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Spaceways, v. 3 issue 3, whole no. 19, March 1941
Page 5
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S P A C E W A Y S 5 MOESTITIAE ENCOMIUM When the demon ceased, he leaned back in the shade Of the tomb where he'd talked to me, And a lusty pair of lungs displayed, As loud and long laughed he; But I couldn't laugh, and I couldn't be made To share in the demon's glee; And still he laughed until he cried-- Till suddenly his laughter died: He had tasted the tears that rolled down the side Of his face: and he cursed at me. ..................... LEARN TO TYPE! by FREDERIK POHL Science fiction fans have been unjustly defined as authors who haven't been able to succeed. Note the "unjustly" in that sentence; the definition is far from accurate. But, like everything qualified by the adjective "inaccurate", it contains a faint trace of truth. Many science fiction fans do want to become authors; quite a few, in fact, have succeeded. And it is to these fans that this article is addressed. I edit two science fiction magazines. Before I became an editor, I was an agent; before that an extremely unsuccessful author. I have had occasion to read literally millions--I estimate, more than ten million--words of science-fiction. Most of this never saw print. Now, of course, it is not physically possible for all of it ever to be printed; there just isn't that much science fiction used. But it is pathetic to see the number of manuscripts that are rejected solely because the authors have done things against which they had been warned time and again. There isn't enough space in Spaceways to tell all that I want to about the reasons stories are rejected. But there is one basic fault present in the work of 99% of all amateur writers that causes their work to be rejected--frequently without a thorough reading. That fault isn't poor characterization, or impossible conversations, or hack plots, or even just plain bad writing. It's something much more basic. The name of it is: "poor typing". I receive an average of fifty thousand words of science fiction a day, a quarter of a million words a week. Out of that I have to choose the comparatively insignificant figure of perhaps fifteen thousand words a week for use in my magazines. And this is how I--and to my personal knowledge, most of the other editors--do it. I look over all the stories and choose first the ones I can possibly buy, those that fit my specified lengths of 1500 to 12,000 words. (You would be surprised to see how many have never even leafed through a copy of the magazine to which they submit their work.) The others I put aside for later examination, to see if they can be cut down, or built up, to a usable length. The ones I retain are divided into three sub-groups: those by authors with whose work I am familiar, and which I can expect to come up to my standards (this does not mean professionals exclusively, incidentally; there are at least half a dozen amateurs who are submitting to me regularly, whose work is rapidly approaching a highly acceptable standard); those which are by authors who seem to know something about presenting their stories, and show it by neat typing, a fiarly good title, and an interesting first paragraph; and the "culls", the stories sloppily presented, and generally shoddily developed. The culls, you see, are the last read, and the least likely to be accepted. Moreover, given a choice between two stories on the same theme, of approximately equal merit, one of which is well typed and the other shoddily, I will (concluded on page 24)
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S P A C E W A Y S 5 MOESTITIAE ENCOMIUM When the demon ceased, he leaned back in the shade Of the tomb where he'd talked to me, And a lusty pair of lungs displayed, As loud and long laughed he; But I couldn't laugh, and I couldn't be made To share in the demon's glee; And still he laughed until he cried-- Till suddenly his laughter died: He had tasted the tears that rolled down the side Of his face: and he cursed at me. ..................... LEARN TO TYPE! by FREDERIK POHL Science fiction fans have been unjustly defined as authors who haven't been able to succeed. Note the "unjustly" in that sentence; the definition is far from accurate. But, like everything qualified by the adjective "inaccurate", it contains a faint trace of truth. Many science fiction fans do want to become authors; quite a few, in fact, have succeeded. And it is to these fans that this article is addressed. I edit two science fiction magazines. Before I became an editor, I was an agent; before that an extremely unsuccessful author. I have had occasion to read literally millions--I estimate, more than ten million--words of science-fiction. Most of this never saw print. Now, of course, it is not physically possible for all of it ever to be printed; there just isn't that much science fiction used. But it is pathetic to see the number of manuscripts that are rejected solely because the authors have done things against which they had been warned time and again. There isn't enough space in Spaceways to tell all that I want to about the reasons stories are rejected. But there is one basic fault present in the work of 99% of all amateur writers that causes their work to be rejected--frequently without a thorough reading. That fault isn't poor characterization, or impossible conversations, or hack plots, or even just plain bad writing. It's something much more basic. The name of it is: "poor typing". I receive an average of fifty thousand words of science fiction a day, a quarter of a million words a week. Out of that I have to choose the comparatively insignificant figure of perhaps fifteen thousand words a week for use in my magazines. And this is how I--and to my personal knowledge, most of the other editors--do it. I look over all the stories and choose first the ones I can possibly buy, those that fit my specified lengths of 1500 to 12,000 words. (You would be surprised to see how many have never even leafed through a copy of the magazine to which they submit their work.) The others I put aside for later examination, to see if they can be cut down, or built up, to a usable length. The ones I retain are divided into three sub-groups: those by authors with whose work I am familiar, and which I can expect to come up to my standards (this does not mean professionals exclusively, incidentally; there are at least half a dozen amateurs who are submitting to me regularly, whose work is rapidly approaching a highly acceptable standard); those which are by authors who seem to know something about presenting their stories, and show it by neat typing, a fiarly good title, and an interesting first paragraph; and the "culls", the stories sloppily presented, and generally shoddily developed. The culls, you see, are the last read, and the least likely to be accepted. Moreover, given a choice between two stories on the same theme, of approximately equal merit, one of which is well typed and the other shoddily, I will (concluded on page 24)
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