THE EDITOR’S WORD by Mike Resnick

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT. PRE-ORDERS FOR ROBERT A. HEINLEIN’S NEW NOVEL, THE PURSUIT OF THE PANKERA AVAILABLE FOR A DISCOUNTED PRE-SALE PRICE AT

https://www.arcmanorbooks.com/pursuit

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Welcome to the forty-first issue of Galaxy’s Edge. We have our usual mix of new and newer writers plus established superstars. In the former group are old and new friends including Nick DiChario, Larry Hodges, Eric S. Fomley, Anthony George, K.G. Anderson, Kimberly Unger, George Nikolopoulos, and Veronica Brush. We also have some outstanding stories you may have missed by superstars Nancy Kress, Joe Haldeman, Mercedes Lackey, and the husband-and-wife team of Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta. And of course we’ve got our regular features: science by Gregory Benford, recommended books by Richard Chwedyk, literary matters by Robert J. Sawyer, and the Joy Ward Interview, which features Rebecca Moesta this interview. Finally we have part two of the late Jack Chalker’s runaway bestseller, Midnight at the Well of Souls.

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Now that Worldcon and the Hugos are done for another year, I was recently asked if indeed the Hugos—or the Nebulas, or the you-name-its—are worth anything to a career.

A quick answer is that all awards are worth something, at least in terms of recognition, and—with very few exceptions—no single one will mean that much to your bank account.

Why?

If you’re on, say, the Campbell ballot because of a novel or two, no, it won’t mean any money to you. Why not? Because you’ve already got a track record, and the publisher will be much more likely to rely on the sales of your recent book(s) than on your nomination.

And of course if you’re a journeyman novelist, your advances will be based on your track record (which is to say, your sales record as opposed to your nomination record).

Where is the one place a nomination—Campbell, Hugo, Nebula, whatever—can make a serious financial difference?

If you’re nominated with one or more short stories and haven’t written that first novel yet, then as an award winner with absolutely no track record but a clear practitioner of quality writing, you’ll very likely get—and deserve—a little better treatment than the average first novelist.