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We asked Van Gelder how many stories from previously unpublished authors F&SF currently publishes.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

Warren Ellis searched through the new edition of Gardner Dozois' latest Year's Best Science Fiction volume, and found the latest ill tidings for the big science fiction print mags. Analog Science Fiction And Fact lost 1,400 readers, or about 5.1 percent, falling to just under 26,000 copies of each issue in circulation. Asimov's Science Fiction and The Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction both saw drops of 2.7 percent each, to around 17,000 copies and 16,044 copies respectively.

These are actually fairly gentle declines, compared to previous years. According to Ellis, Asimov's lost 5.2 percent of its circulation in 2007, 13.6 percent in 2006 and 23 percent in 2005. The last time we reported on circulation numbers, F&SF had seen an 11.2 percent drop, to around 16,489. (That was only six months ago though.)

As we pointed out last time, back in 2004, F&SF had a paid circulation of around 20,000 copies, while Asimov's was at around 30,000 copies and Analog was at around 40,000 copies.

So it's not just an ongoing attrition — there was a fairly steep dive, which has now leveled off somewhat. Does this mean we've hit a kind of floor, for now anyway? Are there roughly 16,000 die-hard science fiction fans who will always buy F&SF and Asimov's, no matter what? And another 10,000 who'll also pick up Analog? Or is this just a brief plateau before the next dive?

I'm actually fairly pessimistic: moves like F&SF going bimonthly are bound to decrease the visibility of these magazines on the newsstand, and a lot of the most exciting short fiction in print seems to be cropping up in themed anthologies lately. The newsstand digest format, itself, feels a bit like a relic, and magazine distribution is only going to get more and more brutal, as a business. I'm not sure what a magazine would have to do to get 40,000 copies in circulation, these days, but I suspect it would involve new distribution channels, like comic-book stores and coffee shops. [Warren Ellis]

"The Only Known Jump" originally appeared in The Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction's August 2003 issue, and F&SF is posting it online as part of their monthly free fiction program. The story has a nice blend of paying tribute to 1920s science (Albert Einstein is just developing his theories about space-time, and the time machine resembles a Van De Graaf generator) and a lush, quasi-poetic look at a budding relationship in the 1920s. The thing that makes it click, for me, is the sexual undercurrent in all of this — the time machine resembles a huge penis, and it's the catalyst that forces tailor Enzo Capellino and spinster Lydia Chase to acknowledge their mutual attraction:

Enzo threw open the lattice door and started out to meet her just as Lydia started in, the two clutching each other as the first lightning bolt unfurled and snapped overhead like a colossal whip. The hair on Enzo's chest burst into flame, scorching Lydia's breasts. The world overflowed with light as every nail and rivet, every garden tool, the cast iron garden chair and even the garden itself surged toward them, all the while flaring apart, coming undone. "Yes!" Lydia thought — or maybe she actually cried aloud — "Yes! We're at the front edge of now and these are the raveled threads of space-time."

It's almost too cute, and yet it works. My only reservation is that you may find the actual nature of the time travel to be a bit of a cheat. [FSF]

"Nine Whispered Opinions," according to the note at the bottom, is the result of a bet Guthridge made with Bruce Holland Rogers, a challenge having to do with creating nine vignettes with a set number of words and various other attributes. But it's actually better to think of it, not as the short fiction equivalent of a sonnet, but more just as an ambitious exploration of future political and environmental dystopia. The mini-stories explore the impact of depleted numbers of moose in Alaska, and then the introduction of a new super-strain of Frankenfish, geneticaly augmented with a growth hormone from the Pacific chinook. Even though the environment is totally trashed, environmentalists come in for their own measure of scorn, as they seek to keep people from shooting wolves and restoring the balance with the dwindling moose.

Meanwhile, a native Alaskan artist creates a "traditional" image, with federal money, that turns out to celebrate pizza and beer. As the stories come along, you learn more about Alaska's vague plans —not quite to secede from the United States, but simply to "decline to participate" in the federal government. The final straw: the federal government puts price controls on oil after the U.S. invades Iran. It's a weirdly sardonic story, with some lovely turns of phrase:

The wind rises, snow needling her cheeks. When the leader calls a halt and tells everyone they have to move fast or risk being blown off the ridge, fear gives her new clarity. Stooped, her weight upon the axe, she adjusts the weight of her pack, takes what deep breath she can manage and mentally prepares herself, glancing around at what peaks she can still see. Her ex's ancestor, Hudson Stuck, was right, she tells herself. Denali is the window of Heaven.

If the word "vignettes" doesn't terrify you, it's well worth checking out, not least because it shows why the Alaska Independence Party (which Sarah Palin allegedly supported at one point) has swung to the mainstream of the state's politics, and explores a future where that party actually wields power. [F&SF]