John DeNardo recently asked me to participate in the Mind Meld section of sfsignal.com. The question was about the state of short fiction in the sf genre. He asked several others as well, and he posted the answers here. It’s an interesting discussion, and I suspect it’ll inspire me to write an essay. But my initial response is amusement: the younger writers wrote pieces I would have written 15 years ago. (And similar responses to the ones writers wrote thirty years ago.) Yes, the digests are hurting–and you should subscribe! Think of all the fiction you can get for the price of a hardcover. Go here for Asimov’s, here for Analog, and here for F&SF. But other short fiction venues are growing. … Read entire article »