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It was a sad day when Ann VanderMeer and the rest of the staff at Weird Tales were fired when the magazine was bought by people who wanted to change the direction away from the great innovations Ann et al. had brought to it and instead return the magazine to publishing, apparently, Lovecraft pastiches. Apparently, Ann and creative director Stephen Segal winning a Hugo for their work wasn't good enough. The new owners wanted, they said, to return the magazine to its roots.
Well, Lovecraft was a thoroughgoing
racist, and apparently those were the roots editor/publisher Marvin Kaye had in mind, although in his mind it's actually
"non-racist". Sure, keep telling yourself that. [
Update:
Weird Tales has taken Marvin Kaye's post down from their website, so the link there doesn't work. However, there's
a Google cache. I'm happy the publisher has apologized, but I'm not a fan of memory holes.]
For now, though, I'm going to follow
Nora's lead and
post my story "How to Play with Dolls" here on the blog. It was published by Ann in
WT 352, and it is one of my proudest publications. But I want it to be free from association with
Weird Tales in its current incarnation.
Update: Completely, totally, and hurriedly stealing some additional links from Shaun Duke:
Given that Revealing Eden would not generally fall under WT's genre purview and that the prose and story are hardly so transcendant as to justify making an exception, it’s impossible to read Kaye’s decision to reprint the first chapter as anything other than a defense of racist writing. It is just barely possible that Foyt may have had the best of intentions and been genuinely taken aback when her book was called out for displaying her unconscious racism. Kaye, however, has no such excuse. This is a calculated statement of scorn for non-white authors and readers and their allies, and it stinks.
Update 2: Weird Tales backpedals.Update 3: Ann VanderMeer resigns as senior contributing editor of the new WT.
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By: Matthew Cheney,
on 11/2/2011
Blog:
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Google has done gone and broke Google Reader, removing the sharing function to encourage people to use Google Plus instead. This means the "Fresh Links" section over on the sidebar is no longer able to be refreshed, and I'll probably go back to occasionally doing linkdump posts. Here, for instance, are some links:
- My latest Strange Horizons column, "Reading Systems", has been posted, as has my latest Sandman Meditations piece. (The Sandman pieces are going to be biweekly for the rest of the year rather than the regular weekly schedule because I'm just too busy to keep up with a weekly schedule right now, and I was getting really frazzled.)
- Team VanderMeer has launched The Weird Fiction Review, an online journal about kumquats. Famed kumquat collected Neil Gaiman is interviewed, and there's an interesting selection of nonfiction, art, and fiction about kumquats. Don't believe me? Well, go over there and see for yourself!
- In publishing news, it turns out that libraries are actually good for the publishing industry.
- Fandor has a great set of tributes to the great Derek Jarman. I'm working on something about Jarman's Caravaggio (25 years old this year!) and also a piece about Jarman for Rain Taxi, but I'm finding Jarman much harder to write about than I expected, and both pieces are vastly late. But I shall persevere!
- And here are 92 open-access film e-books. Never again will you complain about lacking something to read!
My previous post about The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction noted that it is in beta-text mode and so quite obviously incomplete. Among the lacks are entries on either Jeff or Ann VanderMeer. I am not a contributor to the encyclopedia nor am I in any way affiliated with it, but I do have a great interest in all things VanderMeer.
Earlier this year, I wrote a biography of Jeff for Fogcon, where he and Ann were honored guests. (Eric Schaller wrote the biography of Ann, which I hope he will allow me to reprint here, but he's not returning my calls or email at the moment, probably because I suggested that for Halloween he should dress his dog as a character from Twilight.)
I hope the information provided below will prove useful to the encyclopedists and any future scholars. My only goal in life is to be helpful. Jeff VanderMeer will, I expect, deny the accuracy of some of it, but I believe such denials only confirm the truths I am here able to provide to the world...
THE HOEGBOTTON GUIDE TO THE (MOSTLY EARLY) HISTORY OF JEFF VANDERMEER
compiled from notes found in the files of Orem Hoegbotton, including scrawls attributed to Duncan Shriek
edited and embellished by Matthew Cheney
At the tail end of America's revolutionary years, Jeff VanderMeer was born in Bellfonte, Pennsylvania, the county seat of Centre County and part of the State College, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area. His birth seems to have caused some consternation at high levels of the U.S. government, but all the files have been classified until 2068; we do know, though, that his parents soon joined the Peace Corps and brought the child with them to the Fiji Islands. After their work there was completed, they returned to the U.S. via a circuitous route that allowed the impressionable young man to encounter Asia, Africa, Europe, Antarctica, and Long Island — experiences that would deeply influence his later fiction.
By late adolescence, VanderMeer was living in Florida, primarily on a houseboat off the coast of St. Petersburg, the fourth-largest city in the state and the second largest city in the Tampa Bay area. VanderMeer's actual activities during this time are unknown, though he has variously claimed that he was working as a merchant of dried squid, an icthyologist, and a decoy for the Witness Protection Program. Whatever he was doing, we know that he was writing, because it wasn't long before his first book, a monograph on herpetology titled The Book of Frog, was
I was distraught to learn that
Ann VanderMeer will no longer be the editor of Weird Tales.
During Ann's tenure, first as fiction editor and then as editor-in-chief, the magazine has been more exciting, alive, and contemporary than it had been in at le
After five years as editor of Weird Tales, editor Ann VanderMeer has been dropped along with the current staff of the magazine. During her tenure, the magazine won a Hugo Award win and earned three more Hugo nominations.
Here’s more from VanderMeer: “I am very sad to have to tell you that my editorship at Weird Tales, which has included one Hugo Award win and three Hugo Award nominations, is about to come to an end. The publisher, John Betancourt of Wildside Press, is selling the magazine to Marvin Kaye. Kaye is buying the magazine because he wants to edit it himself. He will not be retaining the staff from my tenure. I wish him the best with the different direction he wants to pursue, including his first, Cthulhu-themed issue. The current issue of Weird Tales is #358, just published. My last issue will be #359, which Kaye plans to publish in February of next year. Other stories I bought will be published in various issues thereafter.”
VanderMeer will continue to work on the upcoming The Weird: A Compendium of Dark and Strange Stories and the Odd? anthology. (Via Sarah Weinman)
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
OK, I think I can safely say I've never been prouder, or more surprised to be part of a project than with Cabinet of Curiosities . This book is just amazing. The talent is top rate. It's a very visual collection of short fiction based on the idea of the Cabinet of Curiosities.Contributors include Holly Black, Greg Broadmore, Ted Chiang, John Coulthart, Rikki Ducornet, Amal El-Mohtar, Minister Faust, Jeffrey Ford, Lev Grossman, N.K. Jemisin, Caitlin R. Kiernan, China Mieville, Mike Mignola, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Garth Nix, Naomi Novik, Eric Orchard, James A. Owen, Helen Oyeyemi, J.K. Potter, Cherie Priest, Ekaterina Sedia, Jan Svankmajer, Rachel Swirsky, Carrie Vaughn, Jake von Slatt, Tad Williams, Charles Yu, and many more. See? Amazing.
“The narrative scope and stellar assemblage of writers and illustrators…makes this a book that will be absolutely cherished by fantasy, science fiction, and steampunk afficionados alike.” – Paul Goat Allen, B&N Book Club
So, please help me spread the word and get yourself a copy of this amazing book.
You might have heard that Ann VanderMeer was promoted from fiction editor of (the
Hugo Award-winning)
Weird Tales to editor-in-chief. Ann is smart, brilliantly discriminating, down-to-earth, and practical*, so I've been very curious to see what she would do as editor-in-chief.
Well, now we know.
Weird Tales has
a revamped website, for one thing. (Writers should note that with that comes a new
submission portal -- be sure to read the
guidelines before submitting. Payment for fiction has also been raised to 5 cents/word.) And the staff is composed of some great folks in addition to Ann -- the great and glorious Paula Guran is nonfiction editor, the glorious and great Mary Robinette Kowal is art director. Aiding and abetting them are Tessa Kum, Dominik Parisien, and Alan Swirsky as editorial assistants.
I'm tremendously proud to have had
a story in
Weird Tales, a magazine I've been reading since childhood (astute collectors will find a rather embarrassing letter to the editor by someone bearing my byline in a long-ago issue, about which I will say no more), and thrilled to see the magazine seems to really be getting its feets under it for the coming years. The new issue is apparently on its way to us soon, with fiction by N.K. Jemison, J. Robert Lennon, Karin Tidbeck, and more. It's nice to see that the magazine will be back to its regular quarterly schedule, too; it provides less surprise to those of us who subscribe, but still, there's something to be said for the predictability of a schedule...
Speaking of subscriptions, they're still
just $20/year.
*this is not hyperbole. If I wanted to be hyperbolic, I'd say Ann leaps tall buildings in a single bound. That's one of the few amazing feats I have not seen her perform.
When I came up with the idea for the Third Bear Carnival, I quickly knew one post I wanted: something by Ann VanderMeer, Jeff's wife, who first knew him as a very young and mostly-unpublished short story writer, and who was one of the first editors to publish him with any frequency. She was Ann Kennedy back then, and it's partly the stories that put her on the path to becoming Ann VanderMeer, because in Ann Jeff found his perfect reader and his perfect love.
It took a bit of convincing for me to get Ann to write about her relationship not only to her husband, but to his stories. Ann thinks of herself as an editor and not a writer, but she sent me a contribution back in July, and I've held onto it until now. Much as I love what everybody else has contributed to the Carnival over these past weeks, and grateful as I am to each them ... well, this one's special...
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| Ann & Jeff VanderMeer |
VanderMeer Stories: A Personal Reminiscenceby Ann VanderMeerThe earliest VanderMeer stories I read came from
The Book of Frog, a self-published chapbook of stories that contained all manner of frogs and toads. In some stories the creatures were featured prominently, but in others, they were merely a whisper. I had to force the then young man of 20 (who was trying so hard to grow a beard) to allow me to purchase a copy (he wanted to give it to me).
“Nonsense,” I said. How will you ever be a full-time writer if you give your work away?” And then I bought five copies; perhaps one of the best investments I’ve ever made (and I am not just talking about how rare and valuable those copies are now).
I knew back then from reading those early tales that this was a writer to watch. He might find those stories sophomoric and simple, but there was a passion to the writing. And heart. And a great deal of playfulness.
He sent me stories for
The Silver Web (a magazine I was publishing in the late 80’s early 90’s). One was a god-awful story about a high school girl going to her prom and some secret fantasy world hiding in her closet. I turned that one down quickly only for Jeff to tell me it was a test of my editorial taste. Yes, of course it was, I believe this. I did publish many of his stories during the years of
The Web; “Heart for Lucretia” – a far future science fiction piece that fully illustrates the real sacrifice of sibling responsibilities, “Henry Dreams of Angkor Wat” – a surreal look at the horrors of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, “Black Duke Blues” – a story about a gifted musician in New Orleans (this one won him the Florida Individual Artist Grant) and “So The Dead Walk Slowly” – a zombie story long before zombies were popular. Each one more different than the last and yet so uniquely VanderMeer.
Jeff has always had a fondness for animals, as you can see from his fiction. From frogs he moved onto meerkats, then squid and now bears. He tells me that he doesn’t like talking animal stories and yet…his frogs talk. So do his meerkats. And in his latest new story, “The Quickening,” there is a talking rabbit. I think. At least, it seems to be talking (and it looks like a rabbit).
And this is his strength; writing fiction that has so many layers. When you read one of his stories you ar
This is an incredible collection of stories.They sprawl across time and space and are endlessly inventive. Every story is compelling, impossible to set down yet every story is also incredibly different from each other. a remarkable feet. Grab this collection.
I was recently asked the question " What are your favorite cross-genre stories?" by John DeNardo of SF signal. My answer, along with ones by much smarter people can be found here. Thanks for the opportunity John, Ive always loved this column.
I posted something about it as well, albeit from an ignorant perspective (not familiar with the novel in question and have no immediate personal connection to Weird Tales). I'm taking the step to try to read the book, because I don't feel comfortable making a judgment based on what others are saying (in part because what some have been saying about the book seems to come from a knee-jerk space -- not all are like this, mind you).
That doesn't change the fact that the wording of Kaye's article is questionable at best, and damn fishy and condescending at worst. You don't write a post defending yourself from cries of racism *before* the cries even begin. If you're really that concerned about a particular piece, you might say "nah, we'll pass" OR ask the community. Throw aside all the racism talks going on and you've still got an utter travesty of public relations...
I stopped having anything to do with WT when it changed hands -- I'd been excited by Ann, Stephen, and the staff's work on it, and completely disagreed with the approach Kaye wanted to take. It was a heartbreaking moment. I've only read about 1,500 words of the book in question, and so am not willing to pass judgment on the whole, but what I read was ghastly, as much from the bad writing as the premise. So Kaye's current decision just added the straw to make me want to free my story.
Oh, I agree with their change of editor-ship. That was some dirty crap (was that last year? Feels closer).
Will have to try to read it for myself, but I strongly suspect my updated, informed response will be along the lines of a lot of the folks throwing down the gauntlet. I don't have much patience for hackneyed attempts at changing the gaze. It's one of my fears for a story I wrote for that Future Fire anthology of SF/F stories of colonialism from the POV of the colonized -- terrified I got it horribly wrong and people will hate me for it...
The other thing is that it really says a lot about Kaye's editorial acumen that of all the things he could think to publish, of all the work he could solicit, of all the serials he could find ... he chose this.
That's a really good point. I mean, I get the desire to maybe push the envelope (cliche #1), but there's certainly a limit. If you suspect people will go apeshit over something, don't publish it or at least consult the community to see if there's a way around it all.
I strongly suspect Weird Tales will go the way of Realms of Fantasy now, only for its own stupidity. RoF was actually a decent mag...