Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Taking a Break


After five years of writing reviews for Rocket Stack Rank, I'm going to take an indefinite break. This month marks five years since we started the site, and so it seemed like a good time to pause. Eric will continue to operate the site, producing monthly lists of stories for 11 magazines (with blurbs from the publisher or a few sentences from the story) and aggregating recommendations from other sources (currently 6 reviewers, 16 awards, 7 year's best anthologies), but I won't be reviewing stories myself. Not for a while, at least.

Five years ago, in September 2015, Eric and I started Rocket Stack Rank as a response to the Sad/Rabid Puppy episode that ruined the 2015 Hugo Awards. As we said at the time, we wanted "to create a website to encourage readers of science fiction and fantasy to read and nominate more short fiction."

The response was very positive, and we've enjoyed steady support from readers. We quickly ramped up to a few thousand unique monthly users, with 20-30,000 monthly page views (we recently passed 1,000,000 total page views), and we're currently the #1 Google result for "short science fiction story reviews." Best of all, we were finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine three times (2017, 2018, 2019). Thank you for supporting us!

In the past five years, I've read and reviewed 3,979 stories, totaling 32,755,701 words of fiction or about the equivalent of 328 novels. In the process, I wrote 604,515 words worth of reviews--as much text as in six novels.
 
What I've not done is take a break. For five years, I've read and reviewed stories on a deadline--even on vacations--and every month on the 15th, we've produced our "Monthly Ratings," showing all the new short fiction for that month together with key information like the word counts and the recommendations of other reviewers. 

For a long time, that wasn't a problem; this was a labor of love, and Eric and I happily made it first priority. But over the last few months, it has become a burden, and I've had to force myself to read the stories and write the reviews. This isn't because the stories got worse--it's because we've found other things we want to spend time on. That being the case, it's time for me to stop, at least for a while.

We're still going to produce the Monthly Ratings, the Year-To-Date lists, and themed selections of outstanding speculative short fiction, but I'm going to stop reading and reviewing for the most part.


Greg Hullender

14 comments (may contain spoilers):

  1. Really sad and totally understandable. A well deserved break. Your ratings and summaries has been really helpful to me. It is really valuable as a guide in what to read when you cant read everything. Happy to see the site will still be updated as an aggregator for other reviewers. But really thank you so far for your efforts, both of you!

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  2. I will miss your reviews, but can certainly understand the need for a break. Glad to hear Eric will continue the monthly lists, etc. I've definitely enjoyed having this site as my index to speculative short fiction. Thanks to you both!

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    1. Thank you for being a loyal fan all these years. We've appreciated your many thoughtful comments.

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  3. I will absolutely miss your reviews, but good for you for making this tough decision. Enjoy your time off!

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    1. Thanks for being a reader. I appreciate your support.

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  4. Thank you so much for all the work you've put in! The reviews will be missed, but it's great that the other functionality (including the themed selections!) will remain.

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    1. I hope you find it useful moving forward. Thanks for reading!

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  5. I've enjoyed coming to Rocket Stack Rank every time I finish a story in a short fiction magazine. This site is a big reason I bought print subscriptions to F&SF, Asimov's and Analog this year. Thanks for the herculean amount of reading and reviewing you've done here! Enjoy the break.

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    1. It's nice to hear that we made a difference. I hope you enjoy the stories.

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  6. I don't think I've ever commented before but I wanted to express my appreciation. I will miss the reviews, they are always the first thing I check when I finish a short story, since its the closest I have to discussing them (no one I know reads sf shorts frequently), and the pro/con format is so much better than most of what you find online which usually seems like praise only and kind of feels like turning off your brain and not critically considering things. Stories are just more fun when you analyze them a little.

    Understandable decision of course, its really a crazy pace just how many you've reviewed. Thanks for all your hard work and good luck with your break/other things!

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    1. Thanks for the kind words. I will admit that I was hoping to see more discussion of the stories than we ended up getting. And I agree with you about reviewers who seem to think they're supposed to just praise everything.

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  7. Thank you for all your hard work over the five or so years this site has been operating (the both of you). Much appreciated. Very specifically, it helped with my Hugo nominations.

    This site made me appreciate short fiction more, and I spent money on short fiction because of it. This site is possibly one of the more useful things related to new short fiction in that it gives a very brief story outline and a rating. Any further opinion on a story is 'hidden' because it is upside-down, which helps a lot if you have not already read it.

    Like others who have already commented, I'd read a short story and then read your opinion of it. I even sometimes commented.

    As an index - as Laura describe it. Even with no reviews, it will continue to be useful. All the best.

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    1. Thanks for your regular support across all five years, and it was great meeting in person in Dublin. I'm sorry we didn't get to visit New Zealand this year, but maybe we'll meet again at some future WorldCon.

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