In the "Real World", Charlie Ryan is a newspaperman. He started in 1971 as a reporter for the the Woburn Daily Times Chronicle. In 1979, Ryan was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for a series of investigative articles exposing the illegal dumping of toxic waste in Woburn by several local corporations. Ryan became managing editor of the WDTC in 1981, but by 1995, he'd decided it was time for a change and "went over to the Dark Side", taking on a position as Applications/Software Manager for Essex County Newspapers, one of the few papers in the US which are completely electronically paginated; nothing goes down on paper until the edition is produced by the printer.

Like most of us, Charlie Ryan got bit by the SF bug early in life and read anything and everything he could find. His first experience with the magazine business was in the early 70s, when he worked as a volunteer for Fiction magazine in Boston. In 1975, Fiction editor Vincent McCaffrey decided to do a special issue devoted to SF. Since Ryan was the in-house expert on the genre, McCaffrey put him in charge of the project. The special issue was so popular McCaffrey decided to try publishing an SF magazine. Ryan took the helm as editor and a year later Galileo debuted at the 1976 WorldCon in Kansas City. It was an immediate hit.

Although Galileo garnered much critical and popular acclaim, money troubles forced the magazine to fold in 1980. A few years passed in relative noramlity, but Ryan missed doing Galileo and began to put together plans for another magazine. Aboriginal SF was launched in 1986.

CB: "So where did that name come from?"

RYAN: "At that time there was Analog, and Asimov's, and Amazing, which had all been around for a while. We looked at those names and realized that newer authors -- the people we wanted to focus on -- would use one of two methods to choose who they'd submit to. Some writers would submit first to whoever paid the most, but there are lots of others who just go through the list alphabetically, so we wanted a name that would put us near the front of the market list.

First I thought of "Aardvark", but then I thought I remembered a fanzine with that name and I didn't want people to get confused. Then we thought of "Aboriginal", and came up with this whole story about an alien anthropologist who'd been been sent to Earth to study the indigenous population -- the Aboriginals -- and got so intrigued by science fiction that he started to beam it back as part of his reports to his home world. So each issue of the magazine was supposed to be one of these field reports, which we'd intercepted and printed up.

Sure, it was a cornball gimmick -- but it worked!"

CB: "The Aboriginal masthead lists 'a crazy alien' as the publisher, and each issue contains an column by the alien. Just who is this crazy alien?"

RYAN: "The guy who writes "A Message From Our Alien Publisher" is Floyd Kemske. Outside of Aboriginal, he's a novelist who's created his own little 'niche', sort of 'corporate dysfunctional' fiction. He's written several books -- Lifetime Employment, and Virtual Boss, to name a couple. I've seen reviewers compare him to Aldous Huxley."

CB: "Aboriginal publishes a pretty diverse selection of SF stories. What kind of stories do you prefer?"

RYAN: "First, we never get enough real, actual, Hard SF -- SF in which the scientific premise is as much a character in the story as the characters themselves. I think it was Bob Eggleton [prize-winning SF artist] who told me one of the best definitions I've heard of Hard SF. He said 'It's the kind of story where, if you remove the science, it just doesn't work.'

I think I and every other editor out there are up to our armpits in 'social SF', because it's relatively easy to do. You don't need a strong science background to come up with workable stories. I think it's hard to get good Hard SF because it's hard to find people who're knowledgable with cutting edge science and also have the literary skills to tell a good story.

The other thing we never get enough of is good humorous SF. We get a lot of stories where the author might think something is funny, but it really isn't. What many writers don't seem to realize is that there's a fine line between humor and slapstick. Also, I tend to like things a little on the bizarre side."

CB: "As you mentioned earlier, Aboriginal has always been very open to new writers. Who are some of the people who've gotten their start in the pages of Aboriginal?"

RYAN: "Well, Kristine Kathryn Rusch [currently editor at F&SF], for one. While she might have sold to F&SF before us, her work appeared first in Aboriginal, a couple of months before it did in F&SF.

"Patricia Anthony [Cold Allies], of course. Jonathan Lethem [Gun, with Occasional Music]. Bob Metzger [Quadworld]."

CB: "What are your pet peeves about some of the submissions you get?"

RYAN: "#1 is people who think they need to introduce their stories with ten pages of encyclopedic background. Face it, no one's going to read ten pages of exposition just to get to the real beginning of the story.

"Another common thing we see are stories written by people who don't read any SF, but try to write it anyway. Some of these people may be decent writers, but they don't have any idea what makes a story SF. They think that watching a couple of tv series with SF settings is all the background they need, but all that really gives them is the most cliched plot lines."

"A third type of story I hate to see is something I call the 'imitative fallacy.' It's a kind of literary style where the author tries to be so realistic that you end up reading a list of details instead of a story. You've got to remember, you're writing fiction, and fiction is a lie. Fiction isn't reality, it isn't every little detail, only the ones that you need to tell the story. You've got to lie to tell the truth in fiction."

CB: "What advice do you have for writers planning to submit to Aboriginal?"

RYAN: "First of all, read. Read everything, not just SF. Read Shakespeare, read Melville, Conrad... If you think you can write without reading, you can't."

"And then, be self judgmental. Learn to critique your work. Don't think that because you finally got it down on paper, it's gold. Set it aside for a few days, a week, a month, and then read it again with a critical eye."

CB: "Have you ever rejected a story and later wished you'd bought it?"

RYAN: "Only once. I told the author I thought it was more of a mainstream story and suggested she try it in that market, and if it didn't sell, to send it back to me. But the manuscript got lost."

CB: "Have you ever written any SF?"

RYAN: "I plead the 5th Ammendment."

CB: "How does the slush pile/reading process work at Aboriginal?"

RYAN: "Each manuscript generally goes through two readers before I get it. I do read every manuscript. One problem smaller magazines like Aboriginal have is that things work in cycles. When you get near publication time, you get caught up in proofreading and all the stuff you need to do to get the next issue out, and reading get temporarily pushed to the side. Every so often things will pile up and I'll go into 'Crash and Burn' mode. I'll read the first couple of paragraphs of a manuscript and if it looks pretty good, I'll set it aside to read the whole thing later. If the opening is going badly, I'll skip to the middle and read a few paragraphs, then skip to the end. That way I can see if the beginning was just slow, and then things got better, or not."

CB: "Nobody likes to get rejections, but one good thing about Aboriginal's is that you use a checklist rather than a form letter. What are the most common things you check off?"

RYAN: " 'Too expository', 'weak characters', and 'the plot isn't strong enough, or doesn't begin soon enough'. If a story gets rejected, it's usually because of one or more of those three things."

CB: "Have you always used the checklist rejection?"

RYAN: "Yes, even when I was doing Galileo. Most people really appreciate getting some feedback on their work, although every once in a while I'll get a letter from somebody I rejected who wants to argue about the reasons checked off."

CB: "Every slush pile reader has a hundred horror stories about things they've seen in the slush pile. What's your worst one?

RYAN: "You mean besides getting manuscripts on fanfolded computer printouts printed on both sides? Or stories printed in green ink on fuschia paper?

"Three or four years ago I got a letter and manuscript purportedly from an agent. In the cover letter, the 'agent' said the author of the story was terminally ill, and it was really important to him that he get something in print before he died. It went on to say they'd even be willing to waive payment for the story, as long as I'd publish it.

"I returned the manuscript with a letter explaining that I didn't believe in lying to someone about the quality of their work, especially under those circumstances. Never heard from that agent or author again."

CB: "Aboriginal has just come back from a hiatus of nearly two years. What kind of changes did you have to make to bring the magazine back?"

RYAN: "Since we don't really have a full time staff, we had to divest some of the work. With my mom's illness and the demands of my new job, I can't juggle hours like I used to. Pawn Press is handling the business end of things now.

"On the other hand, we're trying to build more variety into the magazine, adding new features. One that we've already started doing is a series of 'guest' science pieces. Our Spring '96 issue had an article by David Brin on the Millenium, and I have Tom Easton lined up to do a piece for us. And we're always looking for good new writers and illustrators."

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Aboriginal SF returned to bookstores and mailboxes in April with the Spring '96 issue, and the Summer '96 issue appeared on schedule in July, with stories by E.H. Wong, William Barton, and K.D. Wentworth, among others.

Aboriginal Science Fiction wants strong SF stories (preferably hard SF), between 2,500 and 6,500 words in length. The magazine pays a flat $200.00 fee for fiction. For fiction or artists' guidelines, write to:

Aboriginal SF
PO Box 2449
Woburn, MA 01888-0849

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Charlene Brusso has worked as an archaeologist, an astronomer, a baker, a museum curator's assistant, a janitor, a tutor, a physicist, and a scientific programmer. Currently she is finishing her first novel. She reviews speculative fiction for a local newspaper, and also writes for The Thirteenth Moon, Publishers Weekly, InQuest, and Brutarian magazines.

Charlene's short story, "The Salute", appears in the Spring '96 issue of Aboriginal SF.

Copyright © 1996 by Charlene Brusso. All Rights Reserved.