Robert K. J. Killheffer is editor of the much-lauded Century magazine. He generously agreed to do this interview which was conducted entirely by e-mail and I would like to thank him for the time and effort he spent with me. -- James A. Hartley

Q. How did you first become involved with Century?

I first became "involved" with Century when Meg Hamel and I were talking about the state of the short fiction market and decided to put some paper where our mouths were, and launch a magazine to showcase some of the work that we felt wasn't getting published often enough in the existing markets. That was about, hmm, April 1993.

Q. Could you give me a little of your own history?

I went to high school in Branford, Connecticut, where most of my family still lives (graduated in 1984); attended Yale University from 1984-1988, beginning as a computer science major but ending up with a degree in history (concentrating on the European medieval period); came to New York in the summer of '88 to get into publishing. My first job was with Van Nostrand Reinhold, a publisher of technical books; while I was there I got involved with a little review and criticism magazine called The New York Review of Science Fiction, and through the people I met there I heard when Ellen Datlow, fiction editor at Omni magazine, was in need of an assistant. I applied, got the job, and worked for her from May 1989 to about June 1993. While working for her I also started doing many other things at Omni, including writing and editing nonfiction pieces, so in my later years there I was simultaneously the assistant fiction editor and an assistant editor on the nonfiction side. I also maintained my involvement with The New York Review of SF during those years, and started writing lots of book reviews for Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and occasionally The Washington Post Book World and other places. Late in 1993, though, I had to choose whether to move to Greensboro, North Carolina (in order to continue working with Omni) or not, and I chose not. I spent 1994 working as a freelance writer, but found that a bit too stressful financially; in early 1995 I took a job with TV Guide helping to launch their online version, and when that fell apart early in 1996 I shifted over to Simon & Schuster, working in their online division, and have now rejoined the staff at Omni (which had in the meanwhile gone out of print and into a totally electronic/WWW-based form). During that time, of course, I was also launching Century.

Q. Where did the name "Century" come from?

The name "Century" developed out of hours and hours of brainstorming between Meg Hamel and myself, and I can't really think of any particular source for it. I was aware of the old Century magazine of the 19th and early 20th centuries, but we're not really modeled on that at all. Titling our new venture was perhaps the hardest single issue along the way, and in the end I think we chose Century because it had the closest ring in its tone to what we're trying to do with the magazine: it echoes some of the futurism and speculation of science fiction but remains ambiguous enough to cover the more mainstreamy side of what we do.

Q. Century publishes a good range of quality stories. What sort of stories do you personally prefer?

I don't know that it's possible for me to say what kind or sort of story I prefer, in any meaningful concrete sense. If you look at what I've published in Century, you'll see that I have certain leanings: I like some texture in the writing, I like historical settings, and so forth. But the fact is what I choose for Century is not representative of every kind of writing that I like; Century has a certain personality and focus that I feel was underrepresented in the SF field, but it doesn't contain nearly everything that I like. For instance, I have long been a very avid fan of Robert E. Howard's work, both his Conan stories and his others; it's hard for me to imagine that I'd include anything like that in Century. But if there's any strand that connects the many different kinds of writing that I like, from Century stories through R. E. Howard, I guess it's a certain conviction behind the writing, a commitment on the part of the writer, a feeling that comes across between or behind the lines that says "this matters."

It's an emotional investment on the part of the writer that tends to draw me most, I think. I don't know if I'm communicating my feelings on this very well--I have yet to find quite the right way to say it--but I think the example of Howard shows it well. To many people's eye he's just writing sword-and-sorcery stuff, barbarians and wizards etc., but the reason I think his work has stood up over the years, and why it spawned a sub-genre of its own, is that he believed in what he was writing about--not necessarily in a literal sense, though often enough that was true too, but in an emotional and philosophical sense. Howard was writing to sell, sure, but at his best he was also writing in an attempt to work things out within himself, and it's that genuine emotional presence that I think you can still feel in his work.

Q. There have been slow periods in Century's production. Is this likely to improve?

Well, we're just coming out of a "slow period," that's for sure: nearly a year without an issue. Will that improve? I certainly hope so. We've faced all the same problems any other start-up small press magazine does in terms of money and time: no one's making any money off of this yet, and Meg and I have to keep our day jobs in order to pay the rent and so on. We're making some changes now both in the magazine itself and in how we're marketing it in an effort to make it more profitable, and if we succeed at that, then sure, we'll start keeping to a regular schedule. Believe me, there's nothing we'd like more. I guess the main point to make is that it hasn't been from a lack of quality material--we've had all the stuff for issues #5 and #6 for months and months now--nor from a lack of enthusiasm that we've had a spotty publication schedule; it's from the usual ups and downs of getting a magazine going on limited capital, and also from the less usual potholes that have struck our personal lives (Meg's and mine, mostly mine). As you might imagine, changing jobs twice in a year (as I have in 1996) doesn't help.

Q. What are some of your pet peeves with submissions?

Pet peeves with submissions: I probably have most of the ones any other editor does. I wish more people would take a look at what Century publishes before submitting, that's for sure; 95% of the stuff I get clearly indicates that the writer hasn't a clue what we're interested in. I wish people would read the guidelines before submitting: even some of those who write first for a copy of the guidelines then violate them two or three ways when they send their material. I wish they'd spell my name correctly, or even nearly so; you can't imagine some of the hash people have made of it in their cover letters. Stuff like that last point, though, that's just kind of funny, more than anything else; it doesn't have any impact whatsoever on the likelihood of the writer selling me their work. All that matters there is the work itself.

Q. What advice have you for writers who plan to submit to Century?

Advice for writers: well, some of the above applies here already. Read the guidelines, check out the magazine. Be patient (he said only half-jokingly; but we're going to be on a much friendlier response schedule soon, so it shouldn't be such a problem forever). Beyond that I'd say read what I said above, about the kinds of stories I like, very carefully--put something genuine about yourself into your stories. That's what will make them right for me, and what I think will make them read years from now.

Q. How is the slush pile at Century dealt with?

Our slush pile goes like this: all the submissions come to our post office box here in Brooklyn. We open the mail and log each submission in (author, title, date received). I'll go through and pick out stories I think I should read first--writers I know or have heard of, etc. --and I set aside another bunch that look like they might be interesting; these I give to my assistant editor, Jenna Felice, for her to read first. She'll let me know if there's anything there I should take a look at. The rest of it is her responsibility, and given the realities of our daily schedules she tends to go through it in weekend binges, perhaps reading through a whole month's submissions on a Saturday afternoon. Once in a while we'll recruit some of our other publishing friends to come over and lend a hand, if the backlog has gotten too great.

Q. Is there an ongoing mission for Century?

A mission? I wouldn't describe it that way. We're hoping we can keep publishing for many years, and that we can do so profitably or at least without pouring too much of our own capital into the well year in and year out. We want to keep publishing the same sort of material--powerful stories chosen without regard to genre or subgenre, but just because they're great stories. But this isn't a "mission." We're not trying to proselytize or convert people; we won't have time to do that. If they're not already interested in the sort of thing we're doing, they're not going to keep picking up our issues and waiting for our preaching to sink in. And we're not trying to change the world, except insofar as to create a venue for the kind of writing we love.

Q. Century has a reputation as one of the better small press 'zines. Do you ever see it going to the level of a full pro-zine?

I think we're intending to get Century into the category of full pro-zine--that's only a matter of numbers, anyway, how many copies we get out and how much we pay. In some ways we're already treated as a pro-zine, in terms of what kinds of writers are sending their work to me and how seriously people are taking what we publish. But I will say that I think we're never going to be selling as many copies as Asimov's or SF Age or F&SF; I don't think there really are that many readers out there hungry for what we can give them. It's like the market for literary novels; once in a great while a novel with some serious literary ambition sells tens of thousands of copies in hardcover, but for the most part a novel like that has to expect much smaller numbers. Still, such a book can be considered a success, even financially. That's the way it'll be for us, I think. We'll never be moving a hundred thousand copies, but we hope to get high enough to have a long and lasting life in the field.

Q. Century is fairly well known for a comparatively lengthy turn-around time on stories. Why is this?

Our lengthy turnaround time: Go ahead, you can say it--we're probably the slowest boat out there. Well, I should say we have been the slowest; we've made some changes that should lead to a much faster response time in 1997 and beyond. Why have we been so slow? A lot of it has to do with the factors I mentioned in answering your question about our erratic publication schedule: day jobs and other paying commitments sometimes coming before Century work. But that's not the whole story, certainly, since every small magazine faces those issues and many others keep to a much shorter response time.

The fact is that I've held us to some very high standards in terms of record-keeping and the like that have added a lot of extra time to the processing of submissions; it comes from my time at Omni, where we kept very good records and prided ourselves on that. (This is one of the areas where I've instituted some changes, so that we're still keeping some records, but nowhere near the detail and obsessiveness that we had.)

And it also comes from my personal goal of offering every writer some kind of personal feedback. I've always enjoyed writing letters back with substantial comments on why I didn't take a story, and I set out with Century thinking that by sheer force of will I could find the time to give everyone at least a little bit of concrete feedback. Clearly this started to falter right away, and after a while we fell back on a form letter; then we started using it more often; and now we're using it more often still. But it was that well-intentioned goal of offering personal feedback that led me down the road to terminal belatedness, and it's only been with a large helping of regret that I've let the form letter become such a large part of our process.

The final factor is that once you've fallen behind, it becomes really hard to catch up. We get enough submissions that just keeping up with the new ones pushes us to the limit some months; trying to get through several months of backlog can prove impossible. At any rate, as I said above, we've made some changes and compromises that should bring the response time down to less stratospheric levels.

Q. One of Century's stated philosophies is to blur the boundaries of genre distinction. This is an ambitious goal within the genre market place. Where did this goal come from, and what is its ultimate aim?

Blurring the boundaries of genre: The goal comes from the same conversations that gave birth to Century in the first place. We weren't starting a magazine just to do what the other magazines were already doing perfectly well; it was because we had a fondness for stories that tended to blur those lines, and the existing magazines didn't publish enough of them to satisfy us. But I think I should make one thing clear: blurring the lines isn't the goal in and of itself: we think that by blurring the genre boundaries certain literary possibilities are born, and its those possibilities that we're after. And that's its ultimate aim: to create a market space where certain kinds of stories can be told and read, many of which might not be tellable within standard genre blueprints.

Q. The first issue was published in 1995. You've been well rated in various media since then. To what do you attribute this success?

Our success: Well, you're asking a tough question there; how can I answer this without seeming to toot my own horn? I have to believe what success we've had critically comes first and foremost from us doing our main job well: choosing stories that live up to a standard of ambition and quality and that do the things we wanted to see done (like blurring genre lines). But I guess you could say that, at a deeper level, it comes from us having been right that there are readers out there who agree with us: who are looking for the kind of fiction we're publishing, and praising us for doing so. No matter how well we did our job, if there weren't receptive readers out there we wouldn't have received the good press that we have. Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, it's due to the writers we've been lucky enough to attract; in the end, no matter how much editing I can do or how much care I exercise in my selection, it's the writers whose work has been earning our praise, and we owe it to them.

Q. You seem to include a number of relatively new authors in Century. Is this a deliberate policy?

No, we haven't got any sort of deliberate policy of featuring new authors in Century. I think we've had so many for two reasons: (1) There's nothing more exciting about the business of editing than finding a writer who you've never known before--and being able to bring them to the attention of a readership; this is another reason why my response time has often been so much slower than others'--I'm very interested in finding high-quality work by people whose names I don't know, so I'll tend to read more of the slush pile myself. (2) We have to be open to new writers, since as a new and still relatively small-scale magazine we aren't going to make a living off of the best-known and best-established names. I knew right off that in order to succeed at filling Century's pages with work of the type and quality that I wanted, I was going to have to do a lot of leg work to find it.

Q. Century maintains a web page, like many other publications. What do you see as the future of paper publishing? Are there any plans for Century to eventually go the e-zine route?

Yes, we've got a web site, and it's been very useful for us in spreading information about Century. It's essentially a marketing and promotional tool more than a publishing format, and I think that's largely the way it's going to stay for some time to come. I don't think you'll ever see paper publishing die out (though in the long long term, who can say? the Egyptians didn't think they'd see their culture vanish either).

Right now people are finding out that certain kinds of information and entertainment can be delivered effectively through the online medium, and over the next few years you'll see several successful online-only publishing ventures, I think. But I doubt the first ones will be primarily fiction based. It'll be nonfiction, reference tools, that sort of thing (with any luck, it'll be Omni --that's what we're hoping to do there). Think of something like the Encyclopedia Brittanica, which is available online for about $300/year; it's a chunk of change, but compare it to buying the print version for like $3,000--and it's already out of date when it's delivered to your house. The online version is constantly updated, so over the ten years that you'll pay the same $3,000 for it you'll have access to the latest version at all times. That's the sort of thing I think the online medium will do best, earliest.

Will fiction ever become a major part of online publishing? Perhaps, especially if the technology develops to the point where it's less cumbersome to read online. If people can have book-sized viewers with resolution as good as the printed page, into which they can download the work they'd like to read. What I think you'll see first there, though, strangely enough, will be the things that right now sell the most copies in print, not the fewest: things like Stephen King or John Grisham, airplane reads that most people buy and leave on the flight or throw away. They'll download something instead. It's things like literary novels or Century that I think will survive longest in print, because we're appealing to an audience that tends to love the tactile experience of reading as well as the mental one. We like the feel of paper, we like to keep books and magazines for future reading, we like to surround ourselves with bookshelves. Paper fetishizers like us will always be interested in print editions, and there are enough of us to keep the print publishing of smaller-scale projects up and running. So no, there are no plans for Century to go the e-zine route. But ask me again in a year or so; who knows what changes the publishing world will have seen by then?

Q. As an editor, do you pay attention to cover letters? Would any particular inclusion in a covering letter spark your interest?

Cover letters: I tend to glance at them, mainly, and they are useful in giving me a quick sense of who the writer is--if the writer's got any significant fiction credits, they should certainly let me know--but otherwise they're just a courtesy, really. A manuscript with a cover letter looks neater, more professional. But better no cover letter than one that's way too long. I've gotten stories with three-page, single-spaced cover letters, and that's just a pain. For one thing, I've got to dig through all that to see if there's any pertinent information--i.e., writing credits, or has the story already been published somewhere, etc. And for another, it doesn't send a good message about the writer's sense of economy. With a three-page cover letter, I'm going to come to that story worried that I'll find it just as long-winded.

Q. Where do you see speculative fiction going over the next few years?

Where do I see speculative fiction going? I don't know, and I'm not sure anyone does. There are some likely trends--did you know that I've been writing overviews of the SF publishing field for Publishers Weekly for several years now? --such as the continuing split of the field into media-related, tie-in material (which makes the most money) and the more original but less financially successful literary SF, but it's hard to predict even with such large-scale trends; last year lots of publishers bet big that the tie-in market would grow to even huger proportions, and they bought up lots of projects tied to just about anything they could find; most of those things lost money, and now everyone's backing off of the tie-in thing for a bit. The general trend, though, I think will continue, in the sense that the audience for "speculative fiction" will continue to bifurcate: on the one hand you'll have a large and vocal segment who know SF only or primarily as a phenomenon of the visual media (movies, TV, comics) and buy books that derive from those areas, and on the other you'll have a smaller but still quite viable market of readers who know and love SF as a literary phenomenon and want to continually rediscover the head-kicks and mind-twists that brought them to the material in the first place. That latter group is the audience for Century.

Copyright © 1997 by James A. Hartley. All Rights Reserved.