Interestingly, I've been thinking about this a lot as I finish up my reading and make my choices for inclusion in Year's Best Fantasy & Horror #17 . This year I've seen a large number of excellent horror stories about children. I'm not talking "child abuse" or "children in jeopardy" stories, although there are some of those, of course, but of stories with children being an important part of the plot. At least five of the stories I've chosen deal with children.

Also, I see a lot more stories about death and ghost stories.

Which Editors have you learned the most from, and how has this influenced your own editing technique?

Judith Merril was extremely influential on me as an editor because of her Catholic taste in choosing fiction for her Year's Best SF seriesÑshe chose stories by mainstream writers and from mainstream publications in addition to those published by genre magazines and anthologies. I think it's obvious from what I publish in my original and reprint anthologies and in OMNI, on Event Horizon, and on SCIFICTION how Merril has influenced me.

Maxwell Perkins, the editor of Hemingway and Fitzgerald influenced me with his hands-on approach to the text. Going through the process of editing with an author is as important as choosing the material. A good editor helps the writer communicate what that writer intends. I'm a working editor who cares very much about words and how they're used. In addition to substantive editing (that is making sure the overall story works, the characters are consistent, the structure works, etc) I line edit every (original—not the reprints) story that I publish. Only then does the story go to a copy editor and then proofreader.

Give us your five best Horror films of the last decade—and why? Are there any books/stories you personally would like to see developed into either a film or TV series?

I think most horror films suck and I rarely go to them. But if I have to name a few good ones I'll name:
Ringu and The Ring— liked them equally. Both versions were genuinely scary -- the strange young woman at the center of the story is pitiable as well as monstrous.
The Blair Witch Project— there's lots of backlash against it now but the marketing that was used made the movie all the more creepy. This is one that didn't really affect me until I tried to go to sleep the night I saw it. Images of the sticks and the last scene stayed with me longer than with most horror movies.
The Others —good acting, nice atmosphere.
28 Days —For once, I cared about the characters
Audition —creepy, sometimes cringe-making Japanese movie about a very nutty, innocent-looking young woman and her relationship to a hapless widower.

I would never want anything that I love to be made into a film or TV series—it would just be ruined. There are only a few exceptions of books that have been made into even better (or at least as good) movies:
Bladerunner
The Green Mile
Carrie
Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Interzone recently changed from a monthly to a bi-monthly magazine. Nobody ever seems sure about the stability and long-term potential of short fiction magazines these days. Taking into account that the above mentioned is one of the longest running publications around, what do you attribute this change in frequency to? Financial? Surely, it cannot be a lack of viable material?

Interzone lost its government grant a year or two ago and David Pringle does what he can to keep the magazine alive. Everyone reading this subscribe, dammit!!!

Are there any particular countries beside the US and UK that you've noticed writers submitting fiction from? There's a growing move amongst South African Speculative writers, for instance, to get their material out into the international market.

Australia and Canada mostly. I don't believe I've received more than one or two stories from any place else. Occasionally a story from the Netherlands. I've received a few older, previously untranslated submissions by a Cuban writer.

There's no excuse for English language writers not to send their work out to the US and UK markets. It's much more understandable that we rarely see Japanese, Indian, European, or Latin American submissions because it's costly to translate and most editors are not fluent enough in other languages to judge a foreign submission.

Did the coming and going of the new millennium have any significant influence on themes explored in fiction? At one point, it almost seemed as if psychological horror eclipsed the popularity of the good-old-fashioned monster tale.

The serial killer became the monster of the 90s. I don't know exactly what caused the increase of psychological horror in that decade but luckily, the trend seems to have subsided into an almost cozy routine.

You recently edited an anthology of ghost stories: The Dark: New Ghost Stories. Is the ghost story making a comeback? Why has it been absent from view for such a long time?

I'm delighted to see that the ghost story has indeed made a strong comeback. Although it never went completely away it just wasn't noticed as much. I suspect that The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project brought the idea of the ghost story back into the public consciousness.

I wrote the proposal for The Dark in early 1998 and it took my agent and me three years to sell it. And currently many submissions for SCIFICTION are about death and dying and ghosts. I hear the same from Gordon Van Gelder, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Is it true that you play the piano?

It's true that I used to play the piano. I haven't played in many years. I studied classical piano for about seven years as a child and learned to read music well-enough, but never had an "ear" for it. I hated practicing scales (doesn't every kid?) but enjoyed playing. We had a beautiful upright piano that was finally sold by my parents (it hadn't been played in quite awhile) a few years ago.

If Fantasy is about questioning 'What is Real', and SF 'What is Human' – what is the demand behind Horror fiction?

Fantasy is not just about questioning what is real. That's only one tiny subgenre of fantasy. Fantasy is about magic and the strange—finding it everywhere—in a land far away or just around the corner.

And sf is very much more than about "what is human?" It's about how humans are going to evolve, and how are we going to deal with the technological and biological marvels and disasters we humans continually create. For example, when computers were first described in early sf they were envisioned as taking up entire rooms. How wondrous that they are now small enough to fit in one hand. Negatively, technology has helped create holes in the ozone layer, threatened to wipe out many animal and plant species around the world, and enabled humankind to create bigger and better weapons to kill one another.

I suppose horror is ultimately dealing with loss—of self and of loved ones. Dealing with pain and death and other things that scare humans. And or course, there is plenty of horrific sf such as Who Goes There? , the novella written by John W. Campbell that was adapted into the original and remake of The Thing, The Fly, originally written by George Langelaan, H.G. Wells' T he Island of Doctor Moreau, Alien, Nevile Shute's On the Beach, and many other examples.

And speaking of SF—it doesn't seem to matter what decade/timeframe we're in, people are seemingly always convinced that the genre is taking a dive. How do you respond to this?

It's all bullshit. I get tired of those critics who want their genre to remain faithful to its pulp roots. And I get really tired of new editors who have to put down what exists in order to build up their own supposedly edgier, magazines, 'zines, or anthologies.

I generally see sf from the perspective of short fiction and right now I'm delighted by what I'm reading in, and on the edges of the field. I see an influx of new writers who are experimenting with voice and style and I see more established writers maturing into brilliance, as they continue to delve into the political, economic, and scientific issues crucial to our future. I'm very optimistic about the future of short fiction (I can't really judge the novel area).

Are there any new trends in SF—stylistically or thematically—that you've noticed cropping up more?

A willingness by writers to cross genres and move easily between sf/f/h and mainstream. Some of our best writers do this: Kelly Link, Elizabeth Hand, James Blaylock, Lucius Shepard, John Kessel, Dale Bailey, Pat Cadigan, Graham Joyce, Michael Swanwick, Kim Newman, Paul McAuley, Nicholas Royle, M. John Harrison, Richard Bowes, Karen Joy Fowler, Carol Emshwiller, Terry Bisson, Jeffrey Ford, and so many others.

How do you juggle your job as editor of SCIFICTION with editing the yearly print anthologies? What do editors do to relax?

Badly. I'm always burnt out on the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror I switch back and forth between my reading manuscripts and reading published stories, or maybe take a break by responding to this interview or checking various bulletin boards online. I just need to focus on the things that take priority at any given time. If I have a deadline then that comes first.

I work from home so if I really want to get away from the various jobs, I have to go out. I go meet friends for meals or coffee, go to movies. Go away on trips. When I'm home I'm working and online -- that's just how it is.

Who are some of your favorite authors, and why?


Jeffrey Ford because I never know what he's going to write next. He can write marvelous horror stories like "The Trentino Kid" and "A Night in the Tropics" and sf like "The Empire of Ice Cream" and each has a different voice. He also captures where he grew up accurately and beautifully.

Kelly Link for the same reason. For her ability to write twists and mazes that eventually get to where they're going such as in "Lull."  For writing about Nancy Drew, a book series character  I loved as a girl.

Jonathan Carroll for his imagination and for his ability to make me love his characters, flaws and all (I'm his editor at Tor). Because I love his dogs.

William Gibson‹-I've loved everything he's ever written and I think Pattern Recognition is his best yet‹-he writes gorgeously and I enjoy what he writes about.

Elizabeth Hand because I think her stories are passionate and I get lost in them. I'm always eager to read the next one (I wish she wrote faster).

You wake up one morning and little green men have REALLY invaded the Earth. (Or gray ones‹color is irrelevant and resistance is futile)  How do you think they'll react to our literary interpretations of them?

If they have any sense of humor they'll laugh their heads off.

Where do you see the Internet going in the next 15 to 20 years?  Will print mediums prevail?  Will the situation become reversed‹Internet publishing the norm and print editions its inferior twin?

I have no idea but I'm interested in finding out. [smile] Who would have thought it'd take off the way it has? The Internet has already made a difference in how people buy books. Online bookstores have made it unnecessary for readers to go to brick and mortar bookstores. When I wanted to buy the UK edition of one of the Harry Potter series rather than the Americanized version, I merely ordered the book from amazon.uk. I suspect so-called "independent bookstores" (I'm not talking about genre specialty shops) will go the way of the dodo and frankly, it wouldn't upset me all that much. It's the large, chain bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders that carry my books, not the snotty little literary bookstores around town.

Print's certainly not going to go away. And Internet publishing will never be the norm until people realize that "publishing" isn't just slapping whatever crap you like onto a website. Without editing, marketing, and publicity a writer might as well put her fiction under her pillow and wait for the tooth fairy to transform it into a gold.

Any exciting new projects on the horizon for you?

I'm hoping to edit another horror anthology but there's no deal yet and Terri Windling and I hope to do a third YA anthology together but there's no deal on that either. And of course YBFH #18. Ughhh.

If there were any writer you wished you could have worked with, who would it be?

I'm assuming you mean someone dead, as there's always the possibility I'll be working some day with anyone alive today.  Tiptree in her prime. Ted Whittemore. (I did work some on his novel Sinai Tapestry when I was an editorial assistant at Holt, Rinehart, and Winston but not as much as I would have liked.)

What would you like your epitaph to read?

Hey, let's not get too morbid here. [smile] I'm gonna live forever!