Ramblings on Librarianship, Technology, and Academia

oh, in the long run it's probably for the best. But it's changing things, and change is always uncomfortable, you know? And of course, some of that discomfort is good. Just as fans need to learn that authors aren't Golden Beings Who &c &c, authors (and big-name publishers) need to learn that fans don't think of them as such, and that their word is just as challengable as anyone else's. If nothing else, it's a shakeup in the way things have always been done in F&SF fandom, where there always was this very thin wall but it was only available to the people who have the free time and spare income to go to cons, which rules out, well, most of us who read the books.

Even the story of the Harlan Ellison/Connie Willis situation, which required the Internet to spread, was still only available firsthand to people who were there. But the Internet allows authors and BNFs, just like the rest of us, to show their asses to everyone. Not just authors who have newspaper columns, but anybody with an Internet connection.

I wonder if what's actually changing is a way of looking at the relationship between the author and the fan? In the days before the Internet, most of the fans an author encountered would specifically be from that subgroup who have the money, time, and inclination to go to cons -- possibly a subgroup more inclined to the smiling and agreeing (and practically, a subgroup constrained in terms of race and class to something which is not at all IDIC). Now the Internet is making it easy for authors to interact with self-described fans from all kinds of demographics, fans they never would have met back in the old days, and we are all falling all over the place trying to work out the new rules.