One of the panels I was on at Worldcon was intended to allow the Hugo-nominated fan writers to recommend other people whose abilities they admired. Chris Garcia, Steven H Silver, John Hertz and I were all there. Evelyn Leeper moderated, and Lenny Bailes joined us with some excellent suggestions. The full list of recommendations (based on emails from Chris and Lenny plus my notes from the panel) is below the fold.
Note that some of the people mentioned I did not have web links for. In other cases the people mentioned blog under a pseudonym. Even though I had links for some of them, I have not included that link if I could not get to the LJ in question by Googling the person’s name. If you are listed here and you don’t have a link, and want me to include one, please let me know.
Lenny Bailes
Most of us chose to concentrate on people who are currently active, but Lenny included some blasts from the past as well – an excellent idea.
Lenny’s Contemporary List
- Avedon Carol: The Sideshow; see also “Bad Girls and Dirty Pictures” (browse Google copy); Avedon’s fanzine bibliography
- Andy Hooper — Plays: Fanotchka; Fanorama 3004 AD (in No Award #15). Also one of the best fanzine editors of all time: see Apparatchik and Chunga (both zines include material by a wide number of other good fanwriters).
- Claire Brialey: Journey Planet (also Banana Wings, available privately for letter of comment or fanzine trades)
- Teresa Nielsen Hayden: Making Light & Making Book
- Paul Kincaid & Maureen Kincaid Speller
- James Nicoll
- Charlie Stross
Lenny’s Classic List
- Terry Carr: “Egoboo for Algernon”; “Fandom Harvest”
- Robert Bloch: “The Eighth Stage of Fandom”. Assembled there are Robert Bloch’s best essays from fan-produced magazines, including such classics as “The Seven Ages of Fan,” “Through a Picture-Tube, Darkly,” “The Demolished Fan,” “Poe and Me,” “In Memoriam: Weird Tales,” and “The Incredible Head-Shrinking Man.”
- Walt Willis: “The Harp Stateside” and other articles reprinted in Warhoon 28
Chris Garcia
- James Bacon: Writer of all sorts of stuff for The Drink Tank, File 770, Challenger, Banana Wings, Journey Planet etc.
- Leigh Ann Hildebrand: Amazing blogger and all-around writer of things sometimes spotted in The Drink Tank.
- Jason Schachat: Writer of stuff, sometimes seen in The Drink Tank (Absolutely no web presence!)
- Claire Brialey- Banana Wings, various APAs and Journey Planet (and how many of us are going to be mentioning her? )
- John The Rock Coxon: Procrastinations and LJer.
- Steve Green: Regular columnist for The Drink Tank.
- Alisa Krasnostein: Writer of too many things to list!.
- Niall Harrison (also here): The next Dave Langford.
- Liz Baty: versatile writer of stuff!
- Earl Kemp
- Taral Wayne
- España Sherrif
John Hertz
- Milt Stevens
- Lenny Bailes
- Claire Brialey
- Bruce Gillespie
- Mike Glyer
- Yvonne Rousseau
Evelyn Leeper
- Joseph T Major
Steven H Silver
- Michael & Lynne Thomas
- Fred Lerner
- Kat Templeton
- Peter Sagal
- David Levine
- Michael A. Burstein
- Randy Byers
Cheryl Morgan
My own list was designed to ensure that not all of the recommendations were white, or even English-speaking. I also cheekily included a couple of podcasters, because some of them do script their podcasts before recording.
- Matthew Cheney — one of my favorite book reviewers
- Karen Burnham — another of my favorite book reviewers
- Larry Nolen — an excellent source of information on Spanish-language SF&F
- Peggy Kolm — of the fabulous Biology in Science Fiction blog
- From Finland: Jukka Halme does most of his best work in Finnish, but he also blogs in English at Eating Muffins in an Agitated Manner, a blog he co-writes with his wife. Sari Polvinen.
- A more general overview of Finnish fandom is available (in English) from Tero Ykspetäjä’s Partial Recall
- From Brazil: Fábio Fernandes
- From Denmark: Knud Larn
- And for a look at SF& all around the world: World SF News (edited Lavie Tidhar from Israel)
- En Français: Fractale Framboise, edited by Éric Gauthier, Christian Sauvé & Laurine Spehner.
- To finish a couple of podcasts. Dave Monteith & Barry Nugent are two British fans who run The Geek Syndicate.
- Terry Frost is a frequent Ditmar nominee in Australia, and his current main project is: Paleo-Cinema Podcast
And Finally
The elephant in the room: Mr. David Langford.
Update: Various links added and corrected thanks to Gary’s helpful suggestions below.
August 22nd, 2009 at 2:45 pm
I’d never have thought to complain about being left out — I’d darn well not claim to be one of the Best Fan Writers either today or ever, but The Sideshow is an sf blog, and mine isn’t?
(I’m also less abashed about a self-centered question when Chris Garcia seems to think that mostly people from his fanzine are all the best writers, but, I suppose he wouldn’t want his fanzine to not be made up of the best possible contributors, and it’s not for me to judge because I barely know who Chris Garcia is, and haven’t seen any of his fanzines (yes, I know, I could look at efanzines; I plead gafia, and amn’t claiming that he’s obscure in fanzine fandom; it’s my fault that I haven’t been paying attention in recent years, while he and other newer fanzine fans have comea long).
And I suppose it isn’t nice of me to say, but Joseph T. Major seems a perfectly nice guy, but a Best Fan Writer? Um, well, everyone gets an opinion.
One thing is clear is that, as has always been the case to some extent, different people have different standards for the kind of fan writing they prefer, and pay attention to, and are aware of.
This tendency has increased dramatically in recent years and the past couple of decades, with the growth and fragmentation of fandom into subgenres/groups, even before the rise of the Internet, but it goes back to the faan/sercon split of the Fifties/Sixties, and the split in the first decade of fanzines, the Thirties, between those who thought fanzines should be devoted to Science, and those who thought they should be about Science Fiction.
Trivial note: the link above to Egoboo For Algernon goes to Dave’s collection of my original postings of the entries to Usenet, back in the mid-Nineties, as you’ll see in the credits if you read the fine print.
Also, some of the folks you don’t link to don’t have LiveJournals, but you can find (at least some of) their fanzines at efanzines.com.
There are also links you could make to things like Taral Wayne’s art online, etc.
August 22nd, 2009 at 2:55 pm
And a number of the link choices are… strange. Why link to Paul Kincaid’s LJ, but not instead his web page, for instance, which gives tons of links to his sf writings?
Your link to “Bruce Gillespie” doesn’t even go to the fan writer, but someone else entirely with the same name.
Why not link to some of Robert Bloch’s fan writing directly, instead of to a book people need to buy?
Ditto Walt Willis.
Etc. Some very bizarre link choices. Why not make use of fanac.org, and what’s there?
(Any chance of installing a “preview comments” option on this commenting system?
August 22nd, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Gary:
Mostly I used the links that other people gave me. The Gillespie is my fault, and I’ve fixed, it. Most of us were, I think, under the impression that we should recommend currently active people, and you’ve only de-gaffiated fairly recently. I certainly tried to pick people that a fanzine fan audience might not have heard of (on the assumption that the rest of the panel would pick the Usual Suspects).
And yeah, I’ll install the comment review thing at some point. Rather busy right now.
August 22nd, 2009 at 3:29 pm
“Most of us were, I think, under the impression that we should recommend currently active people, and you’ve only de-gaffiated fairly recently”
I’ve been blogging since 2001, and while I’ve made a slight bump in fannish-related posts in the last week, it’s not particularly more than I’ve always done every few days or few weeks for the past almost eight years. Just saying. I’ve always had bumps of fannish posts, which is to say, posts with fannish links and about fandom, and plenty more about sf, and always had links to fanac.org on my sidebar, and efanzines since it started. Etc., etc.
I’ve noted before that once one drops off fannish mailing lists, fans seem to think you’ve died, or something, somehow, no matter how prominent or well-known one’s blog is generally (or is not). Odd, but, then, as I’ve noted before, and as is, I assume, obvious to everyone, the sf world has long been far too huge, by any definition, for anyone to be aware of more than a fragment of who is out where doing what.
Anyway, I’m not irate or anything; I was just surprised to see Avedon’s Sideshow listed, but not my blog, since it doesn’t seem to me that there’s a greater proportion of sf/fannish-related links/posts at her blog than mine, that’s all. And then I threw in the note about the links in general, and the rest of my comment.
Speaking of the hugeness of the “sf community” these days, it’s interesting clicking on some of the con reports by people I’ve never heard of, for their POVs (which I’ve sporadically done in past years by sporadic trolling of some LJs and their links).
Fandom/prodom is a house with many many many rooms these days.
Not to mention the huge number of people who use “fandom” to refer only to slash-writing or media fandom. This place boggled me momentarily the first time I stumbled across it, for example. But that’s apparently the way a bunch of people think of “fandom” these days. Things change.
August 22nd, 2009 at 3:35 pm
[...] See original here: Convention Reporter » Blog Archive » The Best Fanwriter Panel [...]
August 22nd, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Oh, and I’ve suddenly taken to posting a lot of comments on your blog, lately, but, well, stuff like that happens. It’s not particularly a specific measure of my level of gafiation or degafiation. I’ve been commenting prolifically on Glyer’s blog since he started, for example, and Steve Davidson’s. And sporadically on Avedon’s. And very sporadically on some LJ’s, but I hate LJ, so that’s relatively rare.
I attended all of the past Corflu’s Virtual Con suite, for instance, and the year before that, as well, although that time I hid behind a pseudonym, and got to be fascinated to listen/read people gossiping about me behind my back.
When I refer to being “gafia” I’m referring to having quit the fannish mailing lists, such as “timebinders” and “smofs” in 2001, and quitting rec.arts.sf.* on Usenet at the same time.
I’d long since only been getting a few fanzines during the Nineties, anyway (although I did have one substantive piece in Mainstream in 1998, which I’ve just bugged Jerry Kaufman into photocopying a copy for me), and drifted away from attending cons in the Nineties, as well, mostly due to poverty, as well as troughing in my Major Clinical Depression. And I simultaneously became Seriously Cranky with certain specific prominent fans, and some of their crowds.
And around 2003, I was banned from a certain prominent sf/fan blog, and made a non-person by the owners, so I’ve been out of contact with the community around that blog, since.
But it’s not as if I ever dropped out of contact with fans interested in staying in contact with me; indeed, I’ve tried to interest fans all along in my blog, only to usually be told “I don’t read blogs,” or otherwise just not had much visible commenting from more than a handful of stalwart fans, although occasionally I’ve been surprised by lurker email from longtime fans (like, for instance, Jeff Smith, of James Tiptree and sercon fanzine publishing of the Seventies, fame).
Also, I reconnected with lots of old fan friends on Facebook during the few months between my becoming active there, and this happening for no visible reason. (No, the rumor that I “posted too much” is absurdly untrue; I just heard that one for the first time last week.)
Probably TMI, as usual. I never should have learned to type so fast.
Anyway, if I gave links to fannish posts on my blog, they’d run upwards of, well, let’s see, Blogger claims I’ve made 5000 posts, which I suspect means they’ve stopped actually counting. I’d guest I’ve made at least 800 fannish/sf-content posts, fwiw. But you can’t even lead fans to your blog, let alone make them drink. Apparently you’ve either got to keep going to lots of, or doing a fanzine, or lots of letter-writing to snail-mail fanzines, or join LiveJournal, or stay on core-fandom email lists, or something, to remind much of fandom you’re around and constantly publishing/writing.
A couple of years ago I noticed Mike Glyer wrote an extremely peculiar article in File 770 the paperzine (this issue), also long available online, on the theme “Whatever Happened To Gary Farber?” and he announced his discovery via Google that I was alive and well and blogging like mad on the web, and I had to conclude that everyone in fandom had stopped being able to use Google before that. Or something. Beats me.
Anyway, I do wonder — and this is not a complaint! — I’m just genuinely curious as to the general answer to this question! — when you say you were “under the impression that we should recommend currently active people, how does one define “active in fandom” these days?
How would you definite it, at least?, since obviously you can’t speak for All Fandom any more than any of us can.
August 22nd, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Gary:
I know what you mean about different views of what “fandom” is. I was boggled for a while at ICFA when I encountered people doing research into “fan studies” who knew nothing about Worldcon but an awful lot about slash. You get used to it.
Fandom is a very big house these days. I’m glad that the links I’m providing give some idea of the breadth of it. That was part of the point.
As to defining “active”, I think the only way you can do it is by what impinges on your consciousness. That’s one reason why you do things like this as a panel rather than an individual. I hadn’t heard of some of the people who got mentioned, and I suspect that most of the panel hadn’t heard of several of my recommendations.
Speaking personally, I was aware that you were blogging, but had a vague idea that you were mostly talking about politics. That, of course, is fanac, but not a sort of I’m likely to seek out. As you now seem to be talking more about fandom (and banging on my front door) I’m more likely to be reading you and seeing you as “active”.
August 22nd, 2009 at 5:07 pm
“Speaking personally, I was aware that you were blogging, but had a vague idea that you were mostly talking about politics.”
It might be fair to say that I blog about politics more than anything else — I’ve never done an exact count, but I suspect that’s probably true — but I’m somewhat doubtful — again, never having done any kind of count — that I blog about politics more than all the other subjects I address in general.
I blog on whim about whatever interests me at the moment that I have energy to write about at the moment (the latter tending to be ~92% more relevant): it’s a mix of, in no particular order, politics, sf-related, weird science, bits of history, stuff on books (definitely more non-fiction than fiction), science that’s not weird, weird news, news that I have something to say about, stuff I find funny, and so on and so forth.
There’s not much rhyme or reason to it, save that I tend to have spells of posting more on one are than another, for a week or two, and, of course, vary up the frequency of how much I’m posting depending on stuff like how otherwise busy I am, how my mood/depression is acting up, how my health is, etc.
This sort of unpredictability, and frequent bouts of infrequency, is presumably why the general trend in hits, so far as I can tell from Site Meter, from people who just follow me generally, without links from Big Name Political or Other Blogs, has been dropping slowly but steadily over the last few years, which also, I suspect, relates to the rise of professional blogging, as more and more people settle on a few core blogs in their area of interest to serve as, essentially, portals.
Though I can’t tell how many people read via RSS and other methods, for the most part.
Otherwise, it’s fair to say that I had a major bout of huge frustration with some fans that grew in the last couple of years of the Nineties, and culminated in my dropping off the fannish mailing lists and rec.arts.sf.* in 2001, with an exception for a period started by September 11th, lasting approximately until I started blogging in the last week of December of that year.
This bitterness only increased after several subsequent events within a couple of years, in particular relating to several not particularly related things like the someone’s death, that blog-banning, the weird rumors about myself I was hearing third-hand about that no one passing on bothered to ask me my version of, when I had thought they were friends, as well as a growing frustrated feeling that too many fans just couldn’t let go of old feuds with me from literally decades ago, or at the least, even something I’d said, say, two years before, and subsequently withdrawn and apologized many times for. I got tired of some folks acting as if I was still the person I was when I was 15, or 22, when I was in my forties, and generally too often being responded to as if I were some caricature of a rumor of myself, rather than to what I actually had just written.
All that combined made me get Very Cranky with certain segments of fandom, and when I started blogging, I realized that I could find a whole lot more readers, and make a whole lot of literate, very smart, interesting, friends, outside of fandom, who judged me as the person I was then and am now, rather than through the baggage I’d accumulated in fandom, and on top of it wind up getting links in the NY Times and Washington Post, and other prominent places, correspond with all sorts of fascinating and accomplished (and sometimes famous) people, just as one can in fandom, and so on, so I didn’t, despite the way fandom will always be tremendously important to me given the way I grew up in it, and it has shaped me life, feel any longer that I needed to keep strugging with idiotic arguments on fannish mailing lists, etc.
My lack of going to cons has mostly had to do with lack of spare money, although somewhat to do with a lot less enthusiasm than I once had.
When I started blogging, my hope was that I’d have lots of fan friends who I’d been interacting with on rec.arts.sf.fandom, and elsewhere, start reading my blog, given my eclectic set of topics, although knowing that no one was going to be interested in all of my various topics; but I’d figured people only interested in politics could scroll past the fannish and funny and science stuff, and those only interested in one or more of those other topics could scroll past the other topics, etc.
But: a) I was disappointed to find that apparently very few of my fan friends were interested in making the effort of following my blog; and b) I had clearly had unreasonable expectations in thinking that more people would use their scrolling keys to get past the entries that bored them. Live and learn.
“(and banging on my front door)”
That seems to be what it takes to attract most fans’ attention.
Again, probably TMI, but I’m a chatty sort.
I occasionally give some consideration to trying to rejoin either or both smofs or timebinders, but a) I already don’t remotely have enough time in the day to do a fraction of the reading I’d like to do; and b) I’m afraid of just running into the same old complaints about me based on stuff from years ago (and I’m perfectly willing to say that I’ve certainly said my share of jerky or dump or annoying or obnoxious comments at times — but, jeez, people, isn’t there a statute of limitations?).
I’ve occasionally had pretty much joking-to-myself thoughts of trying to get active again in written fannish arenas under a new identity/pseudonym, but when I think seriously about it, it strikes me as somewhat borderline ethically. Not to mention that it likely wouldn’t be worth the effort of trying to change my style sufficiently, pretend to lack of knowledge that would give me away, etc. So I’ve never seriously considered trying that; just amused myself with the idea. (Aside from, that is, hanging out on the Live Virtual Corflu two years ago under various Obvious Pseudonymns; I didn’t pretend to be a Different Real Person; I just made clear I was a fan using a pseudonym — stuff like “Spirit of Degler,” and so forth.)
I claim that I have so many typos in my previous comment due to lack of preview. That’s my story, I’m sticking to it. I’m not going to correct the ones that should be figure-out-able, but “Apparently you’ve either got to keep going to lots of” should have ended with “cons.”
August 22nd, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Gary:
To me, Avedon’s weblog is essential daily reading. It
keeps me from going nuts about the current political climate
in the U.S., and provides an ongoing example for me that a
compelling fanzine writer, rock ‘n’ roller, and progressive social
rebel from the last century can meet the challenge of writing for an expanded audience in a new century. I put her at the top of my
list because her writing and link gathering speaks to me — and
I’d like to interest more readers from our current expanded science
fiction fan community go read what she writes.
As it turns out, this particular “Best Fan Writers” panel was attended only by convention members who might fit the description
of belonging to “the usual suspects.” The drawing power, even of four panel participants who are perennial Hugo nominees and winners in the fan categories, was insufficient to attract many (if any)
attendees from outside the hard core.
I always go into fan panels at Worldcons with the working premise that “You never know. Maybe we’ll see some new faces at this one and plant the seeds to draw them further in.” In reality, I suspect the most pragmatic way to publicize good fan writing is to do what Cheryl’s done, here (and you’ve done on Amygdala). Publish Internet links to it.
As for why the links I submitted were what they were — there’s no complicated explanation. I was in a hotel room at a Worldcon the night before the panel and wanted to give Cheryl *something* that
represented a cross-section of my favorite fanwriting. I linked to the Carr and Bloch books because I think they really are examples of “the best” from Carr and Bloch. I linked to livejournals from Paul Kincaid and James Nicoll because they’re ongoing venues, active in what now seems to me to be the “core” of ongoing fannish discussion on the Internet. (A link to Paul’s website might very well have been more appropriate, since the kinds of essays that make me think of him as one of the best writers in fandom appear on his LJ less frequently.)
Thanks for your supplemental links. I do appreciate your role and the role of Amygdala as a pioneering effort in the integration of fanwriters with social conscience into the larger blogosphere of social conscience.
August 22nd, 2009 at 5:57 pm
“I do appreciate your role and the role of Amygdala as a pioneering effort in the integration of fanwriters with social conscience into the larger blogosphere of social conscience.”
Goshwowboyohboy, there’s a mouthful of a credit senence, Len.
Thanks. I must make a note to remind myself that that’s what I did. Alert the fanhistorians to add this to my resume!
Actually, I had no idea you submitted any of the links; Cheryl doesn’t mention this; just that you “joined us with some excellent suggestions.”
Being completely unfamiliar with Chris Garcia, other than having seen his name mentioned here and there lately as a popular new fanzine fan, I was just briefly glancing here, and this seems another addition that would be very helpful to Cheryl’s set of links. He certainly has been prolific.
Also, Evelyn Leeper.
John Hertz.
Steven H. Silver.
Randy Byers.
A sample of Fred Lerner.
Thanks for the link to Karen Burnham, Cheryl; interesting stuff.
August 22nd, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Gary: Links added to main post. Thanks!
Oh, and the links stuff was supposedly implicit in saying that the post was based in part on emails from Chris and Lenny, but I can see how that isn’t obvious.
August 22nd, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Hi Cheryl,
Please feel free to add links for me and my wife Lynne in Steven H Silver’s list.
http://michaeldthomas.livejournal.com/
http://rarelylynne.livejournal.com/
Thanks,
Michael D. Thomas
August 23rd, 2009 at 5:22 am
*blink*
Whoa, Steven cited me as a fanwriter of interest? I’m…well, surprised.
If you want to link me, go ahead and link the blog address above.
-kat
August 23rd, 2009 at 5:41 am
Michael, Lynne, Kat: thank you, links added.
August 23rd, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Thanks to Gary Farber directing me to this post.
Here’s a couple of my own favorites who were not mentioned by anyone else:
Mark Plummer, who is the other editor of Banana Wings, does not get as much attention as Claire. But I think he’s as interesting as Claire in his topics and approach, and sometimes a little more focused.
Tony Keen has had material published by Mark and Claire, and covers an unusual range of historical topics as well as personal experience. He’s an elegant writer, too.
I am glad that Steve Silver suggested Fred Lerner and David Levine. Saves me the trouble. I’d also add Kate Yule, David’s wife and joint editor of their fanzine Bento. Together they make that fanzine a tiny treasure.
August 23rd, 2009 at 2:22 pm
One additional note from me, since John Hertz honored me with a mention. I don’t update my own website very often, but I have a new
article in Arnie Katz’s just-released Idle Minds #4. (The entire issue is a
symposium on “Why I Am in Fandom,” with contributions from about 50 people and an open invitation for others to contribute to a follow-up issue.) I’m also doing some blogging about comic books and animation at Tor.com.
August 23rd, 2009 at 2:37 pm
More general link for David Levine than just his LiveJournal.
Page for Kate Yule and David Levine, where they have all the issues of Bento available.
August 27th, 2009 at 4:56 am
Wow, thanks for the mention Cheryl! I’m not sure I deserve to be in such illustrious company.
I’m wondering how much the internet is changing the flavor of the Fan writer Hugo, other than allowing people besides David Langford to win (and congrats on that Cheryl!). I’m not sure how one outside of Fandom would have found their writing pre-internet; I know I didn’t even though I actively sought out most of the Hugo fiction winners. I find it excellent that now even fans like me (who aren’t really part of Fandom) can easily access lots of interesting writing about SF online, and it’s happily provided me the opportunity to join in the conversation.
But would an outsider from Fandom even have much of a chance of making the short list – or has John Scalzi’s win opened it up to people who merely blog?
August 27th, 2009 at 7:58 am
Peggy:
When I first started to get nominated for the Hugos there were people who yelled loudly for me to be disqualified on the grounds that work published online was not eligible. Those days are long gone. As long as you write well, and are interesting, you stand a chance of winning.
The issue isn’t so much how or where you write, as who knows you and who those people are. Getting nominated for a Hugo is partly a question of how popular you are, and partly a question of whether the people who like what you do actually vote. That’s really all there is to it.
August 28th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
[...] is still the best fannish writer out there, but there are lots of other good people around too (here are some suggestions). Because few things devalue the award as much as making it seem like a foregone [...]
August 28th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
You have an old link (to laconiv.org) for John Hertz’s website of fanwriting samples.
As you can see if you check out the laconiv.org, the updated site that John and I would rather you link to is…
http://johnhertz.sciencefictionleague.org/
Thanks!
-Chazz
August 29th, 2009 at 5:28 am
Jerry:
Thanks for the mention, which I wasn’t really expecting. These days, I don’t really see myself as a fannish writer. It’s not that I’m not writing, but I’m tending to write academic criticism of various hues, and not much of it for fanzines. This doesn’t mean I disparage my time writing for fanzines – I learnt a hell of a lot about how to write from that – nor that I won’t go back to fanzines. It’s just not what I’m writing at the moment.
If people want to read some of my stuff, there are links off my weblog: http://tonykeen.blogspot.com.
August 29th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Chaz:
Change made as requested.