Gardner Dozois
Philadelphia's a good science-fiction town. There are many professional writers here, like Michael Swanwick, Tom Purdom, Gregory Frost, Victoria McManus and others. There are professional artists such as Bob Walters and Tess Kissinger and Susan McAninley.
Even after all these years, finding a really first-rate story is still a thrill, one I want to share with others.
When I first started editing a 'Year's Best' volume in the '70s, the job was pretty straightforward - there were three or four monthly magazines to read and a few original anthologies from trade publishers every year.
An experienced slush-pile reader doesn't need more than a few seconds to see if a story has potential. You don't need to eat all of a rotten egg to determine that it's rotten.
I've probably read more bad science fiction than anyone else alive. But I've also read more good science fiction than anyone else alive.
When I was a boy in Salem, Mass., in the 1950s, if you wanted to buy a book, you had to take a train to Boston. And when you got there, to a bookstore, there was no such thing as a science-fiction section.
What science fiction does is take what might be possible someday and examine what might happen if it were - the drawbacks and the positive things.
Persistence is worth at least as much as talent. The writing life is not a series of gentle encouragements. It's more like a series of brutal kicks in the teeth. Those who grow a thick enough skin to persevere, survive. Those who do not, do not.Collection: Encouragement
To write good SF today...you must push further and harder, reach deeper into your own mind until you break through into the strange and terrible country wherein live your own dreams.Collection: Dream
I pulled out the manuscript [from the envelope] and a great big stiff cardboard finger sprung up. This is someone that was so certain they would be rejected, they would be getting their revenge in advance. I was lucky - it could have been a pipe bomb.Collection: Revenge