Orcs
Yesterday at workshop, I saw a fantasy novel by Mary Gentle that contained orcs. I had to admit I was a little surprised; it ruins my standard comment that orcs exist only in Tolkien and D&D. But then I was told that the Gentle book was sort of a parody of Tolkien and D&D, so that's all right.
Then today I got a miffed note from an author we'd rejected (this is only about the fourth miffed note we've ever gotten from a rejected author, so I figure we're doing pretty well on that front), stiffly pointing out ("Need I remind you . . .") that orcs come from German mythology. Heh. Well, yes and no: the word orc has various possible etymologies (scroll down the page), having to do with sea monsters and demons, but the modern fantasy-novel concept of orcs as a race of marauding evil humanoid creatures to be slaughtered by a party of adventurers derives almost entirely from Tolkien by way of D&D. The huffy author missed the point, even though I stated it explicitly in our rejection: we're not interested in stories that read like transcripts of D&D sessions, and using the word orc is one of the usual signs that an author is writing a story heavily based on a D&D adventure.
(I should note that I'm a lifelong gamer myself (talking tabletop RPGs here, not computer games); at yesterday's workshop meeting there was a long discussion of RPGs, which made me really wistful, 'cause it's been over two years since I last played. And I'm sure there are many entertaining and enjoyable books based on D&D games. But I have yet to read a story based on one that did anything at all for me.)
At Clarion, I wrote a story that included some beings that I called elves. Lucius Shepard told me something like, "I don't want to read about Tolkien's elves, I want to read about Hartman's elves." I was annoyed with that comment at the time, but in retrospect Lucius was absolutely right: there was no reason for my characters to be called elves other than that I wanted to evoke Tolkien, as a shorthand for having to come up with a culture for them myself.
Moral: be specific and original; don't rely on tired cliches, no matter what their source, as props to hold your story up.
Second moral: don't get huffy with editors who reject you.
Third moral (for editors): don't bother trying to explain rejections. . . . Okay, so I don't actually believe or follow this advice. But in this particular case I may have let the tone of my rejection drift a bit too far toward snippy; if I'd explained more, or less, or just generally been nicer about it, I probably wouldn't have gotten the huffy note back.
Now I have to decide whether to behave sensibly and ignore the note, or whether to attempt to explain more to the author, thereby either placating him or provoking flames.