But if you have time to kill (and I do mean kill) there’s some vaguely-slapfighty convos about the state of short SF and F going on (and, more interestingly actually, at the second link some discussion of political work).
My two cents: Sure, there’s a lot of crap out there, but there’s also an amazing crop of writers working at the short length today in genre — Kelly Link, M. Rickert, Chris Barzak, Alan DeNiro, my own Christopher, Jeff Ford, Margo Lanagan, Ben Rosenbaum, and tons metric TONS more. This makes me very happy.
Exactly. Which has always been my point 🙂
And, maybe more to the point, when has that ever not been the case? I’m not sure I buy into the idea of some kind of golden age of the short story, when everything was brilliant and everything was widely popular. When has Sturgeon’s Law, that “ninety percent of everything is crud,” not applied? I think you could make the argument that the really good 1% is increasingly harder to find (at least at the local Barnes & Noble) — and certainly that it’s increasingly tough to make real money publishing it — but that it doesn’t exist?
“Really good 10%” is what I meant. I was an English major, but I’d like to think I can still do basic math. 🙂