tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573136768377847579.post7246205663054027836..comments2023-12-28T17:51:10.368-06:00Comments on Spiral Galaxy Musings: On CharmKaren Burnhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16803309172414793939noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573136768377847579.post-52290475534115323302023-12-28T17:51:10.368-06:002023-12-28T17:51:10.368-06:00Great reaad thanksGreat reaad thanksStarry Lightboxhttps://starrylightbox.tumblr.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573136768377847579.post-14974339491849782342009-08-23T14:33:15.172-05:002009-08-23T14:33:15.172-05:00Gary - Wow, that's a lot of history to pack in...Gary - Wow, that's a lot of history to pack into one sentence. I'm sorry you've had to deal with more illiterate mouth breathers in thirty years than I have in one. However, my main point was trying to get at how Charm can lift an average, <a href="http://spiralgalaxyreviews.blogspot.com/2009/07/rumir.html" rel="nofollow">RUMIR</a> story up to a higher level.Karen Burnhamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16803309172414793939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573136768377847579.post-87297057772166120682009-08-22T20:30:45.297-05:002009-08-22T20:30:45.297-05:00"During that time of reflection, duty called ..."During that time of reflection, duty called and I continued reading slush pile stories for Strange Horizons. Here’s what they don’t tell you about the slush pile before you start: it’s really not that bad. Very few of the stories are submitted by illiterate mouth-breathers."<br /><br />I perfectly believe you about your experience with <i>Strange Horizons</i>, but based on such experiences as spending a couple of years in the early-mid-Seventies reading slush for <i>Amazing Stories</i> and <i>Fantastic Stories</i> magazines, and a while in the mid-Eighties reading and reporting on both slush and reputable-agent-submitted manuscripts, as well as books that had previously been published but were up for consideration for buying the rights to and republishing (at houses such as Dell, Ace, Bluejay, before moving on to an inhouse position at Avon Books in the later Eighties supervising the slush readers, and still getting some slush directly that I'd pass off to our slush readers to look at to see if it warranted me taking a more serious glance, and then actually farming it out to one of our paid readers, I'd have to suggest that slush varies according to publisher, and the larger/more prominent the publisher, the worse the proportion of truly unreadable slush, versus just Stuff With Problems. <br /><br />Stuff at the major publishing houses where sf is just one of many imprints, for example, that isn't even sent to an editor, or even to the imprint, but just to the general address of the publisher, is of a different quality than that sent to the imprint, which in turn is different than that sent to an actual editor by name. Each is, respectively, a step up in cluefulness, which is generally accompanied by a -- roughly -- proportionate rise in quality.<br /><br />So there are limitations to how far you can generalize about slush sent to one place.Gary Farberhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02883503507068654673noreply@blogger.com