Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The code and open-source tools I used to produce a science fiction anthology

compellingsciencefiction.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 50 posts

Re: The code and open-source tools I used to produce a science fiction anthology

#41

Post by mojoe »

jacquesm wrote: post #38
mojoe wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First I just want to say that it's an honor that you took a look, I've read and enjoyed many of your articles in the past. This anthology is actually a "Year's Best" -- they're reprints selected from a pool of 391 stories printed in the big science fiction magazines last year. So I'm not opening for submissions, or anything like that (I have done that before, back when I published a magazine). For this anthology I re…

Do you plan on making it a cycle? I have been reading old ones (very old, in some cases), they can be quite hard to find and I am absolutely blown away by the quality and the depth of vision in some of those older collections. Stories whose writers never had a second piece in print anywhere. Short story SF is a very interesting genre to me and I'm super happy to see you make this effort.

Yes, I plan on releasing one annually, based on the best concept-driven science fiction stories from the previous year. Any more than that and it would take too much time, but one per year is sustainable for me.

I agree that there are many forgotten gems in old science fiction short stories. I just counted on my bookshelf, I own 19 of those old collections in physical form and I'm sure many more in ebook form.

Re: The code and open-source tools I used to produce a science fiction anthology

#42

Post by jacquesm »

mojoe wrote: post #41
jacquesm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you plan on making it a cycle? I have been reading old ones (very old, in some cases), they can be quite hard to find and I am absolutely blown away by the quality and the depth of vision in some of those older collections. Stories whose writers never had a second piece in print anywhere. Short story SF is a very interesting genre to me and I'm super happy to see you make this effort.

Yes, I plan on releasing one annually, based on the best concept-driven science fiction stories from the previous year. Any more than that and it would take too much time, but one per year is sustainable for me. I agree that there are many forgotten gems in old science fiction short stories. I just counted on my bookshelf, I own 19 of those old collections in physical form and I'm sure many more in ebook form.

Hehe, cool, we should exchange reading lists!

I really dislike Ron L. Hubbard but besides having a knack for tooting his own horn he also had a great eye for good stories.

Have you thought of asking the writers that have already 'arrived' to write a short story on commission? That would lift up the stature of all of the stories you've picked out to be curated. I saw you mentioned Greg Egan, that is definitely a big name.

Re: The code and open-source tools I used to produce a science fiction anthology

#43

Post by mojoe »

jacquesm wrote: post #42
mojoe wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I plan on releasing one annually, based on the best concept-driven science fiction stories from the previous year. Any more than that and it would take too much time, but one per year is sustainable for me. I agree that there are many forgotten gems in old science fiction short stories. I just counted on my bookshelf, I own 19 of those old collections in physical form and I'm sure many more in ebook form.

Hehe, cool, we should exchange reading lists! I really dislike Ron L. Hubbard but besides having a knack for tooting his own horn he also had a great eye for good stories. Have you thought of asking the writers that have already 'arrived' to write a short story on commission? That would lift up the stature of all of the stories you've picked out to be curated. I saw you mentioned Greg Egan, that is definitely a big n…

My favorite collection recently was "The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge". It spans his short fiction from 1965-2001.

I've considered commissions many times, I go back and forth on it. I wouldn't want to put a commissioned story into a "Year's Best" anthology, just because I truly want it to be a "Year's Best" -- i.e. I need to evaluate ALL the stories published to the best of my ability and choose the best regardless of name recognition.

I could commission some and create a new themed book separate from the "Year's Best", but that's hit and miss. The main issue with commissions for me is that you never really know if the thing you're commissioning is going to turn out how you want. If the authors are well-known it will probably be good, but I've had many editor friends commission stuff that was just phoned in.

Re: The code and open-source tools I used to produce a science fiction anthology

#44

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

tenacious_tuna wrote: post #39
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #3

It's quite an achievement. I was once interested in publishing a SF anthology. Formatting and editing was nbd -- I was going to use Amazon's KDP software package for most of it, which can take a .docx and output an ebook in 5 minutes. I've done it before for non-anthology books I've published, and it couldn't be easier, though I understand why people might avoid Amazon in this day and age. The real trouble was gettin…

Can you name the works you'd collected? That's a killer lineup, I'm a huge fan of Walter Jon Willams and have enjoyed what Watts I've read.

It was intended as a sort of military SF anothology, with the word "military" also encompassing revolution, insurgency, and various other 4GW concepts. The stories spanned the period from roughly 1980-2020, with many published from 2010-2020. The list was:

> A Dry, Quiet War by Tony Daniel

> ZeroS by Peter Watts

> A Soldier of the City by David Moles

> The Beast Adjoins by Ted Kosmatka

> Lady Be Good by Jack Campbell

> Mid-Death by Alan Dean Foster

> Weaponized Math by Jonathan Brazee

> Prayers on the Wind by Walter Jon Williams

> Highwaymen by Ken MacLeod

> Second Skin by Paul McAuley

> The Dread And Fear of Kings by Richard Paul Russo

> Herbig-Haro by Harry Turtledove

> The Lost Dorsai by Gordon Dickson

> Cincinnatus by Joel Rosenberg

> The Proud Foot of the Conqueror by Reginald Bretnor

It's the stories lower on the list that were unobtainable. Dickson, Rosenberg, and Bretnor being dead (may they all rest in peace,) did not help matters.

Re: The code and open-source tools I used to produce a science fiction anthology

#45

Post by jacquesm »

mojoe wrote: post #43
jacquesm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hehe, cool, we should exchange reading lists! I really dislike Ron L. Hubbard but besides having a knack for tooting his own horn he also had a great eye for good stories. Have you thought of asking the writers that have already 'arrived' to write a short story on commission? That would lift up the stature of all of the stories you've picked out to be curated. I saw you mentioned Greg Egan, that is definitely a big n…

My favorite collection recently was "The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge". It spans his short fiction from 1965-2001. I've considered commissions many times, I go back and forth on it. I wouldn't want to put a commissioned story into a "Year's Best" anthology, just because I truly want it to be a "Year's Best" -- i.e. I need to evaluate ALL the stories published to the best of my ability and choose the best regardl…

> My favorite collection recently was "The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge". It spans his short fiction from 1965-2001.

I re-read that one just after he died. Amazing stuff.

> I've considered commissions many times, I go back and forth on it. I wouldn't want to put a commissioned story into a "Year's Best" anthology, just because I truly want it to be a "Year's Best" -- i.e. I need to evaluate ALL the stories published to the best of my ability and choose the best regardless of name recognition.

That's a good point. Otoh, 'best' is always going to be subjective and you could make it explicit: A novel short story by X and the best of Y.

> I could commission some and create a new themed book separate from the "Year's Best", but that's hit and miss. The main issue with commissions for me is that you never really know if the thing you're commissioning is going to turn out how you want. If the authors are well-known it will probably be good, but I've had many editor friends commission stuff that was just phoned in.

Ok. That's probably a matter of having an authentic connection to the writers whose work you would like to commission.

I used to run 'daz.com', as a community for people interested in music, much like Musicbrainz, with connections between bands through collaborations and shared individuals to help discover new music. As a side project I thought of commissioning a piece of music. This really opened my eyes to what it costs to produce a high quality piece and that was priced right out of the ballpark but what struck me is that the few artists that I had contact with all had already used the site and had made sure that their own record there was accurate. This was amazing and made me quite happy, even so, they had pretty high standards and when all was said and done it went nowhere. We did manage to raise the profile of a few artists whose work was otherwise less known and I made a number of very interesting contacts.

I'm not going to name drop anybody but suffice to say that I found it amazing that you could just reach out to A-list artists and get a well thought out and very helpful response.

Re: The code and open-source tools I used to produce a science fiction anthology

#46

Post by mojoe »

jacquesm wrote: post #45
mojoe wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite collection recently was "The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge". It spans his short fiction from 1965-2001. I've considered commissions many times, I go back and forth on it. I wouldn't want to put a commissioned story into a "Year's Best" anthology, just because I truly want it to be a "Year's Best" -- i.e. I need to evaluate ALL the stories published to the best of my ability and choose the best regardl…

> My favorite collection recently was "The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge". It spans his short fiction from 1965-2001. I re-read that one just after he died. Amazing stuff. > I've considered commissions many times, I go back and forth on it. I wouldn't want to put a commissioned story into a "Year's Best" anthology, just because I truly want it to be a "Year's Best" -- i.e. I need to evaluate ALL the stories publi…

That's really cool! Yes, it's always been amazing to me how many people will respond helpfully to a random cold email.

And well-known authors are similar to other artists in the fact that they have steep rates for commissions. For instance, https://clarkesworldmagazine.com pays a flat reasonable rate of 14 cents per word ($840 for a 6k word story). I've talked to well-known authors who would charge $5/word for that same story on commission ($30k)

Re: The code and open-source tools I used to produce a science fiction anthology

#47

Post by ozim »

ssivark wrote: post #15
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #3

It's quite an achievement. I was once interested in publishing a SF anthology. Formatting and editing was nbd -- I was going to use Amazon's KDP software package for most of it, which can take a .docx and output an ebook in 5 minutes. I've done it before for non-anthology books I've published, and it couldn't be easier, though I understand why people might avoid Amazon in this day and age. The real trouble was gettin…

Just a thought... would it make sense to maintain a govt/central registry of copyright owners, and have an "official" means of contacting them, on which they have an SLA to respond (say 3 months) which might be part of the ground rules for maintaining rights. From a macro societal perspective, would this evolve "copyright" into a more balanced (value generating) deal for all of society?

Oh how naive.

We have that in place for open source software. No one is contacting the authors on GitHub they just grab and use it.

Second thing is big bad guys will see if someone copyright is just a person that doesn’t have means to fight for themselves in court - you still have to sue them and still have to get initial cost of lawyers.

Last but not least there is a lot of content that you don’t want to be easily tied to the owner because history is showing us how that can be used to hunt down people having “wrong ideas”.

Re: The code and open-source tools I used to produce a science fiction anthology

#48

Post by jacquesm »

mojoe wrote: post #46
jacquesm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My favorite collection recently was "The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge". It spans his short fiction from 1965-2001. I re-read that one just after he died. Amazing stuff. > I've considered commissions many times, I go back and forth on it. I wouldn't want to put a commissioned story into a "Year's Best" anthology, just because I truly want it to be a "Year's Best" -- i.e. I need to evaluate ALL the stories publi…

That's really cool! Yes, it's always been amazing to me how many people will respond helpfully to a random cold email. And well-known authors are similar to other artists in the fact that they have steep rates for commissions. For instance, https://clarkesworldmagazine.com pays a flat reasonable rate of 14 cents per word ($840 for a 6k word story). I've talked to well-known authors who would charge $5/word for that s…

No programmer would get out of bed for that kind of money!

Re: The code and open-source tools I used to produce a science fiction anthology

#49

Post by mojoe »

jacquesm wrote: post #48
mojoe wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really cool! Yes, it's always been amazing to me how many people will respond helpfully to a random cold email. And well-known authors are similar to other artists in the fact that they have steep rates for commissions. For instance, https://clarkesworldmagazine.com pays a flat reasonable rate of 14 cents per word ($840 for a 6k word story). I've talked to well-known authors who would charge $5/word for that s…

No programmer would get out of bed for that kind of money!

Many authors can do a short story per week, I would definitely get out of bed for $30k/week

Re: The code and open-source tools I used to produce a science fiction anthology

#50

Post by mojoe »

darthcloud wrote: post #35

Bought the paperback, I really like curated anthology, it's best way to discover new talent. I would have bought Compelling Science Fiction too but look like its out of print.

I was using my garage as a warehouse for the books, and it burned down, so I lost all the remaining copies of that first printing, unfortunately!
Post reply on HN