In January, 1997, Gordon Van Gelder became the editor of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. In 2000, he became its publisher as well, and the magazine has remained a steady and influential presence in the field. In a recent Locus interview, he said, "Science fiction will never be accepted fully by the mainstream and it shouldn't be, because if it is, it's doing something wrong."
Q: Your presence is often seen on active threads in the blogging and webboard SF communities. How closely do you monitor those communities, and what moves you to post when you do?
GVG: Well, I monitor the F&SF board fairly closely (natch), and then there are one or two other boards I try to check every day. Plus I'm on a couple of private list-servers. What moves me to post? Same as anyone else, I suppose: I speak up when I have something to add to the discussion.
Q: Charles Coleman Finlay recently proposed slush bombing F&SF in August to draw attention to the inequities of gender representation in that and similar magazines, which drew a lot of ire his way. How do you feel about the tactic? Do you think that's the best way to address inequities - or do those inequities matter?
GVG: Charlie proposed his experiment with all of the best intentions and I appreciate that. But as I've said in a few places now, if the idea of having a great mass of women submit stories to me at the same time is intended to prove or do anything, it's not likely to work. For one thing, I buy about one percent of all the stories submitted to us. If Charlie's experiment results in a hundred stories being sent my way and I buy one of them, I'll be happy. If I buy two, I'll be ecstatic . . . but that means ninety-eight or ninety-nine people will go away from the experiment believing that they've proved I don't buy stories from women. Or something like that.
"Do those inequities matter?" sounds to my ears like the old question, "And when did you stop beating your spouse." There's no correct way to answer it. If I say, "Yes, they matter tremendously!", then people will jump up and say, "Why don't you do something about it?" And if I say "No, they don't matter," people will jump and say, "Do something about it!"
So let me lay it out in a different way. Does it matter that there are more stories in _F&SF_ by men than by women? I don't know. To me, the issue isn't who's writing the stories, the issue is whether the stories are _good._ I remember when Eileen Gunn started editing _Infinite Matrix,_ she said she had all sorts of plans for righting inequities, bringing in more writers of diverse backgrounds . . . and within weeks (maybe days), she found she was so desperate for anything good that it didn't matter _what_ wrote the story.
Q: What's coming down the pike for F&SF as the web becomes more and more important? Do you think the magazine will change shape much in the coming years?
GVG: We're launching a column that will appear only on the Website, but basically, I don't think the magazine will change shape much. One thing I've found from hanging out on the message boards is that there's a certain blindness or arrogance among Web-heads that everything that's anything is on the Web. And yet, just yesterday I got a call from another subscriber who said he's shutting off his internet service I'm not saying the Web is bad or anything of the sort, but printing on paper is an old and accomplished technology and I don't see electronics supplanting it in the near future.
Q: How thematic are the issues of F&SF? Do you try to balance things in terms of humor/drama or is it simply a matter of what's next in the pipeline?
GVG: Er, it's an issue-by-issue thing. There are some issues where I deliberately run stories that play off each other. And there are some stories that I can't run within six months of each other because they're too similar in theme. But overall, I try to balance the issues so that there's no one predominant theme or subject. And if there's a dominant theme, it's often unintended. Someone complained that the July issue had two stories about Intelligent Design in it. One was Steven Utley's "Diluvium," which I knew had that theme. But the other one was a "Plumage from Pegasus" column by Paul Di Filippo and I put it in the issue for some humor---I never even thought twice about putting it in the issue with "Diluvium."
Q: What's the most misguided thing anyone's done to try to make their story stand out from the slush?
GVG: Y'know, I don't have a ready answer for you. Since John reads the slush nowadays, I tend not to see the more egregious ones anymore. But in the past I've had bribes, insults, emails, faxes, photos, fancy boxes, Express Mail, and so on . . . but it's still true that nothing stands out more in the slushpile than a well-prepared manuscript.
Q: What sorts of stories are you seeing far too many of lately? Is there anything in particular you're looking for?
GVG: As usual, I'm seeing too many contemporary fantasy stories and too many high fantasy stories. The newest overused subject is viruses---they've become the new nanotech. By which I mean, a few years ago, everyone used nanotech like magic and it created stories in which anything could happen (so it was hard to care what did). Now I'm seeing a lot of stories in which viruses are unleashed that can do anything. And the result is . . . well, I don't need to finish that sentence, do I?
Q: Who are some of the new voices in f&sf that you look forward to reading?
GVG: Some of the new voices I'm looking forward to _publishing_ include Daryl Gregory, Paolo Bacigalupi, and David Levine---I've got stories by all three in inventory. (Paolo's new one might be out by the time this interview appears.) And this year I had a bunch of new writers in the magazine, including Matthew Corradi, Donald Mead, and Heather Lindsley. What are they going to write in the future? Your guess is probably as good as mine. But stay tuned and we'll find out.
