This weekend I will be at Boskone, one of the Boston-area SF conventions.

I will be participating on several panels. One at 8pm Friday and another at 11am on Sunday will focus on online reading habits and resources. Another at noon on Sunday will be about recent developments in biological sciences (rather apropos to my story “Picking Up the Spin” coming out in M-Brane SF next month).

And at 5pm Saturday, I will be hosting a reading of authors from Beneath Ceaseless Skies magazine, including Margaret Ronald, whose recent story “A Serpent in the Gears” got a great review today in IROSF.

So if you’re at the con, drop by the reading.

Over the weekend, my magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies got two wonderful recognitions.

First, SFWA, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, deemed us an official SFWA pro market. Because we’ve met the qualifications since our first issue, any story in BCS in the past or future can be used to qualify the author for membership in SFWA. The magazine of course was designed to meet SFWA’s requirements from the start, and now it’s great to have their official stamp of approval.

Also, reviewer and editor Rich Horton gave BCS a glowing review in his year-end summaries of F/SF magazines. He said we “routinely publish fine adventure fantasy” and “have become a really important source of fantasy.”

He also noted that BCS is “the fourth largest source of new fiction among magazines and webzines, behind only the traditional ‘Big Three'”, which are Asimov’s, Analog, and F&SF. That is really astounding. I knew we had published over 350,000 words of short fiction last year, but I didn’t realize how that compared to other magazines.

I am delighted at both of these recognitions. The magazine is a joy to run, but it’s also an immense labor, so it is great to see it getting more and higher-profile recognition.

The Internet Review of SF, perhaps the best review and non-fiction F/SF ‘zine going these days, has announced they will be ceasing publication in a few months.

I’m bummed to hear that.  Lois Tilton, their legendary short fiction reviewer, reviewed every issue of my magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and I really appreciated that.  Her reviews were sometimes a bit grumpy, as they are known among writers to sometimes be, but she was always fair and honest, and when she praised a story, you knew that that praise had been earned.

I hope that short fiction reviews in general and Ms. Tilton’s in particular will keep going in some form, in this age of unclear business models for online F/SF both fiction and non-fiction.  Non-fiction and short fiction reviews are a vital if less glamorous part of the field, and it would be a shame if they dried up.

The current wildfire blog topic in SF/F short fiction circles has been very low-paying magazines and whether it’s worth it for an author to submit to them. One of the suggested benefits of submitting is for young authors to get publication credits, which they then can cite in their cover letters to other magazines in order to impress the editors.

I read a blog post by Ann Leckie, Associate Editor at Podcastle, which pretty much completely epitomizes what I feel about fiction credits in a cover letter when I read submissions for BCS.

I do glance at credits in cover letters, and they do have some impact on how much time or length I will give a story to let it impress me. But by far the most important thing is the quality of the story. By far.

And I share her admission that there are a very few credits that can have the opposite effect. They would never make me discount a great story, and they would never put me off on reading future submissions by that author. But on occasion, they can have a negative impact on how much time or length I will give that story to impress me.

So I share her admonition: write as well as you can. In the case of BCS, where I include comments in all rejection letters, perhaps spend a few moments thinking about why I said your story didn’t work for me or for BCS. Then please send me a better one.