Ramblings on Librarianship, Technology, and Academia

I see that frustration, although I'm not sure that the blogosphere has so much thinned the wall as simply increased the number of points on the wall at which thinning could occur (to stretch the metaphor horribly out of shape). Certainly, back in "the old days," there was already an often-tiny divide between fans and authors (witness the folks, starting at least as early as Robert Bloch, who spent time on both sides of things), and there were regularly tales of folks acting in a boorish manner. The limits of technology, of course, meant that stories could only spread via word-of-mouth (at conventions or using traditional mail), and the sort of perfect storm of the Harlan Ellison/Connie Willis situation (relying on blogs, youtube, etc) certainly couldn't have spread the way it did if it had happened in 1970.

But the thinned walls aren't always a bad thing, either. One of the most important thing for fans to get over is the idea that authors are Golden Beings Who Should Be Put On Pedestals (or Villains Who Set Out to Piss Of Their Fans, alternatively). The folks who post negative reviews and back down are in the early stages of this, still treating authors as special celebrities. Once they get past this stage (and a number of them never will, of course -- see the current George Martin kerfuffle, or the Peter David/Daily Scans one), some of the dialogues that can occur within fandom as a result are not only phenomenal, but are accessible to thousands and preserved for years. The first still happened in the old fandom model, but the latter two are hugely strengthened by the internet. And I'm not sure many authors want to be on the pedestals; too many of them are fans at heart (Jo Walton's recent writings at Tor.com make for some of the best fan writing I've seen in years).

All of the above thoughts are just off-the-cuff rambling, of course. And there are a dozen or more other factors -- including the fact that, as you note, some authors often step a little too far off those pedestals. I commented in someone's LJ that WS was a prime example of an author I wish didn't blog, as I valued his previous books way too much to want to see him acting like an ass online. And although some authors had managed to create plenty of interpersonal havoc even before coming online (I certainly had a sense of the issues some folks had with OSC, Ellison, and Piers Anthony long before I got online or became a part of fandom), the web abets that hugely. But that strikes me as the second edge of its double-edged sword.