January 02, 2020

Originality: Feh, Who Needs It?

1 hour 34 minutes

RS Benedict talks to Stephen Mazur, Assistant Editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, about originality. How important is it, really? Readers and editors say they crave original stories, but much of our pop culture these days is proudly derivative: sequels, remakes, reboots and adaptations of pre-existing source material. And the human race has been telling stories for millennia; chances are, someone else has already had a story idea just like yours. Should we even bother trying to tell original stories? Does originality matter?

Mazur also talks a little about the nuts and bolts of running the long-running sci-fi mag, why some writers are remembered while others vanish, and whether or not you should write that werewolf detective story.

Recommended reading:

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

Kali Wallace’s “Botanical Exercises for Curious Girls” (FSF March 2011)

Cassandra Khaw and Jonathan L. Howard, “Shooting Iron” (FSF Sept/Oct 2018)

GV Anderson, “I Am Not I” (FSF July/Aug 2017)

Interview with Wole Talabi on “The Harmonic Resonance of Ejiro Anaborhi”

Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series. (In general you should definitely be reading Ursula Le Guin!)

That time Caresse Crosby, the inventor of the brassiere, ghost-wrote smut for Henry Miller

Interview with Ken Liu on “Arc”

Go Forth and Multiply: Twelve Tales of Repopulation

Correction: While many of Philip K. Dick’s books came out as paperback originals, these titles were published first in hardback: Time Out of Joint, The Man in the High Castle, Now Wait for Last Year, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, A Scanner Darkly, The Divine Invasion, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.

About Rite Gud: R.S. Benedict is an author, appearing in Fantasy and Science Fiction and Gardner Dozois’ The Very Best of the Best: 35 Years of The Year’s Best Science Fiction. Matt Keeley, founder of Kittysneezes, is producing Rite Gud for KS Media, LLC. Rite Gud is a Kittysneezes production. If you have questions, comments and concerns, email ritegud – at – kittysneezzes – dot – com. Rite Gud is also on Patreon, at patreon.com/ritegud. Patrons receive access to the official Kittysneezes Discord, exclusive episodes, critiques and more.

Rite Gud is supported by readers like you. If you enjoy what you’ve read here, please consider supporting Rite Gud on Patreon, or via the Kittysneezes Boutique.

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