Bewildering Stories Editorial

by Jerry Wright

What IS A Plethora, El Guapo?

Actually, I was just on the Internet (imagine that...) and determined that I misremembered the line. It is actually El Guapo asking Jefe if HE knew what a plethora was... (Here at WavList.com, but never mind that.) Anyway, we do have a plethora. If only I could remember what a plethora is. Oh. Never mind. I'm more messed up than normal. I was noting that even though Bewildering Stories is amateur in the best sense (that of doing what we do for love rather than money) we are not amateurish. Our webdesign (thanks, Don) is one of the best, and most readable (and fast) around, and the quality of stories is VERY GOOD, considering that we're poor folk.

Are we almost at the semi-pro level? I don't know. I can't judge. I do know that we publish the best of what we get, and because we are one of the few sites to actually publish novels, we get material that other sites can't handle. But submissions keep on coming in. Just had one come that was "semi-erotic" but its primary problem was that there was no story. Sent winging back to the author with a link to the Silverberg articles.

One of the other differences that was mentioned recently in the Analog forum is that few of the "free sites" edit the material presented to them. I know we couldn't handle THAT any more. Obviously in the early days we edited only lightly if at all to simply fix mispelings and such, but now we actually have editorial conferences that go back and forth by email sometimes for MONTHS.

A Plethora, indeed.