Brave New Word
by Doug Hawley
After twenty-three
rejections of my masterpiece “House Of Rats”,
I started looking for a more reasonable publisher. The
publishers and editors that I had been dealing
with were a bunch of snobbish Ivy League arts and
literature majors that couldn’t tell a good
story to save their lives. They’d
probably turn down Shakespeare if he were alive. While
looking through Trilit’s listing for an
alternative, I found a real possibility. Autopub
had a good acceptance ratio – 35.6%, but
better yet, they consistently decided within one
day.
I was
intrigued, so I went to their website. According
to them, all their decisions were made by “Robo
Edit”. I quote:
“We found
that the process of humans deciding which stories
to print was laborious and inexact. Therefore,
we have joined the future and found some interns
fresh out of college to program “Robo Edit”. All
decisions are made impartially, quickly, and
accurately now. Every story will be
judged and either accepted or rejected within one
day. Reasons for rejections will be
given.”
“In order
to help you in your submission, we list the
reasons for rejection:
Wrong number of commas
More than five clauses
Too close to Twilight, Hunger Games or Harry
Potter for the lawyers
Can’t be understood by a grade school
graduate
Inadequate sex and / violence
Uses ‘problem’ rather than ‘issue’
and ‘affect’ or ‘effect’
where ‘impact’ should be used.”
The list went
on for 303 reasons.
I was so happy to see the publishing industry
enter the twenty-first century. If
cars can drive themselves, who needs editors?
I spent the next day reviewing my story to make
sure that it didn’t violate any of Autopub’s
rules. After a few changes, I knew
that I could get my story in their magazine, so I
sent them “House Of Rats”.
The next day I got the email from them “Rejected
– You’re Ugly.”
As you can imagine, there was no such rule listed. When
I emailed Autopub, they replied:
“It is just what we feared might happen,
Robo Edit has become self-aware and found your
picture in Facebook.”
Appeared
in 365 Tomorrows and Subjectiv.
The author is a little old man who wasted his
former life as an actuary making number for
insurance companies.
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