Strange Horizons · The Strange Horizons Editorial Collective

SH@25 Episode 11: A Conversation with Charlie Jane Anders

April 16, 2025·36 min·3 clips

Charlie Jane Anders secretly rewrote her first Strange Horizons story, calling it misogynistic and lazy.

Strange Horizons at 25 begins warmly. Kat Kerbetty treats the conversation as a look back at the magazine's history and its place in speculative genres, but the tone is more kitchen table than victory lap. Charlie Jane Anders comes in with real history there. Kerbetty names Anders's first Strange Horizons publication in 2002, then follows a career that runs through short fiction, novels, awards, and SFF journalism. The word squiggly does a lot of work. It lets the interview talk about a writing life without pretending it was neatly planned. The best stretch is about editorial judgment. Anders remembers a story she cared about that Strange Horizons passed on, even though it later did very well somewhere else. Nobody turns it into a grudge. The point is fit, taste, timing, passion, and whether an editor can see how to help a piece get better. Then the 2007 story comes up. Kerbetty describes it as sentient cryptocurrency, and Anders points out that it predates cryptocurrency. That correction sends the conversation somewhere more fun: day jobs, healthcare compliance, HIPAA, B2B publications, regulation, online banking, and banks stumbling onto the internet. The pleasure is in watching one strange story pull all that practical mess into speculative invention.

As heard by us

A warm anniversary chat about career zigzags, editorial taste, and one very weird sentient-currency story.

Strange Horizons uses its 25th anniversary to look at Charlie Jane Anders in two roles at once: guest and case study. She first appeared in the magazine in 2002, and her path runs through short stories, novels, digital journalism, and awards including the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon,…

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A warm anniversary chat about Charlie Jane Anders's squiggly career, editorial taste, and one very weird early story.

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