-- Ellen Datlow: Interviews --

Interview With Ellen Datlow for Ubik (a Polish periodical)

By Konrad Walewski

Konrad Walewski: How did your interest in fantastic literature emerge, and what appealed to you in this kind of writing?

Ellen Datlow: I've always been interested in fantasy and horror since I was a child, reading story collections from my parents' library - Bullfinch's Mythology, stories by Guy de Maupassant, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. I loved fairy tales and my mother read to me from Oscar Wilde's sad sad stories when I still lived in the Bronx. I'm not sure why I've always been drawn to fantastic literature it's just always been an important part of my life. Later I read stories by Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury.

Why did you decide to take up a career in editorship rather than in writing?

I've never wanted to be a writer. I just knew that I loved books and I loved reading and tried to figure out what kind of job I could do with those interests. First, I thought it might be nice to work in a bookstore-I used to hang out in one a couple of years after University Graduation and spent my salary buying huge art books on Bosch, Escher, etc. So see? Even my taste in art reflects an interest in the fantastic and grotesque. Publishing was the only other career I could think of, although I knew next to nothing about it.

So how did you become a professional editor, how did you develop such exceptional literary taste and sensitivity and, finally, found yourself in OMNI?

I majored in English literature in College but really had no idea what to do with my life. So to kind of put the decision off for awhile, I hitchhiked around Europe for a year after I graduated, using money I'd save while working in --what else?--the University library during the school year. I worked a bit while in Europe as well --in a German factory.

Once I got home I worked at temporary jobs while sending out resumes to magazines and book publishers. One day, I was asked to interview at Little, Brown & Company's NY office, one of the many places I sent my resume. So that was my first publishing job--as sales secretary for the New York Salesman. I stayed there a about ten months before moving to a series of ill-fated jobs as editorial assistant in various mainstream publishing companies. I finally landed and stayed at Holt, Rinehart and Winston (now called Henry Holt, Inc) for three years then I quit, because I couldn't get my boss, the Editor-in-Chief, to promote me.

Another short stint as Assistant Editor at Crown and then I heard about this new magazine called OMNI starting up. I was hired as Associate Fiction Editor by Ben Bova, who was promoted from Fiction Editor to Editor and I worked with the new Fiction Editor Robert Sheckley until he left and I was appointed Fiction Editor, where I stayed until the magazine and website folded.

Your other question about how by developing my 'literary taste and senstivity' developed is a difficult one? How does anyone's taste develop? You read a lot, learn what you like and what you don't and taste develops over time. My taste is always evolving although I still love many of the stories I published over twenty years ago.

What does the editor's job entail in the USA and why some editors, including yourself, have such a powerful influence on American and, in a sense, world SF?

The short story editor's job is very different from the book editor's job in the US. Now, although most book editors I know would love to have the time to actually edit they often don't have time because of the number of books they are working on.

A magazine/short story editor begins with reading the manuscripts that come in. I have a “slush" reader-someone who reads the submissions by people who have never published anything anywhere and who have not attended a writing workshop or have some other writing credentials. If she likes a slush submission, she'll pass it on to me.

So I read a story, decide if I love it enough to buy it or like it enough to work with the author on it to make it a better story that I would buy. Once a story is bought it goes into my inventory for a period of a few weeks to a few months. Before the story is put into production, I do a final, thorough line edit -make sure everything reads as it should. Then it goes to the copy editor who queries punctuation, typos, and sometimes when you have a good one (we do) queries factual or other possible errors. Then in our case it goes online at our server and is proofread. The nice thing about working online is that corrections can be made even once a story is posted.

I never was aware that I had that much influence on sf...

You're kidding me? My students learn about you as one of the most significant American editors of all time and you, having gotten so many awards and nominations, are trying to tell me that you're not aware of your influence on the field?

I'm flattered. I'd like to think I've influenced readers by promulgating the idea that horror encompasses much more than what is traditionally considered horror -- with my co-editing for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. My goal is to gently push great fiction (or at least the fiction I love, whether it's novels or short stories) and broaden the minds of readers (but not pedantically). As far as editing OMNI, Event Horizon, and SCIFICTION, I hope that these venues have showcased and convinced readers how wonderful genre short fiction is and can be, but I don't think influence can be measured by awards. You teaching your students about my work is more important to my reputation in the long run than any awards I win.

To what extent may the editor affect writers and their work, and to what extent she may affect their artistic sensitivity and choices?

Well, if a writer wants to find the perfect audience then it helps to find their perfect editor. By which I mean I have a certain taste in fiction-it has altered slightly over the years (someone else would have to analyze my overall editing career ) but basically, I know I like certain types of writing, certain kinds of stories (hopefully within a broad parameter). So some writers might hit with me or not. Sometimes a writer will write for years and never sell to me and I guess it might become some sort of challenge for her. I'd like to believe that I help make them better writers.

You told me that some writers don't take critical comments easily as they probably believe that whatever they write is so perfect that it should be published immediately. What do you do in such cases?

If it's someone whose story I love anyway-- even with minor flaws-- I'll buy it. If the story needs work, I just won't work with the writer and won't buy her/his fiction.

What are your usual selection criteria, what is a well-written text for you that deserves publication?

That's a very hard question. Every story I buy has to be literate -that's minimal to me even considering it. So the other factors that make me buy a story are difficult to explain. I'm very taken by authorial voice but I also like to visualize what I read so being able to see a story is important to me. Ambition, sense of place, interesting characters, a moral center. But I don't read for any of these things consciously, first and foremost the story must carry me along.

Exactly. Don't you think then that it's the narrative itself rather than the plot or characters that originally draws our attention? I'm asking about that because I've got an impression that American fantastic literature matured a lot in terms of the narrative technique while many young people in Poland, who take up writing, for some obscure reasons believe that you can become a good writer without making an effort to develop your technical skills.

Well, isn't plot a part of the narrative? Sometimes the "voice" draws the reader in first. Technical skills are crucial to writing fiction-whether your work is meant to be experimental or not you still have to draw the reader in. There must be a reason for a reader to continue reading. To me, narrative, voice, characterization, theme, and style are all elements of what make a great story.

Which of the writers you worked with are among your favourites now?

You've got to be kidding! How am I supposed to respond without offending someone? More recently, I've enjoyed working with Lucius Shepard, Jeffrey Ford, Ilsa Bick, Severna Park, Kelly Link, Andy Duncan, Rick Bowes--but these are writers I've published multiple times recently. Plus my book authors at Tor (where I consult) -- Jonathan Carroll and Paul McAuley.

How do you think has SF literature evolved since you became a professional editor? What's going on in American SF now, are there any new trends or movements that you recognize as significant or promising?

The sf field has fragmented into many subgenres such as science fantasy, alternative history, famous people stories, hard sf, I think the magazines are struggling and no one really knows why. Has sf done its job and become so influential in the whole wide world that a specific genre is no longer necessary? Has the fragmentation driven away some readers? Has the younger generations moved on to tv/video and the internet? I personally don't know the answer.

As far as the quality of writing and the experimentation I see I think sf is doing just wonderfully. I've worked on many stories in the past few years that do what the best sf has always done-put a human face on the problems that technology and the existence of humankind on Earth have wrought on society. Terry Bisson's novella Greetings is about a new draft -- drafting those over a certain age to kill themselves to make room for the young. And Bisson incidentally pokes a bit of fun at the politics of the 60s and how they've been corrupted in the very near future he depicts. Maureen McHugh's "Frankenstein's Daughter" is about the effects of cloning on the family of the clone.

I also think there is more of an acceptance of editors mixing sf and fantasy with stories that can be enjoyed by readers of the fantastic even though they may not have traditional fantastic elements. The only trend I see is a rash of little magazines producing fine fiction in whatever mode the editors choose. This can only be a good thing.

How about horror/ghost literature? Do you think that it's been changing seriously for the last 20/30 years?

There are continual changes in every genre --in the late 80s to mid-90s psychological horror novels became more popular, almost driving out supernatural fiction. The serial killer novel, which started so strongly with Thomas Harris's Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, continued with originality and panache in such novels as Susanna Moore's In the Cut, Paul Theroux's Chicago Loop, David Lindsay's Mercy, Bradley Denton's Blackburn, David Martin's Lie to Me, Stephen Wright's Going Native, and some others. But unfortunately, the serial killer novel has become the "cozy" (not sure if you use that word in Poland for a certain type of mystery novel) of the oughts.

Supernatural literature has been sneaking back into the horror field for the past couple of years. Certainly, the ghost story has made a major comeback in the past five years, probably in part as a result of the movies The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project. Much horror fiction is back in the "fiction" shelves where it belongs rather than in its own category.

Apart from year's best anthologies you edit terrific anthologies based on one particular theme. What does usually inspire you?

Do you mean how do I think up a theme that I'm interested in? It depends on the anthology. Alien Sex and Blood is Not Enough both came about because there were stories I loved that I couldn't buy for OMNI-- in Alien Sex they were Connie Willis's "All My Darling Daughters," Leigh Kennedy's "Her Furry Face," and Ed Bryant's "Dancing Chickens." So I created a theme anthology around these three stories that I used as reprints. In the case of Vanishing Acts I was hanging out with friends in Albuquerque talking about stories that we loved and I mentioned Suzy McKee Charnas's "Listening to Brahms" one of my favorites from my OMNI days and "Now Let Us Sleep" by Avram Davidson, which I cannot read without weeping. And since they were both about endangered species I thought I'd like to do an anthology with that theme. I wanted to call it Endangered Species, but Tor, who was publishing the anthology, had a collection by Gene Wolfe with that title.

I've always wanted to edit a non-theme horror anthology and so far have not been able to sell one -- I don't really remember how I came up with the idea for a ghost story anthology but the ghost story is such a broad sub-genre that it really isn't a theme at all.

What advice could you give to young people in Poland who want to write SF/horror/fantasy and become professional?

Read all kinds of fiction and nonfiction -- not just in the genre in which you want to write. You're not a writer unless you write. Let go and mail out your submissions but first write the most perfect version of a story you can because an editor can only read a story for the first time once- - that is the impression that is most important -- the first read. Be persistent. Don't give up. Don't wait for a story submission to come back before writing your next story. Read market reports. Don't sell yourself cheap -- you should get paid for your work. I'm sure I could think up more suggestions over time.

But when you teach at literary workshops, what do you exactly teach to people who want to become writers?

At Clarion West there is a whole workshop process. A group of 17-20 students go around critiquing a story, then the teacher (me, in the 5th week of the six week program) says their piece about the story-what they think works and doesn't work. I suggest they get William Gibson's collection Burning Chrome and read every story's first line to see how it's done. I suggest they read Elmore Leonard for an example of snappy dialogue that does not require "he said" / "she said." But mostly I answer questions. I'm a lousy lecturer and hate it so I'm best when students have specific questions they want to ask me about publishing and how it works.