Adventures in Being Edited
(See the bottom for a very important update.)
So, Moon City Review 2010 has been out for a few weeks now; I received my contributor’s copy yesterday. Yeah, I’m pretty excited and pleased. 
It’s the literary anthology put out by Moon City Press in conjunction with Missouri State University, and printed by the University of Arkansas Press. (I had a story published in last year’s, 2009 edition.) It’s available from UARK (linked above), the MSU bookstore, Border’s (at least in Springfield, MO for now), and Amazon and B&N (once they get either enough orders or their supply of copies).
I can’t help but enjoy the fact that my article in 2010 is the first item in the book, after the editor’s introduction. But, to be honest, that’s nothing to do with quality but rather because my essay introduces the theme of the anthology — a tribute to professor Dr. William J. Burling and his science fiction scholarship. Once I’ve read the whole anthology I’ll post a review; but so far, I’m pretty impressed! Aside from a couple of really lame poems I’ve read, the articles and stories I’ve sampled so far are entertaining and well-written. But until I get to the point that I can comment on the general content, I want to spend some time blathering about something stuck in my craw.
My essay, naturally, went through an editing process with an advisor of mine and the anthology’s editor. Fortunately, not much needed to be changed from my original drafts; some cleaning, tightening, but pretty much all of my content itself remained. My advisor suggested a couple of great improvements that I agree really helped out. But what bothers me is that my essay was changed between the final draft I approved and print! No matter how much I agree with and accept the editing process, that’s not kosher. Even if the change (which I’ll address in a moment) is warranted, changing it without informing the author, saying nothing and letting them discover it in the final product, just seems unethical. Even if one is going to make the change regardless, it just seems like a courtesy to e-mail the author and say, “Hey, just a note: We changed a couple of lines in your essay before sending it to print. Have a nice day.”
Anyway, as I re-read my original, and decided I understood why it was changed and agreed with it (at first), my only beef was that not being told issue. But then, as I read the rest of the article to see if anything else was changed, (nothing that I could tell), I discovered a reason why I now dislike the change itself and really wish I had an opportunity to defend the original.
Here’s the original introduction:
