Sometimes you find someone who gets it

I'm kind of puzzled why some people are still rehashing the 2015 Hugo nominations. That dead horse was beaten into discrete atoms months ago.

Having said that, on the blog "Women Write About Comics", Doris V. Doris Sutherland has been comparing 2015 versus 2014 nominees for a while. On Thursday her post "2014 Hugos Versus 2015 Sad Puppies: Related Works" caught my attention because she had a very fair and perceptive review of "Letters from Gardner".

She's the only person I know who actually "got" the one story that was never formally published:

"The stories themselves are hit or miss—Antonelli cheerfully admits that a few of them were rejected for good reason—but there are some strong works on offer. For my money, the best part of the book is a chapter entitled “In the Wake of the Columbia Tragedy.” Here, Antonelli describes his reaction to the shuttle disaster of 2003, which occurred over his home state of Texas. To exorcise his psychological demons following the terrible incident, he wrote a story called “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” in which a man finds a strange crab-like being amongst debris from the crash. The protagonist realises that it is a parasite that evolved to live off spacecraft, and was responsible for destroying Columbia; he then kills it in disgust.

"Gardner Dozois rejected the story on the reasonable grounds that, while Antonelli’s motives were heartfelt, a reader could easily misinterpret the story as crass exploitation. The chapter gives insight into the creative processes of both Antonelli and Dozois, which it places into historical context..."

Here is the full article.

Sutherland was equally perceptive in December when she discussed my short story nominee, "On a Spiritual Plane:

"Antonelli acknowledges that his background as a journalist shows through in his fiction. In some of his stories, the matter-of-fact clarity of his writing style works in his favour. With “On the Spiritual Plane”, however, he picked a subject that is just too subtle to fit his authorial approach."

Which, in reflection is probably quite true.

But I tried.