Yesterday we reported on a bit of a controversy around F&SF launching a paid workshop whose participants get the inside track for publication in the magazine. And now F&SF has posted the editorial explaining about the workshop online, including some more details:

I don't know why we never tried this before, but F&SF is going to begin hosting a writing workshop.

We're fortunate to have the great Gardner Dozois running the show. I'm sure most of our readers know Gardner already, but just in case, he's the author of dozens of short stories (his most recent F&SF story is "Counterfactual," which appeared in our June 2006 issue) and he edited Asimov's Science Fiction magazine from 1984 to 2004. He also has decades of experience with writing workshops and is widely considered one of the best story doctors in the field.

All F&SF readers should benefit from Gardner's workshop work, because he's going to have the option of selecting stories from the workshop for publication in F&SF. We're currently planning to run Gardner Dozois selections three times a year. (Writers, fret not: I won't be reading the workshop stories myself, so you can still submit your stories to F&SF regardless of what anyone in the workshop makes of the story.)

The workshop will be administered by Lisa Rogers, a former editor for Gollancz and Little, Brown.

Initially, the workshop will be available online only and the site will have a private message board to go with the critiquing.

Until the workshop is firing on all cylinders, we're limiting the membership to 100 people. You can find the membership prices and other information at www.FandSFworkshop.com.

Frankly, I'm very excited about the prospects for this new project and I think all of our readers will benefit from it.

We talked to Van Gelder, who says "the workshop isn't even ready to launch, so any angst about our policies seems very premature to me." And he says that the current plan is for the workshop to provide three stories a year to the magazine, but "we'll see how it goes." It's up to Gardner Dozois when he selects stories for the magazine, and any stories that end up in print will be highlighted as Dozois' selections.

We asked Van Gelder how many stories from previously unpublished authors F&SF currently publishes. He says:

You're welcome to go through back issues and check. My sense is that we average 2-6 stories a year, but I haven't actually tried to verify that. In fact, I'd be curious to see the actual numbers. One reason I thought of launching the workshop was because it seemed like we were running fewer stories by newbies in recent years.

I looked back through eight recent issues of F&SF, and pretty much every story seemed to be from a veteran author. One issue did include a story by John Langan, who seems to have gotten his start in F&SF back in 2007 or thereabouts. One of those eight issues was the all-star anniversary issue, however. In a few cases, an author's bio noted that his/her first publication had been in FS&F — but that first publication had taken place back in the 1980s in a lot of cases.

Also, we asked Van Gelder if he thought F&SF would end up publishing fewer stories by unpublished authors that didn't come from the workshop, since the workshop is expected to provide three new authors per year already. He replies:

No, I don't. If the workshop goes well, I'd expect to see the number increase.

He says the overall goal of the workshop is to get more good stories, regardless of the writer's experience — but one of the major driving forces is a desire to reach out to new writers. He points to other recent moves, like F&SF offering an extra $100 to the next "newbie woman writer" to publish a story in the magazine.

Once again, we're sorry we didn't seek comment from F&SF before posting our previous entry about this workshop.

To my mind, though, Van Gelder is just making explicit what everyone has always known about workshops: they're a way of meeting editors and making connections. David Marusek, to choose a random example, has told many times the story of his first story sale to Asimov's at Clarion West, and how it launched his career. Having read magazine fiction slush before, I don't know that there's a brilliant or equitable way to help new writers bypass it. At the same time, being so blatant about saying "Attend our workshop and you'll get the inside track to publication in our magazine" does feel a bit skeevy. I think the litmus test is whether the increased chance of publication is the main attraction, or just a fringe benefit on top of all the instruction you'll be getting, and that's hard to judge without knowing more.

What do you think?

Update: I've heard from the F&SF folks, and I'm hoping to post their side of this story soon. I apologize for not contacting them before running this piece, since it would have been better to include their viewpoint along with the original report.

[Innsmouth Free Press via Sean Wallace via Jay Lake on Twitter]

I've already praised the stories of Eugene Mirabelli and Charles Coleman Finlay in the past, and they both have pieces in the new F&SF.

Finlay's piece, "The Texas Bake Sale," is another one of his bleak political stories, along the lines of "The Political Prisoner." This time, it's a vaguely post-apocalyptic future where the United States has fallen apart and a troupe of U.S. Marines tries to carry on the old ways. The way they do this is actually pretty surprising and demented — at first you think the "cookies" they keep talking about are a metaphor for some kind of advanced weaponry, and then you realize they're actually cookies. The story has some twists, because nothing can ever go entirely according to plan in a post-apocalyptic military situation, but it also has some weird revelations about the nature of this collapsed U.S. future that may remind you a bit of Battlestar Galactica.

Mirabelli's story, "Catalog," isn't quite as exquisitely crafted as "The Only Known Jump Across Space-Time," which we reviewed a while back. But it's trippy, and demented, and kind of unsettling. A guy jumps across the multiverse, into a weird alternate reality where people from pornographic magazines, L.L. Bean catalogs and classic novels all wander around, and love and dissociation are in the air. It feels like a weird kind of wish-fulfillment, but it's just disturbing enough to work.

The issue also includes a reprint of the novella "The Night We Buried Road Dog" by truck-driving author Jack Cady, and a cover by weird artist Kent Bash. Well worth picking up a copy.

"The Political Officer" and "The Political Prisoner" both take place in a future society of quasi-Russian religious zealots that have terraformed a new planet the hard way: with their bare hands. They're locked in a conflict with the Adareans, who have spliced non-human DNA to allow them to do things like photosynthesize (much like the enhanced Rebirths, in Reed's "Five Thrillers.") In "the Political Officer," which is on the F&SF website, Max is a propagandist and spy, sent aboard a spaceship to spread the official party line and keep tabs on the Education Department's rivals, the Intelligence Department. It's very Gogol-esque. The ship is on a spy mission against the Adareans, but then it comes across a trade ship sporting some new technology that could give the humans an edge in their coming war against the Adareans

In the sequel, "The Political Prisoner," Max comes back to Jesusalem, just in time for the battle between Political Education and Political Intelligence to heat up. He's caught on the wrong side of things, and winds up part of a purge of Political Education supporters. He's bussed out to a gulag, where he and his fellow prisoners are terraforming a new section of the planet, just like their religious zealot ancestors did. It's incredibly rough work: carting rocks out to the ocean, and then carting back a ton of seaweed to help fertilize the dead ground. It's not at all the way you picture terraforming, with huge machines or glowy lights. But it's probably closer to the way actual terraforming would go. Max is forced to live among the Adareans and starts to understand more of their hybrid culture. It's a worthy sequel to "Political Officer," and a worthwhile read in its own right, despite a slightly disappointing ending.

And here's Maurizio Manzieri's full illustration for "Five Thrillers." His blog includes a slightly larger version, plus an illustration showing the work in progress versus the completed work. (See link below.) [Maurizio Manzieri and The Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction]