Golden Opportunity Nearly Missed (But Nonetheless Flubbed)

So, after enjoying Stefan Ekman's monograph on fantasy maps, I did a little entirely-normal-and-not-at-all creepy "scholar stalking," Well, I found his CV and saw to my surprise that his most recent publication was in Fafnir: A Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research.

 "Huh!" I thought. "That's weird -- I just published a review of Jamie Williamson's book there."

 Turns out that I'd been so busy with job applications and finishing my dissertation chapter that I never had the chance to look through the issue properly. Well, I did -- and discovered that, at the end of the journal's title page, was an advertisement for a new co-editor in chief position!

 Now, I'm already currently editor in chief for Scientia et Humanitas, MTSU's journal of peer reviewed student research, but I graduate this May and know I'll miss being a part of academic publishing. And working with Fafnir would not only have been good for professionalization reasons, but it would also have allowed me to employ my editorial skills for the academic field in which I actually do research in. Only problem? I saw this advertisement four days after the deadline for applications had passed.

 So, keeping my fingers crossed, I e-mailed the guy, and he said that the board hadn't met yet and I could still submit. Counting my lucky stars, then, I did. Alas and alack! We got the decision two days ago and, while apparently I had been shortlisted as one of three finalists, they eventually gave the position to a talented scholar of Bengali science fiction. 

 Still, it was nice to have been considered. I'll just have to keep my eye out for further opportunities.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Genre Fantasy Bestsellers through 1990

Image
I've been studying Keith Justice's Bestseller Index , which compiles information from two separate bestseller lists -- New York Times Book Review and Publishers Weekly -- up through 1990, and the results are ridiculously fascinating. For instance, you wanna take a stab at which SFF author has the most individual books appear on a bestseller list? No, it ain't Heinlein, Clark, Herbert, or Asimov. It's not even Terry Brooks or David Eddings. No, the answer is Piers Anthony ... and even if you somehow pulled that name out of thin air, you'll still never guess how truly dominate Anthony was. Up through 1990, Anthony had more than double than number of distinct bestsellers than the next most frequent bestseller, Anne McCaffrey. Whereas Anthony had an astounding  22 different books appear on a bestseller list, McCaffrey had "only" 9.** Now, caveats. These numbers need to be taken with one (or two) grains of salt. For instance, although Anthony had 22 two distin
Read more

A Look at Charles R. Saunders and "Sword & Soul"

Image
So, I've been reading lately about Charles R. Saunders, the black author of sword-and-sorcery fiction, and man .... poor guy. If there's been ever a case of someone being born about 30 years too soon, it's Saunders. Usually, when people mention about black S&S authors, they mean Samuel R. Delany. This makes sense. As a queer, Marxist deconstructionist, Delany established his street cred first by writing SF before wading into the "gutters" (ahem) of S&S fantasy. (Sidenote: are there any black fantasy writers except maybe Jemisin who didn't first establish their street cred by writing SF?). Although I personally never much cared for Delany's  writing style or Nevèrÿon books , which are basically what happens when someone who holds a subgenre in contempt decides to write in that subgenre, it is true that academic critics love Delany .... especially critics who hate S&S themselves. So if they mention Saunders at all, which is rare, it's usuall
Read more

A Good Week For Publication

So, wow. The Journal of Tolkien Research has just published my article, " Harken Not to Wild Beasts: Between Rage and Eloquence in Saruman and Thrasymachus ." What astounds me is that I finished the piece only two weeks ago and already got back the peer reviews. Of course, no real reason WHY the review process has to take months, but it just usually does. Kudos to the anonymous reviewers, great praise upon them, for working so quickly. I might even more appreciative of their promptness than of their kind remarks; I barely had to do any revisions to the article. The process went so fast, in fact, that the publication barely feels real. One of the great advantages of an online open-access journal, too, is instantaneous publication. As I'm learning with the several other articles I have in circulation, the publication process generally takes even longer than the review process. Anyway, this has been a good week. I finished my review of Harry Potter essays, and the edito
Read more