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Some Things About Magazines

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I finally announce that I’m writing reviews for Phantasmagorium, and a day or two later the magazine goes into hibernation. In these cases, hibernation often means death, but who knows? I’m not involved any more.

Then another magazine called Nine, where I’d submitted a story and was waiting to hear back, abruptly ceased publication, or went into infinite hibernation mode, or something.

I was inspired to go back through my submission records and see how many magazines have imploded while they were considering one of my stories (the implications)… it seems to be at least a half dozen. Considering the number of magazines I’ve submitted to, that’s a lot. The statistical analyst in me is tempted to assert something like the following:

If I submit something to a magazine that has published less than five or six issues, the likelihood of that magazine dying during the time my work is under consideration is at least 10%.

Let’s call this Griffin’s Law of Unestablished Periodicals. Yes, let’s.

In happier magazine-related news, during the recent subscription drive for Apex Magazine (where my story “The Lure of Devouring Light” will appear before long — don’t worry, Apex has a lot more than 5-6 issues behind it, and is exempt from Griffin’s Law) I bought a subscription. Part of the subscription drive deal was that people who bought subscriptions would be entered into raffle drawings. There’s a list of prizes here.

I won a raffle!

In particular, I won item #3, Jennifer Pelland duo: Machine and Unwelcome Bodies. These books sounded interesting to me, and I already owned a lot of the other Apex swag, so this is cool. I win!

Reviewing Books For Phantasmagorium

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I haven’t mentioned it here previously, but I’ve agreed to take on the role of book reviewer for Phantasmagorium magazine.

It’s actually been in the works for a while, and I’ve received a handful of actual printed books and another virtual handful of PDFs. I’ve read them and made notes and finished my first review column, which should appear in Phantasmagorium Issue 5, which I would guess should come out some time in the next 4-6 weeks.

The first column is just short of 3,000 words and covers the following books:

Best Horror of the Year, v.4, edited by Ellen Datlow (Night Shade Books)

Hitchers by Will McIntosh (Night Shade Books)

Urn and Willow by Scott Thomas (Dark Regions Press)

A Pretty Mouth by Molly Tanzer (Lazy Fascist Press)

A Season in Carcosa, edited by Joseph S. Pulver Sr. (Miskatonic River Press)

So far, I’ve been able to cover only about half the material I’ve been sent for review purposes. I imagine once word gets out that Phantasmagorium is printing reviews, I’ll start to receive even more materials than I can possibly cope with, and it’ll be a great disappointment to everyone! Believe me, as a record label owner who sends out promo CDs to reviewers and DJs, I know what it’s like to send stuff into the void and never hear back. So then, I’ll just have to read faster, I guess. There’s a limited amount of word space in the magazine, but if I receive a review copy and it’s something I want to read and spread the word about, I can always review stuff that doesn’t make it into Phanta the way I’ve been reviewing all along: in this blog, plus Amazon and Goodreads.

Eventual Twitter Move

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I’ve signed up for @GriffinWords on Twitter. Yes, I already post to Twitter @MGSoundVisions and sometimes, for Hypnos related stuff @HypnosRec — but I wanted to make sure I grabbed this Twitter handle, the one that matches my blog, in case someone else grabbed it.

Probably I’ll eventually shift over to doing writing-related stuff @GriffinWords and Hypnos stuff @HypnosRec and abandon @MGSoundVisions… just not yet.

So now, if you see an “add” from @GriffinWords and think to yourself, “Wait… isn’t that Griffin guy already on Twitter?” you’ll know what’s going on.

Another Chance to Read “The Need to Desire”

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My story “The Need to Desire” appeared this summer as one of Phantasmagorium’s weekly features. I received some nice comments about it.

Several people told me they had planned to read it, but didn’t get around to it during that week. Because it’s fairly difficult to find places to reprint a story that has already appeared in print (even briefly, and only online) I’ve decided to make the story available to read on my my blog, at least for a while. The direct link is here:

“The Need to Desire”

Please forward to anyone you think might enjoy it!

Science Fiction is Devouring Itself

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I’m a lifelong fan of the science fiction genre. Novels, short stories, movies, art, comics… all of it. When I started writing fiction again a few years ago, most of the early stories I wrote were SF. My first published short story, “Remodel With Swan Parts,” was near-future SF.

For a while, that’s what I thought I wanted to focus on. I loved the way science fiction lets you invent some story element, whether it’s a social shift or a new piece of hardware technology, and use it to say something about where we are, where we’re headed. I wrote stories about genetic modification, artificial intelligence, space travel and colonization, alien contact. All kinds of stuff.

I’ve drifted away from writing SF, in favor of weird fantasy and horror. I never really thought about it, just started writing more of what felt right, and following my inspirations. This morning, though, listening to a podcast discussion about where SF came from and where it’s headed, I realized why the genre lost (for me) its sense of possibility, of limitless potential.

So much of the SF community, meaning established authors, reviewers, editors, and outspoken fans, seem to agree upon lists of things that are no longer acceptable to do in science fiction.

Don’t write about the “singularity,” because nobody really believes that any more. Brain uploads, robotic carriers for human intelligence… not gonna happen. Kurzweil’s a crackpot, right?

We really shouldn’t write any more stories about colonizing planets outside the solar system. It would take too long to travel there, would cost too much in terms of energy expenditure, so it’s not worth talking about.

Writing about artificial intelligence just shows a writer’s naivete. Who really believes we’ll ever understand the human brain sufficiently to model it? Of course it wouldn’t be possible to use computation to emulate a learning system.

The list goes on. Time travel. Free/clean/safe energy sources. Faster than light travel. Post-scarcity. Lately all the smart, outspoken people in SF fandom seems to turn up their noses at every technology that can’t be easily, directly extrapolated from what we currently know and understand. Sure, there are still a few of the old guard writing trans-galactic space opera, but none of the opinion leaders seem to take those people seriously. There are endless debates, in blogs, in podcasts, on panels at conventions, and everyeone seems to agree there’s a whole list of things that have been invalidated because “we just don’t believe that’s possible any more.”

I find this puzzlingly restrictive, and so unbelievably dull. I don’t want science fiction writers to stop writing stories that use a bit of handwaving.

An element of fantasy, a bit of “what if?” — what’s wrong with that?

It’s a Go

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A couple weeks back I posted that I expected to have good writing-related news to announce. When things went from probably to definite on that front, I forgot to mention it here. I did mention in a subsequent post that I’d had a second story acceptance, at least.

It’s official. I’ve had a short story accepted, it’s definite, and it should appear in the next 4-6 weeks. I’ll be more specific about the title and when and where it’ll appear, soon.