Extrait :
Do you think there are qualities that a writer/editor brings to the work that an editor who has never published does not?
SILVERBERG: Most of the great science fiction editors—John W. Campbell, Horace Gold, Anthony Boucher, Gardner Dozois, Frederik Pohl—had been outstanding writers before they became editors. As writers they had to internalize the standards by which the best SF is measured, and as editors they applied those standards. On the other hand, a lot of perfectly good editors, like Robert W. Lowndes and Larry Shaw, had only modest careers as writers, but they were perceptive editors all the same. And Howard Browne, who hated science fiction, was a good writer nevertheless, but in another field—mystery stories. At the moment, I can think of only one absolutely first-rate editor who never wrote any fiction at all, Alice M. Turner of Playboy, though Bob Mills and. later, Ed Ferman of F&SF were very good in their way. And Sheila Williams is doing a fine job without any history of writing fiction that I know of.
DOZOIS: Don’t know if there is—except maybe an appreciation of how many things can go wrong with a story, and what hard work it is for how little reward.
VANDERMEER: Inhabiting something from the inside out is definitely a different perspective, but I’m not sure it provides an advantage or disadvantage. I tend to be taking off my writer hat and putting on the editor hat when editing anthologies.