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I'm going to be signing the IGMS anthology sometime in November, somewhere in North Carolina.
I'm telling you now so you can begin to plan to come and meet me-- chances are, this is the only opportunity you'll have, due to my skittishness and general ambivalence about meeting virtual people.
There may be some other authors there as well.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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I am strongly ambivalent about making any effort to meet people who make no effort to meet others.
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Not really. It's sort of like pasta and rice. Sure, you could eat them together...but they don't really complement each other.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I wasn't aware Scott R was featured in any of the IGMSs can somebody point me to which issue?
Also in a few months I might be moving to DC so I'll just leave my copy at your front door, ring the doorbell and run away Scott. Just leave the copy on your porch after signing and it will disappear in about 48 hours.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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$2.50 gets you my story (which received a RAVE review from Tangent); you also get 6 other short stories from exciting authors like Eric James Stone, Dave Wolverton, and Edmund Schubert.
Oh, yes, and an Ender's Game story from Orson Scott Card.
And a novel from Orson Scott Card.
And a comic book adaptation of Card's short story, Fat Farm, drawn by the impeccable Jin Han.
And a audiobook of the Ender's Game story already in the issue.
I don't mean to be pushy, but with all that content, you can hardly afford NOT to purchase the issue.
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Unless you have no way of paying making me wish that you could get it free if you did some meaningless task that is worth $2.50 of entertainment. If only....
Posts: 549 | Registered: Feb 2008
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I had NO IDEA that the novel serialization was there in issue #1. Maybe I used to know and I forgot. I'm glad I read this thread.
Oh, and Eviction Notice is a fine read, and the Mazer story is worth $2.50 if you're a real OSC fan. (You are real, right?)
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Um. I should note, for the record, that I was half-kidding, and the half of me that wasn't kidding should add: I'm not thrilled with the state of speculative fiction in general, though I read all the major magazines, and IGMS is at least as good as most. So when I said "I wasn't thrilled" -- splash-damage. Sorry.
Scott's story was good. Seriously.
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I'm actually thinking about going, mainly to see if other Hatrackers show up. Meeting Scott would be a bonus.
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: $2.50 gets you my story (which received a RAVE review from Tangent);
So that's where despicable things with a spoon came from!
Yep. Eric Stone transformed the review into:
quote:Scott M. Roberts sees himself as a demon who feeds off dark butterflies of evil. Roberts is also a man who has done despicable things with a spoon.
posted
I've been thinking about that, and I think there are a combination of factors at work. The most prominent factor probably is the false perception of the high quality of the speculative fiction of the past. When I was a kid and getting into reading and falling in love with short fiction, I wasn't reading the magazines on a monthly basis, I was reading single-author collections in the library and 'best of' anthologies. So when you start out and you're reading a bunch of stories by Card, Ellison, Gibson, Wolfe, Zelazny, etc., you probably develop an unfairly high opinion of speculative fiction in general. At least, that's what I think happened to me. These guys wrote high quality stories. There is nothing junkbin about what those guys did (do).
I also think there has been a shift within the genre to an ickily humanist point of view. Many of the stories I read now seem to share the same philosophies. Or they're as tricky and as shallow as jokes. I don't mind the point of view -- but I'd like to see more diversity in the types of stories published. I don't know if this is the writers or the editors. Probably both.
I don't see the boldness, the audacity, the risk-taking, and the individuality of the writers of the past. I miss it.
Who are our young Cards, Zelaznys, Ellisons, Gibsons, Wolfes, Simaks?
Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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TL, do you subscribe to any of the monthly spec-fic magazines? Have you read other issues of IGMS?
I find the individual stories that get published vary quite a bit. Some of them I think barely fit the genre, others are love stories which aren't quite my cup of tea, but I almost always find something of high quality and in line with my tastes in every issue of Asimov's or F&SF that I pick up (I don't actually subscribe), and IGMS has held up pretty well too, although I THINK I detect new-writer-writing in a lot of the stories. I haven't rued purchasing any of the issues; there's always something good in there. (Did I mention how great "Eviction Notice" is? There's a dumb waiter, and that's not all.)
But you're right - you're unlikely to find that the pulp magazines consistently stand up to best-of anthologies.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I subscribe to the following magazines: Zoetrope, Fiddlehead (kind of a random choice), Cemetery Dance, Asimov's, Realms of Fantasy, and F&SF. I would subscribe to Atlantic Monthly if they still published fiction in every issue. I also read Strange Horizons and Thieves Jargon regularly. (I'd subscribe to them but you don't need to.) So... I'm reading a mix of genre and non-genre things. I'm not super-thrilled about any of them except for Cemetery Dance, but I keep finding gems out there. Cemetery Dance is by far, to me, the most interesting short fiction magazine at the moment. Um... I don't know. Maybe I'm too critical. I think I'm most disappointed in F&SF because they used to be, it seems to me, the standard-bearer for wild and interesting stories, and now they seem to pick stories that fall into a very narrow spectrum. Oh, and yes -- I got the first several issues of IGMS and then stopped. Not for any specific reason. Maybe I'll go back and get the ones I've missed.
Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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Okay. Maybe so. Well, hatrack aside, I'm always interested in discovering writers, and I did like Eviction Notice, so I went to his website and read the Blackberry Witch excerpt, and I came back to hatrack and read the thread about his writing career from start to finish. He's good, I can tell, even though I've only read those few things. (There are a few excerpts in his writing thread as well).
But. But Scott.... Scott, are you still writing? Did you stop? What's happening now? There's been a long gap between the last time you posted about story submittals and now.
I would definitely read his (your) stories (I've mixed up who I'm supposed to be talking to) if they were available. They seem (from the excerpts) like better stories than most of the stories coming out in the magazines.
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quote:Scott, are you still writing? Did you stop? What's happening now? There's been a long gap between the last time you posted about story submittals and now.
Yep!
I haven't publishing recently because I've been spending most of my time writing my novel. It's a slog; I've finished a couple short stories recently that are making the rounds. Hopefully there will be some good news soon.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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