The World That Did Not End- prophets, seers, and doomsday men

So here it is, December 23rd 2012. The world is turning, life is living, and nothing fiery is falling from the sky. Where are all the prophets of The End of Time today? Sedona… they are all in Sedona. An old friend of mine, Ben Masters (one of the most brilliant and original minds I have every known), started spewing this “end of the world 2012″ bullshit about fifteen years ago. I honestly was a bit excited about the oncoming end day so that I could call Benji out of the blue and say this:

Ben: Hello?

Me: Hey Benny-Boy, how are you doing?

Ben: Porter?… is that you? What’s going on?

Me: Ah, nothing, just calling because it’s the 22nd of December 2012 and the world is still here.

Ben: Oh.

Me: Oh? Oh?! That’s all you have to say to me? Oh? After more than a decade of suffering through your crazy ass theories about the end of the world and all you can say is ‘Oh’??

Ben: Well, you know, the world may still have ended. We could just be like, a simulation or something.

I wish that the conversation had gone better than that, but frankly I didn’t have anything to say. Like most prophets of bullshit, Ben was able to move the goalpost without breaking a sweat.

My favorite aspect of such doomsdayology is the full integration of crap metaphysics. Go on youtube and you can find thousands of hour long “ascension” lectures that will tell you how to deal with the “side effects” of the new era of higher existence. My favorite tries to explain the ascension into “new dimensions.” According to this prophet, humankind has dwelt in the third dimension and is now ascending through the fourth on our way to the fifth dimension. The fifth dimension is a place of accelerated spiritual and biological evolution. We will become more psychically attuned to the world around us and start to perceive the invisible realms: ghosts, angels, insert your bullshit superstition here. Now as far as I know, the fourth dimension is time (given to us via relativity), and the fifth dimension is a mathematical construct used to solve several problems in particle and astrophysics (i.e. for unifying gravity).  Of course they could be referring to the band, but I don’t think so.

Yes, I hate new age pseudo religion/philosophy. I’ve been to Sedona, the Vatican of New Age touchy feelyism. I’m still trying scrub off the skank off of me.

Look at me… I can see the future!!!

 

So today is the last day… ever. I want to go into oblivion with a clear conscious so here, in order of importance, are my apologies to people I’ve wronged. I want to say I’m sorry too…

10. …those guys from Illinois that I met at the bottom of the grand Canyon. I popped your raft and took a leak in your camel packs. I’m a redhead and my legs resemble the milky flesh of a girl that took a three day swim in the bottom of a river before resurfacing to a crowd of permanently scarred kids fishing on the bank, and you noticed their color- over and over again. I should have let nature take its course. After all, you were terrible people and I’m sure the annoyance I caused you was nothing compared to the jagged disappointments that life made you swallow in the years since.

9. …the girl from the HR firm that had the crush on me. You were a reasonable, lovely person. I enjoyed the dates we went on. I have never stopped admiring your grasp of The Legend of Zelda. We met during a period in my life when I was really into vapid, shallow, silly people and did not yet appreciate the power of dating a girl that shared my taste in video gaming.

8. …Orson Scott Card. I still think your summery of me as a “liberal douche-bag” was unfair, but what I did was just uncivilized. I hope the smell came out.

7. …the lady renting the beach house in St. Augustine. There is no excuse for what I did. You simply asked us not to park where we were parked. The fact that you yelled that the end of that street was not some sort of “scenic overlook” while we were standing beside the sign that said “scenic overlook” was surely just a result of you not wearing your glasses. Cramming, stuffing and threading three pounds of squid into and around every inch of your car is just no way to behave.

6. …all the citizens of my home county. Though many of you have informed me that I embarrassed our county on national television, I still feel like I owe you all an apology. I suppose I just thought it was PBS, and nobody from my hometown watches PBS. I was very wrong. I stand behind my statements- they were all true- but in retrospect I should have followed the example of my fellow BCians and just said nothing at all.

5. …Stephen Hawking. The “you’re taller in person” remark was uncalled for. I appreciate you laughing, but we all knew you were just being polite.

4. …the labor union movement in Kentucky. I’m not an enemy of unions. Did I do a lot to kill their development in Kentucky? Yes I did. Do I feel bad about it? I’m on a break, but when I come back on the answer will be yes.

3. …the meth cooks in that lab out the old Brooklyn School Road. I called them.

2. …Peter Jackson. Your heart was in the right place. Your head… well, that is debatable. I have been talking shit about you for nearly a decade, and for what? So you trounced on one of the most beloved books of my young life. Who cares. I should thank you. Your over-saturation of the world with all-things-Tolkien made me stop reading the books long enough to discover “A Game of Thrones.”

1. …Jack White. I was so stoked about opening up for your band. You seemed really cool. You still owe me 800 dollars you asshole. No, this is not an apology. I’m still pissed at you, and yeah, I stole your amp.

Cheers.

The Science of Fiction.

Rejected! Shimmer Magazine says I just don’t sparkle.

Here is the rejection I got from Shimmer Magazine:

Dear Andrew,

Thank you for allowing us to consider ‘Mahdi’, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass. It was interesting, but overall it was too vague, and the tone was too detached for our tastes, which meant that I struggled to work out what was going on, and I didn’t feel that I got to ‘know’ the characters enough to care about them. The syntax also felt a little awkward in places, and there were a few grammatical errors, and while these are minor slips, they do disrupt the flow of the story so I’d suggest scanning over the piece again should you choose to send it to other markets.

These are just my opinions, of course, and are intended to give some (hopefully helpful) insight into why it didn’t quite work for us.  All the best in placing it elsewhere, then, and good luck with your writing!

Nicola,
Associate Editor,

Shimmer Magazine
www.shimmerzine.com

All in all one of my favorite places to get rejected. First of all, every rejection I’ve gotten from Shimmer (about a dozen now) has been quite nice, in tone I mean. Take the opening sentence, “Thank you for allowing us to consider….” Allowing us to consider, that’s rich! It is also a perfect way to begin telling someone that their story isn’t going to sell. She made it sound as if I was doing them a favor and, frankly, I think it’s all class. Her break down on the problems within the narrative was fair and even and she ends them with the “just my opinions,” caveat which is serves two purposes. First, it is a simple statement of truth, the story didn’t read well for her, but it might be just the ticket for another editor. Second, it keeps writers from writing back and angrily saying, “well, that’s like, your opinion man.” Her comment on my grammar is disturbing. I’m generally pretty careful with my product when it’s time to ship it out and though on occasion “its” might live where “it’s” was supposed to be, I try and send clean copy. I can tell you from my time slushing, get that grammar right! (I am very embarrassed) She does have good points about the story. Unfortunately I was trying to write a sparse, almost mystical apology for a sort of transhuman Judas, and that diffusion is on purpose. That might mean that the story is going to be difficult to place, but as I generally publish only about one out of thirty short stories, them’s the breaks!

So thank you Nicola- you’re a class act! For that, Shimmer Magazine is my favorite rejection of the month (for the second time)!

The science of fiction

Andy C Porter

Peter Jackson, Tolkien his time.

I love The Hobbit. I took a trip through the Appalachian Mountains in an expensive German car and my girlfriend and I took turns driving and reading the book to aloud. We rented old cabins and sat around fires and The Hobbit was with us all the way. The Hobbit is, to my mind, a far superior book to any of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. They are fine (don’t send me hate mail because I very likely have read them more than you), but the hobbit is a perfect fairy tale. It is subtle, it is smart and it is magic.

Peter Jackson picks Tolkien’s brain

I hate the Lord of the Rings films. Oh I enjoyed the first one. No Tom Bombadil? I get that and I forgive it. Bombadil would be a diversion in the films that wasn’t vital. Replace Glorfindel with Arwen after Frodo gets stuck with the morgul blade? Okay, I understand; you want Arwen to have a more active and heroic role in what is a boys’ club of a narrative. But let’s be honest, this trilogy suffered from some major narrative drift away from the source material. I mean that car chase in the second movie? What the hell was up with that? Sure it was Wargs instead of Fords, but hell’s bells, that was so silly! I felt like I had been transported back to the pod race from Phantom Menace. My fantasy/science fiction film disappointments start with Highlander II and I’m afraid they will continue into the Hobbit. Here are my fears:

Legolas, our dear, pretty wood elf prince. Fans of the Rings trilogy love Legolas. His initial disposition toward Gimli the dwarf and their budding friendship are one of the finer subplots in those books. Students of deep Tolkien lore (those of us that have read The Silmarillion, the letters, and the various arcana of Middle Earth) know that Legolas is the son of the King that held Bilbo and the Dwarves prisoner in his hall in Mirkwood. It is likely that Legolas was present during this chapter of the Hobbit, but let’s not kid ourselves, Orlando Bloom is not going to be a quiet background character.

Galadriel: queen and Noldor rebel. Gladriel is going to be in the movie and she just ain’t in the book. All I can figure is that Jackson is mining the appendices for narrative substance. The events in The Hobbit take place while great goings-on are happening elsewhere. The white council (Gandalf, Saruman, Galadriel, Elrond and others of the mighty in Middle Earth) were making a move against a villain that had risen in Mirkwood known as the Necromancer who turns out to be Sauron returned. So the film could be telling more of the story of Middle Earth than was specifically covered in the book.

Three films. The Hobbit is a short book- just over 90k words. The Trilogy comes in at well over half a million words. So what is happening that The Hobbit film is getting three films to tell a story that is only 20% as long as the LotR? Even if you dive in to including appendices there seems to be a lot more time than is needed.

Peter Jackson. I like Pete. Really, I’m not kidding. He has made several films that I adore, the Lord of the Rings trilogy however is not three of them. Oh I don’t mind the first one, but the second and third suck. He just ignored the books. He added crap that had nothing to do with the original narrative. He took out some of the most important subplots and added ridiculous twists that just weren’t needed. And frankly, Gimli was a stupid caricature of the very serious and noble character that appeared in the books. Gimli in the books was an austere, honorable and faithful character. In the films he was comic relief. Gimli was not comic relief!!! He was the only dwarf ever named “Elf-Friend,” and in one of the time-line appendices it says that Gimli, alone among the race of dwarves, was allowed to pass into the west with his friend Legolas. Jackson puts this line into Gimli’s mouth, “No one tosses a dwarf!”  Thanks Pete, thanks a lot.

So here is my prediction for The Hobbit- A bunch of special effects and a bunch of deviations. Most of you will love it. As a Tolkien black belt, I will probably stay home.*

 

*editor’s note: I will not stay home and nothing could keep me from seeing this movie… possibly twice, but I reserve the right to complain in a rambling barely coherent way.

Look at me, I’m Legolas, the sexiest elf in the forest. Who cares about the two trees of Arda? I got Silmarils for eyes baby!

 

The science of fiction

Screw you Peter Jackson!

 

I could have written that: a writer’s guide to Schadenfreude

At some point I think every writer encounters this situation; you read a book published by a major press that is just a total toss off. You think back to the stack of 300+ typed pages in your closet and you think, “it’s better than this hear crap.” It is always “this hear crap.” Don’t ask me why, them’s the rules. For me that novel was 1996′s Beggars and Choosers by Nancy Krauss. It was a meandering task of a novel whose most challenging aspect was the bizarre speech patterns of the underclass where they tag every sentence with a strange referencing pronoun. Krauss basically creates a linguistic idiom for the poor that makes no sense and is tedious to read. There are some novel social-science fiction notions in the book- representative government was never so capitalist, but really, this award winning book just plain sucks. I read this book years ago and said, “I can do better than this.” That was the day I started seriously writing and submitting my work. I think I’ve published five stories in the intervening 14 years so I don’t have much room to talk, but really my point is sometimes publishing a story is not about quality alone. Because this novel got a pretty good dose of positive criticism and because I hate it in the same way I dislike randomly placed turds I must draw the conclusion that people are people and people is fickle. Yep, they sure is fickle. Taste matters and you might not find the editor that is into what your pushing. They might love Beggars and Choosers, they might love a turd lovingly nestled in the thong of their flip-flop, or in the arugula beet salad that is even now being delivered to their table.

You have to keep trying. You have to workshop when you can. You have to learn how to listen to what those with opinions say and you have to learn how to ignore some of it. Six months before the “Arab Spring” I wrote a story about the collapse of the Egyptian regime to a popular student democracy movement and in the story a man tells a visiting American not to worry, that Egypt will always have its Pharaoh.  I shopped that story hard and one editor told me he liked the writing but that the notion of a democratic revolt in Egypt was for her, “…an idea harder to accept than faster than life travel.” I’m not saying the story was great, but it was good. But every editor is an audience and you absolutely MUST MAKE YOUR AUDIENCE HAPPY. Beggars and Choosers, aren’t we all.

 

The Science of Fiction

Andrew C. Porter

Writing as martial arts and Gardner Dozois- not a person after all

It has been a bit since I posted and I want to apologize to my erstwhile reader (she knows who she is!). Frankly, since the assault and attendant brain injury, I’ve found it a bit difficult to write fiction or otherwise. That being said, I am pushing forward here and trying to get back to basics, hence the title.

What do I mean by writing as martial arts? I am referencing my old karate teacher from way back in the foggy distance. He would often tell the room full of feckless thirteen year old boys that we had to practice every day whether we had a class or not. At the time I remember being really into Jean Claude Van Damme, otherwise known as “the muscles from Brussels,” a moniker that I would say he made up himself if it weren’t for the fact that I’m pretty sure he is developmentally disabled. Because I was really into Mr. From Brussels, I wanted to be able to do the splits. Now, apart from kicking really high, there probably isn’t a more useless feet of human mechanical flexibility than doing the splits, but because the Van Damme movies are full of perfectly spaced corridors  where the splits allow him to hide just out of sight above his opponent’s head, I found myself spending an inordinate amount of time painfully stretching out some very sensitive muscles and tendons. I did this for the better part of a year, and at no point did I feel that I had made any progress, but one day I realized that I had gone from having a foot or more space between my crotch and the floor to a mere three inches.

What am I saying? Van Damme is the archetype of humanity made perfect? Yes, yes he is. But I’m also saying that you improvement is a slight and incremental process driven by consistent effort and a sore crotch. I can’t stress the sore crotch. Every successful writer will tell you that he or she got where they are through years of suffering through groin pains. Get it? Groin pains? That’s write. (i apologize to Jesus for making him cry).

So that is your pat advice for the day. Keep on keepin’ on. Now for what I’m reading.

I don’t think Gardner Dozois actually exists. I recently cleaned out some of my book shelves and I had no less than 25 huge anthologies edited by him. At least four came out in any single year. And he’s been going on at that clip for years! Add to this the fact that he is an award winning short story writer in his own right- big awards, like Nebulas. In the past half dozen years his productivity has not diminished that I can tell. One brilliant anthology after another flows from his efforts and if his wiki is to be believed he had heart surgery and got hit by a taxi. He slowed down a little bit in that he has retired from his editing gig at Asimov’s, but honestly, no single human could possibly do what he does. So propose there is no such person as this Gardner Dozois. Instead I posit that there is a GARDOZ 9000, a science fiction editing, anthology compiling, short story writing super computer that isn’t going to let me back in the spaceship because, despite my best efforts to not be overheard, it read my lips. Open the pod-bay doors GARDOZ! Open the pod-bay doors!

The hypothetical person that is Gardner Dozois spent a lot of time practicing the splits. It shows.

That is the science of fiction.

Now open those damned pod-bay doors!

Barnard Zero

Just to prove the point I present GARDOZ’s bibliography lifted straight outta wikipedia!

Bibliography

• “A Special Kind of Morning” (1971)
• “Chains of the Sea” (1971)
• “Machines of Loving Grace” (1972)
• A Day in the Life (1973, ISBN 978-0-06-080307-0)First Edition 1978 Library of Congress number 78-160655
• Nightmare Blue (with George Alec Effinger) (1977, ISBN 978-0-00-614617-9)
• The Visible Man (collection) (1977, ASIN B000GZU4C8)
• Strangers (1978)
• “A Traveler in an Antique Land” (1983)
• “The Peacemaker” (1983) (Nebula Award winner)
• “Morning Child” (1984) (Nebula Award winner)
• Slow Dancing Through Time (collection) (1990, 978-0942681031)
• Geodesic Dreams (collection) (1992, ISBN 978-0-441-00021-0)
• “A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows” (1999)
• Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys with Gardner Dozois (collection) (2001)
• “The Hanging Curve” (F&SF, April 2002)
• Morning Child and Other Stories (collection) (2004, ISBN 978-0-7434-9318-5)
• “When the Great Days Came” (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Dec 2005)
• Shadow Twin (2005) (with George R. R. Martin and Daniel Abraham)
• “Counterfactual” (F&SF, June 2006)
• Hunter’s Run (2008, ISBN 978-0-06-137329-9) (with George R. R. Martin and Daniel Abraham)
• When the Great Days Come (collection) (2011)

Nonfiction

• The Fiction of James Tiptree, Jr. (1977, ISBN 978-0-916186-04-3)
• Writing Science Fiction & Fantasy (1993, ISBN 978-0-312-08926-9) (co-edited with Stanley Schmidt and Sheila Williams)

Anthologies edited by Gardner Dozois (partial list)

• Future Power (1976, ASIN B000H75MWC) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Another World: Adventures in Otherness (1977, ISBN 978-0-695-40695-0)
• Ripper (1988, ISBN 978-0-8125-1700-2) (co-edited with Susan Casper)
• Modern Classics of Science Fiction (1992, ISBN 978-0-312-07238-4)
• Future Earths: Under African Skies (1993, ISBN 978-0-88677-544-5) (co-edited with Mike Resnick)
• Future Earths: Under South American Skies (1993, ISBN 978-0-88677-581-0) (co-edited with Mike Resnick)
• Modern Classics: Short Novels of Science Fiction (1994, ISBN 978-0-312-10504-4)
• Mammoth Book of Contemporary SF Masters (1994, ISBN 978-1-85487-297-5)
• Killing Me Softly (1995, ASIN B000OEN80G)
• Dying for It (1997, ASIN B000H40WZC)
• Modern Classics of Fantasy (1997, ISBN 978-0-312-16931-2)
• Roads Not Taken: Tales of Alternate History (1998, ISBN 978-0-345-42194-4) (co-edited with Stanley Schmidt)
• The Good Old Stuff: Adventure SF in the Grand Tradition (1998, ISBN 978-0-312-19275-4)
• The Good New Stuff: Adventure in SF in the Grand Tradition (1999, ISBN 978-0-312-19890-9)
• Explorers: SF Adventures to Far Horizons (2000, ISBN 978-0-312-25462-9)
• The Furthest Horizon: SF Adventures to the Far Future (2000, ISBN 978-0-312-26326-3)
• Worldmakers: SF Adventures in Terraforming (2001, ISBN 978-0-312-27570-9)
• Supermen: Tales of the Posthuman Future (2002, ISBN 978-0-312-27569-3)
• Galileo’s Children: Tales of Science vs. Superstition (2005, ISBN 978-1-59102-315-9)
• One Million A.D. (2005, ISBN 0-7394-6273-3)
• Nebula Awards Showcase 2006 (2006, ISBN 978-0-451-46064-6)
• Escape From Earth: New Adventures in Space (2006, ISBN 1-58288-225-8) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy (2007, ISBN 978-0-425-21518-0) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• The New Space Opera (2007, ISBN 978-0-06-084675-6) (co-edited with Jonathan Strahan)
• Galactic Empires (2007)
• The New Space Opera 2 (2009, ISBN 978-0-06-156235-8) (co-edited with Jonathan Strahan)

Cross-genre anthologies co-edited by Dozois and Martin

• Songs of the Dying Earth, a tribute anthology to Jack Vance´s seminal Dying Earth series, published by Subterranean Press (co-edited with George R. R. Martin) (2009)
• Warriors, a massive, cross-genre anthology featuring stories about war and warriors (co-edited with George R. R. Martin) (2010)
• Songs of Love and Death, a cross-genre anthology featuring stories of romance in fantasy and science-fiction settings (co-edited with George R. R. Martin) (2010)
• Down these Strange Streets, a cross-genre anthology featuring stories of private-eye detectives in fantasy and science fiction settings (co-edited with George R. R. Martin) (November 2011) ^[6]

• Dangerous Women, a cross-genre anthology featuring stories about women warriors (co-edited with George R. R. Martin) (Planned)
• Rogues, a cross-genre anthology featuring stories about assorted rogues (co-edited with George R. R. Martin) (planned)
• Old Mars, an anthology featuring new stories about Mars in retro-SF vein (co-edited with George R. R. Martin) (planned)
• Old Venus, an anthology featuring new stories about Venus in retro-SF vein (co-edited with George R. R. Martin) (planned)

Themed anthology series co-edited by Dozois and Dann

Main article: Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois Ace anthology series

Formerly known as “Magic Tales Anthology Series” until 1995; all released under the Ace imprint until Wizards in 2007.

• Unicorns! (1982, ASIN B000LW2UHI) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Bestiary! (1986, ISBN 978-0-441-05508-1) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Mermaids! (1986, ISBN 978-0-441-52567-6) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Sorcerers! (1986, ISBN 978-0-441-77532-3) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Demons! (1987, ISBN 978-0-441-14264-4) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Magicats! (1987, ISBN 978-0-441-51532-5) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Dogtales! (1988, ISBN 978-0-441-15760-0) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Seaserpents! (1989, ISBN 978-0-441-75682-7) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Dinosaurs! (1990, ISBN 978-0-441-14883-7) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Little People! (1990, ISBN 978-0-441-50391-9) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Magicats II (1991, ISBN 978-0-441-51533-2) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Unicorns II (1992, ISBN 978-0-441-84564-4) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Dragons! (1993, ISBN 978-0-441-16631-2) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Invaders! (1993, ISBN 978-0-441-01519-1) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Horses! (1994, ISBN 978-0-441-00057-9) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Angels! (1995, ISBN 978-0-441-00220-7) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Dinosaurs II (1995, ISBN 978-0-441-00285-6) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Hackers (1996, ISBN 978-0-441-00375-4) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Timegates (1997, ISBN 978-0-441-00428-7) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Clones (1998, ISBN 978-0-441-00522-2) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Immortals (1998, ISBN 978-0-441-00539-0) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Nanotech (1998, ISBN 978-0-441-00585-7) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Armageddons (1999, ISBN 978-0-441-00675-5) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Future War (1999, ISBN 978-0-441-00639-7) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Aliens Among Us (2000, ISBN 978-0-441-00704-2) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Genometry (2001, ISBN 978-0-441-00797-4) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Space Soldiers (2001, ISBN 978-0-441-00824-7) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Future Sports (2002, ISBN 978-0-441-00961-9) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Beyond Flesh (2002, ISBN 978-0-441-00999-2) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Future Crimes (2003, ISBN 978-0-441-01118-6) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• A.I.s (2004, ISBN 978-0-441-01216-9) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Robots (2005, ISBN 978-0-441-01321-0) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Beyond Singularity (2005, ISBN 978-0-441-01363-0) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Futures Past (2006, ISBN 978-0-441-01454-5) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Dangerous Games (2007, ISBN 978-0-441-01490-3) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• Wizards (2007) (co-edited with Jack Dann)
• The Dragon Book (2009) (co-edited with Jack Dann)

“Isaac Asimov’s” Series

• Transcendental Tales from Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine (1989, ISBN 978-0-89865-762-3)
• Time Travelers from Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine (1989, ISBN 978-0-441-80935-6)
• Isaac Asimov’s Robots (1991, ISBN 978-0-441-37376-5) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
• Isaac Asimov’s Aliens (1991, ISBN 978-0-441-01672-3)
• Isaac Asimov’s Mars (1991, ISBN 978-0-441-37375-8)
• Isaac Asimov’s Earth (1992, ISBN 978-0-441-37377-2) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
• Isaac Asimov’s War (1993, ISBN 978-0-441-37393-2)
• Isaac Asimov’s SF Lite (1993, ISBN 978-0-441-37389-5)
• Isaac Asimov’s Cyberdreams (1994, ASIN B000HWNC5Q)
• Isaac Asimov’s Skin Deep (1995, ISBN 978-0-441-00190-3) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
• Isaac Asimov’s Ghosts (1995, ISBN 978-0-441-00254-2) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
• Isaac Asimov’s Vampires (1996, ISBN 978-0-441-00387-7) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
• Isaac Asimov’s Moons (1997, ISBN 978-0-441-00453-9) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
• Isaac Asimov’s Christmas (1997, ISBN 978-0-441-00491-1) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
• Isaac Asimov’s Detectives (1998, ISBN 978-0-441-00545-1) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
• Isaac Asimov’s Camelot (1998, ISBN 978-0-441-00527-7) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
• Isaac Asimov’s Solar System (1999, ISBN 978-0-441-00698-4) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
• Isaac Asimov’s Werewolves (1999, ISBN 978-0-441-00661-8) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
• Isaac Asimov’s Valentines (1999, ISBN 978-0-441-00602-1) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
• Isaac Asimov’s Halloween (1999, ISBN 978-0-441-00854-4) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
• Isaac Asimov’s Utopias (2000, ISBN 978-0-441-00784-4) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
• Isaac Asimov’s Mother’s Day (2000, ISBN 978-0-441-00721-9) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
• Isaac Asimov’s Father’s Day (2001, ISBN 978-0-441-00874-2) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)

Year’s Best Science Fiction Series

• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection (1984)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Second Annual Collection (1985)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection (1986)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection (1987)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection (1988)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection (1989)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection (1990)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Eighth Annual Collection (1991)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Ninth Annual Collection (1992)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection (1993)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Eleventh Annual Collection (1994)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twelfth Annual Collection (1995)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirteenth Annual Collection (1996)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection (1997)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection (1998)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixteenth Annual Collection (1999)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection (2000)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection (2001)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection (2002)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection (2003)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-First Annual Collection (2004)
• Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year’s Best Science Fiction (2005) (Anthology from previous Year’s Best Science Fiction editions)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Second Annual Collection (2005)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection (2006)
• Best of the Best Volume 2: 20 Years of the Year’s Best Short Science Fiction Novels (2007) (Anthology from previous Year’s Best Science Fiction editions)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection (2007)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection (2008)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection (2009)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection (2010)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection (2012)

Dozois also edited volumes six through ten of the Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year series after Lester del Rey edited the first five volumes. That series ended in 1981.

From Darkness to Light, on violence, change, and being bionic

How do we experience violence? When we write, how do our characters experience violence. I must admit, until recently I gave that subject only token thought. I think I was guilty of “ghost intellectualism,” and by that I mean that I constantly heard the low level boil in the main-stream media second-string social commentary shows. Once a month or so some psychology prof from Rutgers, a preacher, and a spokes-model from EA games would sit down in three different studios (this is not a set-up for a joke) while the show’s host ramrods his/her agenda right through them. Well maybe it was a set-up for a joke. What I’m getting at is simply this: there is a constant blathering rumble about what violence in “The Media” does to our culture, kids, pets etc. and I slowly became desensitized to (discussions of) violence (in the media). Now how’s that for futuristic problems.

My stories run the gamut subject-wise, therefore the presence of violence is not at all  certain. I have stories where n’er a hand is raised in anger, but I also have written tales that are quite red in tooth and claw. It is the latter stories that I want to think about, because I believe that I have been cheating some of my characters. When Mr. Barium gets his ass turned into pulp for trying to hide the secret, Mr. Barium’s next morning shouldn’t be easily confused with a hangover. Getting beaten, tortured, these are things that can quite literally fracture the personality of the victim, and if we ignore such consequences we risk cheapening our storytelling. Violence has consequences. Don’t ignore them.

Obviously i have this perspective because of my own experience with violence and torture. It has been a long road back and some way it is a Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox in that you can never, ever truly arrive. And that is the point I want to make: beat up your characters all you want, but remember that to do so is to kill the original character.

I wondered about reactions to violence in a culture where violence is an every-day if not ubiquitous circumstance. I happen to have a fairly substantial medieval history library and I am hard pressed to find a more violent time and place than late 14th century Italy. It is also a time and place that are well documented (Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, the letters of Petrarch, and of course Dante). Though nine out of ten medieval books are nothing more than king kissing, more recent scholarship has tended to seek out the commonplace and if you are careful and thorough, the day to day can be found in primary sources. (The Monk of Saint Denis spends about a thousand words on who was at King Charles’ tournament and what they were wearing, then spends three lines about how a peasant was beaten to death for winning a game of dice with a knight, and then another thousand words about God’s judgement on the vanity of villains (peasant’s in this context). So how did people surrounded by violence, infused with it, react in their day to day lives? Poorly. Late 14th century social behavior reads like a check list for post traumatic stress disorder. Never was humanity so inhumane. The average person, in between ablutions to The Father, Son and Holy Ghost is generally engaging in a life that the DSM would define as psychopathic. Then there are the legion examples of the truly monstrous.

Violence matters. Whether it happens to a cuddly little Eloi or a brute-necked Morlock, human beings react to violence, and it doesn’t matter if you spend the next six months watching endless sessions of The Bourne Franchise, the day you find yourself with someones boot on your throat and your future becomes measured in minutes the person that was you is no more.

post script

A friend read through this for me just to give me pointers and he mentioned the Vikings as a culture of violence that did not seem to suffer adverse effects if judged by their own moral criteria as opposed to a Christian world view. I will not debate this as I lack the tools for an informed commentary. The Vikings were pre-literate (runes aside) and frankly did not have the existential drive to self-reflection. But if Tim Robbin’s Eric the Viking is accurate, as I am certain it is, then they didn’t feel good about what they were doing. Thanks T