1. There are maybe 3000 people in the English-speaking world for whom this matters, but I will now describe why "selecting the best stories" or "excellence is my only criterion" is a foolish way to edit a short fiction magazine or anthology, whether of originals or reprints.

2. It's foolish, and is foolish even if one is very skeptical of the idea of curating and editing with an eye toward demographic diversity in tables of contents. I'm not skeptical of this at all, btw.

3. The plain and simple fact is that different stories do different things. This is particularly the case in a genre-fiction context. Let's pick a genre: "fantasy."

4. When you see the word "fantasy" fiction, what do you think? What comes immediately to mind?

A dragon?
A vampire and a werewolf?
Cthulhu?
Elves?
Castles? (They're real, baby!)
A wizard? What kind?
Flying carpet?

5. Well, among all of you reading this, if you're around the age of 40, it's probably a dragon. If you're around 60, might be elves. If you're younger, a vampire and a werewolf—but they're hot and rivals in a love triangle.

If you're gross and smelly, probably Cthulhu.

6. So if you are editing some volume or number of fantasy, you, editor, who want a lot of people to read and enjoy your anthology of issue of a magazine, is going to need to have a dragon, and a werewolf, and a ghost, and maybe some guy walks into a magical store and that stuff.

7. So, you, a genius, who only wants good stories, happens to get three excellent stories. And they're all about the same thing: let's say disgruntled bitcoin miners capturing golden dragons for their scales so they can make the world's first cryptidcurrency.

8. ^^^ feel free to take that idea, which is very dumb, for yourself. Back in the Livejournal days, I used to run a feature called Free-Idea Fridays. I have a million awful notions a day. I just smashed five grapes into toast because I was too lazy to wash a knife and spread jam.

9. So whatcha gonna do, Maxwell Perkins? Run all three stories about the same thing? Get letters from people wondering where the vampire and the wizard are? Eat a few one-star reviews on the ol' Amazon for breakfast instead of using your royalty check on jam in a squeezetube?

10. You're going to, because you're an evil SJW or a PC-thug or maybe secretly non-binary instead of just having cut your own hair with the quarantine as an excuse, REJECT TWO EXCELLENT STORIES and publish TWO INFERIOR ones in their place.

Because you need a wizard story.

11. And this is true of all genres. I remember reading an issue of The Strand years ago—in it there were two stories with the same scene: two people eating dinner and one figures out that the other is the baddie and explains why and the baddie says, "You can't prove anything."

12. And I often like The Strand, but that was a terrible reading experience! Did the editor have some kind of fetish for that line? Did he even notice? WAS HE PAYING THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF ATTENTION AT ALL TO HIS STUPID JOB?!?!

13. And identical lines are different than identical motifs, but an editor can edit texts. I've heard rumors, have seen the legends chipped into the side of mighty blocks of limestone in the secret tunnels of the Great Pyramids. It used to be done.

14. "Oh-ho!" we hear from someone in an all-weather scarf and thick black glasses. "What about LITERATURE, which has NO stock themes or motifs! Surely, we need only EXCELLENCE there!"

So, how many miscarriage stories this month, Charles?

15. Will I read Southern Podunk Quarterly Review and look at the last paragraph of every story and see lone figure estranged from a natural scene (rain against the filthy window; leaves browning into black; bugs flying, liberated, from the slammed screen door?) every time?

16. Probably not, if the editor is any good! But perhaps so if the editor selects stories based on a single criterion!

And that's before we get to "I bet if we had some stories by black authors, we'd finally get a break from all the titles cribbed from Elliott Smith lyrics."

17. Editors make other mistakes too: acquiring based on author temperature rather on *general* quality; publishing their five friends over and over; never soliciting anyone new, or for that matter, old; failing to solicit me, etc.