David Thomas Moore has been an editor at Rebellion Publishing in the UK since 2010, where he has worked on books by authors such as Adrian Tchaikovsky and Premee Mohamed. Currently the publisher’s editorial director, he’s provided leadership to the organization through a period of growth. In 2024, he was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Editor Long Form.
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| Hugo-finalist editor David Thomas Moore. |
Earlier this year, Moore took the time to chat with Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog about the evolving role of editors in the long-form publishing world.
UHBCB:
What is your process when working with an author?
Moore:
Oof, start with an easy question, why don’t you?
UHBCB:
What is your process when working with an author?
Moore:
Oof, start with an easy question, why don’t you?
It depends a lot on the author and the book. If I’ve acquired a book from an agent, I already have a manuscript (which has probably already had a couple of editing passes), and the process is a lot to do with midwifing that manuscript into the world. But if I’ve commissioned the work, then a big part of the process is getting the manuscript to delivery in the first place. Different jobs, different demands, different expectations. And of course different authors have different preferences: some like to be very involved, and some are already working on the next book.
So the biggest challenge is communication. I try not to deluge the author, but I’m also aware that they’re stuck out on the periphery of the machine and often don’t have much of a sense of what’s going on — and I’ll be the first to admit I sometimes get the balance wrong! Much of this is dictated by the stages of the process: there’s an email exchange around the first edit, then again when the copy-edit is done, when the proofread is done, around cover and design choices, hooking them up with the marketing team and so on.
My structural/developmental edits tend to be light. It’s not my story — if it were told in a very different way it wouldn’t be the same thing. Conversely, my line edits are brutal; I’m determined to make that story — the story the author wants to tell — the best version of itself it can be, so I pay close attention to the language and the execution (although I also try to make sure I’m conscious of the author’s voice and style).
I guess if there’s any particular philosophy, it’s that I try and make sure the author is aware at every stage that it’s their book. My edits are suggestions, the cover approach is a preference. I’ll always listen and engage, and in the end if the author doesn’t like an idea I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen.
I guess if there’s any particular philosophy, it’s that I try and make sure the author is aware at every stage that it’s their book. My edits are suggestions, the cover approach is a preference. I’ll always listen and engage, and in the end if the author doesn’t like an idea I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen.
UHBCB:
Do you have any thoughts on the state of modern SFF?
Moore:
It’s great, to be honest! There’s such a richness and plurality of identities and voices now; when I started fifteen years ago stories by marginalised authors were marketed on that, because they were exceptional, but now it’s scarcely worth mentioning. And that’s reflected in the stories themselves — when most writers looked like me, most of the stories were the types of stories I’d tell, but now I get to read and work with stories, characters, language and structures that are completely out of my safety zone and I love it.
We’re challenging genre conventions (and mashing them up). We’re pushing the boundary between “literary” and “genre.” We’re trying new things out, questioning assumptions and experimenting. And we’re having fun — the younger crop of writers approach their work with such joy and love, it’s wonderful.
UHBCB:
Are the preoccupations of the genre different now than when you began publishing?
Moore:
Yeah, definitely. I came in at the end of that fin-de-siecle period, with all the brooding heroes, morally grey worlds and bleakness. We’ve come back around to the idea that heroes can just sometimes be good people who try to do the right thing, or people who love each other and support each other — or who find people to love and support them. I sometimes see these kinds of stories dismissed as “cosy” (or do you remember “squeecore” a few years ago?), but these stories absolutely still include threats and challenges, suffering and adversity; it’s just that the goodies get to be goodies without making them low-key horrible, or forcing them through some narrative meatgrinder for the sake of it.
In a perverse way, I think it’s about hope and defiance. In the ’90s, for most of us in the white Western world, the future felt reassuringly stable and dull. There were still problems, but surely we would gradually resolve them. So in our stories we created problems to make the world more interesting. Now everything feels, frankly, a bit shit, between impending climate doom, political turmoil and a determined attempt to roll back the social progress of the last century; we want nice things in our stories.
I was asked, for a recent article, why we’re telling so many “retrofuturist” sci-fi stories and aesthetics — or more to the point, so few stories set in our direct future. I said I thought it was because we struggle to see what our direct future looks like. I think that’s right — we’re imagining around the future to give ourselves something to hope for.
UHBCB:
What are you excited about in science fiction and fantasy in 2025?
Moore:
Ooh. More defiance. Stories about people working together to circumvent and overthrow the systems of control built around them. More joy and love. More voices — give me stories set in places I haven’t heard from! I’m excited to see what the “BookTok” crowd that turned up for the new wave of romantasy turn to next, and the stories that this new generation of D&D players come up with.
UHBCB:
How has the editing world changed since you started?
Moore:
There’s a lot less paper, for starters! I juuust about started when editing on paper was still the norm — you’d print out the manuscript, mark it up in red pen, then turn that into electronic notes. It only became the norm to edit straight onto screen in the mid 2010s or so. And that goes for everything — I sent my first digital contract (7000 miles!) in 2012, we stopped getting physical proofs from the printer in about 2015 or so, and so on.
The pandemic, of course, made us all remote. We work in solitude, much of the time; aside from a handful of meetings a week, we do most of what we do alone at a computer. So we all switched to remote work without missing a step, and although our bosses are starting to drag us back to the office (some more willingly than others), I think we’ve all seen how working from home is a viable option for us, at least some of the time. That’s probably going to stay with us. And it means we can hire more widely as well; people who can’t move to the big cities, for whatever reason, could do these jobs, which means there’s a ton of talent there to draw upon that we didn’t have access to before.
There’s more of us, at least in SFF. You used to be able to get all the UK SFF editors around a large table (we literally did, at an occasional Christmas dinner in London) – now we pack out a good sized pub. And it’s a more diverse bunch, which is awesome; it’s all very well to say we want to hear more voices in fiction, but that means getting more voices in the publishing houses to help find and hone those stories.
But everyone is busier. It’s always been the norm for editors to do submissions reading on their own time, but now increasingly we do the same for the actual editing. And everyone has an inbox full of unanswered emails and a guilt-inducing pile of unread subs. (This isn’t any one publisher, or an indie vs corporate thing — it’s all of us.) It feels like something’s got to change there.
UHBCB:
Since the editing process is opaque to those outside of the industry, do you have any advice to Hugo voters on how to assess the work of editors?
Moore:
Ooh, tricky one! It’s an odd category (although please don’t take it away — it’s the only award we got!), because without access to an unedited copy of the MS to compare side by side with the final published version, you really can’t tell what an editor’s done to the text itself.
But nil desperandum! Keep in mind that an editor isn’t just there to work on the text. They most likely acquired the manuscript, which meant they read through a pile of subs, picked that one as the one to champion, and fought it through an acquisitions process. They conceived of the cover approach (again, via a process) and commissioned the art, they liaised with the freelancers working on the project.
So I would say look at the books each editor brought into the world last year and decide which ones you love the most. Because what you’re looking at there isn’t just the product of the editor’s grasp of structure, grammar and punctuation; it’s reflective of their tastes, they made it their passion, the whole package is (partly) their vision. They wanted you to be holding just exactly that book. If that book makes you happy, then vote for the person who edited it.
UHBCB:
What are some of your proudest accomplishments as an editor?
Moore:
I mean, being nominated for a Hugo’s got to rank up there!
When my books do well, obviously. When one of them sells well, when it gets picked for a fancy special edition, when it gets nominated for an award; I always get a huge kick going to an award ceremony (either with my author or on their behalf) because a bunch of other people loved that book as much as I did. I’ve been to the Hugos, the Nebulas and the Clarkes on behalf of my authors and it’s a huge honour every time.
But more than anything, it’s the people I gave a chance to: like commissioning Cass Khaw for the Rupert Wong novellas, getting Suyi Okungbowa for David Mogo, Godhunter, acquiring Premee Mohamed’s Beneath the Rising. Just incredible talents I was lucky enough to accompany through their first books. Seeing them succeed — and especially seeing them succeed with other publishers — is an incredible feeling, because maybe I made that possible (I mean, maybe they’d have done it without me, but I can tell myself I helped!), and it feels like I made the world a slightly better place each time.
UHBCB:
Worldcon sessions about editing and working as an editor tend to be very popular. Do you have any advice for aspiring editors?
Moore:
For editing, per se: read and read and read. Discard the idea of having a “taste” in fiction. By which I don’t mean you should have no taste(!), but that you should aspire not to have a preference. Teach yourself to romp your way through a high-action adventure, then pick up a dense, wordy examination of human nature before jumping into a cosy romance followed by a gory slasher story, and enjoy them all (and, more importantly, learn to judge all of them by the standards of their own genres and styles). You’ll not only be a more versatile editor, you’ll be better even at editing the genres you already liked, because you’ll broaden your perspective.
For working as an editor (which I’ll interpret as meaning, getting a job like mine), it’s so much to do with luck I’m not sure what to say! I’ve never applied for, nor advertised, a job like mine that had fewer than 100 applicants. I guess, having had to sift through the applications pile, my biggest tip would be, show me how much you know and love genre stories. I’m more likely to give an interview to someone whose formal credentials are maybe less than stellar but whose covering letter mentions three or four SFF books they loved and which came out in the last five years, than I am to someone whose experience and qualifications are spotless but who clearly regards SFF as the fiction world’s redheaded stepchild (if they think of it at all).
UHBCB:
What projects are you working on right now?
Moore:
Hee. I kind of love answering this question even though I always end up going into a slight trance, because inevitably I’m working on three or more projects at various stages of production at once:
Do you have any thoughts on the state of modern SFF?
Moore:
It’s great, to be honest! There’s such a richness and plurality of identities and voices now; when I started fifteen years ago stories by marginalised authors were marketed on that, because they were exceptional, but now it’s scarcely worth mentioning. And that’s reflected in the stories themselves — when most writers looked like me, most of the stories were the types of stories I’d tell, but now I get to read and work with stories, characters, language and structures that are completely out of my safety zone and I love it.
We’re challenging genre conventions (and mashing them up). We’re pushing the boundary between “literary” and “genre.” We’re trying new things out, questioning assumptions and experimenting. And we’re having fun — the younger crop of writers approach their work with such joy and love, it’s wonderful.
UHBCB:
Are the preoccupations of the genre different now than when you began publishing?
Moore:
Yeah, definitely. I came in at the end of that fin-de-siecle period, with all the brooding heroes, morally grey worlds and bleakness. We’ve come back around to the idea that heroes can just sometimes be good people who try to do the right thing, or people who love each other and support each other — or who find people to love and support them. I sometimes see these kinds of stories dismissed as “cosy” (or do you remember “squeecore” a few years ago?), but these stories absolutely still include threats and challenges, suffering and adversity; it’s just that the goodies get to be goodies without making them low-key horrible, or forcing them through some narrative meatgrinder for the sake of it.
 |
| One of the books Moore is currently editing is An Unbreakable World by Ren Hutchings. (Image via Amazon.ca) |
In a perverse way, I think it’s about hope and defiance. In the ’90s, for most of us in the white Western world, the future felt reassuringly stable and dull. There were still problems, but surely we would gradually resolve them. So in our stories we created problems to make the world more interesting. Now everything feels, frankly, a bit shit, between impending climate doom, political turmoil and a determined attempt to roll back the social progress of the last century; we want nice things in our stories.
I was asked, for a recent article, why we’re telling so many “retrofuturist” sci-fi stories and aesthetics — or more to the point, so few stories set in our direct future. I said I thought it was because we struggle to see what our direct future looks like. I think that’s right — we’re imagining around the future to give ourselves something to hope for.
UHBCB:
What are you excited about in science fiction and fantasy in 2025?
Moore:
Ooh. More defiance. Stories about people working together to circumvent and overthrow the systems of control built around them. More joy and love. More voices — give me stories set in places I haven’t heard from! I’m excited to see what the “BookTok” crowd that turned up for the new wave of romantasy turn to next, and the stories that this new generation of D&D players come up with.
UHBCB:
How has the editing world changed since you started?
Moore:
There’s a lot less paper, for starters! I juuust about started when editing on paper was still the norm — you’d print out the manuscript, mark it up in red pen, then turn that into electronic notes. It only became the norm to edit straight onto screen in the mid 2010s or so. And that goes for everything — I sent my first digital contract (7000 miles!) in 2012, we stopped getting physical proofs from the printer in about 2015 or so, and so on.
The pandemic, of course, made us all remote. We work in solitude, much of the time; aside from a handful of meetings a week, we do most of what we do alone at a computer. So we all switched to remote work without missing a step, and although our bosses are starting to drag us back to the office (some more willingly than others), I think we’ve all seen how working from home is a viable option for us, at least some of the time. That’s probably going to stay with us. And it means we can hire more widely as well; people who can’t move to the big cities, for whatever reason, could do these jobs, which means there’s a ton of talent there to draw upon that we didn’t have access to before.
There’s more of us, at least in SFF. You used to be able to get all the UK SFF editors around a large table (we literally did, at an occasional Christmas dinner in London) – now we pack out a good sized pub. And it’s a more diverse bunch, which is awesome; it’s all very well to say we want to hear more voices in fiction, but that means getting more voices in the publishing houses to help find and hone those stories.
But everyone is busier. It’s always been the norm for editors to do submissions reading on their own time, but now increasingly we do the same for the actual editing. And everyone has an inbox full of unanswered emails and a guilt-inducing pile of unread subs. (This isn’t any one publisher, or an indie vs corporate thing — it’s all of us.) It feels like something’s got to change there.
UHBCB:
Since the editing process is opaque to those outside of the industry, do you have any advice to Hugo voters on how to assess the work of editors?
Moore:
Ooh, tricky one! It’s an odd category (although please don’t take it away — it’s the only award we got!), because without access to an unedited copy of the MS to compare side by side with the final published version, you really can’t tell what an editor’s done to the text itself.
But nil desperandum! Keep in mind that an editor isn’t just there to work on the text. They most likely acquired the manuscript, which meant they read through a pile of subs, picked that one as the one to champion, and fought it through an acquisitions process. They conceived of the cover approach (again, via a process) and commissioned the art, they liaised with the freelancers working on the project.
So I would say look at the books each editor brought into the world last year and decide which ones you love the most. Because what you’re looking at there isn’t just the product of the editor’s grasp of structure, grammar and punctuation; it’s reflective of their tastes, they made it their passion, the whole package is (partly) their vision. They wanted you to be holding just exactly that book. If that book makes you happy, then vote for the person who edited it.
UHBCB:
What are some of your proudest accomplishments as an editor?
Moore:
I mean, being nominated for a Hugo’s got to rank up there!
When my books do well, obviously. When one of them sells well, when it gets picked for a fancy special edition, when it gets nominated for an award; I always get a huge kick going to an award ceremony (either with my author or on their behalf) because a bunch of other people loved that book as much as I did. I’ve been to the Hugos, the Nebulas and the Clarkes on behalf of my authors and it’s a huge honour every time.
But more than anything, it’s the people I gave a chance to: like commissioning Cass Khaw for the Rupert Wong novellas, getting Suyi Okungbowa for David Mogo, Godhunter, acquiring Premee Mohamed’s Beneath the Rising. Just incredible talents I was lucky enough to accompany through their first books. Seeing them succeed — and especially seeing them succeed with other publishers — is an incredible feeling, because maybe I made that possible (I mean, maybe they’d have done it without me, but I can tell myself I helped!), and it feels like I made the world a slightly better place each time.
 |
| Moore acquired the rights to publish Premee Mohamed's excellent first novel Beneath The Rising. (Image via Amazon) |
UHBCB:
Worldcon sessions about editing and working as an editor tend to be very popular. Do you have any advice for aspiring editors?
Moore:
For editing, per se: read and read and read. Discard the idea of having a “taste” in fiction. By which I don’t mean you should have no taste(!), but that you should aspire not to have a preference. Teach yourself to romp your way through a high-action adventure, then pick up a dense, wordy examination of human nature before jumping into a cosy romance followed by a gory slasher story, and enjoy them all (and, more importantly, learn to judge all of them by the standards of their own genres and styles). You’ll not only be a more versatile editor, you’ll be better even at editing the genres you already liked, because you’ll broaden your perspective.
For working as an editor (which I’ll interpret as meaning, getting a job like mine), it’s so much to do with luck I’m not sure what to say! I’ve never applied for, nor advertised, a job like mine that had fewer than 100 applicants. I guess, having had to sift through the applications pile, my biggest tip would be, show me how much you know and love genre stories. I’m more likely to give an interview to someone whose formal credentials are maybe less than stellar but whose covering letter mentions three or four SFF books they loved and which came out in the last five years, than I am to someone whose experience and qualifications are spotless but who clearly regards SFF as the fiction world’s redheaded stepchild (if they think of it at all).
UHBCB:
What projects are you working on right now?
Moore:
Hee. I kind of love answering this question even though I always end up going into a slight trance, because inevitably I’m working on three or more projects at various stages of production at once:
Currently shepherding Ren Hutchings’ An Unbreakable World through production, an absolutely charming action/heist story with a queer love story running through it, set in the same world as Under Fortunate Stars. Ren’s voice is delightful, and her books are enormous fun; she captures some of the mood of classic Trek, with fun time loops, twists and reveals.
In the final stages for Adrian Tchaikovsky’s The Hungry Gods, a smart, angry (all his novellas are angry in the best way) post-apocalyptic story in which four sociopathic techbros return to the Earth they destroyed to wipe out the survivors and create new worlds in their own images, and immediately go to war with each other.
Editing Anna Smith Spark’s Anderson vs. Death, a 2000 AD tie-in novel telling the story of what happened in the eighteen months when Judge Anderson first successfully trapped the evil Judge Death in her head and got sealed in Boing!™. It’s set in Anderson’s mind, in an imagined Mega-City One, as Cass duels Death for control of herself. Anna turns out to be an old-school 2000 AD fan, and has married the gonzo weirdness of early-eighties Dredd with her signature dark poetic style. It’s gorgeous and I can’t wait for people to see it.
