William
Sanders
Senior Editor and Mean Old Bastard
We at Helix are, of course, out of our minds with joy at the nomination of Jennifer Pelland's story "Captive Girl" for the prestigious Nebula Award. (And also for the other Helix stories which were longlisted.)
Not everyone seems to have been so happy at this year's Nebula nominations. In fact there has been considerable controversy — which there always is, but this year some have been unusually vocal in their criticisms.
Among other things, it has been said that this or that story on the ballot "isn't science fiction." Which is something else you hear every year, and it always leaves me a bit baffled that anyone would regard this as a valid complaint. All else aside, the Nebula Award is after all an institution of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; it doesn't claim to be an sf-only award.
But beyond that, there is still an attitude in some sectors that science fiction is somehow innately superior; that other forms of speculative fiction are at best to be tolerated but not encouraged. Back when SF magazines still printed letters to the editors, damn near every issue had at least one angry epistle from some disgruntled reader, pissing and moaning about the appearance of some story or stories that didn't meet his definition of science fiction, and threatening to cancel his subscription if this trend continued.
Helix hasn't run into much of that; on the contrary, just recently one blogger posted an enthusiastic encomium, praising us for publishing such a high proportion of science fiction as distinguished from that other stuff. And he wasn't the first; earlier this year, a well-known critic observed approvingly that fully 68% of the stories published in Helix last year were, by his definition, science fiction.
Well, God knows I hate to pass up any sort of praise, but the truth is that if this is indeed the case, if we have published mostly sf, it hasn't been by design or intent. As with the high proportion of women writers in most issues, it's just something that happened — it wasn't even something I thought about when making the choices.
(I haven't actually gone over past issues to see whether or not it's true. I don't know if that would prove anything anyway, since sometimes it comes down to personal definitions — and I give the matter so little thought that I don't think I even have a definition of science fiction.)
We could consider the present issue: of seven stories, three are pretty clearly science fiction, three are just as clearly fantasy, and I don't really know what the hell you'd call Robert Jeschonek's story except extremely weird....
But I didn't plan it that way; I wasn't trying for any sort of "balance" of genres or subgenres. I do sometimes try for balance in other respects — I like to have stories of different lengths, for example, and generally I try not to let a single issue become overwhelmingly dark or egregiously silly — but I really don't give a rat's ass whether a story is science fiction or fantasy or what, and I don't think in those terms either in what I accept or what goes into a given ish.
There is a reason our masthead says Helix: A Speculative Fiction Quarterly. We publish speculative fiction in all its varieties: science fiction, fantasy, alternative history (wish we could get more of that), and horror — of the sort involving supernatural or paranormal elements, though not slasher or psychological stories — as well as some that doesn't classify readily; and we have no prejudice in favor of one over another. And yes, I have rejected stories because I didn't consider them speculative fiction.
Be all that as it may, it's certainly gratifying to see a Helix story nominated for one of the Big Two genre awards. And I would hope that it is at least somewhat gratifying to other online publishers as well. Electronic publishing has come a long way in a remarkably few years; I can remember when only print-published fiction was even eligible for the Nebula, and the controversy that arose when that was finally changed.
It seems strange that the medium of publication should be considered an indicator of literary worth; just as Print On Demand technology, because of its use by various questionable outfits, became smeared by association and seen as virtually synonymous with vanity publishing. But so it goes....
(And even now some of the old attitudes have not entirely vanished. Reading some of the remarks about this year's Nebula long and short lists, one gets the impression that what's really eating some of these people is that the short-form categories are dominated so heavily by online and small-press publications, with the traditional "major" deadtreezines in a distinct minority. I will say no more about this except to observe that Jennifer's story was rejected by at least two of the Big Three, and to add thoughtfully: yahaha, also neener neener.)
I would be remiss, too, if I didn't give recognition to the people who did so much to gain acceptance and respect for electronic publications. Too many to name them all, but Ajay Budrys, with the later version of his Tomorrow magazine, was one pioneer; Eileen Gunn with Infinite Matrix was another important figure in the evolution of the ezine into a respected form. Above all, Ellen Datlow, with the much-mourned Sci Fiction, demonstrated conclusively that an online magazine could publish work of the very highest literary standards. (In fact a Sci Fiction story, Linda Nagata's novella "Goddesses", was the first webzine story to win a Nebula, back in Y2K.) Helix owes Ellen a great debt, as do all online magazines that try for serious quality, because she more than anyone else showed what was possible.
And so much for that. If you still haven't read Jennifer's Nebula-nominated story, it's still in the archives, in all its dark and disturbing glory. The archives are starting to add up to quite a compendium of outrageousness and cruelty, in fact; if you haven't been with us from the beginning, you could put in a lot of good reading hours just catching up. Assuming, of course, you've finished reading the present fine issue.
So send us some money already.
Lawrence
Watt-Evans
Managing Editor and Freelance Pedant
Identity Crisis?
As Will touched on above, one of the perennial debates among SF readers is exactly what is science fiction, and what isn't. A lot of people seem very sure they know.
They're wrong. Nobody knows. No one has ever managed to come up with a definition of science fiction that satisfies everyone, or even comes close. No one can come up with a nice clear dividing line between science fiction and fantasy, or between fantasy and horror, or even between science fiction and mainstream literature. There are always borderline cases, no matter where you set your boundaries — stories with one foot on either side of the line. If you really want to ruin an evening, ask a roomful of fans whether 1984 or Dragonflight is science fiction.
There's Damon Knight's often quoted definition, "Science fiction is what we point to when we say 'science fiction,'" but that's not very satisfying. Note that he said "we," not "I" — he later explained he wasn't trying to set himself as a final arbiter; he meant that even if we don't have a real definition, we have a consensus on what's included and what isn't. He was, in my opinion, wrong about that.
Look at my aforementioned example of 1984, or at Aldous Huxley's Brave New World — how can you possibly argue that these dystopian futures aren't SF? Yet many people do just that, arguing that they're literature, and therefore not science fiction. Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest, in New Maps of Hell, summed it up:
"SF's no good!" they bellow till we're deaf.
"But this is good." "Well,
then it's not SF."
For more recent examples than Orwell and Huxley, Doris Lessing and Margaret Atwood are cited as authors whose work can't be considered science fiction because it's not about robots and spaceships. J.K. Rowling has been quoted as saying she didn't think of Harry Potter as fantasy, which, as Terry Pratchett has pointed out, leaves one wondering just what the heck she did think it was.
There is no consensus, even among people who read and write the stuff.
What's more, most people outside the field, particularly non-readers, have no bloody idea what science fiction or fantasy is.
I used to admit to being a writer in social situations, but I got tired of the stupid questions that inevitably resulted, so now I just say, "I work with computers," which is accepted as boring and needing no further explanation. Back when I still admitted I was a writer, though, I was surprised and depressed by the resulting conversations.
For example, "What do you write?"
"Fantasy."
Confused expression. "You mean, like Penthouse Letters?"
"No, stories with dragons and wizards."
"Oh, kids' books?"
At that point I would usually be tired of the conversation and just say, "Yes."
I got sick enough of this that I started saying "Science fiction" instead of fantasy, but that wasn't much better.
One variation was, "Like Star Wars?"
"Sort of."
"I thought you had to live in California to write for the movies."
"I write books, not movies."
"There are science fiction books?"
(Incidentally, George Lucas has denied that Star Wars is science fiction at all; he calls it "space fantasy.")
Another response to saying I wrote SF was, "Oh, I don't read science fiction. I don't like math."
Or, "I'm not smart enough to read that."
Or, "I don't like silly stuff like that."
But the people who said these things would sometimes turn out to be big fans of Star Trek, or Ray Bradbury, or Jean Auel, and it would never occur to them that any of those might be considered science fiction.
Consider the recent rise of new crossover genres like "paranormal romance." Why is it called "paranormal romance," and not "romantic fantasy"? Because nobody outside our community is clear on what "fantasy" means. Put the word "fantasy" on a cover, and you instantly drive away millions of readers who think "fantasy" means only Tolkien imitations and nothing else. It would never occur to many of the romance readers who happily read about vampires and demon-hunters that they're reading fantasy.
(Incidentally, SF fans have no idea what's actually in romances, either, as demonstrated by their dismissive use of terms like "bodice-ripper" and the common assumption that because they read one thirty-year-old Harlequin once, they know everything about the entire genre.)
I long ago concluded that while I have a pretty clear idea of what I mean by science fiction or fantasy, it isn't necessarily going to match someone else's — Damon Knight's "we" is a pretty small, select group. Which meant, at least to me, that arguing about where the boundaries of each genre might be is a complete waste of time, on a par with counting how many angels can dance on the head of a pin — it's just fiddling around with esoteric theories that bear no relationship to the world at large. I have better things to do with my time. I don't care whether a story is science fiction or fantasy or alternate history or horror or weird menace or paranormal or the New Weird or what.
I don't care whether a story is an award-winner or a bestseller, either.
What I care about is whether it's a good story. Same as Will.
And I'm proud that Helix publishes those.