What not to write for Strange Horizons

A long list of stories that are clichéd, or dull, and unwanted by Strange Horizons.

Statistics written by the winners

Survivorship bias is the tendency to draw incorrect conclusions from survivors in a group, because those that didn't survive are no longer in it. Studies of the performance of investment funds often ignore funds that have closed but a common reason for closing a fund is that it has performed badly, so the performance reported by the studies of funds in general is inflated.

Apparently, the term was coined when the stakes were even higher. During WW2, engineers studied British bombers that returned from missions to determine why so many weren't making it home. They decided to reinforce the areas most ridden with bullet holes but that didn't work, so they assumed the weight of the new armour had affected the handling of the planes and negated the advantage.

But mathematician Abraham Wald suggested the engineers armour the areas of the bombers that had not been holed, after all the bullet holes they had examined had not brought the planes down so the critical areas would be where there were no holes.

What a computer generated story looks like

This is what a computer generated story looks like. It's data, obscured by words. Here's another.

Here's one of the culprits, Narrative Science.

On to a winner with Mr Creecher

I think we're on to a winner with Mr Creecher, Giuseppe hates the writer because he had the temerity to end the first chapter. It feels like a film noir set in the rainy streets of London in 1818 and it's propelled along in a stream of similes, starting with the second sentence:

Billy pulled his clammy coat collar rightly to this throat. It was damp with the fog and felt like the tongue of a dead animal lolling against his neck.

No matter. Giuseppe gripped my arm as Billy discovered what he thought was a putrid corpse in the street, a corpse he would have robbed had he not been delayed by an armed gang intent on carving his eye out.

At twenty three Fahrenheit your blood freezes

Twenty three Fahrenheit is the temperature at which blood in the human body freezes.

Finishing Just Henry in a rush

As we read the last chapter of Just Henry, Giuseppi pleaded with me to keep reading the book although bedtime had long passed.

It's a terrific story, recreating post-war Britain, the privations and the prejudices, in minute detail which occasionally threatened to overwhelm the drama.

Torn between a good step-father and wicked father, the only chance for Henry is that his growing maturity will let him distinguish what he wants to believe from the truth and cope with the fact that he is who he once despised.

I gave in. We finished Just Henry tonight.