Thread by @NMamatas

1. There are maybe 3000 people in the English-speaking world for whom this matters, but I will now describe why "selecting the best stories" or "excellence is my only criterion" is a foolish way to edit a short fiction magazine or anthology, whether of originals or reprints.

2. It's foolish, and is foolish even if one is very skeptical of the idea of curating and editing with an eye toward demographic diversity in tables of contents. I'm not skeptical of this at all, btw.

3. The plain and simple fact is that different stories do different things. This is particularly the case in a genre-fiction context. Let's pick a genre: "fantasy."

4. When you see the word "fantasy" fiction, what do you think? What comes immediately to mind?

A dragon?
A vampire and a werewolf?
Cthulhu?
Elves?
Castles? (They're real, baby!)
A wizard? What kind?
Flying carpet?

5. Well, among all of you reading this, if you're around the age of 40, it's probably a dragon. If you're around 60, might be elves. If you're younger, a vampire and a werewolf—but they're hot and rivals in a love triangle.

If you're gross and smelly, probably Cthulhu.

6. So if you are editing some volume or number of fantasy, you, editor, who want a lot of people to read and enjoy your anthology of issue of a magazine, is going to need to have a dragon, and a werewolf, and a ghost, and maybe some guy walks into a magical store and that stuff.

7. So, you, a genius, who only wants good stories, happens to get three excellent stories. And they're all about the same thing: let's say disgruntled bitcoin miners capturing golden dragons for their scales so they can make the world's first cryptidcurrency.

8. ^^^ feel free to take that idea, which is very dumb, for yourself. Back in the Livejournal days, I used to run a feature called Free-Idea Fridays. I have a million awful notions a day. I just smashed five grapes into toast because I was too lazy to wash a knife and spread jam.

9. So whatcha gonna do, Maxwell Perkins? Run all three stories about the same thing? Get letters from people wondering where the vampire and the wizard are? Eat a few one-star reviews on the ol' Amazon for breakfast instead of using your royalty check on jam in a squeezetube?

10. You're going to, because you're an evil SJW or a PC-thug or maybe secretly non-binary instead of just having cut your own hair with the quarantine as an excuse, REJECT TWO EXCELLENT STORIES and publish TWO INFERIOR ones in their place.

Because you need a wizard story.

11. And this is true of all genres. I remember reading an issue of The Strand years ago—in it there were two stories with the same scene: two people eating dinner and one figures out that the other is the baddie and explains why and the baddie says, "You can't prove anything."

12. And I often like The Strand, but that was a terrible reading experience! Did the editor have some kind of fetish for that line? Did he even notice? WAS HE PAYING THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF ATTENTION AT ALL TO HIS STUPID JOB?!?!

13. And identical lines are different than identical motifs, but an editor can edit texts. I've heard rumors, have seen the legends chipped into the side of mighty blocks of limestone in the secret tunnels of the Great Pyramids. It used to be done.

14. "Oh-ho!" we hear from someone in an all-weather scarf and thick black glasses. "What about LITERATURE, which has NO stock themes or motifs! Surely, we need only EXCELLENCE there!"

So, how many miscarriage stories this month, Charles?

15. Will I read Southern Podunk Quarterly Review and look at the last paragraph of every story and see lone figure estranged from a natural scene (rain against the filthy window; leaves browning into black; bugs flying, liberated, from the slammed screen door?) every time?

16. Probably not, if the editor is any good! But perhaps so if the editor selects stories based on a single criterion!

And that's before we get to "I bet if we had some stories by black authors, we'd finally get a break from all the titles cribbed from Elliott Smith lyrics."

17. Editors make other mistakes too: acquiring based on author temperature rather on *general* quality; publishing their five friends over and over; never soliciting anyone new, or for that matter, old; failing to solicit me, etc.

18. So when some editor says that they only select for excellence, they're either not thinking clearly or are lying for political purposes. And it could be micropolitics: "If I say I need a cat story, every cat weirdo in the world is going to send me cat stories forever."

19. But often it's macropolitics. "Ugh, black people!" is a common theme. Sometimes, but less often, "Ugh, girls!"

20. And so politics, being politics, a look at tables of contents, especially over the course of years and a number of projects, is often used as a shorthand to determine whether an editor is just kind of a dim bulb or if there is something else going on.

21. Now that books are not distributed regionally by organized crime (this is not a joke) there are many fewer dim bulb editors (this is surprising, but also not a joke)—so it very likely, outside of the realm of micropresses, that an "only good stories" editor is a reactionary.

22. And reactionaries deserve their literature as much as anyone else does, but when reactionaries are the major taste-makers in this or that field, there's going to be real problems. Money problems.

23. Far from "get woke, go broke", the reality is that there are lots and lots and lots of books in print, and as reactionaries like things the way they used to be, there is PLENTY of what used to be still in print, and cheap or even free.

24. If you like reading, but are suspicious of every new-fangled thing from the use of dirty words and sentence fragments to uh female suffrage, you can entertain yourself forever just from Project Gutenberg and never spend a penny again!

25: Aside: film/comics/video game reactionaries like the dirty words and the big titties, so that's a different story so far as money goes. Books and short fiction are different.

26. In Bookland, you have to have the new all the time, and the old exists to keep everyone paid. Thanks, Jane Austen!

And that is why notions of politics and excellence are often entangles. Publishing depends on the old AND needs the new.

27. Oh hey, and speaking of old and new and excellence but also diversity and searching for different themes and such, did YOU KNOW that I have an anthology coming out in November, reimagining Lovecraft as a visionary of the sublime?

booksinc.net/aff/nick.mamat…

28. So if you like this thread, or are suspicious of my claims and want to see if I am any good, why not pre-order? Leave a note and I'll sign and inscribe the book when it comes out in November.

booksinc.net/aff/nick.mamat…