How to Critique: Best Practices for Workshopping

This week sees the book getting officially launched on Wednesday. This week I’ll be doing a series of five posts about the interior art. Comment on a post to be entered to win one of three pieces of Near + Far jewelry; comment on all five posts and you’ll be entered five times.

So left to right above are five of the interior illustrations from the book. One of the things Mom said to me last night was how much she was enjoying the afternotes, so I’m trying not to repeat those too much, but to add a touch more to them.

Leftmost is a star like pattern, which accompanies far future story “Timesnip,” in which 18th century Victoria Woodhull copes with life in the future as a traveling saleswoman dealing in time travel. It’s actually a version of one of the other illustrations, arranged in a star cluster, which mark didn’t point out to me till later. That seems very fitting, given the circularity of the story.

The second pattern is one that accompanies the story “Amid the Words of War.” Its cramped interior echoed the desperation on Six’s part that I wanted to convey over the course of the story. The story is about war and conflict and the distrust they force on each other. The pieces in the book are black and white and here Mark’s chosen to create a white “eye” for a number of the illustrations which (to me) just adds to the coolness and makes each one become a creature presenting itself sideways to the camera.

The third design accompanies the story “Kallakak’s Cousins”. Again, there’s that eye looking out, and sometimes it’s a creature and sometimes a face, sometimes a helmet built of butterflies and submarines.

The fourth accompanies a flash piece, “Futures.” It resembles a submarine, or perhaps a rocket ship, although once more there’s an eye, set dead center in this case.

The fifth is used with the slipstream afterlife story, “Bus Ride to Mars.” It’s one of Mark’s older pieces, a sideways slash of a piece that appears differently in here than in the book itself.

I’ve been following the controversy with Galaktika with particular interest because there are a number of SFWA members involved. My thanks to A. G. Carpenter for graciously sharing what they found out. In the process of talking to people, I dropped Istvan Burger a mail because I had these questions:

1. Would all writers be paid, preferably without their having to contact Galaktika?
2. Would all translators be paid? (my understanding was that the same lack of payment has happened with them.)
3. For any online stories, would authors be able to request that the story be taken down?
4. Would a process be put in place to ensure this never happens again?

Here’s the reply:

Dear Cat,
I’m writing on behalf of Istvan Burger, editor in chief of Galaktika.

We’d like to ask authors to contact us directly to agree on compensation methods. You can give my email address to the members. mund.katalin@gmail.com

The short stories were published in a monthly magazine, which was sold for two months, so these prints are not available any more. So Authors don’t need to withdraw their works. As we wrote in our statement, there is no problem with novels, as all the rights of novels were paid by us in time.

Also let me emphasise again that all the translators were paid all the time!

You can quote my reply. Thank you for your help!

Best regards,
Katalin Mund,
Manager of Galaktika Magazine

Next week SFWA will be sending Galaktika a list of affected SFWA members who need to be compensated. If you’re a member whose work was published in Galaktika and want to make sure you’re on the list, please drop me an e-mail, message me, or leave a comment here.

Later addendum: I requested clarification about the magazine not being available for longer than two months since there seem to be digital editions for sale on the website, which would seem to contradict that statement. I was told that authors will be able to withdraw their stories from the electronic editions if they so desire.