Ellen Datlow is being interviewed by Jack Womack in the WELL's public Inkwell conference. Ellen is a legendary science fiction editor: as fiction editor for Omni, she presided over the first (and, so far, the only) sf market that circulated over a million copies a month; her Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Anthologies (co-edited with Terri Windling) are brilliant tours of trends in top-rate fantasy; her other anthology projects, like the ground-breaking Alien Sex, are classics decades after their publication. Today, she edits scifi.com's fiction section (where Jury Service, the novella I co-wrote with Charlie Stross, was serialized last month), for which she took home last year's best editor Hugo Award, breaking Gardner "Asimov's" Dozois's seven-year streak — a streak that was last broken by Kristine Kathryn Rusch after six consecutive Dozois wins.
Womack, of course, is a brilliant dystopian sf writer whose wild, caffeinated prose makes his stories of the collapse of the world into barbarism chillingly real.
The best way to procure short stories from those who have gone on to
write (goddamn!) novels is to catch them at the right time–maybe when
they're having trouble with the novel they're writing….or when
they've just finished a tough one and they need a break.It's difficult to codify what I look for in a story–but there must be
something about the story that _moves_ me in some way. That makes an
impression. Competent writing is a must, great writing is a joy to
behold but I'd also like there to be a point to the story. I look for a
freshness in the telling, an unusual point of view or venue. There are
so many components that come together in the decision to buy a story.
I try to be honest with writers who I work with. If I think they can
deal with straightforward criticism I'll give it (and if I think it'll
help the specific story). I'm probably more critical if I like the
work–otherwise I wouldn't bother. I'd just give the story a brush-off
rejection.There are the occasional stories that on second/third/fourth look
didn't hold up and I've very occasionally bought a story that I didn't
think was up to snuff that I was pressured to buy for one reason or
another. But I've never published a story I was embarrassed to have
published.
