Does the Future of SF Lie in Media other than Traditional Literature?

[altariel]

"Does the Future of SF Lie in Media other than Traditional Literature?" was the title of a panel I spoke on at NewCon, alongside Paul Cornell, John Jarrold, Steve Longworth, and Dave Hutchinson. owlfish assures me that I was witty, erudite, and profoundly insightful but, given that poor acoustics meant she had only heard one word in ten, I thought I'd disprove that by putting up my preparation notes.

Not all of this came up, and plenty of other interesting points were raised too, particularly surrounding the user-friendliness or otherwise of eBook readers, and the failure of the Doctor Who webisodes to catch on.

• My background is in fanfiction; an interesting set of communities to look at in this context because without the commercial constraints of mainstream publishing, they are able to take more risks in terms of format.



• It’s fair to say that the paper fanfic zine is dead. The fanfiction has all gone online. Why not? Cheaper to produce, you get more rapid responses, and it serves wonderfully the desire for community that is a big reason that people participate in fandom. So the paper fanzine is dead, and has been for at least five, possibly going on for ten years.



• So when I hear people talk about the demise of the SF short story magazine, I wonder if something similar is happening: again, there are tight margins, comparatively small audience, impatience with the slow turnaround on response (if any) when you can have the immediacy that comes from online (particularly now we’ve all had a taste of that).



• But certainly not the death of the SF short story form – there’s more short fiction out there than anyone could possibly consume! If I did wake up one morning and decide that what I needed in my life was more Stargate: Atlantis, I could spend months catching up on the fiction. I assume a similar proliferation of online venues for original fiction has been happening?



• Even more than online zines, this is where the shift to podcasting is very interesting. Short fiction and the podcast seem made for each other: 30 minutes to an hour, ideal for a commute or for escape from the misery of the exercise bike. As well as there being podcasts putting out short fiction (e.g. EscapePod, PodCastle), there are podcasts with the old fanzine content of discussion and interviews (e.g. StarShipSofa).



• And this struck me as being almost a return to the roots of SF: poking around iTunes, I found the British Science Fiction Podcast, which puts out 50s radio classics like Journey Into Space. This is great for several reasons: not just the nostalgia value for people who remember the broadcasts the first time round, but the opportunity for people who weren’t born to have access to classic material. Like when we were all of a sudden empowered to come up with our opinions on ‘The Tomb of the Cybermen’.



• So for the future of the short story as a form, and for the audio fanzine – the podcast – I’m very positive. That’s seen a revival. For the paper format, less so.



• Except for the book. About which I’m very positive, because as archive technologies go, it’s been pretty successful compared to Betamax or the CD. Why? I think people like the physical artefact. But also, I think that we’re afraid of the ephemerality of the net, particularly communities like ours which are conscious of tradition.

None of the following came up, IIRC, but I include it for completeness' sake:

• Another potential huge change is in the composition of audiences: there’s so much to consume now, that we can’t consume it all, and that might mean greater fragmentation of audience: if people feel their taste isn’t well represented in long-established venues, they’ll go off and create their own venues.



• And to disprove my own final point and show you can’t predict the future, I’ll note that Doctor Who has done exactly the opposite, and reconstructed a large general audience that most industry experts said was dead. However.. has it done this for SF? It’s fantasy and action-adventure, rather than SF, that has been made as a result: Merlin, Robin Hood, Primeval.

Comments

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

It just shows how witty, erudite, and profoundly insightful you were that it still worked on one word in ten.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Proves how important editing is.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, the paper zine (which I assumed would be totally dead by now) is still alive in some places. Zine sales bottomed out a couple of years ago and now seem to be low, but steady.

I think there's a small minority who just prefer to read stuff on paper.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I suspected there was still a readership out there. My point was chiefly that fanfiction publishing has altered beyond recognition, compared to the way it was as little as ten years ago. Some large fandoms must have bypassed the paper zine stage almost entirely (Harry Potter, for example).

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. To pick up on a few points:

I think one could make a good case that fanfic has been around for so long (hundreds of years) that it is a branch of "traditional literature". (Whatever that is. I appreciate that the term wasn't yours, but did anyone try to define it? If one's going to discuss a topic, it's useful to have a consensus as to just what it covers.)

BBC 7 has been broadcasting some old SF radio series, including "Journey into Space". (And is available onlide on the BBC website via "Listan Again".)

Arguably "Doctor Who" itself is fantasy/action-adventure rather than SF.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

The consensus definition was the short story and the book. I suggested radio, but I didn't have a reason for it that couldn't encompass film.

Arguably "Doctor Who" itself is fantasy/action-adventure rather than SF.

I absolutely agree, to the extent that I don't think you need the 'arguably' there.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

The consensus definition was the short story and the book...

Ah, so fanfic was viwed as being part of traditional literature? I had the impression from your original post that perhaps it wasn't so viewed,

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I never know whether or not I'm in a fanfic-friendly environment, so I tend to assume I have to justify it in certain ways. But this particular panel was very fanfic-friendly.

[toft-froggy.livejournal.com]

I'm so interested by what you say about the podfic and podcast - I hadn't thought about that at all as a new place for the sci-fi zine, but you're right, of course. Podfic has actually made me start to seek out radio comedy and serials, which people don't talk about so much anymore, but they work so well for the walking-to-school time too. Radio is so much better when you can carry it around and listen to it when you want to! I'm going to look up those podcasts you mention, too.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I was very pleased with myself about that point about the podcast replacing the old zine. I suddenly remembered that back when I was about seventeen or eighteen, I used to receive a Doctor Who fanzine on tape. This guy used to make it (in his bedroom, presumably), copy it, and post it out. Terribly exciting receiving it.

I totally agree about radio being more fun when you can carry it around with you. That's the big difference from before, I suppose - the timeshifting, and what that means for audience and appointment listening/viewing. I was never able to find time to listen to radio before.

[toft-froggy.livejournal.com]

Right! And actually, I think short fiction is on the *rise* for exactly the same reason - I read far more fanfiction these days than I do novels, because I can access them more easily, I don't have to carry them around with me, and they offer much quicker satisfaction and closure. Sometimes I just want to go to the computer lab while I'm in the library and read a 1,400 word story about how Rodney can heal puppies with his brain, you know? We fanfic readers have discovered that short fiction is best, and others will too. It's actually the perfect genre for 21st century life, if only people realize this and put it where people can get it - and podfic is the perfect technology to do that. I bet if someone set up a service where you got one short story delivered to your blackberry a week, or something, people would go for it.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I bet if someone set up a service where you got one short story delivered to your blackberry a week, or something, people would go for it.

Totally! I remember a few years back (um, possibly as much as a decade?) someone started publishing short stories in pamphlet form for sale at railway stations: you could fold them round on themselves really easily so that they were compact, and they had a disposable feel about them. But an online service dispenses with all that mucking about of having to handle paper and queue up to pay and so on.

ETA: Also, without all the production costs of printing, there's a chance someone might make some money out of such a venture - or, at least, not lose money.

[owlfish]

So THAT's what you said. Intelligent and interesting remarks indeed. I don't suppose you could tell me what everyone else on your panel was saying too, while you're at it? ;)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Oh, I wasn't listening to anyone else!

Seriously, I do have terrible recall for panels, thanks to getting so nervous - I wouldn't be able to tell you what I'd said if I hadn't had these notes. The major line of discussion that I can recall was about whether the eBook would or could takeover from the paper book.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

Actually, I thought what Ken MacLeod said was kind of interesting - that thing about online fiction not being linky enough, not taking proper advantage of the medium. It occurred to me that newspaper websites do that better, but it only occurred to me on the train home the next day.