Right now, writers have more opportunity than they ever had before-especially short story writers. (Writers of the Future winners submitted short stories.) There are more magazines than there have been since the pulp era. There are more viable short story markets that pay good money and need content than ever before.
The flip side is that it’s hard to get noticed. Twenty-five years ago, everyone in the sf/f field read the fiction in the same six magazines: Amazing Stories, Aboriginal SF, Analog SF, Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy amp; Science Fiction, and Omni. Omni paid the best, but only published one story per issue. Asimov’s and F amp;SF had the most prestige, but Aboriginal and Amazing often found the best new talent. Analog had the most consistent voice, and any writer who sold to them was pretty much guaranteed to have a long career in hard sf.
There were other magazines, like Weird Tales, which published on an irregular schedule and some prestigious anthologies. Twilight Zone still existed then, but had begun the struggles that eventually killed it. (And it didn’t publish much science fiction.) Writers of the Future came in and filled a void, first publishing writers from Dean to Nina Kiriki Hoffman to Karen Joy Fowler.
Now most of those magazines are gone. Asimov’s and Analog are doing great, thanks to the forward-thinking that got them into e-publishing early. Their subscription rates, if you count e-editions (which I do), have gone way up. F amp;SF has one-tenth the circulation it had at its peak. Omni, Amazing, and Aboriginal are long gone, memories to those of us who sold to them, like the pulp magazines were to the generations ahead of us.
But now there’s a dozen other magazines that exist mostly online or in e-format, from Subterranean Online to Lightspeed. They’re starting to dominate the awards, and the stars who first appear in those magazines are starting to dominate the field.
Kinda. Because there isn’t that much of a field left to dominate. The rise of the new magazines, of e-publishing, and of big mega-conventions like Comic-Con and DragonCon have meant that what was once a small little club of about 10,000 people who read the same thing (and disapproved of newcomers, like Writers of the Future) has been subsumed by mass culture.
Writers of the Future has moved into that mass culture. The little workshop I attended, held in a tiny Taos hotel, has morphed. In the late 1980s, WoTF added the workshop to the awards ceremony. Then the contest went to spectacular places like the United Nations to hold that ceremony. But the contest and its “event” as the organizers call that week didn’t really take off until the rise of the internet.
Now, the judges, speakers, and contestants go through a Hollywood-style to-do, complete with clothing approval and all-day make-up/hairstyling sessions. This is so that we’ll look presentable for the television cameras that are filming us during the ceremony, which has become the biggest such event in all of writing. The ceremony gets streamed live over the internet, and the WoTF organizers say that millions of people eventually watch it. Since the ceremony initially streams worldwide and remains on the website for a year after the initial airing, I have no doubt that eventually millions do watch some or all of it.
This has come a long way from the tiny little workshop that I attended twenty-five years ago. Some of the new writers I met at the later WoTF ceremonies are now old hands in the field. Many of them have moved to other fields, like Jo Beverly, a New York Times bestselling romance writer.
The one thing that has remained the same, however, is the support from WoTF and Authors Services. They do their best to prepare the new writers for a career in publishing. Not for another award ceremony, but to actually make a living at the profession. And with the exception of the workshops Dean and I run, some of which are shamelessly modeled on that first WoTF workshop, I know of no other writing workshop that trains writers to have a career.
Go take a peek at the website, www.writersofthefuture.com. You’ll see how successful the contest has been over the years. Its track record is astounding. Then look at this year’s class picture, at the faces you don’t recognize scattered among those of us you’ve seen too much over the decades.
You are looking at the future of the science fiction field. At the publishing field.
I realized as I scrambled down a flight of stairs at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel to get to the photograph session on time that a lot more of my anecdotes will start with phrases like “Twenty-five years ago . . .” because I am a bigger part of the history of the field than I ever thought I would be.
Part of that history stood beside me in Hollywood. Someday, fans of the genre will look at that photo and say, “Wow, look at all the famous writers who hung out together.” And they won’t be referring to me or Eric Flint or Larry Niven. They’ll be referring to the winners, who have become long-term professionals in the field.
Those fans will be looking at their past. But right now, it’s our future.
And that’s really cool.
****
The Comfort of Your Wake
The joyous din of feeding time-bursts of conversation, crunching bredfish, the wandering ghosts of lost echolocation clicks-faded when a sobering message of silence spread through the gathered pod: They're here. Fear sapped the strength from Squeak's tail and flippers and the frightened taste of her urine filled the water.
Squeak couldn't see them, of course-eyes were useless in the liquid night of Europa's ocean. She could only listen helplessly as they drew near. Then her mother outlined them with her sonar beam and Squeak read the echo image: four large orcas, male judging by their proud dorsal fins, dangerous judging by their scars and confident, sinuous stroke.
"Stay close," said her mother.
Squeak obediently took up a position beneath her left pectoral fin.
The nearby orcas gave way and the newcomers began circling Squeak and her mother.
One of them directed a tight beam of high-frequency clicks at Squeak's mother. It was a private message, but Squeak with her experience in eavesdropping could hear it: "I am Hammerhead-mater-Grabjaw. That female cowering under your flipper-she is your calf?"
Squeak noted that the other males, probably Hammerhead's brothers, did not identify themselves-a breach of whale etiquette.
"I am Tailspinner." Squeak's mother broadcast her reply so that everyone could hear. "What business is it of yours?"
Squeak noted the absence of the matrilineal name with bitterness.
"Our business is to ensure that the Breeding Laws are obeyed," Hammerhead replied in the same fashion. "I think that you can see how we need to catalogue descent to do that."
"She is mine." While she clicked these works, Squeak's mother said simultaneously in the slower squeaks and groans language that orcas shared with the Grandfather whales: Defy.
"You are refugees from Broken Tail Spire, are you not?"
"Yes! When the vent died, we had to move our herds. The whole pod was dispersed; families that had swum together for generations never to touch again. Only five tides ago did we join your pod."
"You are welcome to the Singing Valley pod. We ask only that you obey the rules." And like Squeak's mother, Hammerhead whistled a counterpoint: Punishment.
One of the other circling orcas took up this whistle as a refrain: Punishment . . . Punishment . . .