77 Responses so far

1. 1. SMD on Jul 9th, 2008 at 2:48 am

   I saw this whole ordeal earlier (or, rather, early afternoon yesterday). The only thing that everyone seems to agree on is that the guy shouldn’t have posted the email (except one individual who thought it was open game…though I disagree out of courtesy), but “sheet heads” is really not the term one should use when referring to certain groups of people…couldn’t he have just said “terrorists” or “extremists” or “muslim fundamentalists” or a series of other terms equally as expressive and more indicative of what he meant?
   I’m not even that familiar with Helix, to be honest. Not sure if I will submit there at all now (though I hear it’s by invitation only).

2. 2. Tobias Buckell on Jul 9th, 2008 at 3:11 am

   Yeah, posting the email was a rookie thing, but it’s recoverable from. Editors in this field are really good at not holding your past against you, which I really respect.

3. 3. Tobias Buckell on Jul 9th, 2008 at 3:11 am

   Just a note, as posts like this tend to generate a lot of comments, if this is your first time posting, comments go into a moderation queue until I have time to approve, and then after that you can post.

   I’m also a bit of a deadline and more focused on that, so I may be slow about approving posts.

4. 4. A Reader on Jul 9th, 2008 at 4:00 am

   The flipside of this is that, when you’re clearly a writer of colour, as I am, and someone very obviously has issues with that, and you object to it, it’s you who gets called a racist. That’s something Kubler-Ross didn’t cover but it seems to be the norm. ‘Fucking turbanhead’, ‘turd’, ‘asshole…brown asshole’ are only some of the choice epithets thrown at me for daring to question (politely and very reasonably, with no trace of abuse at all) something they said. At the end of it, I’ve been threatened with ‘exposure’ and warned that I’ll be ‘blacklisted’, the irony of which last phrase didn’t escape me.

   Quite frankly, in my admittedly limited (thankfully limited) experience, American SFF is racist and bigotted without even realizing it. They’re a long way from admitting it, and while I’m sorry to sound like I’m generalizing here, there are just too many names to list individually. I don’t ever expect to work in the American SFF field, and am quite comfortable with that. The clannish (Klannish?) atmosphere of the field is just not inviting to an ‘outsider’ like me.

   You can keep it. Us niggers are happy in our little ghettoes around the world.

5. 5. Tobias Buckell on Jul 9th, 2008 at 4:06 am

   I’m sorry about your limited exposure being so negative with US SF. I can be frustrated with a great deal of it, and there is a lot of education that needs done, but ultimately, I find a lot of good folk in the field who have worked very hard to help me and my books and gotten on board with the Caribbean adventure SF thing I was doing, so I can’t just tar and feather *all* these awesome folk, just point out the real obvious assholes and see if I can move things forward a little bit more however I can.

   Trying to be the change I want to see and all that…

6. 6. Catherine Shaffer on Jul 9th, 2008 at 7:49 am

   I disagree that it was bad form for the recipient to post that email. I think it was courageous. Mr. Sanders has been on record in public on his own newsgroup and in the SFWA lounge with his racial bigotry. It is a very serious issue. If the president wrote an email like this, would he be allowed to get away with it? Would the recipient be scolded for publishing “private correspondance?” What about if a more prominent editor or journalist, let’s say someone from CNN or Foxnews, had written a letter like this. Private correspondance is generally kept private out of good manners and respect for individuals. However, when the correspondance itself breaks the rules of civility, and when it reveals a behavior and mindset which the community should know about, then it is right and correct to expose it.

   This guy has posted similar things about sheet heads, as well as sexually discriminatory comments, and what I would consider outright sexual harrassment against women in the SFWA lounge, and each time friends of his have defended him and made excuses for him. Moreover, each time he has been protected by “privacy,” such as in the SFWA lounge, or he has had the luxury of deleting posts that are embarassing to him, etc. This guy needs to be outed as a racist bigot and a hater of women.

   As a writer, I decided long ago never to submit anything to Helix, and quite honestly, when I hear mention of a story published in Helix, some of the intense dislike I have for Sanders starts to bleed over to that writer. Don’t they know? Do they endorse his views? I try to quash it, because they may well not be aware of his writings, but I also will not read the magazine.

   I can’t find a link to the author who posted this rejection letter, but if I could, I would salute him. Good for you! You’ve got to wonder about this industry when it takes someone at the very bottom of the heap–someone who has the most to lose–to stand up to injustice and an editor’s abuse of power.

7. 7. Craig on Jul 9th, 2008 at 8:23 am

   Great post, Tobias.

   The apologizing just drives me crazy. I want to ask the apologists:

   If “sheetheads” and the crass and negative generalizations expressed in the letter aren’t racist, then what is? What if the letter had said, “sand-niggers”? What if it had characterized all white Christians as ignorant fanatics?

   More importantly, things like this make me want to write and publish my fiction more. Our voices have to get out there.

8. 8. Michael Thomas on Jul 9th, 2008 at 8:48 am

   Thank you. Those things needed to be said.

9. 9. Mark Terry on Jul 9th, 2008 at 9:14 am

   It all reminds me of my in-laws, years ago, lecturing me on how “not all blacks are n******.”

   The reverse, or at least tangential, is an agent asking me to change “black” to African-American in a manuscript. It’s probably possible to be too PC.

   As for publishing the rejection letter, I’m ambivalent about it, given that it was probably perceived as a confidential business communication.

   It strikes me that racism and bigotry is probably a spectrum and I suppose we all fall on the spectrum somewhere. I recently had a meeting with some editors and they were going on about the genetics of race, thanks to James Watson’s latest inflammatory remarks, and they were quite enthused about exploring it as a controversy and I couldn’t quite decide whether there was some some latent (or not so latent) racism going on here, largely because they kept coming back to the subject, or they objected to it and were discussing it in some sort of subdued intellectual way, or whether they saw it as a way of causing controversy that would drive readers to their website. (Or possibly all three). I came away a little uneasy about them, wondering exactly what had been going on there.

10. 10. Scott Marlowe on Jul 9th, 2008 at 9:20 am

    It’s funny how different standards exist across different industries (maybe they shouldn’t, but if this particular editor still has his job, then obviously they do). I’ve worked in the computer industry for many years. As one can imagine, I’ve worked aside people of all ethnicities. While I’ve never done this, of course, were I to refer to any one of them using any of the number of ethnic slurs available in the English language (and such information became publicly known) I’d find myself without a job fairly quickly.

    Now, this editor sent a professional correspondence, which probably should have been kept between the writer and editor, but now that it’s become public, what is Helix going to do about it?

11. 11. Mike Allen on Jul 9th, 2008 at 10:32 am

    To #6: Before you praise the poster too much, you should probably be aware that he posted the rejection letter because of an entirely different issue (involving the parameters of genre vs. non-genre markets) apparently oblivious to the effect it was going to have once folks read the “sheet heads” comment, etc.

    People tend to forget (and this goes just as much for e-mail senders as blog posters) that, really, there is no such thing as “Internet privacy.”

12. 12. Celia on Jul 9th, 2008 at 10:49 am

    I’m not sure if something so amazingly unprofessional *should* be considered ‘professional business correspondence.’

    Of course, that said, I’ve already boycotted Helix on all levels, and as Catherine says above, when things like this happen–and get explained or otherwise supported by others on staff/published by them–I start to think badly of the people who do continue to submit and get published by them.

13. 13. Nora on Jul 9th, 2008 at 11:21 am

    A Reader,

    I’m sorry to hear that you’ve decided not to get involved with the SF field. I think you’re right on one level — SF is rather more racist than it thinks it is, in large part because its demographics are so overwhelmingly white that editors/writers/fans with these kinds of views have been allowed to get away with voicing them unchallenged for a long time. Things are changing, though — in part because people *are* challenging this behavior more often, and more strongly. I think that’s what’s necessary to make the genre more welcoming to all.

    I say this, note, as a black woman who’s been published twice in Helix (along with a bunch of other places). In general I like the magazine; they’ve published some other authors I respect, and while the selections occasionally edge into territory that I find uncomfortable, that’s the ‘zine’s stated purpose. I think there’s value in exploring that territory. I’d heard rumors about Sanders’ views before — he’s apparently notorious for them — but yesterday was the first time I’d seen confirmation. When I saw him in that thread defending those views, rather than apologizing for them, I knew I had to speak out, even though it meant (as he informed me privately afterward) that I’d never be pub’d in Helix again. ::shrug:: So be it.

    Anyway, what I want to say is this: there IS a place for writers of color in the SF world. Yes, the field is littered with Imusesque bigots, many of whom consider it a point of pride to be offensive, but they’re still *a minority* within the field. In my experience there are just as many if not more perfectly intelligent, enlightened people out there to counterbalance them. A bigger problem, really, is well-meaning privileged/colorblind racism, but that goes for all of America (if you’re in America); and at least those people are usually willing to listen. The more blatant stuff is quite literally dying out.

    So I would urge you to reconsider. SF will change as its demographics change, and as standards of what’s acceptable shift in response. We have futures too, don’t we? So we have just as much right and reason to be here as the cranky old white guys. Don’t let them scare you off, or worse — convince you that they’re the true face of the genre. They’re anything but.

14. 14. Steve Buchheit on Jul 9th, 2008 at 11:26 am

    Let’s see, “public posting of a private email message is contrary to the rules both of accepted internet practice and common courtesy.” Hmm, he must be reading a different internet than I am. And, you know, editors never tell each other stories about which author did what in their manuscript. That would just go against common courtesy.

    Guess this editor forgot that just because the characters in a story may espouse a world view, that it isn’t necessarily the same world view of the author.

    And you’d think an editor could, at least, get the epithets right. Reminds me of listening to my nephews learning how to cuss. They just couldn’t get it right, so I had to explain what all the terms meant. (yes, I know he meant it to be close to another word, very clever of him, still, wrong).

15. 15. Stephen Gordon on Jul 9th, 2008 at 11:43 am

    A couple of years ago a relative who was visiting my house started dropping the “n” bomb - and in front of my kids too.

    I told her that we don’t use that word in our house.

    Then she started the same “I’m not a racist” defense. My response, “Fine, but I don’t want my kids exponsed to that.”

    Maybe it was a little too diplomatic of me to give them a pass on the “I’m not a racist” defense. Of course it was B.S., but its the sort of B.S. you sometimes let pass in order to get along with relatives.

    Ultimately it didn’t matter. If you dare to hold a mirror up to a person who hates, casually, you can’t expect a positive response. A racist doesn’t like self-examination.

    So my relatives packed up and left, angrily. After a couple of more incidents (involving problems other than their racism) they’re out of our lives completely.

    Good riddance.

16. 16. SMD on Jul 9th, 2008 at 1:12 pm

    Catherine: I think people are unaware of it out of unintentional ignorance. I didn’t know anything about Sanders’ opinions until yesterday.

17. 17. Livia Llewellyn on Jul 9th, 2008 at 3:01 pm

    But then the poster of the rejection has this to say (in the comments on his blog about general reaction to his posting then pulling the letter):

    “It’s not just that Gardner Dozois said that Sanders would be entitled to sue me over at the Asimov’s forum or that I’m now banned from Helix submissions, it’s that Sanders implicitly extended a certain amount of trust to me in writing a message like this and expecting me not to republish it. But at the same time, I can see how this implicit trust between us two white men to say such things would be seen as “problematic” by people of color.”

    WTF? So there’s some kind of organic, entitled trust between white men that allows this kind of shit to take place, whether it comes to light or not? Please. I think guy has shit of his own that needs to be called out…

18. 18. Sam Taylor on Jul 9th, 2008 at 3:56 pm

    Brilliant post.

    There are people I have to deal with on a daily basis that show this type of bias toward muslims, and I have to remind them constantly that I lived in Turkey for a while and I have several muslim friends. It’s everywhere these days. At least here in Texas, there is a proliferating belief that “They” are “The Enemy” and anything you say or do to hurt “Them” is okay. To me, it feels evil and wrong.

19. 19. Nick Mamatas on Jul 9th, 2008 at 4:01 pm

    I can see how this implicit trust between us two white men to say such things would be seen as “problematic” by people of color.

    Hilarity: Sanders isn’t white.

    Further hilarity (though actually first, chronologically):

    I’m impressed by your knowledge of the Q’uran and Islamic traditions. (Having spent a couple of years in the Middle East, I know something about these things.) You did a good job of exploring the worm-brained mentality of those people - at the end we still don’t really understand it, but then no one from the civilized world ever can - and I was pleased to see that you didn’t engage in the typical error of trying to make this evil bastard sympathetic, or give him human qualities.

    Then Sanders, who prides himself on standing up for his own opinions, backpedals by claiming that he was talking about terrorists, not either Muslims or people from the Middle East.

    Well, just swap out “those people” and put in terrorists. Does the paragraph make sense? Of course not. For one, it transforms Sanders ’s claim of familiarity into a claim of being familiar with terrorists from his time in the Middle East. What was he doing chillin’ with terrorists in Turkey? (And which terrorists.)

    Further, the idea of the “civilized world” falls apart — there are plenty of terrorsist in the US (abortion clinic bombers), Spain and the UK (separatist groups), in Greece (N17 and related Marxist-terrorists), etc. Where is the actual “civilized world” geographically if Sanders meant terrorists? Nowhere at all, clearly. Heck, had he said “no civilized person” could understand them, he might even have a centimeter of wiggle room.

    Ah well, it does give Sanders the opportunity to play poor maligned victim again. Here’s a good idea for a follow-up, Toby: count the number of times people who make mild complaints about Sanders’s letter are described as being a “lynch mob.”

20. 20. JM on Jul 9th, 2008 at 4:49 pm

    I’m grateful for the posting of this simpleton’s letter, whether the poster backpedals into apologist privilege or not, because it lets me know that I can stack Helix onto my boycott list with Night Shade Press and Seal Press and all the other sexist, racist publishers that have come to light recently. I find it fascinating that Sanders has so many yes-men (who all apparently feel that their privilege is being personally attacked because someone pointed out that Sanders shows all the signs of being an unprofessional, racist twit who uses his own sandbox as a space in which to propagate his foul views). But then vocal sociopaths often have a bizarre charisma that attracts cultists.

21. 21. Jim Hetley on Jul 9th, 2008 at 4:58 pm

    Hey, a tangent for you — I just found this via other LJ posts. Your stuff hasn’t been coming through there on feeds…

    (And, publishing private mail is generally considered rude. I think that applies to private email, as well. But then, some folks make a career out of being rude, so it comes around…)

22. 22. Celia on Jul 9th, 2008 at 5:15 pm

    re: #21 a), the feed I use was working (http://syndicated.livejournal.com/tobiasbuckell/588377.html), so maybe it’s just a hiccup with your account, or you glanced at it at the wrong time or something? and b) while I agree with the privacy things in theory, this gets into some really grey areas–it’s not private email, it’s professional correspondence between an editor and a writer, which I would think raises the expectation of professional behavior and lowers the expectation of privacy. (also, I feel I deserve to know if people who want my money and/or stories are reprehensible human beings, even if the ways in which I find out may prove to be less than by the book.)

23. 23. Livia Llewellyn on Jul 9th, 2008 at 5:28 pm

    Hilarity: Sanders isn’t white.

    Oh, I know. That makes for all the more WTF-ness to the poster’s little white man’s club, as well as the hilarity.

24. 24. Delux on Jul 9th, 2008 at 5:38 pm

    I’m too unsurprised to muster any outrage; I’ve come to expect this from too many of SF’s leading ‘luminaries’.

    This is why I am all about POC and those white people who can deal with us as humans making our own spaces and doing our own creative efforts.

25. 25. Wyman Cooke on Jul 9th, 2008 at 6:41 pm

    Oh. My. God.

    I’ll say no more since I’ve had negative confrontations with Mr. Sanders. I don’t need to be within miles of this.

26. 26. thnidu on Jul 9th, 2008 at 8:17 pm

    Two comments, second one first:

    * Nick Mamatas (comment #15) quotes Sanders as writing: “I’m impressed by your knowledge of the Q’uran and Islamic traditions.” More than I’m impressed by his knowledge. It’s “Qur’ān”, or “Qur’an” if you’re just using ASCII.

    * Not relevant to this case, but should be remembered: There are, or at least were, non-racist white people who used the word “n****r” because that was the only word in their dialect for the meaning.

    Appalachia, 1965: I was a teenager in a project in an all-white, very poor region of rural Kentucky, coal country. Our group was racially mixed, and some of the local people didn’t like that at all. During one meeting at a school or church, the project’s adult staff members came in and quietly told us to line up right now and leave the building, go directly to our bus, and not look at or interact with the angry crowd of white people outside — some of whom, we discovered as we followed instructions, were muttering “n****r-lovers” and similar expressions.

    BUT for one week that summer we all boarded with local families. The man of the house where I stayed was around 60 or so. He couldn’t read or write, beyond his own name. He’d only been away from home twice: once in the Army, and once going to Chicago for work, and other than those times, he’d never worn shoes: his feet were callused 1/2″ thick. And one of the things we talked about was race. He’d met a number of “n****rs” in the Army and in Chicago, and they were as good as white men in every way. He was against segregation and racism. This wasn’t just a line: I was living with this family for a week, and this is how he felt and believed. But he didn’t say “African-American” (nobody did, then) and he didn’t say “Black”, and he didn’t say “Negro”, because those words just weren’t in the dialect they spoke there. He said “n****r” just as an ordinary word, and that’s all it was to him. Taylor Smith, God rest his soul.

27. 27. --E on Jul 9th, 2008 at 8:43 pm

    Correspondence such as that deserves to be published. There’s zero expectation of privacy attached to rejection notices (unless the editor is twelve flavors of naive).

    Writers are communicators, and they will communicate with each other about their business. Newbies will run to old hands for rejectomancy. Writers will take heart–in fellowship–that their rejections have progressed from “does not suit our current needs” to “I really liked this one, but alas… Please do try us again.”

    And in the SF/F community in particular, we have a grapevine, and that grapevine is notorious for spreading the word when someone has been an asshat. If one is not prepared to be outed as an asshat, one ought not to be an asshat in writing.

    All social circles self-police the behavior of their members. The SF/F community is no different. This particular flavor of asshattery is one which I suspect most people would want to know about.

28. 28. Vylar Kaftan on Jul 9th, 2008 at 10:04 pm

    Hi. I’m one of Helix’s authors. I have two stories published there, one in the current issue.

    You can see what I have to say about the issues here.

    In short: Helix authors may not know about any of this. Please don’t hold it against them.

29. 29. Michael Canfield on Jul 9th, 2008 at 11:16 pm

    Well T.B. I think you’ve really nailed this one. Subsequent attempts by the editor (and the original poster of the rejection letter)to refine the meaning of the original words just don’t hold up to scrutiny. #7 Craig (above) gets it is right too when he questions how the same words would sounds about another religious group. Since the original poster (and story author) is his own attempt at damage control invokes Timothy McVeigh, lets see how some substitutions in the original passage sound:
    “I’m impressed by your knowledge of the BIBLE and CHRISTIAN traditions. (Having spent a couple of years in the MIDWEST, I know something about these things.) You did a good job of exploring the worm-brained mentality of those people - at the end we still don’t really understand it, but then no one from the civilized world ever can - and I was pleased to see that you didn’t engage in the typical error of trying to make this evil bastard sympathetic, or give him human qualities.”
    Substitutions aside I thinks its pretty glaringly obvious what Sanders meant. I appreciate your analysis here for returning the focus of this eruption where it belongs: on the statements made, and not on tangential distractions like the (n)etiquette of rejection letter posting.
    However, it’s a very helpful passage to me. An editor who praises a writer because she or he “didn’t engage in the typical error of [giving a particular character] human qualities” because that character is an evil bastard — well, that’s an interesting point of view on character development there isn’t it? To say nothing of its comfortably-blindered view on the human condition.

    I’m not acquainted with the work that’s appeared in Helix; and this rejection letter doesn’t give much incentive to make myself so, but I’m willing to allow that some good work may have made its way into the publication despite the editor’s prejudice. Prejudice is the right word here. Let’s not kid OURSELVES, after all, even if the editor and story-writer involved persist in trying kid us.

30. 30. Dan Goodman on Jul 10th, 2008 at 12:08 am

    thnidu: My paternal aunts were well-educated, non-racist, and well left of center politically. But they used the term “colored people” well after it stopped being the polite or neutral term, because that had been the proper term when they were young.

31. 31. Lawrence Watt-Evans on Jul 10th, 2008 at 12:50 am

    Technical detail: I don’t think I would say I am a close friend of William Sanders. I’ve never met him. I’m managing editor of his webzine, and a friend, but I would not say “close.” All our interactions have been online or over the phone.

32. 32. Tobias Buckell on Jul 10th, 2008 at 1:21 am

    Lawrence, I’d like to believe you, but when you vouch for his behaviour, for example (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010424.html#280529) you say:

    “Whereas I do believe him, Avram, because I’ve known him online for about ten years, and while William’s a cantankerous old bastard, I have never seen any sign he’s any sort of racist. I know his style, and his words in that rejection letter are very much in line with his comments about terrorists elsewhere.”

    So I’m confused, are you not vouching for him as a close friend here but then representing yourself as someone close enough to be a friend that you have a sense for how his mind works?

33. 33. Jason Sanford on Jul 10th, 2008 at 6:06 am

    Excellent post on all this. Someone asked me my view of the content of Sanders’ letter and you summed it up so well I just pointed them to your blog.

    I do want to point out that, totally separate from the content of Sanders’ letter, writers need to be careful about posting rejection letters online. I agree with Buckell that editors in this field are really good people. But there are still some who might hold it against a new writer for posting a rejection letter, so why hurt your submission chances by doing that.

34. 34. Sean Wallace on Jul 10th, 2008 at 7:40 am

    Jason, I would strongly disagree. Throwing around veiled threats that editors or magazines might ban them for posting rejection letters is a bit over the top, a suggestion I’ve seen on the Asimov’s message boards, and elsewhere, and there’s little call for it. Advising authors to keep their heads down, and stay quiet like good little sheep, sounds too much like to me like submission idiocy, and there’s no cause for that. Is that what you’re advocating?

35. 35. Sean Wallace on Jul 10th, 2008 at 7:57 am

    I also want to echo what Tobias has already said elsewhere: “The true gentlemen of this field and great editors won’t blacklist you for having an opinion or posting a rejection letter to try and figure out what it meant . . . “

36. 36. James Davis Nicoll on Jul 10th, 2008 at 9:51 am

    33: But there are still some who might hold it against a new writer for posting a rejection letter, so why hurt your submission chances by doing that.

    Do authors need sales so badly that losing the chance to sell to a bigot is something they should go out of their way to avoid?

37. 37. Muneraven on Jul 10th, 2008 at 10:17 am

    Hey “A Reader”:

    Yes, I agree, there is some genuine racism in SFF circles and I agree that it is mostly unacknowledged and denied. Also, though, there are many people in SFF fandom who are seriously lacking in ALL social skills and in denial about that. This might explain some of the racism. A typical SF con can sometimes be like a showcase for social ineptitude, lol, and a certain boneheaded sort of racism is one of the symptoms of that.

    BUT there are also a lot of people in the SFF field who write stuff that takes on racism in a variety of creative and intelligent ways. And there are a lot of fans who truly are not racist at all. Some of us even have a social skill or two.

    Okay…maybe just one social skill.

    Just sayin’: If you let the boneheads chase you away you miss out on the good stuff and the good people in the community. And we miss out on you.

38. 38. Kelly McCullough on Jul 10th, 2008 at 11:57 am

    Thanks for this, Toby. Instead of having to put together a long post on the subject, I can just say “what Toby said” and link.

39. 39. Catherine on Jul 10th, 2008 at 1:40 pm

    Interesting developments in this thread. I am boggled by the actions of the recipient of this rejection letter. As well, I am stunned that LWE, who has been a relentless apologist for Sanders, doesn’t actually know him. In other words, he has formed his good opinion of Sanders upon the same basis that has caused the rest of us to find him repulsive and despicable–his behavior on the internet. What can this possibly say about Lawrence?

    The fact that he has an ill family member is irrelevant. Who among us cannot trot out a tragedy, loss, or secret despair powerful enough to elicit sympathy? Nonetheless, each of us is responsible for our actions. Each of us is charged with holding our own behavior to the standards of our stated beliefs. We hold ourselves accountable.When a person’s actions are condoned by those close to them, then they can weather any and all criticism from outside. Wouldn’t you say it’s time for Sanders friends to hold an intervention, minimally, upon the use of the term “sheet head” (which, by the way, I could not in any way justify as referring to a person’s philosophical beliefs, but is pretty clearly a slur against people of Arab ethnicity)?

40. 40. Jason Sanford on Jul 10th, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    James: No writer should have to deal with a bigot. I don’t deal with bigots. That’s why I said the issue of posting rejection letters is totally separate from any discussion of the contents of Sanders’ letter.

    Sean: Not posting rejection letters has nothing to do with veiled threats–it’s about being professional. There’s nothing that says writers have to suck up to editors or agree with them or any of that crap. For example, I disagree with editors in online forums all the time.

    But editors also prefer to deal with writers who behave in a professional manner. Just as it is unprofessional to call an editor every week and ask about the status of your story, or submit a handwritten manuscript, or spam every editor under the sun with submissions, so too is it unprofessional to post a rejection letter online. Obviously there are times when one will be forced to go against this rule–and if I’d received a rejection with crap in it like Sanders’ letter I probably would have posted it online so the world knew about the issue. But writers should realize that that doing this isn’t what professionals usually do. I just don’t want new writers to look at this situation and think, “Oh, I should post every rejection letter I receive online.” Because doing so would not be in their best interest.

41. 41. Nick Mamatas on Jul 10th, 2008 at 7:14 pm

    Since when is posting rejection letters unprofessional? It really is the done thing — I’ve seen dozens of examples over the past eight years. There’s also RejectionCollection.com and other such things.

    Until, well, three days ago, I never heard any sort of complaint or potential problem coming from posting a rejection letter.

    Perhaps the fact that 99% of the letters that go out are just “doesn’t meet our needs” forms has something to do with it, but the late hysteria about posting rejection letters is just that…late. In a few days, all the old school editors will return to their Old King Log stupors and new writers will go back to posting letters and asking people what is meant by “alas” or “didn’t come alive for me” or “there is nothing wrong with this story, but…”

42. 42. Sean Wallace on Jul 10th, 2008 at 7:24 pm

    “Because doing so would not be in their best interest.” There’s that veiled threat, again. I seriously don’t understand what you don’t see wrong in what you’re posting, as it keeps coming across as passive-aggressive. For myself I don’t care a whit if authors post their rejection letters, and I don’t care they discuss it among themselves, or others, or even to the wall, if they like, because it has nothing to do with the way editors pick stories for their magazines. (It may even help the quality of the submissions, god only knows) In essence, there is no expectation of privacy with regards to such correspondence, and for an author to feel that they might be ostracized for such actions, why, that’s just bonkers. That has nothing to do with the “business” of editing, and authors shouldn’t be convinced, or talked down at, regarding this. They’re not children, and we aren’t gods, even if some of us might act like one :p

43. 43. Jess on Jul 10th, 2008 at 7:59 pm

    I just wonder…if we replaced the racial epithets with gendered ones (to the tune of “no civilized person could hope to understand those whores anyway”) if there people would still take issue with exposing that appalling, unprofessional rejection letter?

    Filling professional correspondence with racial epithets, I think, sort of exempts one from privacy. Seriously.

    Also, poor dude who got the letter, and is now amid an ‘Open-Source Boobies’ like shitstorm.

    Also, for anyone taking issue with the racism and bigotry in the American SF/F community: it’s not the SF/F community in part that’s so nasty. It’s AMERICANS. This is just part of our culture. It’s a long slow excising process. We’re trying.

    Well, some of us are….

44. 44. Jason Sanford on Jul 10th, 2008 at 8:38 pm

    Sean: In order to make a veiled threat, I’d have to be in a position to enforce the threats. I don’t work as an editor anymore and my work with storySouth is not relevant to this since I no longer Ihandle submissions. I’m offering advice based on my experience. People can take or leave it as they want. And Nick is right–people continually post their rejection letters online. But that doesn’t make it the right thing to do. But if people want to do it, then they will do it. They just need to be aware that the potential for blowback exists.

45. 45. Nick Mamatas on Jul 10th, 2008 at 8:43 pm

    And Nick is right–people continually post their rejection letters online. But that doesn’t make it the right thing to do.

    Well, after a fashion, when one speaks of “professionalism” one IS speaking of the common practices of a profession.

    In popular fiction, for example, it is unprofessional to publish work in a non-paying market. In literary fiction, it is perfectly acceptable to publish in a non-paying market, as the economy is oriented toward building a CV acceptable to the academy. There is not a trace of foundationalism here — there is no Platonic Ideal of professionalism that one part of the field has embraced and that the other part has flouted, it’s just a pair of distinct common practices.

    So too with the passing around and transmission of rejection letters. People share them all the time, and not just new writers and whatnot.

    Exhibit A: http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Reject.html

46. 46. Arachne Jericho on Jul 10th, 2008 at 10:28 pm

    I’m ashamed of myself for not noticing this craziness earlier on the 7th. That’s one Hugo vote I’d take back if I could.

47. 47. Jason Sanford on Jul 11th, 2008 at 7:03 am

    Nick: For what it’s worth, I’ve realized that I’m on the losing side of whether or not one should post rejection letters online. But you are correct that professionalism is the common practices of a profession. So if enough people feel that posting rejection letters online is an okay thing to do, then it will fit the definition of professionalism. But I wonder if editors will be as free with their feedback knowing that odds are your words will be placed online. Of course, Sanders’ letter is a case where I’m glad the words were placed online, but I just wonder what will happen to legitimate feedback from editors as more people place their letters online.

48. 48. Sean Wallace on Jul 11th, 2008 at 7:47 am

    Jason, if editors feel that the criticism that they are providing is valid and legitimate, within context of what they’re looking for, then I don’t really see an issue, because whether it’s public, or private, it still holds true. Why should an editor be scared or embarrassed over that?

49. 49. Jason Sanford on Jul 11th, 2008 at 8:16 am

    Sean: For what it’s worth, professionalism cuts both ways. The comment by Nora above (post number 12) shows how Sanders is not behaving in a professional manner. Nora confronted Sanders over all this online and was told (privately) that even though she’d published two stories in Helix, he would never again publish one of her stories. That’s totally unprofessional on Sanders part and makes the issue I’ve been raising about posting rejection letters seem insignificant in comparison.

50. 50. Luke Jackson on Jul 11th, 2008 at 11:26 am

    OK, since Mamatas has stood up for our right to post rejection letters, I posted one from him to the same story Sanders rejected. Thanks for the solidarity.

51. 51. Jeff VanderMeer on Jul 11th, 2008 at 1:12 pm

    Popping up from novel writing for a moment, and into this discussion just to say I agree with Tobias one hundred percent. What I don’t get is why there wasn’t an instant, complete, and sincere apology from all involved from the very first moments of this coming to light.

    As for rejection letters–for the longest time I’ve thought the interaction between an editor and writer should be private (except in circumstances like the one related above). That is the way it has been pre-internet. But I think it’s a fact of life that this is eroding on both sides–people post rejection letters as Nick says, and some editors (something I don’t agree with) post excerpts from rejected submissions or from correspondence with submitting writers. Not agreeing with something that’s obviously happening doesn’t mean I haven’t adapted to it myself, though. Part of the New Transparency of the internet means taking the impolite with the good part of it. Recognize now, though, that a single slip-up (and I’m not talking about something as bad as this Helix issue–that’s a different class of fucked up) by a writer or editor can give them a bad rep whether 99 percent of their correspondence and behavior is professional or not. Not many people can live up to that.

    I rarely offer comments in rejection for a number of reasons, most importantly because that’s not my function. It’s my function to buy stories for anthos as an editor. Workshops provide more than enough support for critique. If I was entering as an editor now, though, I’d not offer comments for a different reason. Email allows the writer to instantaneously argue with you about your reason for rejection, which is a losing game for both parties.

    Jeff

52. 52. grndexter on Jul 11th, 2008 at 7:30 pm

    Re Post #26

    Just a general point - my Arberry translation (1955, Macmillian) spells it “Koran” as do many Universities and scholars today - the point of which is that the original title of The Book is in Arabic and any English rendition is an attempt to approximate it. ie There IS no “correct” spelling for it except in Arabic.

53. 53. grndexter on Jul 11th, 2008 at 8:09 pm

    Lest my comment on the “proper” spelling in English of the title of the Koran be construed as being in ANY way supportive of the Sanders Group at Helix and their sycophants (who, given Mr Watt-Evan’s amazing post, apparently may or may not know who they are), I was so proud of having been granted the below opinion from Mr Sanders, I use it as one of my sig. quotes on my email.

    “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

54. 54. Katherine Sparrow on Jul 11th, 2008 at 8:55 pm

    Thanks, Tobias. Well said and well reasoned. I kind of can’t believe this whole incident isn’t a no brainer in the SF world. The issue is the dude is really racist. Period. It’s not an issue of copyright. I would bet their subs are going to go way down. I hope so.

55. 55. Melissa Mead on Jul 11th, 2008 at 9:42 pm

    “What I don’t get is why there wasn’t an instant, complete, and sincere apology from all involved from the very first moments of this coming to light.”

    Yes! Thank you! I’ve been thinking “Is it just me, or would things be a heck of a lot simpler if everyone just said “I’m sorry, I screwed up, and I’ll do my best not to let it happen again.”

56. 56. bellatrys on Jul 12th, 2008 at 7:40 am

    Well, yah, Melissa, no brainer indeed - but they aren’t sorry, which makes it difficult to proceed!

    We can say that at least they have the courage of their nasty convictions, and thus are at least honest in their refusals to back down - but mitigating this somewhat is the problem that the longer it goes on (the farther those feet keep going down the old esophagi) the less clear it becomes that apologizing for diplomatic reasons is even an option for them - that they are not sufficiently well socialized to even comprehend the common restrictions of courtesy and ‘getting along’ as even my racist boss can, keeping a damper on his views when customers who aren’t his buddies are in the shop.

    Which really does explain why they feel like they’re being ‘oppressed’ by the ‘thought police’ at being held accountable/made uncomfortable at expressing their bigotry in public - it’s a three-year-old’s mindset “but I am the center of the universe!” coming out in tantrums.

    I’m somewhat familiar with this from academics - there are always one or two tenured assholes, usually in the politics dept (in my experience at least) who have given up entirely on the idea of “right to swing my fist stops at your face” and have only a coterie of lackeys, no friends, and no one who bothers any longer to try to engage them in debate, because they brook no dissent and have no intellectual honesty, seeing everything as a contest of power in which they must rule.

    The problem is, we as a species do tend to admire the forceful, and so these folks do get their followers and have their influence on the public sphere (q.v. Limbaugh, who just got another raise for pandering to and reinforcing the mindset of these folks.)

57. 57. Voxwoman on Jul 12th, 2008 at 11:03 am

    Well, one good thing has come out of all of this brouhaha, Mr. Buckell, I am going to find your books at the bookstore and read them! (I have not heard of you until today)

    I can’t even *say* the “n-word” without a pause and a great effort… even to use it to refer to compatriots in the colloquial sense. Such has been my upbringing. I seem to be able to manage a lot of other curse-words quite well, and can refer to others with coarse terms for genitalia without any effort whatsoever.

    It is always upsetting to discover racism in people who you had heretofore liked or respected or hoped to have a professional relationship with. I’ve had to distance myself from extended family members of both the older and younger generations (I’m ashamed to say that my step sons are racist, and there wasn’t much as an evil, baby-killing-Jew-Witch that I could do to adjust their path from their mother’s influence) because I just don’t want those kinds of people in my life.

    As for the publication of rejection letters, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, business correspondence is published all the time, and there are federal whistle-blower laws to protect those who do publicize these things (maybe a rejection letter doesn’t come under that category, but I think a convincing argument could be made). But I also think that the rocks need to be turned over every once in a while, so we can see exactly what nasty crawly things are living under there.

58. 58. Nick Mamatas on Jul 13th, 2008 at 8:20 am

    If I was entering as an editor now, though, I’d not offer comments for a different reason. Email allows the writer to instantaneously argue with you about your reason for rejection, which is a losing game for both parties.

    Oh Jeff, they argue with form rejection letters as well. Sometimes for being a form, sometimes because they cannot tell that the letter is a form and thus read too deeply into phrases like “Good luck.”

59. 59. Saladin on Jul 13th, 2008 at 9:27 am

    Tobias, I’m a long-time lurker here. I’ve been away from the web for a couple of days and just heard about the Sanders madness last night.

    As an Arab/Muslim I am very used to witnessing and experiencing open hatred toward my people. It’s like breathing air in this country. But the unapologetic, mean-spirited, gleefully bigoted fuckwad-ness of that rejection letter really made even my jaw drop.

    Besides all of the obvious mega-offended/infuriated reactions, there are petty and not so petty personal-professional ones, too

    A)Learning that helix is a publication a guy named ‘Saladin Ahmed’ is never going to get a fair shake from.

    B)Learning that no matter how explicit/cruel/straight-up-racist the bile being spewed, a significant portion of the F/SF community (incl., depressingly, editors and writers I revere) doesn’t care nearly so much about this as they do about protecting a certain ‘professional’ culture (never mind that the rejection letter itself clearly took the correspondence well out of the realm of professionalism (SHEET HEADS!?))

    Happily, there’s also a “C,” though: seeing that there is (perhaps moreso amongst readers and writers than editors) a significant number of people who are ready to call a racist asshole a racist asshole. Who are ready to say that there is no ‘gentleman’s agreement’ about covering up the venomous bigotry of jerks. That you and some other prominent bloggers have taken the time and energy to call this shit out is about the only thing that can begin to counteract all of the closeted and not so closeted Muslim-hating that this debate is dredging up.

    Not a lot of us Muslim wanna-be spec fic writers out there, but it’s good to know we have friends!

60. 60. William Schafer on Jul 17th, 2008 at 2:57 pm

    Hell, some writers will argue with you because you won’t let them reach the stage of likely receiving a rejection slip. Not that long ago I had a writer with a decent, although not overwhelming, bibliography ask if he could submit to Subterranean Online. I politely declined, and he took umbrage, asking if he could quote me in his blog. I declined, as the only reason I could see for him wanting to blog about the rejection was to heap offal on my head, but I did get namechecked in there.

61. 61. Luke Jackson on Jul 18th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    Bloggasm has covered the William Sanders issue:

    http://bloggasm.com/the-ethics-of-hate-mail-should-bloggers-post-email-correspondence-with out-permission

62. 62. Ashok Banker on Jul 31st, 2008 at 11:27 pm

    Hi Tobias, Muneraven, all,

    I posted earlier (above) as ‘A Reader’. My real name is Ashok Banker, and I’m an Indian author based in Mumbai, India, with a career of writing behind me.

    I’ve posted about this issue at my blog. Here’s the link.

    It’s an issue that concerns me, as a writer in an America-dominated publishing world, as well as a reader and great fan of SFF. And since I don’t give a damn about being published by American SFF magazines or publishers, I’ve decided I stand to lose the least by talking openly about it.

    Ashok Banker
    http://ashokbanker.com

63. 63. Denise on Aug 19th, 2008 at 8:09 pm

    Whoa.
    Hubby just came by and asked why I looked so grim? I sighed and said “The world isn’t perfect.”
    Maybe this is just the FURTHER education of me, being shocked at this. Speechless.
    I mean, growing up on SF gave me the best, most articulate reasons to NOT be racist. It made it ‘obvious’ that being racist was, frankly, *stupid*. And in SF I’ve found that in general, being stupid was the worst possible thing you could be.
    In short…my mind’s boggled.

Pingbacks

1. sillybean » William Sanders… again Pingback on Jul 9th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
2. Cheryl’s Mewsings » Blog Archive » Swings, Roundabouts Pingback on Jul 9th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
3. While the stomach turns — Words Words Words — The Dream Cafe Weblog Pingback on Jul 9th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
4. Vylar Kaftan » Blog Archive » Nebula nominations Pingback on Jul 9th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
5. I concur. « Synecdo-chic Pingback on Jul 10th, 2008 at 4:52 am
6. Dear People On The Asimov’s Boards and Elsewhere… at K. Tempest Bradford Pingback on Jul 10th, 2008 at 8:01 am
7. Book of Screed » on apologizes and courtesy Pingback on Jul 10th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
8. » Linkfest: 2008-07-10 >>Nostalgia For Infinity: Literature, Gaming, Punk Rock (and all that) Pingback on Jul 10th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
9. 2008 Hugo Awards Countdown: Best Semiprozine and Best Fanzine : Spontaneous Derivation Pingback on Jul 10th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
10. Keeps digging at Tobias Buckell Online Pingback on Jul 15th, 2008 at 1:08 am
11. In Link Times « Torque Control Pingback on Jul 15th, 2008 at 5:09 am
12. William Sanders, You Stay Classy! at K. Tempest Bradford Pingback on Jul 15th, 2008 at 8:02 am
13. Summary of a Train Wreck: Helix Speculative Fiction Magazine’s Sordid Bigotry and Blunders : Spontaneous Derivation Pingback on Jul 19th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
14. Belated response to Helix kerfuffle : The Murverse Pingback on Aug 3rd, 2008 at 4:40 pm

Leave a comment