Turns Out This is Your Dad’s SF: Friday, 9:00 pm
David Levine (mod)
Eileen Gunn
Chip Hitchcock
Brad Lyau
Pat Murphy
The premise of this panel was, as presented by David Levine, a question: Are there any new ideas in science fiction, or are we merely retreading old ideas? The panelists, particularly Eileen Gunn and Pat Murphy, promptly dismissed the question as silly. They asserted that science fiction, being about the moment in which it is written, not actually about the future, is always fresh and new because there is always a new present moment about which to write.
Levine seemed a little non-plussed by the quick dismissal of the premise, and stated that he thought there were no new ideas in science fiction. This bogged the panel down momentarily in a discussion of what “new idea” meant. It turned out that the panelists had some fairly divergent assumptions. Levine was talking about the trappings, the set dressings, of science fiction — the plots. Space travel, alien encounters, brains-in-jars. Murphy and Gunn were talking about story, about the reaction of characters to the plots and set dressing.
I wondered, at this point, if what we were seeing was one of those cultural differences in how people read science fiction — for the plot, for the tech, for the relationships? But the panel was moving back to the premise.
Chip Hitchcock asserted that there was nothing new in sf, but that, instead, we had bleeding between genres masquerading as new ideas.
Brad Lyau spoke up, from his authority as a historian of literature. He said two things. First, that science fiction has won the culture war. That, when one’s imagery and stories are used to sell deodorant and sports drinks, one has won the hearts and minds of the populace. Second, he said that new writers have no difficulty coming up with new things about which to write — that their lives are radically different from people before them, and they see the future in new ways. Hitchcock added that writing about the classic ideas is still powerful, because we are still not in the future.
Murphy raised the question of marketing categories — that a lot of sf is being released as something else. Levine pointed out that sf readers are conservative and resist new forms of sf, so publishers don’t want to publish it. [At this point, I started to get irritated. The appeal to "people won't buy it so we won't publish it, nevermind that if it's not published no-one can buy it," is one habitually used as a weapon by those in authority against those outside it.] Gunn added that sf is not about experimental literature, and Hitchcock agreed that the conservatism of publishers is related to the conservatism of readers.
Murphy asserted that sf is not afraid of science, but that mainstream works not marketed as sf is afraid of science because our culture is afraid of science. Gunn agreed and added that the sf of now addresses the fear of how we will still be human in the future.
[At this point, my notes become highly editorialized. My notebook says: "Hitchcock, insert foot in mouth. Hitchocok, still foot in mouth w/ regard to paranormal romance. Still foot in mouth w/ regard to REAL sf/f. Hitchcock now slamming 'mundane' press?" I then say, "I wish they would stop us vs. them re: 'Mundanes' and 'Enlightened."
I then say: "The suppositions in this are killing me. Self-published = bad, small press = good, large publisher = necessary evil, large books stores = unenlightened gate keepers, independent bookstores = champions of the light. For fuck's sake, people."]
My notes stopped then. I did not write down the thing about paranormal romance that Hitchcock said, which so set me off. He referred to paranormal romance as “hairdryer books.” When asked by his fellow panelists what that meant, Hitchcock replied, “books women read while sitting under the hairdryer at the salon.”
I am not an impartial reporter of this panel. The presumptions, left unsaid but strongly implied —
- that there is a pure form of sf
- that this pure form is for the readers of science fiction, not the mundanes or those who read genre-blending works or watch television or movies
- that all those who do not read sf are fearful of science and the future
- that self-publishing was inevitably poor quality work that didn’t make the cut to real sf
- that genres with primarily female audiences are not in any way sf
- that real sf can only be read in books and physical anthology magazines, not the internet
— these presumptions are divisive, elitist, anti-feminist, and uphold a hierarchy that currently limits access to story, production of story, and is invested in silencing any other forms of access to science fiction. At a convention whose Guests of Honor were Ellen Klages and Geoff Ryman, I found these presumptions and statements particularly ironic and misguided.
The capper, to me, of the panel was when someone — I don’t recall who, I wasn’t taking coherent notes at this point — said that people who begin reading science fiction after the age of thirty are not allowed to judge whether a work is science fiction, whether it is good, or whether it has value, because their brains are not accustomed to sf and they will never be able to fully understand it the way real sf readers understand real sf.
The panel colored my view of the rest of the convention. I left that room with a growing sense of unease which I still carry, weeks later.
Bluntly, if that’s what being an sf fan is about, I want no part of it.
But here’s the thing — I don’t believe there’s a “real” sf. I don’t believe that a publishing industry gets to tell me how I can access my stories. I certainly don’t believe, at all, that anyone else can govern my response to a creative work. Work made on the internet, or through vidding or fanmixing or self-publishing, these are all creative works. They need to be judged, certainly! Some will be good and some will be bad. But the means of their production and distribution does not score points one way or the other on value. To assert that only works passing out of the hands of the artist, through gatekeepers who control the means of production away from the worker, and judged by those invested in maintaining that hierarchy of production are valuable is as self-serving a claim as I’ve ever seen.
I appreciate the work of those who came before me. I value and respect the stories and ideas, the craft and effort and sacrifice made by previous authors. But Now is a moving target, and investing so heavily in the past and its values obscures one’s view of the Now. I love my dad’s sf, as it turns out. It’s shaped who I am.
I know what my sf is. And it’s not my dad’s sf. My sf is made by people any damn way we can. My sf is produced by peers, distributed through gift economies and barter. My sf is made available legally and illegally because the more people who read and watch stories, the better we all are. SF is about the now. It’s also about the future. We don’t need time travel to change the future, we only need right now, this moment. The changes we make now create the future. And my sf, the sf of now, embraces diversity, gives ownership to the creators, judges stories in peer networks, and invites everyone to participate in owning tomorrow.
ETA: David Levine, the moderator of this panel, responded to my remarks in the Wiscon LJ group. He has very kindly given permission for me to add them here. I think hearing his view is valuable and necessary for the generation of dialog and understanding. Thank you, David, for taking the time and energy to reply.
“The panelists discussed the panel extensively in email before the convention. Eileen objected strenuously to the original panel statement, which boiled down to “there are no new ideas left in SF,” and we found that none of us agreed with it; I asked the convention to change it and they did, by changing the statement to a question (“is it true that there no new ideas left in SF?”). Eileen also invited Pat Murphy to be on the panel, to increase the number of women on the panel and because she thought Pat would have some interesting things to say about the topic (which she did).
“I’m sorry to hear that I appeared “nonplussed” by Pat and Eileen’s rejection of the panel thesis. What I was trying to do at that point in the panel was to raise questions and elicit discussion on the topic, and I may have been playing devil’s advocate a bit.
“Personally, I thought that the panel went well and did a good job of demolishing the idea that all the good ideas have been done already and the real world has become so science-fictional that writing SF is no longer possible. I disagreed with some of Chip Hitchcock’s statements, but I didn’t feel it was my place as moderator to slap him down for his opinions, only to keep the discussion moving and on-topic.
“I do believe that the science fiction genre (both readers and publishers) is quite conservative, resistant to new ideas and new forms of storytelling. However, just because I’ve observed this conservatism doesn’t mean I think it’s a good thing, and I don’t believe it should be used as an excuse for continued conservatism.
“The presumptions that you found so appalling (the bullet list in the middle of your post)… well, I don’t think we actually discussed any of those topics in the panel, though as you say they were presumptions rather than stated. I personally do not agree that real SF is not for those who read genre-blending works or watch TV/movies, or that all non-SF-readers are fearful of science and the future, or that self-published works cannot be real SF, or that genres with primarily female audiences are not real SF, or that real SF can only be read on paper and not on the Internet. I’m sure that Eileen Gunn, editor of the groundbreaking webzine The Infinite Matrix (2001-2006) would disagree even more strongly with that last!
“I do not recall anyone saying in the panel that “people who begin reading science fiction after the age of thirty are not allowed to judge whether a work is science fiction, whether it is good, or whether it has value,” which I agree is an appalling statement, but if it’s in your notes I suppose someone must have said it or something like it. We did talk about the differences in perception of SF and science-fictional ideas between people who grew up reading SF and those who didn’t, and about how non-SF writers who tackle SF ideas without reading broadly in the field first can get it badly wrong, and I can see that something along the lines of “no one who didn’t read SF before the age of 30 knows anything about SF” might have been said at some point.
“Bottom line: I can see how you might get that kind of anti-media, anti-Internet vibe from some old-time fans, but I personally did not see that vibe explicitly on display in this panel and I was surprised and disheartened to find that you came away with it as your primary memory of the panel.”
Filed under: Books, Conventions, Feminism, Racism
What a bunch of rigid, basement-dwelling, closed minded fanboys.
We get a lot of the same thing in comic fandom. “ZOMG!!! The X-Men have a history! You can’t possibly throw that history out the window and start again! That would mean that all of the energy I, as a rigid, basement-dwelling, closed minded fanboy, have invested in becoming an expert in the history of the X-Men will mean nothing! Without the history of the X-Men I am nothing!!!”
Except substitute history of the X-Men with definition of SciFi.
Some people need to get a life.
So this panel was clearly all about Your Dad’s SF. How did the rest of the audience react to this stuff?
The good news is that I think the majority of SF readers don’t think like this, and probably a growing number of publishers.
@ladypeyton As an X-Man fan for the last twenty years, I hear you!
@nkjemisin You know . . . I don’t know what the audience thought of the panel. There wasn’t a lot of back and forth, not a lot of questions. I know the friend I sat next to — not a life-long sf reader — was distinctly put off by the panel. But she would be. I would be very interested to hear what other audience members thought!
My big regret about this panel was not speaking up in the moment, not challenging what I felt to be the presumptions of the panelists directly. It took me a couple weeks to figure out what my problems with those assumptions were, though, and I missed the opportunity to discuss the matter at the con.
Wow, I have to say that based on the comments of that panel, any interest I have in going to future WisCons is severely curtailed.
Out of curiosity, any idea about what the general feeling is among attendees on the label of ’speculative fiction’? Seems to me that it is an all-encompassing term, which would be off-putting to those that want to see themselves as separate. However, it also allows for a not so divisive us vs. them mentality.
@BookGnome I must leap to the defense of my convention!
Wiscon is comprised of a wide range of fans, fannish experiences, pros, pro experiences, and a whole host of differing views on The Isms — feminism, racism, ableism, heterosexism, etc. I found this panel enraging, certainly — but I found all of the other panels I attended (except one other instance) to be thoughtful and thought-provoking, regardless of whether I agreed with the panelists.
Wiscon is a convention hosted by volunteers from disparate communities; it is diverse.
To answer your question, I think many many people do use speculative fiction as a term; what they mean by it may vary.
Bluntly, if that’s what being an sf fan is about, I want no part of it.
Just as theres no one central sf, there’s no one central fandom.
I define fandom as being the people who love sf enough to pay attention to it and communicate with other people who want to do the same. My preferred fandom centers on professionally produced print sf because that’s what I like, but that’s just me, and only a small part of fandom.
There’s a wide range of personalities and attitudes, and you can probably find compatible people. I don’t know if it’s worth pursuing for you, but it’s possible you identify with some groups that include people you detest– it’s just that you focus on the ones you like better.
@Nancy Lebovitz It’s funny; the post just after this one chronologically is a mourning of the loss of David Eddings. Professionally produced print sf/f is one of the joys in my life. I also love your definition of fandom: “the people who love sf enough to pay attention to it and communicate with other people who want to do the same” That’s as clear a definition I want to support as I’ve ever heard. Thank you!
Sigrid, I am sorry to hear that you were so distressed by the panel. I certainly think you should have spoken up as soon as the panel opened to questions, about halfway through. That would have broadened the discussion in a way that would have been beneficial, as I think we were talking mostly of print SF, and we were subconsciously confining ourselves to the “Dad’s SF” limitation of the title.
I don’t believe the panelists were as monolithic as you portray. Frankly, I cannot imagine anyone describing myself and Pat Murphy as “fanboys,” or thinking that we consider science-fiction fans to be an elite group. I am wondering what she and I might have said to give you that impression. I quite agree that fannish discussion of SF as a special category can be very annoying, and if the entire panel fell into doing that, then I can certainly understand your annoyance. I don’t think it we did, but then, being on the panel, I was not in a good position to judge.
Tthe “Dad’s SF” theme, which the panelists did not choose, certainly invited the narrowing of the topic to a highly conventional SF category. One of the reasons I wanted to be on the panel was that I disagreed with the stated topic, and I wanted to be there to voice my disagreement. (Btw, David was certainly not startled by my disagreeing with the premise, since we had discussed that in e-mail prior to the panel.) Most of the other panelists disagreed with the supposed topic in one way or another: I think it was probably created with the expectation that the panelists would disagree with it. However, I think that as a group, we didn’t expand much into SF romance areas, gaming, movies, etc — which you might have reasonably expected and wanted to talk about.
I think it would have been great if the panel programmers had included people who wanted to discuss those areas. Perhaps no romance or gaming people volunteered for the panel. In addition, there were no people of color on the panel, and few in the audience, and it would certainly have benefited from that. (I am sure that no POC on the panel is what led to few in the audience.)
I think your characterization of what I said, although it is generally correct, misses some of the fine points. For instance, I did not say that SF is not experimental, I said that genre SF is not experimental. It might be that you and I have different ideas of what experimental fiction is, but I can guarantee you that the major publishers of genre SF would veer sharply away from anything that resembles “experimental” fiction. This is not true of the small presses, and certainly it is possible to find experimental fiction in self-published books. (I would say the bulk of self-published books are not particularly experimental, but some are, and it is a time-honored way of publishing experimental work.)
In addition, I don’t believe I subscribe to the list of suppositions that you attribute to the panel. Iirc, I talked about different sf publishing categories, but it was not to draw distinctions of quality, it was to indicate that we on the panel were not all talking about the same thing, and that SF itself was larger than what the panel was discussing. I am sorry if I didn’t make that clear.
In terms of being an elitist: I don’t think all books are alike, and I don’t think all writers write equally well. I also think that readers (of which I am one) read for different characteristics at different times — for prose, for the quality of the adventure, for character, etc. Not every writer does all things equally well, and some people are simply better writers than others. If that makes me an elitist, I’ll wear the banner, because I think drawing distinctions of quality is how you learn to write well.
It was a panel of people with different views, and we did not speak with one voice. In addition, it was a fairly lighthearted conversation — perhaps because it a topic that has already been done to death on previous panels — and nobody stamped their feet and yelled when they disagreed with one of the other panelists, so it might have been hard to tell that we held some very different opinions.
I’m sorry that the conversation did not seem equally lighthearted to you. Next time, please speak up and raise serious issues.
@Eileen I really appreciate you coming by to voice your views. I particularly appreciate you pointing out the places where my hearing transformed intention into generalizations that were not meant!
(This being the internet, I feel compelled to add that I am not at all sarcastic here — I want the dialog!)
I did miss the nuance of “genre SF” as opposed to all science fiction and speculative fiction — I am somewhat loathe to rigidly define genre sf, but I do think we share some images — spaceships, interplanetary travel, beam weapons of some sort? I have a vague mental picture of a compiled cover art with spaceships warring in the background in front of a stellar object, with a man or woman in the foreground in battle armor, holding a gun? If that’s what you mean, then, yes — I agree that genre fiction is not experimental literature. [Digression: what a whole 'nother panel that would be, listing works that were experimental sf, and listing which genre conventions they broke or played with . . . it could be like bingo!]
I appreciate your clarification on differing forms of publication not as markers of quality. I did get that impression from . . . somewhere on the panel, I thought? Perhaps not you. Though, let me be clear; at some point I obviously stopped listening with an open mind and heart, and I acknowledge that.
I find your statements on elitism encouraging of dialog, because it strikes me that you and I may be discussing two different forms of judgment — I agree, wholeheartedly, that different creative works can be good or bad or a mix, and can be good and bad at different things all at the same time. Moreover, I *deeply* agree that we need to exercise critical judgment of creative works. As you say, if that makes me an elitist, I’ll wear the banner.
What I object to is a strain of judgment that weighs the means of production of a creative work as part of the work’s value, favoring large-house traditional hard-copy publishing over other forms due to their institutional sanction. Do you have time (and inclination) to talk about your experience getting published and reviewed in different formats, or any other remarks on this form of elitism?
This is a very useful discussion for me, even though I could not attend the panel.
One of the things that I think may account for the difference in perception from the podium and the audience is the pre-con email discussion. As a moderator and panelist, I also used it to discuss the panel topic, set an agenda, and other handy things. In this case, it’s possible that the panelists unintentionally started out with some comfort with each other and assumptions not available to the audience. So when @davidlevine played devil’s advocate, his fellow panelists already knew his position, but the audience might not be able to read that.
I think that point is one to seriously consider for the moderator mailing list next year, and I will try to bring that up — that too much pre-panel discussion may lead to an ‘inside-baseball’ feeling.
@eileengunn talked about the panel feeling like a light-hearted discussion in a panel that had been done to death. I think it may have been for the panelists. These are certainly topics familiar to many people, myself included. It’s like a family reunion where everyone hashes over familiar anecdotes and discusses differences of opinion, but in a family way. However, an outside observer may not have the context to understand why no one talks about current events.
The best part of Wiscon, to me, is that there is always someone new, an outsider wanting into the family. I wrote about sofvckinghot in the Book vs. Media Panel, who changed the whole panel by being willing to stop people and get them to explain their terms and assumptions. But even if there is no one who is explicitly asking questions, I hope that all of us, panelists and audience members, will remember that people are listening to the panel because it *hasn’t* been done to death, FOR THEM. That it’s new. That it’s their first con. That they are here to learn something.
Not every panel has to be 101, but we should flag the ones that are 201.
Sigrid, one of the things that did not happen on the panel was a definition of terms. Which is understandable, because that can totally bog down a panel, but the lack of it can also make dialogue and understanding impossible. I don’t have time tonight to make a complete post on the discussion you open, but I do have time to refer to some of the terms I have been using here and on the panel. Fortunately for me, these are well defined (as I understand them, and was using them on the panel) on Wikipedia.
Genre fiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre_fiction
Genre SF
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre_fiction#Science_fiction
Experimental fiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_fiction
I was not referring particularly to “formula fiction,” and if you thought that, you may have misconstrued what I was saying:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_fiction
In addition, genre SF has a long list of respectable sub-genres:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction_genre
I will return in the next day or so to address the questions you raise. Briefly, I would say that a given work can of course be considered totally independently of the publisher. Most are conceived that way. To my mind, the most interesting works are the ones conceived and executed with the least obvious regard for the marketplace. However, the word “obvious” is the critical word. Even James Joyce, even Emily Dickenson, considered the marketplace. (If you don’t think so, read their many excellent biographies.)
Cross-posted with @Wired. You make a good point, Wired, but the fact is that it is usually the 101 panels that are clearly numbered at WisCon. Most of the people attending have been to many WisCons. I’ve been to about 15; there have been 33.
However, the point you raise is well-taken: the audience is not all at the same point in the dialogue. What’s more, the panelists are not at the same point in the dialogue. In this particular panel, there were at least three different discussions going on. Maybe four. (I think Pat and I were somewhere on the same page, because we usually are.)
It wasn’t that we were over-discussed to start with. Imnsho, the topic was too broad and the panelists too diverse (in background, not ethnicity) to yield a single coherent discussion. These things happen — it wasn’t a tragedy — but I am sorry that @Sigrid was too distressed to speak up. Often a pointed question from an audience member can bring focus to such a panel.
Very interesting reading all around.
This is a thought I’ve been mulling for a while: might it be a good idea to generally lay off playing devil’s advocate? I’m becoming increasingly convinced that it ends up damaging discourse more than it helps – I’m noticing just how many arguments among people I’d like to see getting along come from tone sliding around through various degrees of insincerity, abstraction, and/or hypotheticalness.
I was with Sigrid at the panel so I thought I’d share some of my impressions –
I definitely did not come away from the panel thinking that everyone on it shared the kind of views that Sigrid mentioned, and there were some points which were very clearly limited to one particular panelist (ie, nobody in the whole room seemed to be on board with the ‘hairdryer book’ thing). On the other hand, that panelist was very vocal about the superiority of sci-fi readers to ‘mundanes’, and that sentiment was echoed by audience members. I think it was his comments + various audience comments that produced the overall feeling Sigrid is talking about.
With the rest of the panel, it was more that I didn’t get a strong sense of an alternative to his the anti-mundane thesis, so that ended up being the strong feeling that I came away with. I didn’t really pick up on the publisher/medium bias that Sigrid did, but I’ll also admit that a lot of this flew over my head. I’d never even HEARD the term ‘mundane’ before and I think I was a little too puzzled and confused by that to take much more in.
To say a little about my perspective — I haven’t been much of a sci-fi reader throughout my life; I’m just starting to get into it (I’m 33), which was one of my reasons for being at WisCon. I came to the panel because I’m somewhat better versed in classic than in contemporary sci-fi, and I was thinking based on the panel description that it would be a discussion of the relationship between the classics and what ’s going on today. That was just kind of a guess, though; I agree the panel description, even as modified, was unclear, and I have sympathy for the panelists trying to respond to it.
I walked away with this ‘mundane’ thing as my primary impression — basically thinking, “Hey, that’s me you’re talking about; I’ve read *some* sci-fi, and I’ve absorbed a lot of the ideas in passing, primarily through movies and the kind of ‘bleed’ that the panel was discussing — into comics and so-called literary fiction. ” Sigrid knows this about me and I suspect that having me sitting next to her had some effect on how she perceived the panel.
Now I want to emphasize that I’m not saying I felt attacked or deliberately excluded by the panel — one of the things we talked about quite a bit at the con is ‘people who like different things than you do are NOT oppressing you’ (one would think that was more obvious than it seems to be based on some conversations I’ve had). What I did feel was that the people who were talking about sci-fi vs. mundane actually intended to be inclusive of the people in the room. I just got the impression they assumed that anyone who would be at WisCon and would come to this panel in the first place couldn’t possibly be a ‘mundane’. So the intention was to say that some nonspecified ‘they’ don’t understand ‘us’. I did think of walking out of the panel, not because I was insulted but because I felt like I wasn’t the intended audience for it.
And I’m not quite done yet — I wanted to mention that having gone through a writing MFA program, I am painfully aware of the other side of this conversation as well. I’ve been in the room with a biggish name ‘literary’ writer, who clearly has written speculative fiction, who was told, “I don’t consider your books sci-fi because blah blah. ..” and heard him say “Thank you.”
But hearing the blanket dismissal of ‘mundane’ readers at the WisCon was the first time that I kind of, a little bit, understood where this guy was coming from. Not that much. I still think he was a prick about it. But I at least have some context for why he would want to deny it.
Basically, I understand the value in using genre as a critical category, and the necessity of using it as a publishing category. But if we must be splitters instead of lumpers, I think the more important split is between people who read books (even under the hairdryer) and people who don’t. I wish folks on every side of this conversation would be more willing to see it that way.
@Sigrid, I’ll take as a starting point the last paragraph of your previous quote:
—-
>>What I object to is a strain of judgment that weighs the means of production of a creative work as part of the work’s value, favoring large-house traditional hard-copy publishing over other forms due to their institutional sanction. Do you have time (and inclination) to talk about your experience getting published and reviewed in different formats, or any other remarks on this form of elitism?
—-
First of all, I don’t consider favoring traditional publishing a form of elitism, but that is not to say that I personally look to traditional publishing to supply my information or entertainment needs, or that I think self-published work or work published on the Internet is necessarily inferior.
Publishing of any kind (even self-publishing) is a filter: it’s selective. I think that’s what you are referring to when you speak of elistism. (Please correct me if I am wrong.) All publishing selects for particular characteristics. Different publishing houses and different editors select for different characteristics. Most mass-market publishing does not select for the characteristics I’m interested in. However, I don’t think that makes either me or mass-market publishing elitist. I think it is important for writers and readers to learn to discriminate between what they want and what they don’t want. Even self-publishing is available only to those who have the stamina to produce a book and distribute it. (I am not talking about vanity publishing, but even vanity publishing sorts out the people who do not have enough money to pay a vanity publisher.)
There are so many books available, new and used, that every reader has to have a sort-system in order to find what they want to read, and to explore new books that they might be interested in. I found, as a child, that science fiction books from certain authors and certain publishers were interesting, and expanded out from there. As an adult, having not kept up with the science fiction marketplace, I found that 90% of randomly chosen science-fiction books were crap, and I had to develop a new sort-system.
What makes an elitist is not selectivity in the first place: it is thinking that one’s own sort system is the only one that makes any qualitative sense, and everyone else’s is somehow defective.
(More on next rock.)
@Caroline, crossposted. Thank you for clarifying the situation for me. (As Sigrid said earlier, I mean this sincerely.)
When it comes to the “fans vs. mundanes” conversation, which occurs more often on panels than in my real life, I tend not to engage: it’s a boring topic. In fact, I usually turn off my sensory input system until that panelist stops speaking.
It may be that I am not alone in this, and it might have given Sigrid the impression that the rest of us concurred. I was annoyed (and a bit surprised, given we were at WisCon) by the hairdryer remark, but other than pointing out, dryly, that my own most recent hairdryer book was from a small press, I did not argue with him. The points I thought I was making were (1) Hey, buddy, watch it with the sexist hairdryer cracks, and (2) Your generalization about what people will read under a hairdryer is defective. Irony and oblique humor do not play well on panels, so as I type this, I realize that perhaps Sigrid thought my point was about the superiority of small press books.
Sorry if I am going on at too great a length, but I want to respond to @Sigrid’s question about my personal experience:
—–
>>> Do you have time (and inclination) to talk about your experience getting published and reviewed in different formats, or any other remarks on this form of elitism?
___
That’s a complex question. First of all, my personal goal as a writer is to write what I want to write and to get as many people to read it and understand it as possible. It would also be nice if I could make a living of some sort at it, and have my efforts rewarded with favorable critical attention.
To accomplish what I want, I may have to use all the publishing possibilities available, but there are trade-off involved in each. (Not to mention the fact that a publisher I am interested in may not be interested in me.)
I write short stories. In order to disseminate my work broadly and get critical attention, I especially need to publish in widely disseminated and/or respected books or journals. I have been able to do that in the SF field, but have not tried to do it in the larger world.
A major publisher would print far more copies of my work and distribute it more widely than a small press publisher, but they may not give me the marketing approach I want, or the book design. If I were a novel writer, they might want changes in the book that move it away from the issues I want to deal with. Or they might not.
A small press publisher would (and Tachyon has) publish my work and distribute it well, giving me a voice in the marketing and production of it. (No naked babes with blasters blazing, unless I insist on it.) It got a nice capsule review in Publishers Weekly and was reviewed very nicely in the Washington Post, the Seattle Times, and other venues that pay attention to SF short fiction. It also was well-reviewed on the Internet and in SF trade publications, and all of this was important to its success. It required a lot of work on my part, as well as the publisher’s, and we worked together to get the book reviewed and read. In this respect, I think that my having a well-designed book that was handsomely printed made a big difference. (My partner is a very talented book designer, and my publisher was willing to allow him to design the book. This would probably not have happened at a large publisher. The fact that I am a marketing professional also helped reduce the learning curve, but did not eliminate it.)
If I had not been able to get someone else to publish it, I could have done so myself, either online or on paper. That would have required considerable effort and expense on my part, much more so than having a small press publish it. If it were published on paper, distribution would have been a real problem. Personally, I would not go that route if I had any other options, but I admire the people who have the courage and skills to do so. I know writers who prefer and enjoy self-publishing, for a variety of reasons. I also know a lot of people who have started their own small presses — but I do not consider that self-publishing, even if they publish their own work.. It’s completely a ymmv situation.
I started an online magazine, the Infinite Matrix (now no longer publishing, but still readable, at http://www.infinitematrix.net). It started at about the same time as OmniOnline and Strange Horizons, and published both major authors and newcomers. I think the appearance of the three paying magazines about the same time (2001) strengthened the category.
In short, the work is independent of the way it is published. The writer should go for the way that suits her or him best, but the choice is more likely made by editorial rejection or acceptance, not by the author.
The reader should read what they enjoy reading and (in my opinion) try new things, and use whatever sort system is the most fun for them, or most efficient at giving them the best results (i.e., books they enjoy reading).
Sorry this is so long — it’s a complex issue. I hope it addresses your question. An issue you didn’t raise is paying versus non-paying markets, which is equally complex and fraught with elitism, but I’m not going there….
Ooops #2: At the end of my last post, I meant to say that the Infinite Matrix started at about the same time as SciFiction (not OmniOnline, which was much earlier) and Strange Horizons.
@ Eileen, @Caroline
This is really one of the best conversations I’m in on this. Eileen, your thoughts on the complexity of working and getting paid within the markets are great. Also, daunting!
“When it comes to the “fans vs. mundanes” conversation, which occurs more often on panels than in my real life, I tend not to engage: it’s a boring topic. In fact, I usually turn off my sensory input system until that panelist stops speaking.”
This made me snort my morning coffee.
And I particularly like this:
“What makes an elitist is not selectivity in the first place: it is thinking that one’s own sort system is the only one that makes any qualitative sense, and everyone else’s is somehow defective.”
More than that will have to wait, as these thoughts percolate. But this is a great conversation, thank you.
(Also, I will edit out the accidentally posted incomplete comment!)
@Eileen Thank you for your comments. This is really interesting to read, and I’m glad to get some more insight into what was going on at the panel.
I also want to say that I did really appreciate what you and Pat Murphy had to say about SF changing with the concerns of the time. I’ve been really immersed in SF since I’ve gotten back, and this is a really helpful way to think about why a story written in the 60s is different from a story written in the 90s is different than a story written today, even when they have a lot of the same elements.
@Sigrid, I look forward to continuing the conversation.
@Caroline, IMO SF (all fiction, really) is about the writer’s present concerns, and popular fiction is popular because it addresses the readers’ present concerns (and maybe fears), and SF content and politics evolves as people’s concerns evolve. That is what Pat and I were most interested in talking about on the panel. We were hoping to have a conversation with the other panelists and the audience about this, but it didn’t really develop that way. With a different group of panelists, it might have.
What I think happened here was a difference of expectations between long-time SF fans (all of the panelists are long-time fans) and those who read SF but are not participants in the culture of fandom. Many of the presumptions identified above as problematic, including the word “mundane” and corresponding negative attitudes toward non-SF-fans, are traditional attitudes of fans. These attitudes may even have been somewhat justified in the early days of fandom (1930s-1960s), when SF really was looked down on by the average person as well as the literary establishment, but times have changed — relying on all audience members, even at an SF convention, to share those attitudes can get people in trouble.
I noticed a bunch of paragraphs in the interview with Robert Charles Wilson in the latest Locus that seemed apropos to this discussion (both the original panel and the subsequent discussion here), and I’m going to make use of the Fair Use provision of copyright to quote them here. Everything below this point is quoted from Robert Charles Wilson.
“Science fiction isn’t the same genre it was when I grew up. It doesn’t have the same boundaries. It bleeds off in every direction — into comic books, into movies, into trivial adventure novels and also into more ambitious novels addressed to a more literary audience. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, because we get to play with all that stuff, and it’s a nice set of toys.”
“[E]ach generation of writers has to re-envision all this stuff. And I see that happening. There is a long tradition of mainstream literary writers occasionally attempting to write science fiction and doing things clumsily that science fiction writers have painstakingly learned not to do clumsily. But recently I’ve seen a number of books from mainstream writers (the obvious case would be Michael Chabon) who _are_ utterly familiar with the science fiction tradition and value it. I see a huge diminution of that old snobbery about ‘real literature’ and science fiction, because people who write ‘real literature’ often have grown up reading science fiction, or at least having been exposed to it.”
“I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically elitist about what we do as science fiction writers. It can be hard to address scientific or cosmological questions in a way that speaks to people who aren’t simmered in science fiction or in the sciences. But that’s a problem every writer has: Who are you talking to? Who’s your audience? The nice thing about the science fiction genre is we have an expansive space in which all these things can coexist.”
“The quality of writing in science fiction now is higher than it’s ever been. The danger is that we sometimes get seduced into a kind of self-loathing, where we will write a book of science fiction that minimizes the science-fictional element because it might not be acceptable to a broader audience. My response would be, ‘No, don’t let go of that! Write a better book, a more profound book, a more interesting book, but don’t cut out the heart of it!”
“Science fiction can talk about scientific and cosmological issues in a way science itself would never permit you to do. I certainly don’t consider myself to be somebody who’s dispensing wisdom, but if I can provoke people into thinking about these big issues on a personal level, I’m satisfied.”
David, I disagree with your suggestion that everyone on the panel was a “long-time SF fan,” and would say, rather, that all were sufficiently members of the community to have heard the fans/mundanes argument derail previous discussions. I certainly class it as part of the thinking of an earlier generation, but, to paraphrase Wm. Gibson, “the past is still here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”
Eileen, that’s a fair assessment of the situation and shows that I’m guilty of the same “we’re all fans here” assumption I was pointing out above. Sorry about that.
No problem, David. Just goes to show that you think inclusively.