Over at Omnivoracious, Jeff VanderMeer asked me to name five ways you can plant real-life seeds of change, since, you know, I edited a book called Seeds of Change.
In other VanderMeer-related news, Horia Ursu, who recently blogged about Seeds in Romanian, is guest-blogging this week at VanderMeer’s Ecstatic Days blog, and had this to say: “John Joseph Adams was kind enough to indulge my pleas and e-mailed electronic copies of Wastelands (the best reprint themed anthology I have read this last couple years!) and of his then-forthcoming, now freshly trailered Seeds of Change, where at least half of the stories will (or deserve to) show up in next year’s awards final ballots. This book reminded me why I started to love science fiction in the first place, with the stories’ focus on the paradigms of change and an almost militant engagement that stands out in a sea of simple entertainment.” Wow, that’s some praise right there!
And finally, I’m included in the latest SF Signal Mind Meld, which asks “What would you change about the SF/fantasy field?” Excerpt from my contribution: “From an editorial perspective, I think maybe that we don’t often enough challenge writers to be great. Not all stories (or writers) have greatness inside of them, but I think that perhaps too often we accept and publish good stories that truly could be great if the writer was just pushed to *make it* great. It seems like editors used to do this routinely, if one can accept the statements one reads in historical accounts at face value. Editors like John W. Campbell and Harlan Ellison are frequently cited as having done a lot to mold and shape the fiction they published. It could be that this is still happening today, but I don’t hear about it very often and don’t often see it–instead I find myself reading good stories in which I find greatness lurking inside them. I don’t know what the reason for this is, or even if it is a true problem–good stories are, after all *good*–but it’s something I’ve been thinking about.”
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