Reviewer and writer Steven Silver announces:
William Sanders has announced that the Hugo-nominated on-line sf magazine Helix SF will cease publication following its tenth issue (which will be online beginning on October 1). Sanders has said that part of the reason was the magazine’s “ongoing failure to develop a broad base of support.”
For those of you who are unacquainted with the minutae of science-fictional fandom, there’s some interesting context to this announcement.
See, a few months ago, a rejection letter penned by William Sanders was published online by its recipient, resulting in quite a firestorm. (text of the letter may be found here (among other places), commentary all over the place- just google “Sanders rejection letter”.) The letter was widely held to be offensively racist, using phrases such as, “worm-brained mentality of these people”, and “sheet-heads”. The response to the outcry from the editor in question was to go after the poor rejectee for publishing ‘private correspondence’, only later waving vaguely and saying that his remarks were misinterpreted.
In the resulting brouhaha, several authors asked Helix to pull their work, no longer wishing to be associated with the magazine. The editor responded to one such request as follows:
[...] the story “never did make any sense” and that he only accepted it to “please those who admire your work”–what altruism!–”and also because (notorious bigot that I am) I was trying to get more work by non-Caucasian writers.”
Sanders continued on his merry little path by insulting the writers who requested withdrawal (the pages that used to contain their stories said, “Story deleted at author’s pantiwadulous request.” until someone with some sense took it down) and then announced that he would charge a $40 “fee” to remove someones story.
This whole incident was widely circulated and discussed at the time, and Tempest wrote:
I’m going to say again: When will we, as a community, collectively shunn these people until they go away? Because, seriously, this has to stop. Pandiwadulous? PC Nazi? If people like this aren’t shut down and put out of the group, they will not stop, they will not get better, but they will infect others, drive folks away, and make the “professional” venues they’re associated with look like safe harbors for hate and bigotry.
Well Tempest, looks like one for the good guys after all.
I am sorry that there is one fewer marketplace for short speculative fiction in the world, but I am not sorry that there were real, meaningful consequences to William Sanders’ actions, and that enough people said “This is not acceptable” to make a difference. I’m very proud of my fandom today.
Proud of your fandom? Don’t be; it is well known that this was planned many months ago, and in fact Helix was planned from the very beginning to have only a limited lifespan.
But if you want to take pride in having killed a paying market, I guess knock yourself out.
Actually, she said she’s sad a paying market is gone. We all are. But there’s good space and bad space, and Sanders created bad space. There is intrinsic value in a paying market, and we all know that the paying markets for short science fiction and fantasy are too few and far between. However, the more credibility someone like him gets in a community, the more people of that ilk are attracted to the community.
Many of the people who published fiction under the Helix banner felt betrayed by the editor and sickened that their work was associated with openly hateful, racist, and sexist language coming from him.
It would have been nice if the Helix banner had been picked up by someone more civilised after Sanders left it, but such is life, and compromising on principles for the sake of one more paying market is unjustified.