Welcome to this week’s installment of The Never-ending FAQ, the constantly evolving adjunct to our Submission Guidelines and general-purpose unfocused Q&A session. If you have a question you’d like to ask about Stupefying Stories or Rampant Loon Press, feel free to post it as a comment here or to email it to our submissions address. I can’t guarantee we’ll post a public answer, but can promise every question we receive will be read and considered.
Delving right into the virtual mailbag, then…
Q: Have you heard the news about Kamala Harris’s choice for her running mate?
A: Was it possible to avoid hearing it?
Q: But surely, as a Minnesotan, you must be excited about who she picked?
A: Harold Stassen. Hubert Humphrey. Walter Mondale. The Minnesota Vikings. As a Minnesotan, one learns to distrust feelings of excitement and optimism. Why do you think local-boy-made-good Charles Schulz drew so many strips involving Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt, and a football?
If you have a few minutes to spare, go read the Wikipedia article about Harold Stassen. Considering all the good he did and everything he stood for, it’s really sad that he ended up as the punchline to innumerable jokes.
Q: But—
A: I’m cutting off this line of questioning right now. I have always tried to keep Stupefying Stories studiously apolitical. Let’s not break tradition.
Q: What is the deadline for the Space: 1999 short story contest?
A: Is it a contest? I suppose it looks rather like one, doesn’t it? Okay, the deadline is… hmm… Labor Day, September 2nd. If I’m going to start running these things the week of September 9th, I’ll need to have them in-hand at least a week earlier. Even earlier would be better.
This wasn’t meant to be a contest. I was thinking of it more as a role-playing thought exercise. IF Friday, September 13th, 2024, is the 25th anniversary of the day the Moon was blown out of Earth’s orbit and launched across the galaxy—
How would we be marking the occasion now? How would The Atlantic cover the story? How would National Geographic? Would this be enough to get David Gilmour and Roger Waters to reconcile, put Pink Floyd back together, and take their Dark Side of the Moon show back on tour? In this alternate timeline, is Prince still alive, and are we still partying like it’s 1999?
How did this catastrophe affect the stock market? Has the Cult of Diana made a big comeback? Are there lunar denialists, who insist there never was a Moon, it was all just a hoax? In this alternate timeline, is there someone like an Alex Jones saying, “See? See? I told you the Apollo landings were faked! They had to blow up the Moon to hide the evidence!”
Q: Because of your post I watched a few episodes of Space: 1999, and in one of them Dr. Russell was typing a medical report, on paper, using an Adler typewriter. On the Moon, in the future, halfway across the galaxy: where does she get new typewriter ribbons? Where does she get blank paper?
A: I often wondered about that while watching Battlestar Galactica, too. In any future space-faring civilization, paper would be an incredible extravagance. In Star Trek that isn’t a problem, as they have those magic replicator thingies that can make anything you wish for, provided you don’t think about it too much, but anywhere else… Okay, your space colonists have made it to Arglebargle IV. Now, what sorts of things that we take for granted will they not have, because it’s either too expensive to ship it there or too difficult to make in situ?
Q: I really liked those stories you ran last year about the 12-step group for werewolves. Have you written any more of them?
A: Not for public consumption. That series kind of petered out, as my stories turned very dark and unpleasant. I have a lot of darkness inside of me that I need to expunge in some way. Sharing the ugliness isn’t it.
Q: Are you still writing fiction?
A: Yes. No. Maybe. I can’t not write, but I’m not trying to write for commercial publication anymore.
It’s the same story here as in so many other industries: consolidation and contraction. The publishers I used to sell most of my fiction to either went out of business or were acquired and shrank their product lines. Today there are more fiction writers than ever before writing more fiction than ever before, but it’s become harder to make a living at it than it was even a generation ago. The commercial publishing industry seems to be driven entirely by Amazon’s marketing algorithms now, so that some writers actively strive to produce the sorts of formulaic and derivative paint-by-numbers tick-the-checkboxes novels that A.I. will be writing soon.
I’m cautiously optimistic about the state of the indie and small-press publishing business—that’s where the interesting work is being published, because that’s where the people who can afford to take risks are working—but indie and small-press publishing is synonymous with “damn near non-profit.” It is really hard to not lose money in small-press publishing, because you simply can’t afford to run the kinds of marketing campaigns that the Big Four (or is it three now?) can run.
And when your publisher is struggling not to lose money, that doesn’t bode well for your getting a five- or six-figure advance for your next novel, does it?
Q: Speaking of indie publishing, how do I get my book onto your Friends of Stupefying Stories list?
A: First, tell me about it. Sending me an email usually works best. As Karen proved many times, I am absolutely immune to telepathy.
Second, know that this is intended to be a curated list. Lightly curated, it’s true, but curated nonetheless. I’m putting our reputation on the line, by saying, “These are people we know. These are people whose work we like. We recommend that you take a look at their book.” So understand that acceptance on the F.O.S.S. list is neither automatic nor guaranteed.
The F.O.S.S. list wasn’t a one-shot deal. Our intention is to update this monthly. But before we can do that, we need to know about your book—and especially about any upcoming releases.
Yes, we’ll be happy to look at ARCs, either electronic or print. Query first.
Sigh. I suppose this means we need to add more book reviewers to the crew. Any volunteers? If this sounds like something you’d like to do, let me know.
C: Oh, and one more thing…
A: Perhaps I was being too cute, but the F.O.S.S. List isn’t just an acronym. I named it that because foss is the Old Norse word for “waterfall.” It’s a conceptual thing, you see. In the same way that many small streams can join together and eventually become a roaring cataract, I was thinking of the F.O.S.S. List as a way for self-, indie, and small-press publishers to come together and become something much bigger and more powerful than any of us can be on our own.
It’s a dream, anyway. I still have those, once in a while.
5 comments:
The Twins won a few world series.
And for a long time, I had the Wheaties boxes to prove it.
Probably until the cereal turned into stone...dinosaur droppings can fossilize (coprolites); surely Wheaties have enough preservatives to keep them from decaying until they become rock. "Wheatrolites", anyone?
Just the empty boxes. The contents, we ate. Once the inner bag is opened, Wheaties turn stale and unappetizing very quickly.
I always considered it a travesty that Suni Lee did not get to be featured on a Wheaties box.
ABSOLUTELY AGREE!!! Maybe THIS year???
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