That’s apparently what today has been declared. Several folks have already done it (Tobias Buckell, Justine Larbalesteir, Willow Fagan, and likely many others.).
So, throwing aside personal integrity, I thought I’d do the same thing. So I decided I’d post two of them. No mentions of the stories or which markets, for obvious reasons. Here is the first one:
Shaun,
Thanks, but it’s not for us. We look for the new, so we tend to stay away from the suite of elements like AI, wetware, near-future dystopias and so on which have become as ubiquitous in SF as wizards, fairies and monarchies are in fantasy. These ideas have been strip mined for more than twenty years now, and there’s very little life left in them which doesn’t depend on significant renovation from the familiar. We didn’t find that here; instead, moments like this:
[redacted]
could have been lifted from any number of cyberhappy SF literature, movies and TV we’ve all seen before.
That all roughly translated to “don’t write crap from the 80s”, which totally makes sense now.
And for something happier:
Dear Shaun,
Thank you for submitting [redacted] to [redacted]. It was well received
here, but after some thought we have decided not to accept it for
publication.I hope you’ll consider us again, and I wish you the best success in
placing this story elsewhere.
So, yeah! Good stuff. Hope you all enjoy it.
