Transcriptase

Transcriptase is a new website that has launched, featuring fiction by some very familiar authors. You may remember the Helix debacle from a while back, authors who asked for their stories to be taken down, and authors who felt they didn’t feel right taking them down but didn’t appreciate what the editor of Helix had done, have all banded together to create Transcriptase (n: the enzyme that copies DNA into RNA).

The site features the work of:

* Elizabeth Barrette
* Beth Bernobich
* Maya Bohnhoff
* Eugie Foster
* Sara Genge
* Samantha Henderson
* Janis Ian
* N.K. Jemisin
* Vylar Kaftan
* Ann Leckie
* Yoon Ha Lee
* Margaret Ronald
* Jennifer Pelland
* Vaughan Stanger
* Rachel Swirsky

From their introduction:

In July 2008, Helix editor William Sanders stirred up controversy in the community with remarks that many found offensive. The blogosphere exploded with discussion. You can find a summary of the events here.

As the controversy continued, several Helix writers asked to remove their work from the magazine and were met with unprofessional treatment. This upset all of us. We agreed that we would not stand by in silence.

Transcriptase hosts reprints of our stories and poems originally published at Helix. During the controversy, some of us removed our work from Helix; others left it up. There are valid reasons to make either choice, and we hope you’ll respect that we had difficult decisions to make. We offer our stories and poems at Transcriptase so that you can enjoy our work away from Helix, if you choose.

My hope is that they’ll stick a donation button on Transcriptase so that we can tip the authors and their hard work in coming up with an elegant and nifty solution for the entire mess. No banning needed. No engagement with Sanders needed, they can say what they need to and feature their work in a very nice showcase.

You can follow various reactions to the project online via Technorati.

Filed under the topic Journal on July 31st 2008 at 2:50 pm. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.