr, a relatively new SF publisher, using the original anthology format to showcase its brand of literary yet entertaining SF."

Aaron particularly likes the book's novella, as he writes, "For my money, the single best story in Fast Forward 1 is 'Sideways from Now' by John Meaney, a British author who is fast becoming one of my favorites. 'Sideways from Now' combines familiar SF tropes such as telepathy and alternate universes, but weaves them together in very original ways, blending two disparate styles." Aaron goes on to make comparisons to Meaney's story-within-a-story to the New Weird, then adds, "At 69 pages, 'Sideways from Now' is the longest story in the book, but so richly layered that it is difficult to believe Meaney was able to contain the tale in as few pages. I will certainly be nominating this story for a Hugo Award, for it is inconceivable that there could be five better novellas published this year."

Aaron also likes stories by Stephen Baxter, Elizabeth Bear, Robert Charles Wilson, Paul Di Filippo and others, and concludes, "this book demonstrates what a variety of authors and stories science fiction can encompass. By its wide array of different approaches to the future, Fast Forward 1 gives us an encouraging glimpse into the future of science fiction."

He also made an interesting observation, which may be relevant to recent discussions of the decline of digest magazines and the rise of several new annual, unthemed SF volumes in Fast Forward's wake: "There is precedent for original anthologies filling the void when print magazines suffer a period of decline. When multiple digests folded in the late 1960's and early 70's, anthologies such as Orbit, Universe, New Dimensions, and Dangerous Visions picked up the slack. (Notably, stories from original anthologies received over 40 Hugo nominations in the 1970's, after print magazines had accounted for all but one of the short fiction nominations before 1968.)"

Marketing the Big Three

My friend and exceptional writer Paolo Bacigalupi has posted three linked articles on the state of the "big three" science fiction digests and what can be done to boost their circulation numbers. I rarely just point and say "go," but in this instance, I will:

Science Fiction Magazines Part I - Why are the "Big Three" Dying?

Paolo says: "There’s been a fair amount of talk about the die-off in the short fiction magazine markets. Interestingly, this is often played as indicating their loss of relevance either generationally (sf market is aging) or else technologically (The internet is where it’s at! All else will crumble and fall before it!) or else in the business model - (free content will triumph over paid content). My perception however is that there are some specific things going on with the major sf magazines that heavily affect their success, and it doesn’t have much to do with the themes above. "

Science Fiction Magazines Part II - Marketing in Meatspace

Paolo says: "More than anything - more than changing demographics, or the advent of new technologies, or the rise of free content - I have a sense that the loss of sf readers for the 'big three' markets is actually a failure of marketing and core circulation management practices, not of the sf market as a whole. I just don’t see the big three doing a lot with their current subscriber base and I don't see them actively reaching out much. On one level this has to do with things like the appearance of their websites, whether they offer exciting subscription enticements, etc (which I'll go into later). But even more, it relates to how they use something decidedly unsexy: direct mail. ....Overall, I think the institutional barriers in the magazines may be significantly more problematic for them than the actual state of the SF market."

Science Fiction Magazines Part III - Online Marketing

Paolo says: "My sense of the online sphere is that it remains a place of opportunity rather than threat for a print magazine. Over time, this may change, but the internet provides the best place to attract pre-qualified subscribers, to build a relationship with them, and then to convert them to paying subscribers. Unlike direct mail, this is an area where initial sunk costs continue to pay off over time, and where simple changes can have positive ripple effects far down the line. It also seems like the barriers to change are fewer than in completely revamping the way they do direct mail."

DeathRay is Damn Impressive

I picked up the second issue of former SFX-editor Matt Beilby's new magazine, DeathRay, and I must say I'm more impressed than I expected to be. In fact, as the subject line says, I'm damn impressed. Although I came up through the media magazines myself, I don't read them very often these days. I only picked up DeathRay because it had both an 8 page piece on Michael Moorcock and a 2 page review of Ian McDonald's Brasyl. And to have one issue on hand so I could see what kind of treatment this magazine gives to literary SF&F. Because although prose science fiction and fantasy is the wellspring from which all things flow, it's usually given short shift in film, TV and game-centric glossy publications like this.

So imagine my surprise to find that Matt's review of Ian McDonald's Brasyl, though by no means entirely favorable, displays an awareness of Ian's body of work and the larger SF canon into which if fits well beyond my expectations. The actual writing of the review itself is far better written, more literary and detailed, than I would have thought, and, for that matter, two whole pages is more than I'd expect Ian to get in a magazine where he must share space with the Transformers and killer zombie sheep. That it is the editor-in-chief himself penning these two pages impresses me too. Here's a sample of his analysis, "Ian McDonald has gained quite a reputation as a science fiction writer in recent years - he could broadly be categorised as cyberpunk, sure, but there are other prominent interests here too, notably the impact of rapid technological change (and the social change that follows it) on non-Western countries... I don't think it's perfect, however, and the prose style annoyed me almost as often as it thrilled me. But by God, there are ideas here. And tellingly, I'm still thinking about it days after I finished reading it, a sure sign of a worthwhile book." Yes it is. Meanwhile, a sidebar summarizes five other novels from Ian's backlist. Minor quibble - as the magazine is distributed in B&N's all over America, I do wish they'd let us know they were planning this piece so we could have given them the US cover to run alongside the UK one. (But they do say that Brasyl is "probably the most important science fiction novel of the year so far" on their Table of Contents page. I guess I can quote that, right?)

The Moorcock piece is likewise detailed, in depth and well-written. The interview is roughly four pages, with a sidebar explaining "Michael Moorcock's Multiverse" and a two-page spread called "8 of the Best." My favorite bit from Mike: "Most economists agree that roughly between 1920 and 1970 wealth was spreading more evenly across the classes. Essentially wealth was moving from capital to labour. As a result we were all far more optimistic because we understood, albeit dimly, that we could change the world; that there were more of us able to affect change. By 1970 that power was being grabbed back until, by 1980, those represented by Thatcher and Reagan had put 'monetarism' in place, and if there was every a system designed to put the most wealth in the fewest hands that's it. Even better at preserving power than feudalism was in some ways, because we do get better crumbs from the table than the old peasants did--so we're less likely to revolt--but we're still getting crumbs. We're not getting the power. I think all this is exemplified in the problems of modern democracy, too." This in a magazine called DeathRay.

There are at least another 11 pages devoted to books and authors in this issue, though it's hard for me to be sure, as the magazine mixes its book pieces throughout its 130 pages, rather than consigning them to a section at the back fans of non-dead tree media can easily skip over. And I'm equally impressed by their media bits. In Jes Bickham's review of The Fountain, when discussing the casting changes that necessitated a lower-budget production, he writes, "It's hard to see the original Fountain--the big budget vehicle that was to star Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchette--being as effect as this, the scaled-back version that Aronofsky doggedly got made." The review praises the risk taking of a film that may not quite work but gets points for not dumbing down. (I haven't seen the film yet myself - it's upstairs waiting to be watched - so I don't know if I will share their opinion, but I respect their attitude.)

Meanwhile, an article called "The Best SF Show You'll Never See," written when ABC still hadn't scheduled their Masters of Science Fiction anthology series, speculates that, "maybe the lack of spectacle frightens the network executives. Who would want to watch a show that's talky and clever? Well, quite a lot of us, as it happens." And they lament that, "It'd be a terrible shame to see something so literary and intelligent fall by the wayside." And Red Dwarf co-created Rob Grant even tackles the question of "what is science fiction?" in his piece, "The Eternal Question," though his conclusion is of the "you know it when you see it" variety.

Of course, DeathRay emerges at a time when mainstream media is granting more respect to literary SF and where we've seen a rash of intelligent films and television shows like Children of Men, Serenity, Heroes, certain episodes of Doctor Who, etc... So perhaps it should come as no surprise that a magazine should arise that follows suite. Final analysis: despite the really lamentable title, I think I'll pick up issue three.