Well, my posts didn’t go up – sorry. I will roll them out the next couple days.
But here are the long form editors for 2016! This is always a tricky one since it’s not always clear who edited what. I was hoping the packet would be available now, but even if we don’t know their specific works yet, all of them are well known.
But a couple potential misconceptions to clear up first,many see “editor” and simply think of someone editing the text. In which case, it’s kinda impossible to know who did the best job unless we try counting typos or compare against first drafts. But that isn’t really the most important part of these editor’s jobs (and in many or all cases, it might not even be part of their job at all – those are proofers/copyeditors/etc.) The concept, at least for me, is clearer in the newspaper world – these people are the J. Jonah Jamesons, the Perry Whites. They aren’t necessarily going through a stack of papers with a red pen (especially since it’s electronic, but you get the point), they are deciding what stories should or shouldn’t be published. They are taking the fledgling ideas for stories from writers and saying “What about coming at it form this angle?” or “Isn’t this really person X’s story and not person Y’s?” or “Nice background, but the real story starts in chapter 5, delete the rest.”
So judging best Editor Long Form even without a listing in the voter packet, is to look at their publishers and see if they were putting out interesting stories last year. Were they enjoyable? Original? Whatever-works-for-you-able? That’s at least a good starting point for consideration, but if anyone has some solid lists of which works they were specifically responsible for last year, that’d be awesome. I know George R.R. Martin had a series of posts a while back listing editors and their works. Haven’t dug back into those yet.
- Vox Day (Castalia House)
- Sheila E. Gilbert (DAW)
- Liz Gorinsky (Tor)
- Jim Minz (Baen)
- Toni Weisskopf (Baen)
So, who is at the top of your list?
As always, keep in mind the Comment Rules, and let’s discuss the Hugo finalists!
