I suppose there is ‘good’ and ‘not actually bad’ meanings for that worth reading, too, especially if.

Paying for ‘My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding’ or ‘The North Dakota Bridge Club’s journal of duckwatching horror’ doesn’t appeal too much (or to too many people at all), so if you can help them out with that bit, that would be cool. To help with the ‘I’m crazy AND I paid for it’ thing. Also good if it leaves you a bit more time for Really Good Anthologies et. al..

What intrigues me is the lower end, and what might be lurking there as far as quality of story, genre, and availability goes.

Some of which they have pointed out already, as has Rich Horton, and yourself with anthology lists or other mentions, so pretty useful. Especially if they can keep it up.

Something you could consider if you end up with a nice spreadsheet next year, is either selling it, or using it promotionally like the cool lists Bill Congreve has of all the oz stories. Whether on a book website, or as ’secret bonus download info password included’. That is absolutely because I’d personally like to see a big, classified list to go back and look at later, certainly. An advantage Dozois has is the length of his intros, but his Amazon essay says he writes stuff down in a notebook! So pretty much useless to anyone else. Could be a point of difference – the Strahan and LSS 2007 Fiction Guide. Or something like that, anyway.

Reading every magazine/collection with a fair SF or even Weird Tales would certainly not be painful at your costs, as opposed to every more obscure issue costing the same as say, ordering The New Space Opera from the book depository.

And if 1,000 of the 3,000 stories were really *worth* reading, I think we’d all be quite happy.

3000 stories is ok, Cat, it is the 2000 not too good bit that is the problem. :-)