My History with Short Fiction
Jul. 27th, 2015 07:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forestofglorySo as long as I've been a reader I've been a reader of SFF but I didn't always love short SFF. I want to talk a bit about my history with short SFF and how I came to enjoy reading and recommending it.
When I was a teen online short fiction had not yet taken off, so the ways to access short fiction where the few remaining print magazines or anthologies which were mostly reprints. I did know that the magazines existed, as saw them for sale at my local SFF bookstore, but I never was moved to buy one.
I did buy and read a handful anthologies. I would read them like novels stopping in the middle of stories. (I hate doing this now.) I tended to choose anthologies based on themes. I remember their being lots of anthologies with titles like “magical cats” or “women with swords.” Anyway these were a bit hit or miss for me, I liked some of the stories, loved a few, but most didn’t move me.
Then in my late teens I decided I was going to read all the written fiction that had won both a Hugo and a Nebula award. I think as a way to expose myself to more older SF. Anyways for this project I included all the short fiction winners and tried to track them down. I generally found them in anthologies. Many were first published in print magazines, which were not easy to track down, but anthologies featuring re-prints were more accessible. Having got a hold of an anthology containing at least one piece of short fiction for my project I would generally read the whole thing. I still didn’t find a lot of short fiction I loved, possibly because these volumes were not very diverse.
I never quite finished the Hugo and Nebula award winning fiction project, but after it tailed off I went back to reading the occasional anthology. I was aware of online short fiction for a while before I started reading it. I was reluctant for a long time to read fiction on a computer screen, and I also didn’t have good way to fit reading short fiction into my reading routine.
What finally got me to start reading short fiction was becoming a Hugo voter. I thought I should really try to read at least a few pieces of short fiction and see if there was something I thought was award worthy to nominate. My first year I just read short fiction form other people’s best of the year list, but I found a few authors I wanted to follow also decided to try and keep up a bit more by following a few online magazines. So I stared reading some short fiction throughout the year, and I’ve slowly been following more authors and more magazines. More recently I’ve joined twitter and started getting recs that way as well.
I’m continuing to read short fiction not out of a sense of duty but because I’ve found that I really enjoy it. Right now reading short fiction is great way to find new and/or marginalized authors who are pushing the genre(s) in interesting directions. However the proliferation short fiction can also be really intimidating and overwhelming. So to try and help other people find the things that I enjoyed I’ve started posting recs here.
So that’s how I slowly became more involved in reading and rec'ing short fiction.
When I was a teen online short fiction had not yet taken off, so the ways to access short fiction where the few remaining print magazines or anthologies which were mostly reprints. I did know that the magazines existed, as saw them for sale at my local SFF bookstore, but I never was moved to buy one.
I did buy and read a handful anthologies. I would read them like novels stopping in the middle of stories. (I hate doing this now.) I tended to choose anthologies based on themes. I remember their being lots of anthologies with titles like “magical cats” or “women with swords.” Anyway these were a bit hit or miss for me, I liked some of the stories, loved a few, but most didn’t move me.
Then in my late teens I decided I was going to read all the written fiction that had won both a Hugo and a Nebula award. I think as a way to expose myself to more older SF. Anyways for this project I included all the short fiction winners and tried to track them down. I generally found them in anthologies. Many were first published in print magazines, which were not easy to track down, but anthologies featuring re-prints were more accessible. Having got a hold of an anthology containing at least one piece of short fiction for my project I would generally read the whole thing. I still didn’t find a lot of short fiction I loved, possibly because these volumes were not very diverse.
I never quite finished the Hugo and Nebula award winning fiction project, but after it tailed off I went back to reading the occasional anthology. I was aware of online short fiction for a while before I started reading it. I was reluctant for a long time to read fiction on a computer screen, and I also didn’t have good way to fit reading short fiction into my reading routine.
What finally got me to start reading short fiction was becoming a Hugo voter. I thought I should really try to read at least a few pieces of short fiction and see if there was something I thought was award worthy to nominate. My first year I just read short fiction form other people’s best of the year list, but I found a few authors I wanted to follow also decided to try and keep up a bit more by following a few online magazines. So I stared reading some short fiction throughout the year, and I’ve slowly been following more authors and more magazines. More recently I’ve joined twitter and started getting recs that way as well.
I’m continuing to read short fiction not out of a sense of duty but because I’ve found that I really enjoy it. Right now reading short fiction is great way to find new and/or marginalized authors who are pushing the genre(s) in interesting directions. However the proliferation short fiction can also be really intimidating and overwhelming. So to try and help other people find the things that I enjoyed I’ve started posting recs here.
So that’s how I slowly became more involved in reading and rec'ing short fiction.
