'New York' Mag Publishes First Science Fiction Issue
Inspired by today's 9/11 anniversary package (Just out of curiosity, how tasteless does a pitch have to be to get turned down at the weekly New York story meeting? And has one ever?), we decided to engage in a little counterhistory of our own. We asked a couple of former New York employees how things would be different had Caroline Miller stayed. For professional reasons, both chose to remain anonymous, but we can tell you that one of them is John Simon, and it took us eight hours to edit out all the homophobic slurs. Anyway our first respondent posits that:
The mag would have had 700 percent fewer covers with freakish bigheaded, and or fluid-exchanging kids. The urban strategist would be 9,000 percent shorter and incalculably less pretentious. And since the magazine would have women in positions of real editorial power—outside of the fab ghetto of the Strategist—the female half of the city's population would be treated as something other than jumpy and suggestible discussion-thread addicts.
There would be downsides, though: Wolff would probably still be there. John Homans would be the book critic.
Our more succinct second respondent offers this:
The display type would be bigger. And John Homans would be executive editor.
Chilling either way.
