Gwenda points to an interesting discussion at Asimov’s message board. Apparently the magazine (or rather, the managing editor) had purchased a story from Jim Grimsley (author of the nifty book The Ordinary, and a bunch of other stuff I haven’t read yet), and the owners of the magazine ordered the story killed.
As you can imagine, this has ruffled some feathers–hard core science fiction fans (and who else still reads the magazines, much less comments on their message boards) tend to be touchy about anything that even smells like censorship.
The best post in the thread though, comes–as is often the case for message board discussions about anything genre–from PNH. I would link directly to the comment, but apparently Asimov’s forum software is too brain-dead to embed per-comment anchors, so you’ll have to scroll/search down. Anyway, the post includes this glorious bit:
Yes, of course publishing is a business, but the trouble with the “don’t you realize this is a business!” gambit is that nine out of ten times it’s meant as a conversation-ender, the assumption being that the social relations of business, God praise its Holy Name, automatically take precedence over every other human value. The message isn’t really “publishing is a business,” the message is “shut up and don’t criticize the behavior of the business class.”
Of course, as it turns out, there are in fact other human values, and it’s entirely wholesome for people to care about them. J. Random Publishing Company is within its holy-gee-whillickers legal rights to kill a story after its editor has accepted it. And onlookers who care about science fiction stories or science fiction publishing or the science fiction subculture are entirely within their rights to think J. Random & Co. are a bunch of shitheads. Culture matters. Caterwauling that something is A Business is not, as it turns out, a perfect talisman against the disapproval of free human beings.
Lest you have forgotten, I believe Patrick’s current title is managing editor at Tor Books. I’m not sure who could make that statement, and have more street cred.
