Yesterday’s Guardian Book Blog had a post about science fiction fandom. What is more, it actually presented fandom in a positive light. This is in stark contrast to The Independent who, you may remember, did the usual thing of sending someone to a convention in order to make fun of it. If only The Guardian could manage to stop its hate campaign against transgender folks I might actually start having a bit of respect for it again.
On the other side of the equation, Annalee Newitz at io9 has this to say:
WorldCon, which focuses more on books and writers than it does on mainstream media, is still as authentic as it gets when it comes to large gatherings of scifi fans.
Now admittedly she was trying to be nice to Worldcon, recognizing that we have an international focus that larger events such as Dragon*Con and ComicCon do not, but I’m amused by the casual assumption that writers and books have nothing to do with mainstream media. I’d like to take that and shove it up the noses of various people in the UK literary establishment. (And I’ll also add it to the list of explanations as to why I am not fannish enough.)
Hm. Maybe I do I have something to suggest in the “Challenge Cheryl” queue…
What Worldcon doesn’t have that Dragon*Con and CCI do is a boatload of media guests. As you know, there are a lot of people (and probably a lot of io9 readers) who judge conventions by their guests rather than the actual program content.
Well yeah. I think Annalee’s point is that far more people watch movies and TV than read books, so to that extent what we call “media” fandom is far more “mainstream” than people who just read books. I think that’s rather more defensible than the literary people who claim that their books are “mainstream” while people like Gaiman, Pratchett and Rowling, who sell in huge quantities, are not.
I think that’s rather more defensible than the literary people who claim that their books are “mainstream†while people like Gaiman, Pratchett and Rowling, who sell in huge quantities, are not.
There’s another term for genre fiction, “popular fiction.”
Kind of underscores what literary fiction isn’t. Of course, some people find their ghettos to be cozy.