Every writer needs an editor. Another pair of experienced eyes can strengthen any written work. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to edit.

First, let me clarify that there are several kinds of editing, generally falling into these three categories:

• Developmental, substantive, or structural editing helps give overall shape to the piece: what to include or exclude, how to control the pacing, and how to make sure that the piece flows logically from beginning to end. This kind of editing should be done fairly early in the process, and it’s what a critique group ought to do. It’s “big picture.”

• Copyediting or line editing is what most people who aren’t trained as editors (yes, you can go to school for that) think of when they think of “editor.” Copyediting should fix grammar, usage, tangled syntax, and mistakes, and in general should polish the prose. This is what I’m going to be talking about because this is where wannabe editors get confused and abusive. Copyediting works at the paragraph and sentence level.

• Proofreading or mechanical editing checks for typos and makes sure that a style sheet is applied (whether you abbreviate months, spell out numbers, and so on). This is sometimes confused with copyediting by wannabe editors who are tasked to proofread but who get over-ambitious. Proofreading should look at the individual words and punctuation marks.

How do you copyedit correctly? Here is the rule: Only suggest changes to correct an objective error or problem. “Objective” means you should be able to explain the precise reason for the change: “In this sentence, the antecedent is separated from its pronoun.” “There might be too many short sentences in a row in this passage.” “The reader would be helped if the attribution were moved up in the quote.” “This paragraph isn’t in chronological order and is confusing.” “Bullet points and parallel construction could work well here.”

Any piece of writing can be changed in an almost infinite number of ways, however. Just because something can be changed, that doesn’t mean it should be changed. You are not a good editor because you can see all the possible changes. You are a good editor because you can see all the necessary changes. If the meaning is easy to understand, the writing won’t need much changing at all.

Bad editors want to change things that don’t need to be changed. They tip their hand in their explanation for their edits because they can cite no objective reason. They say something like, “I made it sound better.” “It reads smoother.” Why? “It just does.”

Usually it doesn’t sound better or read smoother — at least, not objectively. “Sounds better” is a subjective judgement. The wannabe editors believe it sounds better because it does — to their ears. This is what these wannabe editors actually mean but don’t realize that they mean: “It sounds more like I wrote it.” Their changes sound better to their ears because we all love the sound of our own voice. My voice is uniquely beautiful to me. You have a voice, too. It’s not like mine, yet it should be respected.

When bad editors change your writing “to sound better,” they make it sound like their own voice, not like yours. In the process, they silence your voice. This may infuriate you, and it should.

You have a right to be yourself. Your writing ought to reflect your voice, and it should sound like you wrote it, not like someone else did. Good editors, if they fiddle with the voice at all, try to make the writing sound even more distinctively like the writer’s own unique, beautiful voice.

Good editors respect and celebrate the writer. They do not impose their own voice. They only change what needs to be changed. Writers love editors like that.

— Sue Burke

I’ll be at Worldcon 76, the World Science Fiction Convention, from August 16 to 20 in San Jose, California. Here’s my official schedule. I’ll also be working as staff of the Worldcon newsletter, The Tower.

Autographs, Friday, August 17, 10:00 to 11:00 a.m., in the Convention Center Autograph Area
Also signing during that hour will be Charlie Jane Anders, Annalee Newitz, Richard Hescox, G. David Nordley, and JY Yang. This is a good time to come say hi, no autograph request necessary. I don’t expect long lines.

Exploring a Wider Universe: Beyond the World of Anglophone SFF, a panel on Friday, August 17, 5:00 to 6:00 p.m., in 210B
A tremendous amount of high-quality science fiction and fantasy is being published around the world. In XB-1 in Czechia, in Nowa Fantastyka in Poland, in Hayakawa SF in Japan. In countries like Mexico, Spain, Nigeria, France, Italy, Hungary, South Korea, and many more. What is being published? Join us as we chart this universe of stories that English readers may not be familiar with, but should be!
I will be moderating. Panelists: Rani Graff, Yasser Bahjatt, Gerardo Horacio Porcayo, Crystal Huff, Yao Haijun.

Beyond The Border II: Borders, Crossings, and The Lands Beyond, a panel on Saturday, August 18, 2:00 to 3:00 p.m., in 210B
Some of the first SF books were written in Spanish. Some of the most prominent speculative films of the last few decades have a Mexican as a director. Speculative fiction has taken many shapes in Spanish throughout history, and now we want to talk beyond the past and the present and into the future. We want to think about the ways SF written in Spanish might be evolving and the routes it is taking. What have the borders done? What are the similarities and differences with English and between Spanish countries? Have geography and language created something different on the other side? Where do we imagine it may be going? Panelists will discuss in Spanish with an English translator for non-Spanish-speaking audience members.
I will be moderating and translating. Panelists: Gabriela Damián Miravete, Gerardo Horacio Porcayo, José Luis Zárate, Andrea Chapela Saavedra.

Broad Universe Rapid-Fire Reading, Saturday, August 19, 210G
Broad Universe is a nonprofit international organization of women and men dedicated to celebrating and promoting the work of women writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror. In our Rapid-Fire Reading, members will read a few minutes of their works: just enough to whet your appetite. Come see how many genres we can jam into one group reading. I’ll tell you what would happen if I were a plant.
Loren Rhoads moderator, and quite a few of us presenting scrupulously timed four-minute-max readings.

Poetry Reading, Sunday, August 19, 11:00 a.m. to Noon, 212C
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) was created in 1978 to bring together poets and readers interested in speculative poetry. Some of its members will share their favorite speculative poems in this reading.
G.O. Clark, moderator, Mary Soon Lee, John Philip Johnson, Sue Burke, Alan Stewart, Denise Clemons, Andrea Blythe.

HarperCollins has just published a paperback, ebook, and audiobook edition of Semiosis in Great Britain available today, August 9, and in Australia.

The cover art, similar to the American cover art, features the leaves of a sundew plant (Drosera). The dew-like drops on the hairs of its leaves are actually a kind of glue that attracts and traps insects. Then the hairs and tentacle wrap around the victim and excrete digestive fluid. The leaves are also sometimes referred to as “tentacles.” The idea of motile, flesh-eating tentacles on plants is creepy. I’m glad sundews are small, because they grow in many areas of the Earth, including the American Midwest, where I live.

The text hasn’t been adapted to British English, which disappoints me a bit. I would have enjoyed seeing the word “color” with an extra U.

British author Stephen Baxter was given an advance copy, and he said this: “Semiosis combines the world-building of Avatar with the alien wonder of Arrival, and the sheer humanity of Atwood. An essential work for our time.”

I am blushing.

If you weighed every living thing on Earth, what kinds of things would weigh the most?

Scientists Yinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo tried to answer that question. They estimated the amount of carbon stored in organisms — that is, our planet’s biomass: wild birds, viruses, fish, plants, fungi, etc. Overall, it amounts to roughly 550 gigatons of carbon. Their paper, “The biomass distribution on Earth,” was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America on May 21, 2018.

The numbers are rough but revealing. The authors come to several conclusions, including “the mass of humans is an order of magnitude higher than that of all wild mammals combined.”

You can see it in the chart. Humans amount to 0.06 gigatons. We outweigh wild mammals, which are a mere 0.007 gigatons; our livestock outweighs us both together at 0.11 gigatons. Wild birds amount to 0.002 gigatons, while domesticated poultry weigh three times more.

Plants rule the planet at 450 gigatons of life, but the authors of the study estimate that since the start of human civilization, the total biomass of plants has fallen to half its previous level.

You can read the six-page article at PNAS or reports about the article at The Economist and Vox. Vox has created an especially easy-to-understand chart. The Economist explains briefly but carefully the enormous impact that human beings have had on the planet.

We rule the Earth and have changed it in ways we don’t notice day to day. The big picture is instructive. It tells us how a single species can entirely reshape the structure of life on a planet.

On a related note, this article at Bloomberg shows how land in the United States is used: pastures, forests, crops, urbanizations, and special uses like parks, roads, and golf courses. Most land is used as livestock pasture/range. Considering the weight of livestock, this comes as no surprise.

The Hugo Best Novella Award goes to a work of science fiction or fantasy between 17,500 and 40,000 words — a fine length for speculative fiction. I’ve read all the nominees, and these are my votes. The Hugo Award uses instant run-off voting, so voters can rank their preferences: it’s all explained here.

I’m a little harsh because I have to rank these. They’re all good stories and well worth reading, no matter what else I say.

6. Binti: Home, by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)
This is #2 in the Binti series. A young woman named Binti, who in novella #1 had gone off to study at a university and in the process ended a war and became a hero, must now return home. As in the first novella, there are complications with her family, with her culture, and with the larger galaxy — and she must also find out more about her identity. It’s a coming-of-age story with interesting details, but the narration rambles and the plot twists are few and not always surprising. The novella is also clearly part of a series and doesn’t quite stand alone. Although Binti is charming, the storytelling about her is a bit less so. Binti #1 won the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

5. The Black Tides of Heaven, by JY Yang (Tor.com Publishing)
In an Asian-like culture with two moons and fluid genders, twins are driven apart as children by their tyrannical mother, the country’s dictator, who rules with a bloodstained iron hand. Technology is managed by those gifted with the control of a sort of elements-based magic, and the tyrant and her family are among those gifted. But a rebellion against the dictator, using mechanical technology, brings the twins, now adults, back together. At times, the writing seems a little cliche and approaches purple prose, and some characters, including the evil mother, get little development. The story doesn’t quite end, either, instead setting up a sequel. This novella was a finalist for a Nebula Award.

4. River of Teeth, by Sarah Gailey (Tor.com Publishing)
The Wild, Wild West with hippos. A man of few scruples and a thirst for revenge assembles a crew with even fewer scruples and a variety of essential skills to clear the fierce, feral hippos out of a Louisiana swamp. (The prologue explains how they got there.) Repeatedly, the man denies that his plan is a caper, but it is: a predictable story right down to the many reversals, much like a matinee movie except that this story has a lot of savage murders. Despite the bloodshed, this is a fun farce of an old-fashioned Western — with hippos! — but I was hoping for something a little more solid and original. A Nebula Award finalist.

3. Down Among the Sticks and Bones, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com)
At age 12, twin sisters, Jacqueline and Jillian, or Jack and Jill, find a portal in the attic that leads to a fantasyland. They’re glad to go. Their parents aren’t abusive, just self-centered and clueless in a way that makes both girls miserable and emotionally stunted, one a tomboy and the other a princess. In fantasyland, their roles are reversed, and they change. After a few years, they have to escape back to reality, which is where the story ends. I wish it had gone on just a bit longer. I would have loved to see how the parents reacted to their now older, wiser, and different daughters, one of them blood-spattered upon her arrival (not her own blood, either). Although the story was in some ways predictable, the plot twists sometimes felt more like knife twists and kept the story surprising. A worthy contender for a Hugo, and it’s already won the 2018 ALA Alex Award.

2. “And Then There Were (N-One),” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny 3-4/17)
Sarah Pinsker (not the author) gets an invitation to a Sarah Pinsker convention being organized by Sarah Pinsker, the quantologist, who has found a way to connect alternate realities. More than two hundred Sarahs come from a wide variety of divergence points, some very similar to other Sarahs, a few quite different, and from similar or different Earths. In one, for example, Seattle has been destroyed by an earthquake. Then a Sarah Pinsker is murdered. Which one? By which one? Why? Sarah (the author) does a good job of showing the weirdness of being surrounded by people almost just like yourself. This novella was also nominated for the Nebula, Locus, and Sturgeon Awards.

1. All Systems Red, by Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing)
I was among those who nominated this, a straight-up science fiction adventure. The narrator’s mordant attitude makes the story outstanding: a robot who has killed in the past, who is sure everyone hates it because of that, and who hates itself, too. It’s possibly clinically depressed and spends its time trying to lose itself in its favorite video series, secretly dreaming of not being a slave to a brutal, profiteering corporation. But it does its job to protect people on a dangerous mission, even risking its own life, in a way that those people didn’t expect. This story won the ALA Alex Award and the Nebula, and it was also my vote for the Nebula.