If you haven't already done so, check out the thread on Sergeant Chip.Responding to Survivor's post of 12/17/06 18:58:
You've made some fair criticisms here.
First, I concede that I didn't pick the best example to examine the market with; I picked it because it highlighted a few points (first person present tense opener) and had a strange opening (the "word shapes" discussion). The strange opening perhaps obscured the person and tense issues I had noticed in my reading. A different example would have been better.
I also concede that I went too far down the "it isn't what you write, it's who you know" path. That wasn't my original point, but I certainly got sucked into it. You're right, it has no real place here, and I apologize for cluttering up the place. I certainly don't think that craft's unimportant; I wouldn't spend so much time commenting on it if I thought it were.
I will also pick some nits.
First, "Sergeant Chip" is an excellent story, which is much more than an excellent idea. Ideas may be a dime a dozen, but excellent stories clearly aren't.
Second, there are definitely different ways to read a story. Whether you engage in them is another question. I'll leave it at that unless you're interested in pursuing it further.
So let's move beyond all that, with my apologies for the distraction. I still think it's relevant to look at the market: (a) what it's buying, and (b) what it's calling "the best".
I said I'd provide statistics. I don't have a lot of data at my fingertips, but I'll give you what I've culled from _The Year's Best SF 10_ (where Sergeant Chip came from), _The Year's Best SF 6_ (Edited by Kramer, one of those who edited 10) and _Writers of the Future XXII_ (for 2005).
Let's look at SF10 first. It's the anthology that made me doubt the oft-repeated conventional wisdom that that stories are easier to sell if you write in the third person limited viewpoint, past tense.
The SF10 anthology included 23 stories, of which fully 61 percent (14) were written in the first person. Stranger still, 26% of the stories (5, plus "Glinky" which sandwiches past tense between significant chunks of present) were written in the present tense. Only one of the present tense stories was third person; the rest were first.
These aren't weird markets, either.
* Four stories came from three original anthologies. Half were first-person, none present.
* One story came was a bit of an exception: a first-time English translation that came from an anthology of the author's work.
* The rest (19) were from magazines, most of which I've heard of. I think one is a literary magazine -- The Denver Quarterly -- but interestingly, it was only first-person and not present tense.
** Of Asimov's four entries, three were in the first person, and one of those was present tense.
** Fantasy and Science Fiction had six entries, of which two were third-person limited past tense, two were first-person past, and two were first-person present.
** Strange Horizons and Island Dreams each had one first-person present-tense entry.
** Analog and The Denver Quarterly each had one first-person past-tense entry.
** SciFiction had one entry each of first-person past and third-person present.
** Interzone was the only one that had only third-person past tense. It had only one entry.
SF 6 contains 27 stories.
There were a variety of unique pieces because of a special issue of _Nature_: the stories it contained took the forms of one second-person story, two first-person present stories, three reports, and one press release. Most of them are very short. It's a five-year-old anomaly, and should probably be ignored.
That leaves 20 stories. 5 of these are from anthologies, and 15 from magazines.
Of these, nine (45%) are third-person past tense. seven (35%) are first-person past. Two (10%) are first-person present. One (5%) is third-person present. One is a diary, which is first person, but blends present and past.
Chopped differently, 80% are past tense, the rest are present, (or a blend of present and past). 55% are first-person, and 45% are third-person.
If we turn to Writer's of the Future, we see that there are no present tense stories, and only 25% (3 of 12) of the stories are written in the first person. This is interesting, and I wonder whether it is skewed or the other anthologies are. Perhaps WotF is more representative of the market as a whole; perhaps of the market for new writers; perhaps of the type of stories written by writers who enter contests.
What does all this tell us? Possibly much more about the editors of the anthology than about the market, I admit. It would be better to know how many stories were published overall of each type, but I don't have that data.
I have to go, so I'll leave it at that for now. I haven't touched on unnamed characters or other no-no's, but at least for first person -- and to some extent for present tense -- I have to re-evaluate my position. It may be harder to _write_ well in those modes, which is why fewer amateurs publish in them -- but editors seem willing to buy it.
Regards,
Oliver