Helix: because what this industry needs is more crotchety men running things.

[tanaise]

You're probably thinking to yourself, "Self, whatever happened to the good old days, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and Dave Trusdale ran Tangent with a fist of iron and a heart of gold(en age science fiction)." Be not alarmed! Someone has seen the hole, nay, void, created by his absense and has stepped up to the challenge.

http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=read&group=sff.publishing.helix&artnum=577

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My land. I went to see if I'd submitted anything so I could immediately withdraw it (happily, I had not). OH NOES COPYRIGHT VIOLATION PIRACY PIRACY ACK ACK! Yarr, says I.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I get it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The evil internet pirates plundered their submission guidelines and were going to make a fortune off their ill-gotten booty. Err. Somehow.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

OK, now I get it. I sort of though that was it, but it's so . . . odd.

From the ensuing discussion:

Not a matter of irritation, Thomas. Just that we can't allow it or pretty soon everybody will be doing it.

The temptation to find their guidelines and post them in my blog is so strong right now. I hear everybody's doing it.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I know! There's something about them that just....MAKES me want to be bad.

Also, whenever my life is lacking that extra dose of crazy, I just stop by their newsgroup and am filled up in minutes. Last week there was bitching that IROSF didn't put a link to the site in the review of their stuff. And how will anyone find their magazine if there isn't a link? How? How? just randomly type things into their browser and hope? A bit before that was expressions of disbelief that they go to all the trouble of finding 'daring' content about 'taboo' subjects, and all anyone wanted to talk about was their (lack-of-) submissions policy. (that's still my favorite ranting, I think. "We're only publishing things we asked for, but we plan to have new authors too." If only the FB had been psychic enough to just know what new people to ask for stories.)

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I must confess that I pretty much dismissed and forgot about them the day after the magazine was announced.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Well, I've never been to the site, never read any of their stories. But their newsgroup can be much more entertaining than the stories possibly could have been, particularly when they start trying to defend something stupid.

[amberdine.livejournal.com]

Also, whenever my life is lacking that extra dose of crazy, I just stop by their newsgroup and am filled up in minutes.

Ha! I was doing the exact same thing today. (Thus following the link here -- hi.)

I knew it couldn't be just me. If only they could track hits to the newsgroup. :D

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Have you noticed that whenever someone says something sane and unarguable (such as when I asked them why they care what I talk about in my own journal) they rebut with "why are you reading this? it's for discussion of the stories! The stories, man!"

[slithytove.livejournal.com]

I need a crotchety old man icon.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

You could always steal William Sanders' editorial photo.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

PIRATE! PIRATING in my journal!

Hmm. If you were sanctioned by a different magazine, would that therefore make you a privateer? Are there literary privateers?

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I prefer the term "freebooter."

[slithytove.livejournal.com]

Wow! Now that's crotchety!

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

That's going to get you called a nasty name

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I'm more afraid of the gun than the names.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

That is just insane.

How do they expect readers and submissions if they don't widely disseminate their guidelines--

Oh yeah, they don't want submissions, just our money to pay for their solicited stories.

*wanders off giggling and shaking her head*

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

Don't forget to pay the ELEVEN people they have on staff ...

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

Just so you know, he linked to this post and called everyone here 'vacuum brained assholes'.

I don't know about you, but I feel special.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Aw. and he hasn't even *seen* what we've said about the stories....

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

It's better that way.

The shock to the system, the horror of knowing you aren't worshipped and adored....

It could all be too much.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Pass the smelling salts.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Oh, please. It's not like they'd even notice. I"ve seen them seeing bad reviews. They go, "well, they just didn't *understand* our vision," and pretend that it's someone else's fault.

[susansugarspun.livejournal.com]

I find it all kind of trainwreck-fascinating, actually. It's like the mirror-world version of how I think about running a magazine.

That said, I do think we have all kind of misunderstood what they're trying to do over there. Sanders makes it pretty clear that their editorial policy (towards both writers and readers) is basically "if you're not one of us, we don't care what you think." We're not in the group. The people who are in the group appear to really like the magazine, and appear to be kicking some money their way, so, y'know, good on them. If you think of it less like a broad-audience magazine and more like a local chapbook collective or something, a lot of the attitude makes more sense.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

I've heard this magazine and Sanders talked about since it opened, but this is my first real exposure to him.

Having just read a lot of the posts on their SFF.net newsgroup...

I think I'm glad I'm not part of their in-crowd. I know that I'm not SFWA qualified, yet, but my view of professional behavior and how to hold a discussion is miles away from what I see there.

Not caring what someone who disagrees with you thinks is one thing. In that case I think you would just ignore them and go on.

But finding the swear word of the moment to dismiss them because they disagree is childish and rude. Flat out no excuse for that in my opinion.

[susansugarspun.livejournal.com]

Well, that's one of the mirror-world things I mentioned. :)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, indeed, I'd just like to be able to ask questions about what they are looking to do, how it's working, et al without being called an idiot, commie, etc. and told where to stuff myself.

I'm Canadian. I'm real keen on those professionalism and politeness things. *g*

[silk-noir.livejournal.com]

Canadian? Polite?

Ack! Commie!

Heh.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Hey, that red on our flag? That's no accident! *g*

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

The attitude, yes. The professionalism, still missing.

[grndexter.livejournal.com]

Ha! *I* got a new sig-quote out of it!!!

"Just to make it clear: even if we WERE accepting unsolicited submissions, there is no way in hell we would take anything from Missouri Mike. For one thing I doubt seriously that a Creationist could write anything we would want to publish; and for another most of us simply can't stand him."
William Sanders

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

the very fact that you're replying to *my* post probably means he would think you're vaccumheaded too, so if that sig fails, you've got a back up one waiting.

[grndexter.livejournal.com]

Well... actually he seems to actively dislike/hate me, even though we've never met. (A pleasure I'm willing to forgo.)

It all started a few years ago, someone told me he was an "interesting" person. Unfortunately, their comment was online and they didn't inflect it properly. In retrospect, what I think they meant was that he is an "IN-ter-resting" person, with a ":-\" after it.

Since I'm always interested in meeting interesting people, I went to his newsgroup. Unfortunately, I had the effrontery to express an opinion there. Apparently only HE gets to have opinions. I am also a Christian, which is apparently THE unforgivable sin.

So he now apparently has this undying mortal hatred of me and anything I say or write... which I view as an endorsement for people of taste and intelligence.

Or not. ;-D

He reminds me a lot of my father and one of my brothers, and I feel sorry for all of them. I think it's a poor existence to spend ALL of one's time hating and fighting with others.

And the crowning irony? I have stories of just the sort he says they created Helix to publish... stories that probably no one else would touch. (Even "Creationists" can think and create.) But he'll never see them unless someone else actually DOES publish them.

Finally, after reading a few of the first month's offerings, I'd have to disagree with his statement that he has ability as an editor.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The thing that I find startling -- this is almost certainly due to the vacuum in my brain -- is that Janis Ian is willing to associate her name with people who clearly see copyright as existing in a vacuum. (Like my brain!) Copyright isn't around to protect the interests of people creating work for long enough that they can benefit by it. No, no no no! Copyright is an absolute moral position, just because, regardless! Reprinting anything is exactly the same, regardless of context, and fair use means not doing anything I don't want you to do. None of that is new, but Janis Ian is one of the people who is fighting most tirelessly for logic and reason in all the internet music copyright wars, and it makes me wonder if she knows what the people who are publishing her stuff are advocating.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

people who clearly see copyright as existing in a vacuum. (Like my brain!)

I love you. Just so you know.

Honestly, after last night's discussion, I'm amazed that there are any women on the staff.

I'd love to know what the reaction in the newsgroup would have been if a) a guy had talked about them the way I did in my post or b) a number of guys had posted things like we posted in the newsgroup. Because it's not that I don't believe Adam-Troy's explanation, it's just that I think he's totally wrong. I don't think--and I have had a lot of experience with online fights--that what we said was worthy of such contempt that we would so quickly be considered assholes anywhere else on the net, I think it's that we were *girls* in their clubhouse saying these things.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it's about gender, age, or total inability to see what, exactly, the problem is. I do know that anyone who talks that way to our Kat is done, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, to other people, too, but Kat in particular apparently makes me want to pull out the lance and charge. Disagree with Kat all you want, but if you invite her to suck on something of yours, you had best be buying an awfully nice dinner and making desperately hopeful puppydog eyes, and you had better take no gracefully. Unless there were e-mail conversations going on that I couldn't see (which I strongly doubt, under the circumstances), it was out of the blue, gratuitous, disproportionate sheer nastiness.

I am perpetually amazed by people who don't realize how much of a statement about their magazine the submission guidelines make -- or how much of a statement their editorial behavior makes. I am very much "pro enough" for their stated guidelines, but I would rather never see a dime for my short stories than work with someone who is willing to attempt to verbally vomit down Kat's shirt for daring to question why a policy was formulated as it was.

And continuing to behave as though no one understood that something is copyrighted when it's written down -- totally not the point. Once something is automatically copyrighted, you have a choice on how to behave in regards to that copyright. Treating your (non-)guidelines as though they were the equivalent of your fiction is...well, silly. And I haven't seen any reasoning for why they should behave that way. Just repetitions of, "But they ARE copyrighted! They ARE!" As if whether they were copyrighted, and not behavior in regards to copyright, was the issue in question.

You run into this with music industry dupes all the time (again, this is why I'm surprised Janis Ian is associating herself with this group): they keep repeating, "But the songs are COPYRIGHTED! They're COPYRIGHTED! They ARE!" And the question of whether you can make more money with some free distribution just never comes up, or whether you can get more listeners, or any of that. Because they're COPYRIGHTED! Even though no one is disputing that at all.

I am so very grateful to the late Jim Baen for seeing past this model and showing the way for others -- Tor, for example -- to do the same.

[katallen.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

You're right to strongly doubt any other communication -- my god, I did get off lightly, he might have sent pictures. :)

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

assless chaps!

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

...

*cries*

[slithytove.livejournal.com]

I need a vacuum brained asshole icon.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

at this rate, every time there's an internet slap fight, you're going to have to buy more icon space.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I entirely see nothing wrong with that.

New Web Mag

[grndexter.livejournal.com]

Ahhh... lurking in the Helix newsgroup has borne fruit! First a comment by Ahmed A. Kahn there said that he'd read the stories and only liked one of them. (Thought you all might be interested in that)

So - just to see who he was/is, I followed the link to his weblog and found out about another new Web Mag (first issue out last Thursday)- one that's apparently NOT trying to Make A Statement! I have already submitted a SF poem to this one, and plan to send them a short little piece that I can't think of where else to send it (only 500 words).

Check it out here:
http://www.theopinionguy.com/index.html
:-D