So this is how it's going to go down
just so you know
Over the past year or two I’ve been posting little twitter threads to my three-digit following in which i recommend short stories which i have read, and i figured “why not start a monthly-ish [name of site where this was previously published] to post the same content to even fewer followers”?
Why ‘Short Story Rex’?
Basically because the first dumb puns that sprung to mind were:
'Get Rec'd' (already taken, a podcast or something apparently)
'Rec's in Effect' (turned up a couple google hits as well, and a pun on a one-hit wonder from the New Jack Swing era was maybe a tad niche)
and 'Recc'd 'Em' (too crass?)
…until i landed on Short Story Rex, which didn’t turn up anything on google, and i liked the ring of it and ultimately went, ‘fuck, i kind of have to do this now, don’t i’
but also, ‘why Short Story Rex?’, as in ‘why are you doing this?’ well…
1. shifting the spotlight
My reading tastes and habits, while not squarely ‘genre’, are at least ‘genre-adjacent’.
And down here in the SFF demimonde, many (probably ‘most’, possibly ‘nearly all’) of the readers are (or have been, or aspire to be) writers. Perhaps you, dear reader, are one—and if so, you’re familiar with the traditional distinction between ‘pro’ and ‘semi-pro’ (and even ‘token’) markets, as defined by their pay rate.
This is a legacy of the not-so-long-ago days when membership of SFWA (the Science Fiction Writers of America) required at least three short fiction sales to "qualifying markets", and the minimum pay rate to qualify was (at last count) $0.08/word. (More recently, they appear to have ditched this, replacing it with the requirement that a prospective member’s “catalog of paid work in science fiction, fantasy, or related genres equals or exceeds an industry standard set by the board. (US$1000)”.1
So while the distinction per SFWA is now obsolete (there’s also the “semi-pro zine” category in the Hugos but please let’s not get into it), there’s still an assumption that work in the ‘pro’ markets—the better-known markets, the ones with all the prestige and awards nominations—must be objectively better, more worthy, and more important than work that appears elsewhere.
That assumption is, of course, laughable.
One of the main things I’ve wanted to do—the main reason I ever post on twitter-dot-com these last couple of years—is to share stuff from outside the confines of the Known, Prestigious, frequently-Award-nominated venues of SFF.
There have been exceptions—several of the ‘big names’ often publish stories I love, and will continue to do so, I hope—but mainly i am interested in bringing attention to work and writers that go beyond what’s commercially in-demand with the mainstream of SFF short fiction.
2. the jaws of oblivion (part 1)
From experience I can tell you that the half-life of short fiction online is astonishingly short. A story is published, maybe read, perhaps liked and shared a few or even times, But then days pass, weeks, and the noise around it dwindles down, until soon enough it may as well never have been published. Or at least it feels that way.
So, rather than hitting you with only the latest, hottest, freshest new output each month, i will more often than not be recommending stories from a few months, maybe even a few years ago, in hopes of giving more exposure to work that may have already been consumed and filed away and forgotten, or that didn’t get the attention it deserved the first time around.
3. the jaws of oblivion (part 2)
I’ll probably be sharing some more classic stories as well. I’m far from a diehard, old-school Fan, a capital-f fan, a ‘Fans are Slans’ fan, and you’ll rarely catch me pining for the ‘good old days’ (unless the conversation turns to music in which case I make no promises) but…
….that said, a lot of online discourse in the genre world these days has a pretty ahistorical perspective, taking as axiomatic that anything over 20 years old must either be poorly-written to the point of cringe or problematic to the point of cancellation or else generally just not worth bothering with.
Lucky for us, there’s plenty of stories out there that put the lie to this kind of oversimplification and I hope to share them here.
4. the jaws of oblivion part 3: the final chapter
full disclosure: i will also occasionally plug my own stuff here, whether it’s words or music or whatever
5. this is going to be pretty chill
Yes, I have an English degree but you won’t find anything in the way of academic rigor here. We won’t be getting too erudite with it. (That said, I won’t be doing fourth-grade book-report style plot synopses, either.)
Also this will be chill as in: don’t let the reference to ‘online discourse’ in #4 above frighten you. Those who know me know I don’t really go hard in the paint like that.
Also as in, informal. Frankly I can’t be bothered to respect most norms re capitalization, punctuation, spelling, etc. (unless I feel like it, in which case I will)
Finally this will ideally be a space where people respond to what they find here and comment on it and share their own recommendations. Ideally.
And if not, well, at least now i’ll have a place to type about stories when or if the birdsite becomes utterly impracticable.
Let’s see what happens…
From the SFWA website: “In January 2022, SFWA unveiled a plan to create a comprehensive market matrix or scorecard to better guide creators toward professional publishers. We are starting with short fiction markets on this rollout, and while the committee makes the finishing touches, we are suspending the short fiction qualifying markets list.”