The science fiction world is abuzz today with the news that Gardner Dozois is stepping down as the editor of Asimov's. Gardner has been the editor there for 19 years, and has guided not just that magazine, but perhaps the whole field of short SF fiction. He brought literary respectability to Asimov's, and also edited the definitive annual SF anthology series, The Year's Best Science Fiction, now in its 21st year. Before that, he edited another "best of the year" anthology series. He also edits several themed anthologies each year. He is today what John Campbell was in SF's golden age.

I never was able to sell anything to Gardner, although I sent him many stories. That's been one of my goals as a writer, to break into the Asimov's stable and sell Gardner some work. But it won't happen now. Perhaps I was just an "Analog author" to him, and his dislike of Analog was pretty clear. Both of my AnLab award-winning stories, as well as the one story I managed to place on the Nebula preliminary ballot spent some time in Gardner's slush pile before selling elsewhere. Apparently, I couldn't sell him my best work.

Perhaps I'll still sell something to Gardner one day. He's still going to edit The Year's Best Science Fiction as far as I know, so there's still hope for that, as well as his other anthologies. Gardner gave my stories a bunch of "honorable mentions" in some of those anthologies, so he probably didn't hate my work. He just didn't like it enough to buy.

Maybe I'll have better luck selling work to the new editor of Asimov's, Sheila Williams. I certainly can't do any worse than I did with Gardner. Time will tell.