Small Victories

I recently received a rejection from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, for my deliberate deus ex machina tale, “At the End of Babel.”  A bummer, of course, since I still think it’s a very fine piece, and I’d like to see it in print.

That said, there is a small victory here.  F&SF is a fast-rejection market, often with response times measured in single-digit days.  This speed, as writers know, is largely due to the efficiency of the mag’s chief slush reader, John Joseph Adams — known hereabouts as the Tri-Lettered One, since he signs his alas-o-gram rejects “JJA.”  My small victory in this rejection, therefore, is that my rejection came not from JJA but from the Editor/Publisher of F&SF, Gordon Van Gelder.  Even more, it took 52 days.