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Cover Letters for Short Fiction

Anyone paying attention to this blog in the past year will be well aware of my Year of Short Stories experiment. If you write short stories and submit them for publication, you’ll quickly learn a few things about formatting.

Firstly, there is a specific format—Standard Manuscript Format—that everyone uses, and the canonical explanation of that format can be found on William Shunn’s website. For many years, this was something that you just had to piece together from reading lots of submission requirements, but Shunn made a fantastic and thorough explanation, so now, many publications just link directly to it on their submission pages.

All your stories should be formatted this way by default. Of course, some publications have their own little foibles, and these are typically called out in their submission requirements. You should make sure you pay attention to these notes and adjust your story’s formatting accordingly. Usually it’s something simple, like Standard Format with a courier-family font, or Standard Formatting with no personally identifiable information (to ensure unbiased readers). Standard Manuscript Format is still the best starting point for your story if you want to quickly and easily make those small changes.

Secondly, many publications want a cover letter along with your manuscript. Sometimes this is a separate field in an online form, sometimes it is the body of the email you send with your story attached. Rarely, it’s a separate document. Some don’t want one at all.

Unfortunately, there’s no Shunn-style standard for cover letters. Many publications are much less specific about what they’re looking for in a cover letter for short fiction. For a new writer, “cover letter” sounds awfully formal, and the lack of specifications make it seem worryingly mysterious.

So, what goes into a cover letter? Does anyone actually read it? And can it really help or hinder your chances of having your story selected for publication?

Why Should I Care?

The strange truth of submitting short stories (and submitting to “traditional” publishers in general) is that most of the formalities really do nothing to increase your chances of being published. The quality of the story and the taste of the people in charge is really what matters. However, being clearly unprofessional or very bad at following instructions might hurt your chances of successfully selling an otherwise pretty good story.

The story is the most important thing, but the people who work in publishing are human, and at least some of them will take note of signs that you might be a pain to work with. That probably won’t make them reject a story they absolutely love, but it might lend a slight negative weight to something they were on the edge about.

A cover letter should be short, polite, and business-formal. Doing something unusual will make you stand out, but probably not in a good way.

Addressing, Thanking, Signing

First, address the editors. This can be as simple as “Dear Editors.” If you want to, you can try to figure out who is actually going to read your manuscript and address them personally. That might be the head editor, other editors, or a mysterious cadre of readers.

In my experience, many publications do not make it clear who will read the story, and there are often several layers of readers, culminating in editors and editors in chief. Some editors explicitly suggest that you not try to address your cover letter to anyone in particular.

The biggest faux pas is to address your cover letter to a particular editor, and then reuse that cover letter for a subsequent submission without remembering to update the greeting. That might cause someone some mild irritation, and is a good reason to stick to the generic “Editor.”

Part of being polite is thanking your reader. They are likely reading a huge number of often mediocre story submissions for little to no money, and they honestly deserve a little thanks. This is unlikely to sway anyone’s opinion. It’s just nice to do.

Finally, put your name on the thing. For clarity, this should generally be your real name, not your pen name.

So, the bookends of the cover letter ought to look something like this:

Dear Editors,

…

Thank you for your consideration.

John Doe

Story Info

Cover letters commonly include some basic info about the story. This helps associate the cover letter to the story, which might occasionally matter in disorganized editing environments (and doubly if the submission requirements tell you to remove personally identifiable info from your manuscript itself).

This info is very simple: story title, genre, and length.

You might think your story is “genreless” and you might be bending genres, but chances are that you decided to send this story to this publisher because they tend to publish things like your story. And most publications advertise themselves as a particular genre or set of genres. Try to fit your story in that neat little labeled box, even if you know in your heart that it’s not so easily categorized. Stick to the “big” genres. Think science fiction, not solarpunk; fantasy, not grimdark. If the publication lists subgenres they like, you might decide to use one of those labels. Generally, it’s best to just use a label you’d see on a shelf at the big box bookstore, or in the Amazon books menu.

Word count doesn’t have to be exact. Round to the nearest hundred words unless the publication says otherwise.

All of this can easily fit in a single sentence:

Dear Editors,

Attached is "The Really Cool Sword" (fantasy, 1200 words).

…

Thank you for your consideration.

John Doe

Credits

It is common for cover letters to include some previous publishing credits: a.k.a. other stories you’ve had published. These should generally not be self-published or “indie” credits like a personal blog, print-on-demand services, or Amazon e-pub. It’s only relevant if another person chose your story from a selection of submissions to publish. Winning or placing in a contest is also fair game.

You might think that publishing credits could go some ways toward making you stand out, but that generally isn’t the case. There may be some cachet in listing high-profile professional magazines, but again, this isn’t going to make an editor suddenly love a piece they previously hated. It might get you a second read if they’re on the edge about your work.

This section should be brief, listing no more than two or three credits. If you have a long list to choose from, it’s better that they be relevant. A credit in Analog looks good to the editor of a science fiction magazine, but might not mean much if you’re submitting to Atlantic or Esquire. More recent publications are also generally better than older ones.

It’s perfectly acceptable to state that you don’t have any credits and are unpublished. This might feel like admitting to being an amateur, but it’s really not a big concern. Most editors want a great story more than a high-profile name. Many editors love to publish first stories from unpublished authors. It’s a nice credit for them to have “discovered” you when you go on to become a beloved and famous author.

If a publisher doesn’t explicitly say that they want credits in the cover letter, you can choose to leave them out.

Finally, if you have some life experience or professional “day job” experience that directly relates to your story, you might choose to mention that in this section as well. For example, if you are writing about growing up Native American on a reservation, or if you’re a retired CIA agent writing a spy story, that may be pertinent.

Dear Editors,

Attached is "The Hacker" (fantasy, 1200 words).

I have worked in network security for fifteen years, and that perspective really informed this story.

My work was recently published in Clarkesworld and is forthcoming in Analog's October issue.

Thank you for your consideration.

John Doe

…or alternately, if you have less to say…

Dear Editors,

Attached is "The Really Cool Sword" (fantasy, 1200 words).

I am relatively new to submissions and I have not yet been professionally published.

Thank you for your consideration.

John Doe

Variations

That’s really all there is to a basic cover letter, but there are a few variations. These are bits that you should leave out unless you’re in a particular situation and are explicitly asked for them.

First: the submission type. Some publications accept reprints, which are typically defined as any story that has been published in print, or online somewhere public (not password protected). They might offer different payment for those stories, or limit the number of reprints they accept in an issue. They may also want credit the original publisher.

…
Attached is "The Really Cool Sword" (fantasy, 1200 words). This is a reprint submission, originally published in The Best Flash Fiction Anthology, 2021.
…

Some publications also allow simultaneous submissions, which simply means sending the same story to more than one place for consideration at the same time. Whenever a story is under simultaneous submission, it’s good form to let all those publishers know immediately if the story is accepted somewhere, so they’re not wasting their time. But some publishers want to know up-front, in the cover letter.

…
Attached is "The Really Cool Sword" (fantasy, 1200 words).  I will be submitting simultaneously to other publications.
…

Finally, some publishers may request a brief biography to include at the end of the piece. This saves them the effort of asking for it after they accept your story. These usually have a pretty strict word limit. Don’t go over it. They may suggest a format, too.

There is a whole art to little biography blurbs, but the basics are all you really need: your name, location, and maybe something interesting about you, your job, or your family. This is the place in the cover letter where it’s perfectly fine to show a little bit of your personality. If it’s permitted, you might also advertise a personal website or social media handle.

This is what I’ve used in my own submissions:

Sam Johnston is a software developer by day and a writer of fiction by night. He lives in Minnesota with his wife, three children, and a small grumpy dog. More of his work can be found on his website at wordsdeferred.com.

Cover Letters…Covered

While cover letters may sound intimidating, they really aren’t that bad. As these examples show, there are really only a couple things that go into a cover letter, and your main concern should be following the submission directions for each publication.

The contents of your cover letter aren’t critical. It’s the quality of the story that matters at the end of the day. The paperwork around submissions is really just an opportunity to show that you are a pleasant, professional writer who is able to follow simple directions.

Here are some additional resources if you want to read more about cover letters.

Reblog: “800 Submissions: An Analysis” — Aeryn Rudel

Today’s reblog comes from Aeryn Rudel, who breaks down the numbers on his remarkable 800 tracked story submissions over twelve years. This includes a few novel submissions, but the vast majority are short stories and flash fiction.

With over 100 acceptances, Aeryn has a very good batting average. Even so, it’s interesting to hear that there are still publications where he’s submitted often and escaped the slush pile, but never gotten an acceptance.

These statistics also show the power of writing a lot of flash fiction: there are simply more publishing slots available for flash fiction than any other kind of story.

Read the whole post at Aeryn’s blog, Rejectomancy…

The Inevitable Fall of the Superhero Movie

I would describe myself as a mid-level comics nerd. I’ve subscribed to comics. I worked at a comics store in high school. I still read comics in trade paperbacks, but rarely the ones with superheroes. I’ve seen at least half of the Marvel movies, although I’ve really cut back in recent years. The last DC movies I saw were the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy. (But honestly, I’ve never been that into classic DC characters.)

In short, I come at this topic as someone at least reasonably informed, but not quite a super-fan. Unfortunately, from this point of view, I think superhero movies as they currently exist are doomed.

The Structures of Comics

For many years, comics have been primarily periodicals. They exist somewhere in the universe of magazines and newspapers, traditionally printed on cheap paper and published in monthly 30-page installments. You can find many examples of other form factors, but this is the standard, and this has had a strong influence on the structures of the comics industry and the stories comics tell.

Comics follow a structure I call “endless episodic.” There may be arcs to the story, but the overall goal is to keep publishing issues, month after month, year after year. If the story ends, it stops making money. “Endless episodic” naturally trends toward a steady state, a cartoon-like existence where the world and the characters are more or less the same at the end of the story as they were at the beginning.

This steady state is death for good storytelling. If nothing changes, there are no stakes. There is no satisfying resolution. The ending is what provides meaning.

This is one of the reasons why origin stories are so important to superheroes. Often, they are the best story about that character, the only one a non-comics-nerd is likely to know. If the average normie knows anything about Superman, it’s probably that he comes from the planet Krypton, that it blew up, and he was adopted by farmers. If they know anything about Spiderman, it’s probably that he was bitten by a radioactive spider, and that “with great power comes great responsibility.” That’s because the origin story is allowed to have an actual character arc. At the beginning, the hero is just some person, and by the end, they are a superhero. They’ve changed. They’ve learned things. They’ve experienced loss.

Of course, comics writers have long understood this limitation of the form, and they’ve come up with many solutions and band-aids. They’ve ramped up the stakes in each subsequent story arc, saving the city, the country, the world and the universe. They’ve written tie-ins that pull in other, unfamiliar characters to provide novelty and sell more books. They’ve killed off the main character and put a replacement in the same old super-suit. They’ve explored alternate realities.

All of these are ways to create an arc while keeping the endless episodic story going, but you can only squeeze so much juice out of each of these techniques. Readers might get excited by the first or second jaunt into alternate realities, but eventually they’ll get bored. Everybody can only get worked up about the death of Superman so many times when you know he’ll be back in a couple months.

Comics will even go so far as to completely reboot their entire lineup and shared universe, and it’s all because they’re fighting against the intractable problem of endless episodic stories.

The State of Movies

The pandemic had a profound effect on movie theaters and theatrical releases, but the truth is that it only accelerated processes that were already in motion.

Movies today are a luxury item. Theaters have more screens, reserved seating, big fat recliner seats, restaurant food and a full bar. Taking my family of five to a movie is a significant outlay even if we only buy the tickets, and it’s very easy to spend over a hundred dollars on two hours of entertainment. Small, discount, and second-run theaters are essentially extinct.

The big studios are bigger than ever, and they’re putting more money into fewer movies. These bigger tentpole movies are designed to be as safe as possible, and are engineered by committee to appeal to a maximally broad audience.

It is in this environment that the superhero movie has ascended. I don’t necessarily think this environment boosted superheroes into pop culture. It may just be coincidence. However, superhero movies are the flavor du jour, and the current environment has resulted in maximum saturation. Disney spent billions to acquire Marvel and has continued to pour billions into it, and Disney will get its money’s worth. Same goes for DC and Warner, although they’re not quite as good at the money extraction process.

The State of Streaming

It’s easy to forget how young the streaming industry is. Netflix started streaming in 2007, and it didn’t really take off until 2010. The industry rode a decade of steady growth and market expansion into the pandemic boom, and now it’s quite possible that we have just entered the era of flat growth that will become the norm going forward. Prices are rising, everyone is adding commercials, and all of this looks awfully familiar to anyone who saw the rise of cable TV. Nobody knows yet how much people are willing to pay (in cash or commercial attention) or how many different services can coexist.

Early in Marvel’s meteoric rise, they released a few limited series on Netflix. These featured characters ranging from moderately popular (Daredevil) to almost unknown (Jessica Jones). These initial forays into superhero TV were largely self-contained, with real character arcs—although the origin story is always a bit of a freebie. The series were popular enough to warrant second seasons in a couple cases, and eventually a tie-in series that featured the whole Netflix superhero crew.

When the contracts between Disney and Netflix ran out, the new home of Marvel streaming became Disney+, and with this, they doubled-down on integrated stories. The movies told an ongoing, interwoven story, so why not include TV series in that and sell some subscriptions? Just as comics love crossovers to sell more issues across different lines, comics movies love crossovers to sell more tickets and subscriptions.

However, this also begs the question of just how many people are willing to see that many movies per year, and subscribe to the streaming service just to get the “whole story.”

The Present Moment

When the movie studios bought Marvel and DC, they bought a massive back-catalog of superhero stories. Decades of content, some of which is effectively modern mythology, it has so permeated modern society. From this huge backlog, they can pick and choose the best stories…for a while.

The studios wanted a return on their investments, and they have kept their foot on the gas for years now. They have burned through some of the biggest classic comics stories. Eventually they will have to look to more and more obscure and mediocre storylines, all that filler that kept those “endless episodic” stories going. Of course, they could take a chance on a brand new story, but big studios don’t like to take chances.

It seems inevitable that comics movies will fall into the same patterns as comics, only faster. The same forces are shaping them. The more history the movie universes accrue, the more is expected of new viewers to “catch up.” Big, integrated universes become weighed down by their history. The temptations of reboots and alternate universes grow ever stronger. Hell, we’ve already had multiple movies featuring multiple alternate-universe Spidermen.

The flavor du jour of movies will change. Just like Westerns, superhero movies will eventually discover that they can’t command the same budgets they once had. There will be less room for incredible effects and star-studded casts, and these are integral parts of the modern superhero movie formula.

There are even signs that the super-fans are tiring. I wasn’t even aware that there was a Secret War series on Disney+, until a wave of nerd-rage and complaining washed over Twitter. As someone who hasn’t watched these series, it was quite the contrast to the excitement that followed Wandavision or Loki. And even if you ignore bombs like Morbius, people just don’t seem to be talking as much about the current crop of movies as they did in the era of Endgame (or even Justice League).

The Future

People have been debating whether big-budget superhero movies have peaked for nearly the entire time studios have been making them. We could debate whether now is an inflection point, but it doesn’t really matter. It seems inevitable to me that there will be a hard turn sooner or later, followed by a significant decline. Nothing lasts forever.

As a somewhat-invested comics fan who is burnt-out on Marvel and DC, I think I’m a reasonable bellwether for the broad audience. Super-fans might stay invested longer.

On the other hand, the genre won’t go away completely, and that’s a good thing. Projects like the Spider-verse films and “off-brands” like Umbrella Academy or Sandman show the possibilities of less-integrated properties, less focus on classic superhero archetypes, and eschewing the “endless episodic” formulas.

Superhero movies are, in some ways, burdened by the need to be the 900lb. gorilla at the top of the hill. If budgets shrink and opportunities dwindle, it will force some limitations on the genre, and limitations breed creativity. If movies and shows are given smaller budgets, the people in charge of the money may be more willing to dig into the many weird and interesting corners of comics, taking on riskier projects on the chance that they hit big.

I’m hopeful that the future of comics movies will be filled with cheaper, smaller things, and more innovation. I’d love to see more exploration of less mainstream titles. I think the massive shared universes will eventually collapse, although I doubt any media based on comics can completely escape the gravity of cross-overs, alternate universes, and reboots. Even if the number of releases and the budgets decrease, the future of superhero media is bright. In fact, it’s likely to be better than an alternate universe where they remain big-budget blockbusters forever.

Reblog: On the State of Literary Magazines — Lincoln Michel

Today’s reblog is Lincoln Michel discussing the sorry state of short fiction magazines, which isn’t exactly anything new, but still worth paying attention to.

Check it out on Counter Craft.

I’m only just now learning of the fact that Amazon is no longer “publishing” periodicals on their Kindle platform. This seems bad, but they wouldn’t shut it down if it was making any significant money (although who knows where that line is at Amazon). It’s probably more a symptom of shrinking short fiction markets than a cause.

I have a few samples of these magazines on my Kindle. And I’m not subscribed to any of them. So I suppose I’m part of the problem.

When I first started writing, the fiction magazine landscape had already contracted quite a bit from the golden age, but it still seemed fairly strong. Magazines were the place to cut your teeth—standard advice was to submit short stories until you got good enough to publish, then publish short stories to build credibility for getting an agent to sell novels.

That old pipeline of short fiction into traditional publishing isn’t gone, but it seems like the funnel continues to narrow. Meanwhile, indie publishing has become a legitimate alternative for novels and novellas, but it’s no easier to stand out or make money as an indie, and I suspect hardly anyone is making money on indie short stories.

Maybe I should be grateful that I write SFF and there is still a professional short fiction scene at all. Maybe eventually they’ll all be non-paying or barely-paying markets.

The Read/Write Report

This week, instead of the usual storytelling class that I have with my daughter, we just set aside some time to write together. It was nice to have that time set aside, and I think we may switch to a schedule where we have our “class” every other week, and just have a scheduled writing time for the weeks in-between.

However, one of the things I’ve really enjoyed about our writing class (and documenting it on the blog) is the opportunity to review what I read and wrote over the past week. I figured I can continue to do that even if I don’t have a separate topic to discuss as well.

What I Read

I continued to work my way through The Unwritten, finishing volumes 5, 6 and 7. This series is my favorite read of the year so far, and quickly becoming one of my favorite graphic novel series of all time.

One of the tricks that The Unwritten pulls off amazingly well is the constant expansion of the story. It’s a mystery at its heart, with the main characters trying to figure out the motivations and powers of their enemies, and even trying to understand how the world around them actually works. In each volume, our understanding expands. We learn more about the world, which reveals more questions and raises the stakes.

I’m already thinking about a dedicated post talking about the series once I’ve finished, so I won’t dig too deep now, but I’m thoroughly enjoying it.

I’m continuing to read Dune aloud at bedtime with my oldest son. It has been years since I last read Dune, so I get to come at it with fairly fresh eyes.

I’ve been struck by Herbert’s style, which is equal parts florid and terse. He seems almost allergic to conjunctions, and is happy to connect multiple sentences with nothing more than commas. He frequently has paragraphs that consist of a single short sentence, or even a fragment. And yet, there are moments when he waxes poetic, when he’s describing the geography and environment of the desert planet Arrakis, or when delving into the characters’ thoughts on philosophy and politics.

Like many works of science-fiction that have been able to endure for decades, Dune is a strange book. It is a mix of prescient futurism and anachronism.

It is infused with environmentalism and ecological systems inextricably tied to the human populations that live within them. It offers a generally positive view of Islamic cultures. It imagines a universe where people have rejected artificial intelligence, and spent centuries exploring, advancing and honing the possible modes of human thought.

It also imagines a far-flung spacefaring society that is fundamentally feudal, governed by all-powerful emperors and lesser royals, where the populations of ordinary people have no meaningful say in the structure of their society. The only competition for power comes from the Spacing Guild, who monopolize space travel; the CHOAM company, who monopolize life-extending spice; and the Bene Gesserit, who use social, political, and even religious manipulation to infiltrate the other powers and perform experiments in long-term eugenics. Power is almost exclusively amoral and self-serving. It’s not the sort of future most of us would be eager to experience first-hand.

Having read all of the Dune books (at least the ones by Herbert himself), I never felt that any of them stood up to this first one in the series. They are interesting though, because they do a better job revealing Herbert’s interests in vast timelines; huge interconnected systems; and ideas of humanity behaving as a single collective organism, with the fates of individuals being dictated more by the drives of the super-creature than any individual choices they make.

What I Wrote

I got about halfway through Razor Mountain chapter 9. I also started writing a short story that I’m calling “The Incident at Pleasant Hills.” The idea was inspired by a Story Engine prompt, and I used a slightly modified version  of Firewater’s Cube brainstorming method to flesh out the characters and setting.

I think I was in need of other fiction to work on alongside Razor Mountain. I’m still enjoying writing Razor Mountain and I’m committed to finishing it, but it’s nice to have small things to work on alongside the novel that I know I’ll still be working on for months to come.

Storytelling Class With Freya

One of the joys of parenthood is when your children take an interest in an activity you love. You get the opportunity to teach them what you know and give them all the advice you wish you’d had. My nine-year-old daughter Freya recently lamented that English class was boring because she didn’t get to write stories. She said, “I wish I had a story writing class.” It took a lot of restraint for me to not jump up immediately and start singing “A Whole New World” from Aladdin. Instead, I immediately instituted a story writing class for just the two of us.

My daughter was kind enough to give me permission to post about our classes. Since we’re planning to meet once per week, this will be a new weekly feature until she gets bored or I run out of things to talk about.

Teaching writing to a child is an interesting exercise, and I don’t have a ton of experience teaching. My daughter is a smart cookie, but she doesn’t have a lot of experience writing or reading stories, having not been on this earth all that long. I think the key is to be flexible and adjust to her interests. The most important thing kids need for successful learning is enthusiasm.

For our first “class,” I decided to start with some general principles and try to find out what she was interested in.

Nobody Can Tell You How to Write

I started with an abridged version of my writing advice advice. There are many authors who have found success with wildly different methods that work for them. It’s great to study and find out what works for other people, but you ultimately have to synthesize your own systems from bits and pieces of others’ advice, along with your own discoveries.

I can give advice, but not all of it will work for you. Just take what works and don’t stress too much about what doesn’t.

Making Sense, Feeling Good

It’s important for (most) stories to make sense. They should have events that follow one after another logically. But that isn’t what makes a good story.

If you think about some of your favorite stories, you probably love them because they made you feel something. The “feeling” of a story, the emotions it evokes, is the real measure of its worth. It might be “happily ever after” and make you feel good, but it might also make you feel bad, scared, surprised or satisfied.

I think one of the many reasons humans are storytellers is because stories serve as a sort of experience by proxy. I will never know what it’s like in real life to be an astronaut stranded by myself on Mars. I’ll never know what it’s like to be a little person with hairy feet, sneaking to volcano to throw in a magic ring. But I can still experience these things vicariously through stories.

Doing It on Purpose

The most important things you can do to improve your writing are:

  • Read a lot
  • Write a lot
  • Seek advice and opportunities to learn from others

The human subconscious is a wonderful thing. Your subconscious can absorb ideas and techniques, even without you realizing that you’re absorbing it. Your subconscious instincts can take you a long way. Still, if you want to get better at writing, you can’t rely solely on your subconscious.

You want to be able to make choices and decide how to do things to achieve specific effects. To do that, you need to consciously learn different techniques and the ways to deploy them.

Questions and Homework

To finish, we discussed a few open-ended questions. These may seem a little silly, but I do think that it’s worth it for any writer to ask themselves overly-broad questions

  • What is a story?
  • Why do you read stories, and why do you enjoy them?
  • Why do you want to write stories?

I also asked Freya what she wanted to cover in these classes. She said that one thing she has trouble with is not finishing stories. I’ll admit, this is something I’ve occasionally had issues with as well. So that will be our topic for next time: finishing stories!

Writing Like Knitting

I wrote a poem today, which is not something I typically do. In fact, I didn’t intend to do it at all.

I was listening to Mike Birbiglia’s postcast, Working it Out. In episode 4, he talks about writing poetry with his wife, and Matt Berninger and Carin Besser of The National. They talked about all the people who are out there making creative work, but not showing or sharing it. Maybe not even having the desire to share. Mike seemed surprised and fascinated by the idea, and I also find it very strange to think about. Whenever I write, I always have the vague idea of a reader other than myself in mind.

They discussed working on a poem for years, “like knitting,” with no real concern or urgency for finishing it. In fact, specifically enjoying the not-doneness of it. Writing as a pass-time. Writing as a personal, private act, or peaceful meditation.

This idea really struck me. So even though I don’t write poetry, it felt fitting in the moment to write a poem about writing poems. I started writing, and before I knew it, a poem happened. I won’t vouch for the quality, but it was a fun little spontaneous act of creation. In fact, it was fun enough that I’m thinking I might delve into poetry again some time.

She Writes

She writes
Taps the keys
A poem, a secret, between her and the screen
Words are fluid
Day to day, month to month,
Year to year
Obsequious to whim and whimsy
To whatever mood takes her
That day
That year

The poems are not for others
They are hers
They are her
They are
A slow progression, knitting
Bonsai trimming
Cutting hair
No desire to share
To show
Not greedy
Just comfortable in the words
In the middle of making
No concern
For done

Is Cyberpunk Retro-Futurism Yet?

The author of Neuromancer – the book widely considered to have kicked-off the cyberpunk genre – says it’s now a retro-future. That’s pretty interesting, considering how much high-profile cyberpunk seems to still be happening.

For those who don’t follow video games, Cyberpunk 2077 was perhaps the most hotly anticipated game of 2020 (before it ended up releasing late, dogged by accusations of employee abuse and so buggy that refunds were offered on some platforms). Blade Runner 2049 was a lauded, big-budget movie just three years ago. And most of the streaming services have their own recent cyberpunk offerings.

Through five decades, we received a steady, if inconsistent, stream of cyberpunk literature, cinema, television and games. Not only that, but it gave us an almost absurd number of ___-punk sister genres, cribbing the dystopian outsider aesthetic and patching in various kinds of technology.

Death of a Genre?

Unlike most genres that take place in the present or a particular historical era, most science fiction has a built-in shelf life. While most people might be able to look past the 2019 “future” date of the original Blade Runner or the clunky flip-phones of The Matrix, there comes a certain point where an imagined future starts to feel stale.

The parts of these retro-futures that actually came to pass seem somehow more depressing, more mundane, more obvious when we live inside them every day. The predictions that failed often seem further away than they did before, or outright absurd.

Some of cyberpunk’s staying power might owe to pop media’s perpetual mining and re-mining of nostalgia for remakes, reboots, sequels and spiritual successors. Cyberpunk has also accumulated plenty of visual and tonal markers that have been used (and abused) to provide quick and shallow style. For every Matrix, there’s an Equilibrium or Aeon Flux.

It seems clear that if cyberpunk does die, it will be a slow, sighing death. Most science-fiction genres and styles don’t go away completely. They inform the sub-genres and successors that follow, transforming or splintering.

Where is the Center of the Universe?

Back on Twitter, Aaron suggests that the future is in “Gulf Futurism, Sino Futurism, Afro Futurism.” It’s not hard to see that these are all sub-genres with very different geographical and cultural centers from old-school cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is rooted in extrapolations of 1980s American culture. Even when it goes as far afield as Hong Kong, it’s more 1980s British Hong Kong than post-handover Chinese Hong Kong. The neon hanzi are largely window-dressing.

There is certainly a deep vein of anxiety in America that suggests that the country’s cultural and economic influence on the future is waning. That refrain seems to be getting louder, not quieter. Meanwhile, other places in the world are seeing their cultural and economic influence grow at breakneck pace, even as technology upends old norms and traditions.

Gulf futurism centers the world on the Arabian Gulf, while Sino Futurism looks at the future through a Chinese lens. Afro Futurism explores futures and themes not only centered on the African continent, but also on African diaspora and the complex intersections of culture and history that brings.

Cyber, Solar, Bio or Steam

Other Twitter responses mention solarpunk and biopunk, offshoots that focus less on traditional cyberpunk technologies like AI and VR, and instead explore the consequences of things like environmental disaster, climate change, and runaway biotechnology. In a world where climate change becomes more apparent every day, these themes are more relevant than ever.

Meanwhile, there are many other derivatives that shift the aesthetic from futuristic to fantastic. Genres like steampunk and dieselpunk are more fantasy than science-fiction, enjoying anachronistic alternate universe playgrounds that are concerned with the themes of the last century rather than the themes of the upcoming one.

Fodder for the Reading List

Cyberpunk will continue, in some form or another, but it’s getting long in the tooth. Maybe its latest micro-renaissance will prove to have interesting things to say about our modern dystopian world. And even if it doesn’t, it’s interesting to see the genre splintering in so many different directions. If nothing else, these tweets have inspired me to sample some of these other sub-genres.