2013 Rhyslings: Awesome/Not So Awesome News

[popelizbet]

Peeking my head up from the practice of law with some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that my Memphis Lovecraftian poem, "Memphis Street Railway Co. v. Stratton: 1915", originally published at New Myths, was nominated for a 2013 Rhysling Award by some wonderful soul. (It also got some lovely praise from very talented poet and editor

Comments

[shweta_narayan]

Urgh. I'm sorry this has happened to you. Also entirely unsurprised. Thank you for posting.

[popelizbet]

I appreciate you reading. <3

[popelizbet]

Oh, I'm so glad! I am deeply indebted to tithenai for reading it while I was at home very ill and very irritated that I was missing Wiscon. Luckily, antho readers will only miss a few line breaks, but as you said in your own post, we can survive anything but a misprint.

I find it funny-sad that SFPA could not get my poem right, but the editor of New Myths fixed an error both of us had missed after multiple readings, when the poem was no longer even in the current issue, in no time once it was pointed out to him.

[popelizbet]

Yes, I worked an event the weekend before Wiscon doing child care and, either from my charges or a festivalgoer, came home with a case of the flu that left me bedbound for six days. Sadly I couldn't find a last minute volunteer to run the Con or Bust event at the Gathering, but I did get Amal to cover for me at our group reading. I look forward to meeting you at a future Wiscon!

Rhysling Anthology proofing

[fibitz]

The system in place for the Rhysling Anthology has been more problematic in the past. At my specific urging, the custom of sending the .pdf to all contributors to proof was instituted several years ago and has greatly reduced the number of errors. My poems have also previously been published with introduced errors, including the one that won the Rhysling

Re: Rhysling Anthology proofing

[alexandraerin]

I promise, no one was sitting here thinking that someone had decided, "You know what would be awesome? ERRORS. Errors and arbitrarily depriving people of the opportunity to fix them." before you came along to enlighten us as to the process that created this end result.

Explaining the mistakes that led to the situation being deplored is nice, but explaining doesn't excuse. The words "I'm" and "sorry" should be somewhere in this post and I'm not seeing them.

The errors are regrettable, you say? How marvelously passive! Who regrets them? Not you specifically, it doesn't seem. But they are regrettable, so we should fee free to regret them quietly at our leisure?

Also, "as [I/he] thought" suggests that things actually happened in accordance with thought. That's why people say "Just as I thought!" when something they thought turns out to be true. It seems to me like what you're trying to say is that you thought the proof was sent out to contributors when it wasn't, and David Kopaska-Merkel thought he'd gotten all the contributors, when

Re: Rhysling Anthology proofing

[fibitz]

SFPA is made up of volunteers, including Robert Frazier, the main person responsible each year for Rhysling Anthology design and layout. I'm speaking as one of the volunteers involved in the production of the Rhysling Anthology, to defuse the uninformed speculations about the Rhysling process by explaining exactly what that process was.

Everyone involved with the Rhysling Anthology, including myself, is sorry that errors occurred. These errors were primarily due to unforeseeable events (John Mannone's illness and handing over the layout to a second person [me] in mid-production) rather than incompetence. Revising the process used for nominating will prevent or mitigate the impact of such events on future Rhysling Anthologies.

Again, SFPA would love to have more volunteers who think the status quo can be improved upon and more participating members.

please stay with SFPA!

[ext_2083957]

Hi Samantha

Re: please stay with SFPA!

[popelizbet]

I'm not Samantha. My name is Elizabeth R. McClellan. I stand by my statements and my assessment of the situation. If the Samantha you intended to address was Ms. Henderson, it's a bit late to ask her to stay with SFPA, since she's already resigned. And while I interned in a different field, I was none of those things when interning. As for the volunteer aspect, see my comments to Ms. Bergmann above.

Re: please stay with SFPA!

[samhenderson]

Hi Denise!

I'm really confused. This is Elizabeth's journal. Did you mean to respond to her?

To clarify, I have left the SFPA, but not because of the Rhysling anthology.

-Sam

Re: please stay with SFPA!

[popelizbet]

If you're going to call me a "Philistine", Ms. Dumars, you ought to have the decency to do it where the world can see you.

Print Rhysling Updated

[ext_1190390]

I was also unhappy with the quality of the print Rhysling when I discovered how many problems there were. As such, I asked F.J. Bergmann to send me an updated version of the print file and I've replaced the version at the print vendor. Versions of the Rhysling purchased at online retailers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble will now reflect the proofreading corrections. I notice the preview does not yet reflect the changes, but Amazon claims it can take up to a week for that to happen.

Re: Print Rhysling Updated

[popelizbet]

Thank you! I have updated my post with the information you provided.