There goes my master plan (updated)
6 o'clock, November 12, 2005
The one about selling a novelette and retiring, I mean.
Still — a disappointment, but not exactly a surprise. SCIFI.COM’s brief statement says it all, really:
As SCIFI.COM gears up to expand with exciting new ventures utilizing the newest technology . . .
The goal of a statement like this, from a PR point of view, is to make you feel like you’re going to get something cool to make up for what you’re losing. The fact that exciting new ventures utilizing the newest technology have zero relevance to SCI FICTION just goes to show, I think, what an odd bird it always was over there.
(And look! Now the old guard can go back to pretending there are no professional online markets, and stop having to say “except for Ellen.”)
All y’ll who had stories up there, I hope you’ll keep an eye on the archives and put them up somewhere if the Channel takes ’em down. Ellen published some fine work there and it’d be a shame to have to go dig it up out of the Wayback Machine all the time.
Update: It just occurred to me: First Susan’s blog, now SCI FICTION. It’s a sad week for teh intarwebs.
Anymore, I consider people's attitude toward Strange Horizons a kind of litmus test. If they don't consider it a professional market after learning what they pay and what they publish, then we can have all sorts of fine conversations, possibly, but speculative fiction markets is not likely to be among the topics yielding fruitful discussion.