Links : The Ugly Side of Fandom

Sometimes being an SF reader means getting your hands dirty.  We're not talking about murdering hookers or plying schoolgirls with GHB (those activities are strictly optional), but we are talking about some of the unfortunate realities of being a part of the SF scene.  In particular I am thinking of some of the unfortunate thought patterns that SF fans seem to pick up and the fact that for all its artistic worth, SF and Fantasy are still commercial genres.

This week has yielded a number of interesting examples of what I like to think of as the ugly side of fandom.

FIRSTLY, let us consider the relationship between genre and mainstream fiction.   Matt Cheney over at Mumpsimus takes issue with an NYRSF article in which Jason Sanford talks about the US literary establishment having a need-hate relationship with genre.  Cheney rightly points out that "literary establishment" and "the canon" are pretty much empty terms and goes on to accuse genre fans of having an inferiority complex that forces them to lash out aggressively at mainstream lit because every time a book like Cormac McCarthy's The Road nobody jumps up and down and points out all the times that SF visited similar ideas.  This prompts Niall Harrison to jump in and argue that actually, McCarthy is contributing to the same conversation as books like Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz.  I actually agree with Cheney.

Genre is, first and foremost, an ongoing discussion between authors.  Each generation a bunch of authors consider an idea using some of the old tools left to them by the people that came before them and produce books that prompt the next generation to re-use or improve the tools or even apply them to new ideas.  This is how genre evolves without ever really getting stuck (with the possible exception of epic fantasy which isn't so much a conversation between generations as a Platonic Dialogue in which Tolkien says something and everyone agrees with him).  Books like The Road are difficult because they appear to be a part of a conversation but really they aren't.  It's highly questionable whether McCarthy ever read the works of Miller and others.  In fact, it's far more likely that he took the idea of a nuclear apocalypse and decided to put his own spin on it independent of the great tradition of post-apocalyptic fiction.  Indeed, the whole point about not being a genre author is that you're not engaging in a conversation, you're making a speech.  The Road touched on a lot of ideas familiar to genre readers because he was essentially re-inventing the wheel.  In fact, that is why McCarthy is considered to be so brilliant... because he can re-invent a wheel without any knowledge of the wheel-building industry (if you'll excuse a tortured analogy).  I don't think McCarthy owes SF anything, nor do I think that critics writing about The Road need to talk about past works of post-apocalyptic fiction.  However, I don't think that this is the real battleground.

The real battleground between mainstream literature/art and genre is when the authors are clearly familiar with genre and are clearly reacting to that genre.  The person who most obviously springs to mind in this category is David Mitchell.  No, not the Mac and PC one. Mitchell writes about skiffy themes and has clearly read quite a bit of SF in his past.  However, his part of the conversation is addressed not at the people who are carrying on the conversation but the people sitting at the next table.  He is reacting to the genre conversation and as such probably does owe homage to the history of SF and critics are fully justified in talking about how much his books resemble SF.  In fact, Mitchell's work is a bit reminiscent of Glenn Brown's painting The Loves of Shepherds 2000 (after Tony Roberts).  The work was, in effect, the front cover of an old edition of Heinlein's Double Star.  Brown clearly had a point to make about the nature of SF but the piece of art was recycled from the works of another artist operating 25 years previously.  So must Mitchell pay homage?  and if not how about Brown?  apparently, the Tate museum didn't think Brown needed to bother with copyright or even credit.

SECONDLY, someone called Sarah recently commented upon the rampant sexism and idiocy that pervades internet forums devoted to SFF (yes, she comments on sexism and has a Myspace-style cleavage shot on her blog but if Sex Crime Bear has taught us anything gentlemen it's that just because they're on display, it doesn't mean you're allowed to stare or touch... BAD fanboys! Naughty!).  Sarah goes on to talk at greater length on the issue HERE prompting Pat from the fantasy hotlist to comment too.  What struck me as interesting in this discussion is how the casual sexism and "hot chick A should totally sleep with deformed dwarf B because he totally rocks!" is not so much a male thing as it is an immature arsehole cum weird fanboy thing.  As proof, please consider THIS cultural artifact.  I discovered it on the Laurell K. Hamilton forums here, attached as a signature to all posts by a guy called "Ceit".  It looks to me like a cartoon rendering of Anita Blake with Cookie Monster holding a gun and a wad of toilet paper saying "I got your back Anita".  In fact, if you look through those forums, you'll see threads full of speculation about which character is fucking which and people expressing their love for various characters (in fact, you're not allowed to insult any of the characters... it's in the forum rules).  So my point is that once you start looking into genre forums, nobody, male OR female comes out looking good.

As a side issue, this has drawn to my attention quite how clan-like online fandom is.  Pat's rundown of the major forums feels a bit like a who's-who of fantasy with Grrrrr Martin, Steven Erikson and Robert Jordan all having large and well frequented forums in their names.  Add Laurell K. Hamilton to the mix and you'll find that aside from SFFworld, most SF geeks congregate by author... not by genre, thereby encouraging a tribal structure to online society.  the alternative to this tends to be smaller forums with a tightly-knit group of regular posters.  Is it any wonder that fandom is full of people who reject authors as shit within seconds of first hearing their names?

 

THIRDLY, I noticed this post complaining about the quality of Orbit's recent output and the lack of buzz surrounding their offerings.  What is interesting is I have a pretty good idea who the Stealth Geek is and have had dealings with her regarding a particular book.  The British satirical magazine Private Eye devotes a lot of coverage to people making the kind of claims that the Stealth Geek made.  From journalists praising editors of other publications before they get jobs with that editor to partners of celebrities writing about how great their partner's new film is, the mainstream media is full of people working their platforms for their own future gain.  Indeed, if the Stealth Geek is who I think it is then that post allows her to both slag off the competition and grub for a potential job by suggesting that Orbit needs a person with a strong PR background to create the buzz they are so clearly lacking.  Indeed, Penny Arcade recently made fun of such "disinterested" editorialising.

I'm exaggerating somewhat but pulling punches or pushing agendas for reasons of personal gain does pose an interesting ethical question for writers.  Indeed, I've said unkind things about a number of publications who might, at some point, be interested in buying my stuff.  Would it be acceptable for me to not talk about SFX because I secretly coveted a job there? (I don't by the way...)  how about pulling my punches and not saying that the editors of a particular online magazine are sufficiently lacking in social skills to suggest either autism or mild retardation?  at what point does morality demand that I stop digging my professional grave?

EDIT : Actually, that came off as a lot harsher than I meant it to.  I found Stealth Geek's post funny rather than anything else (though my lack of forum hanging means that I'm not really qualified to note whether Orbit is indeed lacking pre-release buzz compared to other publishers) and I'm a big fan of the blog (particularly its willingness to deal with GLBT issues).

Comments

[Rob B]

Very interesting post, Jonathan. Stealth Geek has a point, Orbit hasn't been as prominent on the scene as were Solaris and Pyr were when they first burst on the US scene. I don't get the "wow look at us" sense from Orbit quite the same way. This is somewhat surprising since Orbit is such a proven commodity across the pond. Granted, Lou Anders of Pyr was a solid blogger before the Pyr launch and that has translated very well into Pyr's online marketing/publishing presence.

To the first point, FSF does have something of a self-hating vein, no? We (the collective fandom) often look down upon the non-genre author attempting to play in our sandbox. Walter Mosely wrote a couple of SF novels a couple of years ago, didn't get much love from the FSF crowd. Of course there are some exceptions, Michael Chabon being the first and foremost. He, more than almost any non-traditional (that is not published by a SF publisher) doesn't seem to have a problem being associated with FSF. If anything, from what I've seen, he embraces it and more importantly, he seems to get it. Another "newcomer" to genre, David Anthony Durham, seems to get it, too. He can write pretty damn well, too.

To the third point about forums, thanks for the SFFWorld shout out. When I do visit an author's particular forum, I tend to stick to the "Other Literature" sections. If you think Martin, Erikson, and Jordan's forums are tough, you should check out NoGoodkind, Brooks and Newcomb.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Hi Rob :-) thanks for dropping by.

You are right about Solaris and Pyr. Solaris have been ruthlessly effective at PR despite having little more than a load of third tier authors on their books. Similarly, I agree that Pyr punch above their weight entirely because of Lou Anders' presence on the scene.

In the UK I think that Orbit gets overshadowed by Gollancz because of Gollancz's policy of hoovering up UK writers in order to land the world-wide distribution rights (which is a good thing for British writers and not such a good thing for British readers as it means that loads of great US books never get distributed over here).

I never pay all that much attention to pre-release hype though.

I think that the us-and-them attitude towards mainstream lit made sense before the new wave but given that a sizeable chunk of the movers and shakers in the new wave went on to be critically acclaimed mainstream authors, I think that seeing a big divide there is silly. Both for mainstream fans looking down their noses at genre and for genre fans fuming at the fact that R.A. Salvatore doesn't have a literary journal devoted to him.

[The Stealth Geek]

Robb -

I got all confused when I saw you use FSF; I automatically associate those initials with the magazine Fantasy & Science Fiction. I was thinking, "Wait, the magazine hates itself?" Then the caffeine kicked in.

Jonathan -

I was complaining about Orbit; merely pointing out what seems to be a major flaw in their launch plans. When Orbit US was first announced last year, there was a lot of genuine excitement. But as the actual launch approaches (September 2007) we actually hear less and less about the imprint or the books. The way large trade publishers work in the US, they won't get much a of second chance if this initial list doesn't live up to fiscal expectations for Hachette. Publishers drop imprints fairly quickly these days if they don't meet the bottom line.

What worries me more is that they dismantled a perfectly good SF/F imprint last year (Warner Aspect) to create Orbit. If Orbit doesn't live up to promise, the community will have lost not one but two SF/F publishers.

Which is why their initial marketing and publicity push is so important.

[Jason Sanford]

Jonathan, thank you for writing about the essay I wrote and Cheney’s response to it. While I can’t post a link to my original essay, I have blogged about how I think Cheney went off on a tangent with all the stuff about the literary establishment. You can read the post here.

I should mention that I totally agree with you about McCarthy's genius being his ability to "re-invent a wheel." He did this with horror and westerns (in Blood Meridian) and has now done it with post-apocalyptic fiction. I would add, though, that I doubt he does this re-inventing without any knowledge of the wheel-building industry.

Best,

Jason Sanford

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Stealth Geek -- Sure, you're right. But I bet the fact that you have the skill-set to supply that push figured in your writing the post ;-)

Jason -- Thanks for dropping by and for the link to your response.

If you agree that the likes of McCarthy can and do "re-invent the wheel", do you still not think it reasonable for them to be praised while the genre people who re-invent much less are ignored? Aren't they just praising the people who do loads of heavy lifting rather than the people who only do a little?

I think the mistake a lot of genre fans make is to look at a canticle for leibowitz and see post-apocalyptic goodness. Then look at the Road and see apocalyptic goodness and assume that both are equally worthy of praise as they touch on the same materials.

I don't think people praise McCarthy for writing a post-apocalyptic novel or a horror/western hybrid. They praise the act of creation.

[A.R.Yngve]

Hypothesis: Fans still operate by a ghetto paradigm, even though the SF ghetto ceased to exist years ago.

It's over. SF won. It's the new mainstream.

Speaking of which: So what do we need the fans for now? Like Vietnam War vets, they're drifting around, still fighting the war in their minds...
[*SARCASM*]

[The Stealth Geek]

Actually, my background in publishing is editorial, so I don't really have the skillsets that Orbit needs. (But I certainly could use the technical skills; I hate Blogger templates!)

[Jason Sanford]

Jonathan: In my essay I make a similar point to what A.R.Yngve said directly above, "It's over. SF won. It's the new mainstream." A major point of my essay is that literary fiction is taking on the themes and tropes of speculative fiction precisely because genre writings are so relevant to today's increasingly strange world. That's what I meant by agreeing with A.R.Yngve's comment that SF won.

In addition, it's not so much the praising that bothers me; it's the actual shoving aside of valid cultural influences, which to me is poor literary criticism. In my essay, I examine all the top-level reviews of The Road in publications like the NY Times, Washington Post, and so on. All but two of these top-level reviews ignore possible speculative fiction literary influences on McCarthy's novel. However, while they ignore these influences, they talk about other possible influences such as the Night of the Living Dead and Mad Max films or, in the case of the Time Magazine review, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's almost unknown novel The Last Man and Samuel Beckett's play Endgame.

The interesting fact, though, is that a large number of reviews in smaller newspapers and online mention the very speculative fiction influences on The Road that the top-level reviewers miss. It's almost as if there is a disconnect in what the literary elite deem worthy of being an influence on a novel like The Road, and what average readers and writers see as having influenced McCarthy's novel.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

I think Mad Max and Night of the Living Dead are fair enough as possible inspirations. the bit with the truck was very Mad Max and the process of going through buildings to find stuff was very Night of the Living Dead.

If we're talking possible influences then it strikes me as fair enough to think first of Mad Max and Romero as their influence on the iconography of the post-apocalyptic genre is FAR greater than something like Leibowitz.

As for the Beckett, name me one English graduate who doesn't talk about Beckett at the drop of a hat.

You have a point with the Wollstonecraft novel though.

[A.R.Yngve]

And the theme song for the SF Fan Post-Vietnam Syndrome is, of course, Paul Hardcastle's "19":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSGvqjVHik8
;-P

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Well we all know what happens to de-mobbed Vietnam vets don't we? they either write The Forever War or they go nuts like Rambo.

Ah 19, or "nuh-nuh-nuh-nineteen" as we called it at the time.

[A.R.Yngve]

From the movie FANBO: FIRST EGOBOO PART II

"But what is it you want, Fanbo?"

"I want... what they want! What every fan who went to cons, and got drunk and threw up their guts, and gave everything they had to buy a complete Firefly box set... wants! That New York Times will love sci-fi as much as I love it. That's what I want!"
[SATIRE]

[Mark J. McPherson]

>Books like The Road are difficult because they appear to be a part of a conversation but really they aren't. . . . The Road touched on a lot of ideas familiar to genre readers because he was essentially re-inventing the wheel. In fact, that is why McCarthy is considered to be so brilliant... because he can re-invent a wheel without any knowledge of the wheel-building industry.>

This strikes me as exactly correct, and its surprising to see it on a site devoted in part to SF. In the first ten lines of "The Road", I was conscious of the work being different in some way than any other post-apocalyptic fiction I'd read before. A dim interpretation of that might be that it is simply a function of the quality of writing and talent of the writer, but that is not entirely fair, other than as a means of distinguishing the pulp within the SF library. Is it coincidence, that Russel Hoban and Margaret Atwood came also to mind, albeit a distance from McCarthy, when thinking about "The Road"? "The Road" is different from McCarthy's own body of work as well. But if there is a progression, or a relation culminated in "The Road", it may be the terminus of McCarthy's writing and his journey through the literary landscape, not some late and hidden map to a SF subtext. It is an alarming and possessed writing, and it makes little sense to try and tether genre pieces from lesser authors to it.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Hi Mark :-)

"This strikes me as exactly correct, and its surprising to see it on a site devoted in part to SF."

Don't worry, I'll be back to talking about beautiful Seven of Nine is in no time.

You are correct. I think it does come down to the quality of the writing a lot of the time too. The Road doesn't just have nice ideas and the weird bit with the fish at the end, it's also hauntingly written. Everything from the sentence construction trough to the punctuation is part of the work of art that is The Road.

You're also correct that The Road is far more easily understood not as a component in the evolution of genre but as a part of the journey traveled by McCarthy as a writer and where he fits in the grander cultural tradition of Southern US tough guy sentimentalist writers.

Having said all of that, Jason was good enough to send me a copy of his original article and I'll probably write up some more of my thoughts on this topic tomorrow when I get a chance.

[The Stealth Geek]

Ah, Seven of Nine....

::: purrrrrrrrr :::

Oh, sorry - did I say that out loud?

[Rob B]

What worries me more is that they dismantled a perfectly good SF/F imprint last year (Warner Aspect) to create Orbit. If Orbit doesn't live up to promise, the community will have lost not one but two SF/F publishers.

Which is why their initial marketing and publicity push is so important.

I don't know how long the Orbit switch over was in the works behind the scenes, but the WarnerAspect imprint seemed to have been dwindling and teetering on the edge for quite some time. The only real new authors I've seen from them over the past couple of years was Marie Brennan and Karin Lowachee. And Lowachee's debut novel was almost five years ago.

The Eddings series didn't seem to do very well for them; the Keven J. Anderson series seems to be the biggest thing they've done.

[MattD]

"It's over. SF won. It's the new mainstream."

Hmm, yes and no. Or no and yes? We write as if SF is a monolithic edifice, but it's famously been difficult to pin down exactly what SF is. Certainly one of the dividing points has always been the distinction between fiction that uses technological symbols to comment on the aspirations and fears of current society, and fiction that extrapolates on current technologies in order to present a sense of the options for society going into the future.

It seems to me that it is the symbol-oriented, contemporary-gazing form of SF that has been adopted as a legitimate form of storytelling by the mainstream. And in itself, I think this is great -- it's given some powerful new symbols to master writers, resulting in books that I've really enjoyed reading. It's also the hallmark of much-lauded shows like BSG and Lost.

What worries me is what is happening to the other part of SF, the one that has attempted to facilitate dialog about the future. Did that aspect share in the winning? It seems if anything to be under more attack than ever, from without and within.

So did SF win? Or are we gloating while the dangerous part of SF quietly has a bag slipped over its head?

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Matt -- I think that's a very good point. I think that, vice Buffy, it's now perfectly acceptable to use the literal symbolism of SFF to look at contemporary and pop-sychological issues. I mean, it even appeared in The Incredibles as a form of story-telling.

However, the SF that looked outwards and upwards has continued to fall out of favour. One of the things that I really liked about Sunshine was the fact that it really was a piece of SF that looked at big themes instead of the small personal ideas that have choked US indie cinema to death.

What is particularly interesting about this though is how willing SF, as a movement, has been to walk away from its traditional big themes in order to focus on the small, the personal and the easy. I don't think that this is something that's coming from the outside.

[A.R.Yngve]

MattD wrote that it's "the symbol-oriented, contemporary-gazing form of SF that has been adopted as a legitimate form of storytelling by the mainstream."

I wholly agree, and I understand your concern that the "extrapolating", future-speculating segment of SF is not necessarily doing as well.

Speculating about possible futures is getting harder mainly because of what's happening in the real world. (Quick: Exactly when did Global Warming go from speculation to reality?) As a writer, I struggle to keep up with the pace of change.

If you're an SF writer aiming for serious "hard" speculative literature, you risk not only being overtaken by the real-world change. You also risk that your depiction of the future comes off as so strange, many readers are put off.
(It doesn't help that "some" SF readers are in fact quite conservative and want their future White, Anglo-Saxon and staunchly Protestant...)

BTW, let me ask you: is the "hard" SF of today well written -- i.e. accessible to the reader? I confess that I find some of it difficult to read.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

"BTW, let me ask you: is the "hard" SF of today well written -- i.e. accessible to the reader? I confess that I find some of it difficult to read."

I was wondering about this the other day. I read Jetse de Vries' NYRSF piece on Blindsight and then went back and read mine and realised that what the two pieces had in common was that they both spoke the language of the book.

Jetse went off and read some works by Metzinger and I'm a long time fan of Hume and so I was familiar with the basic idea of there being no self.

I then looked at a lot of the other reviews and a lot of them don't really touch on the meat of the book.

I suspect that if you come to Blindsight without a good understanding of the ideas touched upon then you're going to find it completely inaccessible to the point of being unreadable in parts (particularly the ending).

I think Blindsight is a beautifully written book but by its very subject matter, the meat of the book is not accessible.

I think that herein lies the difficulty with hard SF. Academic and scientific thought is currently so far removed from common sense and pop psychology that in order to engage with their ideas have to be an educated person or a person willing to prime yourself beforehand.

In short : Those big questions aren't popular because as a writer and as a reader they're hard.

[MattD]

"Those big questions aren't popular because as a writer and as a reader they're hard."

Yes, although I find it interesting that the same literary critics who would probably be overjoyed to name-drop Hume or Metzinger in a discussion of a more mainstream novel would dismiss out of hand a book like Blindsight because it is about the future. Isn't it theoretically the job of the critic to make "hard" works accessible to mainstream readers, rather than rather anti-intellectually complaining about how hard they are?

Mind you, I'm not saying this is entirely the work of some vast cultural conspiracy. If nothing else, I can see plenty of blame for it on the SF side, starting with a staggering lack of understanding by many of the staunchest hard SF writers and fans of what words like "literature" and "accessible" are commonly held to mean. But I do tend to think in systems, and I can't help but feel that any system that encourages people not to think about the future is something to be wary of, and to work against.

That said, the whole ghetto/no respect for genre thing has always seemed silly to me. Do punk rock bands complain that they're not featured on Public Broadcasting* often enough?

* = a US-centric metaphor, not sure what the equivalent elsewhere would be.