The Fandom Menace

[athelind]

A recent thread in chrissawyer's LiveJournal discussed the "decline" of SF Fandom. In particular, shockwave77598 said,

"The young who would have found their way into SF and SFantasy a generation ago have instead moved into Anime and Manga. DragonCon and Project Akon are huge, even by Worldcon standards (5000 people or so). The result of this is that there's less new blood coming in and SF is growing increasingly older and smaller.

A couple of us have wondered what the cause is without pointing blame; a small answer is that SF doesn't appeal much to a generation that has never known a world without a computer on their desk or been unable to call someone with their pocket telephone. They've been handed the future on a silver platter and don't seem to care much about what's ahead for them anymore."

"SF is growing increasingly older and smaller"?

Now, wait a minute.

• You rarely see a Top Ten Bestseller's list that doesn't include an SF or Fantasy novel anymore, even if you don't include Horror as part of the "Speculative Fiction" supergenre (and Old Time Fen like Forry Ackerman certainly would).
  
  
• It's no longer a wait of three to five years between big-budget, A-List F/SF films -- now you get three to five of them every year. And this time, I am leaving out horror.
  
  
• The current television line-up is crammed full of shows SF/Fantasy shows, and has been since the early '90s. Not a lot of them are Star Trek-style Space Opera, but I can think of at least two that are, even if I don't watch either of them. Almost every broadcast network has fielded an SF/Fantasy show that has done well in the ratings and enjoyed a run of several seasons.
  

Sure, SPACE OPERA is taking a downturn in popularity, at least on the large and small screens, but I think that has as much or more to do with the excreable quality of recent entries in the Star Trek and Star Wars mythoi. Enterprise and Episodes 1 and 2 have driven people away from Space Fantasy.

SF isn't "growing smaller". Exactly the opposite is happening: SF has grown larger. It's no longer an isolated little fandom -- it's MAINSTREAM. As normanrafferty likes to say, "The Underground Has Become The Establishment". And that means that it no longer suits the psychological needs of the alienated and disaffected outcasts who need some sense of identity to distinguish themselves from the people who alienated them in the first place. "Fans Are Slans" holds little comfort when everyone's a Slan.

To find that same sense of Unity In Persecuted Superiority, Those Who Would Be Fen must delve more deeply into the fringes of Fandom. They hook into Anime and Manga, though even those have become increasingly mainstream. They go Goth. They become Furry.

(I'm speaking as a Fan, by the way. As a teenager, I comforted myself that I Was Fan and They Were Mundane, that I had the imagination and the creativity and the insight to look at the future and dare to imagine its shape, to ask questions and make speculations that Mundane minds wouldn't consider, and as such, I was better prepared to face the World That Was Coming. When I hear some Furries talk about how cruel and narrow-minded "humans" are compared to the animal-in-spirit, it all sounds so familiar.)

Yes, I, too, have always enjoyed tales of an optimistic future, that innocent faith that Progress Will Save Us All. Despite the current popularity of dystopian settings, I don't think that kind of optimism is gone from the genre. Most of those dystopias show people struggling to improve things, to challenge the rotten establishment, to undermine the oppressors.

We live in the future, now and today. Reality has caught up with speculation, and in some ways, sped ahead. SF has changed its focus accordingly: rather than dreaming of a wonderful tomorrow... it depicts the struggle to create the future of those dreams.

Comments

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

So your assertion is that the fringe going mainstream has caused those who are in it only because it was "underground" out of the genre? If that was the case, then wouldn't SF begin shrinking as soon as everyone and their cuttlefish started reporting in the mainstream media about the trek cons and the like? Shoot, that was back in the mid 70s that ordinary folks began to hear about SF conventions. And I can watch anime on Cartoon Network - lots of folks still into anime, and it's now quite mainstream itself.

SF today is but a pale shadow of its previous self. I saw pictures of this year's Worldcon and was astounded that the biggest SF event of the year didn't even halfway fill the convention center. And I believe that part of the cause is that young people are being drawn to the exciting stories and sharp art present in Anime rather than general SF. And they are doing so for the same reasons they are finding furry - it's a metagenre that can have all kinds of storylines possible. It is exciting and entertaining with lots of movies and comic books and such. SF has lost a lot of its cutting edge appeal so the audience has moved on. One reason, I think, for the success of the "Matrix" was the strong story which fans desperately snapped up like a starving man snaps up a sandwich.

All I know is when I went to Akon, I was the oldest person there. Going to a general SF con a few years ago, I was the youngest person there. It isn't hard to see that the current generation has found its niche in anime rather than SF just by looking at the crowds in both. Maybe that's just in convention going, but I see the same change in age when I move from the Anime/graphicNovel section and into the SF section so I kinda doubt it. I have my theories as to why, but they are just that; theories.

Dynamic, not Static

[(Anonymous)]

While WorldCon may be shrinking, DragonCon is growing. Most of the folks there are young, but that has always been the case in SF/Fantasy. Yes, there has been a visible anime influence in recent years, but it is just one of the dozens of flavors available. Back in the 80's a lot of old-timers were worried that the British were going to take over in SF with offerings like Dr Who and Red Dwarf. Nowdays shows like Dragonball-Z are scaring the "new" old-timers.

By it's very nature SF/Fantasy fandom is dynamic, and I hope it always remains so. Yes, I mourne that old favorites like L. Spraigue DeCamp, Fritz Lieber, and Ray Harryhausen are no longer the center of attention, but I also like Cowboy Bebop.

(P.S., Sorry about not replying a timely fashion; it's just not my nature to be on time anymore.)

[araquan.livejournal.com]

Well said.

[drakegrey.livejournal.com]

I think what Athelind is saying - and this is in response also to shockwave77598's comment - is that when SF goes mainstream as he's shown here, you don't NEED SF conventions any more.

I can remember in my youth that the SF/Fantasy section of the bookstore was relatively small and for any sort of news and information on new films and books you had to buy a specialty magazine like 'Starlog' or yes, attend a SF convention.

And usually the only place I could find Starlog was at a convention.

I mean, what does it say when you realize that when Dungeons and Dragons was published, you had to buy from a gaming store - and good luck finding one in your local jerkwater burg*. Now, Barnes and Noble and Borders carry it - and those guys are everywhere.

So is old school SF dying out? Not at all - we're just living after the repeal of Prohibition; you no longer have to find a speakeasy to enjoy it.

--Drake



*Although strangely enough, Wee Warriors located was in my folks hometown of San Luis Obispo.

[stalbon.livejournal.com]

Well, there's the question of 'Do fans want to stay on the outside?'...I mean, there's certainly a sense of non-fans not knowing what goes on in Sci-fi, Fantasy, or furriness, or comics and the like as well. 'Mundanes' certainly don't seem to follow along with the series or sagas as well as true fans do, but I think it's been made easier for casual fans or newcomers to get into the fandoms...well, the more 'normal' fandoms at least. Still, I doubt conventions will go away or that all people will just overflow with joy for these niceties. There's always going to be a world some don't understand, and that others will be quite comfortable in. Cons allow these fans to just...get in the flow of it and be surrounded by their favorite characters, stories, or shows. It's something special. I've certainly felt that way at the cons I've attended.

Meh, I dunno. Sometimes I can't put it down quite right in words. Hopefully you get the gist of what I'm trying to say.