Amazing and NBC Kiss and Make Up

Only 10 days ago Steve Davidson was telling Amazing Stories readers, in “More NBC Bullshit”

It’s not gonna happen.  I want nothing to do with NBC and I want them to have nothing to do with Amazing Stories.

If that sounded final – surprise! You can throw that memo in the trash. Here’s the new plan, announced today in Steve’s editorial.

Well, it looks like there is a deal to be had with NBC.  Right now the lawyers and I are waiting for a draft proposal of our verbal discussions/agreements.  Then we’ll review.  I’ve yet to get through that stage of a negotiation without some changes being necessary, but rarely, if ever are those of the deal-breaker kind, so it certainly seems (with appropriate reservation) that we’ll be signing some time in the relatively near future.

Whatever the exact terms may turn out to be, Davidson says in “Plans” there will be enough money to let him to realize his long-held ambition of acquiring fiction for publication on the Amazing Stories website:

I believe that the initial revenue from the NBC deal will allow us to pay better than SFWA rates for at least one short story per week, so that’s what we’re going to do, at least to start.

Follow on to that will be the bundling together of three month’s worth of stories (12+) in an e-magazine issue and POD book, which will be titled Amazing Stories Quarterly.  I’m hoping that we’ll also be able to afford a couple of bonus stories that will initially only be available in the Quarterly editions.

Beyond that he expects to do a re-design of the Amazing Stories website by the beginning of 2018, and to start a club or membership organization.

12 thoughts on “Amazing and NBC Kiss and Make Up

  1. That’s good news. Hopefully a big enough truck full of money backed up to Amazing’s door to let Steve do what he wants.

  2. Having another paying site for short SF is good news. However, I wonder about the guidelines; beginning with a desire for “positive” stories seems limiting. I remember Scithers looking for the same thing in the early days of Asimov’s; I wonder whether it would have dominated the short-fiction Hugos if he hadn’t been replaced by an editor with wider taste. I also wonder whether that will be an unintended source of bias (contrary to the stated aim); do minority writers, given the real world they’re dealing with, produce as high a fraction of positive stories as SWMs? (cf reports that SWMs are less likely to believe that racism is an issue than other sections of the populace.)

  3. Well, they had a deal before and then NBC never paid. So I’ll withhold celebrating until Steve says he’s been paid this time.

  4. Mike may not have seen it, but I also explained some of the rhetoric in a post on Facebook, where I also asked everyone to hold this incident in abeyance as they judge the show. In other words, when he show airs, give it an honest go.

    @Chip: I’m not the only one calling for positive SF; in fact, several authors I approached (who have written positive SF) were unable to participate in my plans because they have joined another group with the same goal(s).

    When I say positive, I mean outlook. At the end of a story, things may not have gotten better, but the reader should believe they’re going to: maybe there is a way for pilot and stowaway to both stay alive….

  5. If all we wanted was positive outlooks, then we would be trashing many of the great classics of SF; “if this goes on…” does not always have a good outcome. I do hope Steve reconsiders this simplistic absurdity.

  6. There’s room for a publication that focuses on positive stories, just as there’s room for publications that focus on horror stories, or steampunk stories, or urban fantasy stories, or….

    It’s a great big slushpile out there; I don’t see a problem with publishers focusing on whichever niche market they’re most interested in.

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