Rudy Rucker and John Shirley, two of my favorite spec-fic writers are having a hissy fit for being snubbed by a new Cyberpunk short story anthology. These guys practically invented the sub-genre of Cyberpunk (along with Bruce Sterling and William Gibson) and made it popular. They deserve to be included in any new Cyberpunk anthology and I might agree with their annoyance, except for one thing. I don’t know if they were even asked to submit, but if they were, I don’t know if the stories that they submitted were any good.

These guys are capable of writing a crappy short story. They are better at their craft than the rest of us, but what if the stories that they sent in for consideration just really sucked, or weren’t right for the anthology? Rudy has been off in math-land lately, writing stories not really intended for the rest of us and John has been making money writing film treatments and horror novels that seem like they should be heavily illustrated in a manja style. Have these former gods of Cyberpunk wandered too far from the true path?

It seems to me that you need a thicker skin if you want to be in the spec-fic market. There isn’t much money to go around. Anthologies make pennies, even the ones that sell. Both of these guys admit that they are over-reacting, and seem to be having fun with their outrage. Rudy’s blog entry is funny, but I don’t think that it was a good decision to write it.

The image of the cow magically appeared in my blog when I hit my Blog This! button. I don’t know what it means, but I left it in. It was on Rudy Rucker’s blog and he didn’t explain what it means, either.