February last year, I posted for the first time about the Three Types of SF Fans.  Reactions were mixed.  I have thought about it a lot, and I have realized that their are not really three types of SF fans, these are actually parts of a spectrum.

Fans of the Spectacle

Fans who are interested in action and special effects, typically of Space Opera, Disaster/Monster/Action Movies, usually watches movies, some series, rarely reads the books.

These fans are on the coldest end of the spectrum.  They are only interested in being entertained, and simply do not think too much about what they are watching.  Think about your friends who thought the Matrix was just a great action movie with cool special effects.  You know the ones who didn’t see all the questions about the nature of reality and how we perceive it.  They are fans of spectacle.

The studios have geared their films more towards this type of fan because there are more of them and they are easier to please.

Admit it though, we all started here.  We may have been young, but each and every one of us first got into Speculative Fiction be we enjoyed the spectacle.  For me, it was dragons and vampires.

This is the first stage of development of every fan.  Our job is to move more people into the second and third phase.

Fans of the Specifics

Fans who are interested in the nitty-gritty details and their accuracy or consistency.Typically of Hard Scifi, Military Scifi, and High Fantasy, usually reads the books, watches the series, and nit-picks the movies

For many Scifi fans, this shift happened with Star Trek or Star Wars.  For Fantasy Fans, it is usually Lord of the Rings, and for Horror Fans it was either The Vampire Chronicles or Mayfair Witches by Anne Rice or Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Many fan bases stagnate here and die off.  The Studios have started blaming continuity and consistency for their financial short comings, thus the spate of remakes, reboots, and the dread re-imaginings that crop up every year.

Yes, it is easier to write a story when you don’t have to worry about consistency or continuity, but they are not better stories.  They are just different.

To move a fan from Spectacle to Specifics, find something in a setting or character they like, and talk to them about it.  Encourage them to grow in their fascination, and soon they will delve into the setting more fully, and the spectral shift will happen.

Fans of the Story

Fans who are interested in the story, the characters, and Typically Soft Scifi and Sociological Fantasy, usually reads or watches the series, and watches the movies.

For Fans of the Specifics, the changes George Lucas made to the original Star Wars Trilogy and the prequels went too far.  Fans of the Story were able to see how these changes improved and tightened the narrative.

Fans of the Story are few in numbers, but they are the heart blood of fandom.  They write/perform the filk, the fan fiction, and fanfilms.  They make the fan art, run the conventions, and strive to keep SF on the straight and narrow.

It isn’t easy to move from being a fan of Specifics to a fan of Story.  For this shift to happen, the fan has to see the complete series as a seamless whole.  They have to learn how to see past the trees to the forest.  There is no easy way to happen or to bring this about.

When it does happen, it is like magic.  Most of us have had this shift happen for at least one franchise.  Think about the one series that is closest to your heart.  The one you seek out every little tidbit of information about.  For that story, you are a fan of the Story.

Spectral Shift

It is not easy to ask people to make these shifts, or to help other move through the spectrum, but it is vital if fan culture has any chance of surviving.  So for the next thirty days:

• Introduce your friends to filk.
• Have a movie night at your house and show a fanfilm.
• Start a role playing group and uses your favorite setting.
• Start having friends over to watch your favorite shows.
• Help just one person find a new series, book, or movie that they will fall head or heels in love with.

If we all do our part, fandom has a long and beautifyl future.

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Where are all the SF fans?
Long time passing

-SF Fans

Generation Gap

The rise of throw away media in the ’90’s and ’00’s sapped the passion of a generation of would-be fans away.  With the exception of a few cult classics like Firefly, Lexx, and Farscape, the last two decades have produced little quality content.

Firefly and Stargate produced the most rabid fan followings, but they were slow to adopt the fan culture established by earlier franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars.  As a result, a gap in fandom grew between the older generation of fans and the newer generation coming up.  The new fans were not brought into the conventions, filk,  and fan works until lately, and they are still few and far between.

Enter the web

Compounding the problem, through out the ’90’s, the Internet began to take over the work of more traditional media.  The BBS became the forum.  The fanzine became the website.  The local fan club became the blog.

These newer form of fandom introduced new issues:

• Unlike fanzines, fanfiction sites are not edited.
• Fan clubs went from being collections of local friends to a collection of anonymous strangers on the web.
• Fans stopped sharing new finds, and specialized in one franchise.

Fandom became increasingly less personal.  I have watched the average age at conventions and filksings go up.  Then it happened:

Revenge of the Corporation

Paramount started suing fan sites and clubs.  The few fan clubs that went online had their sites taken down.  The corporate obsession with copyright pushed more would-be fans away.

What had been a nascent culture was now under attack by the copyright holders.  Viewership dwindled, and the corporate media assumed there was something wrong with the shows and not with the alienation of their fanbases.  So they started changing to shows.  Retool, remake, reboot, and reimage became common terms used by the corporate media to try to garner attention.

Their final assault was on the conventions themselves.  Corporate conventions started signing exclusive deals with celebrities changing the convention from a gathering of fans into little more than a weekend shopping spree with the sole purpose of milking as much money from the attendants as possible.

Retaking Fandom

It is time to take fandom back for the fans.  I grew up in the vibrant fan culture the once was, and now that it has been lulled to sleep, and not destroyed.

Like I said in Speculative Fiction: The Lost Art of “What if?”, it is time for us to dream again, but more than that, it is time for us to organize again.

It is incumbent upon us to:

• defend fandom from those who would abuse it.
• promote the culture to those new to the scene.
• spread the franchises we love that treat us with dignity.
• organize a revitalized fan culture, filled with conventions, fan works, and filk.
• seek out solutions to the problems that still plague fandom.

Seeing the problem is the first step to finding a solution.  Together, we can take fandom back!

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I feel alone lately as a fan of Speculative Fiction.  Many of the people I talk to have never heard of it, and others have had a hard time wrapping their head around the concept, so I have decided to talk about the lost art of speculative fiction.

Art of the Imagination

Speculative Fiction (SF) is the art of the imagination.  Any story, video, image, or song that answers the question, “What if?” is SF.   There are five main subgenres of SF:

• Science Fiction
• Scifi
• Fantasy
• Horror
• Alternative History

I meet a lot of people who lack an imagination.  Most are not fans of SF, but what frightens me more than anything is the number of writers/would-be writers who don’t have an imagination.

Many people believe that SF is easy to write, when nothing could be father from reality.  Great SF requires more imagination and work than any other genre of fiction.  Not only does the writer have to create a good story, but they also have to construct a new world that is internally consistent and filled with an immaculate reality that will engage the reader/viewer/listener in the setting and story.

The problem with the industry is that too many writers with little to no imagination have found employment making SF because their work is commercially viable to the mass market and lacks any of the qualities great or even good works should have.  They too often forget the one thing that SF should do:

Transcend Limits

The last time SF was popular in the mass market, a spirit of activism, adventure, and dream pervaded the works.  Not all of them, but enough for the the majority of SF fans to be satisfied with many of the films and series launched.  Since then, post-modern fiction styles have dominated print, television and movies, as a result the recent SF works have lacked any depth.

Pioneering SF writers/creators like Frank Herbert, Gene Roddenberry, Harlan Ellison, David Gerrold, et al, believed that SF could challenge peoples preconceptions and inspire them to transcend the limits imposed upon them by their upbringing and culture. They wrote and produced SF that attacked our sacred cows, presenting the world as it could/should be with all of the ambiguity and possibility that this world offers us.

This is the SF I love, produce and support. The trite cynicism that has again become en vogue is antithetical to this spirit of transformative fiction that inspired so many to fall in love with science and hope for a better world. It does not have to go this way. We must reclaim the spirit and art that made SF great.

The Search for Meaning

The root of the problem is simple:

• We hope for a meaning and purpose for our lives and when we find that nature does not provide us with an easy answer we can slavishly follow after, we assume life is devoid of meaning and purpose all together. Nihilism is an easy trap to fall into, but is also an easy one to escape.

Sure, life has no grand overriding purpose… or does it? Life seems to exist to survive, thrive, and evolve. With the exception of evolution, these are not very inspiring goals, but the urge to better ourselves and grow throughout our life is a fundamental function, if not purpose of existence.

This is no reason to despair. The fact that life does not impose a purpose on us allows us to find or invent one for ourselves. What a liberating gift from the universe! We are free to choose our purpose and to find meaning for ourselves.

Now, I won’t lie to you. This is a burden to bare, there is no doubt about that, but it is a burden that is easy for us to take up, if we choose to live boldly.

For too long, we have lived our lives under the constraints and limitations placed upon us by society. We have to rise above the nihilistic stupor, and make the world we want to live in.

Let’s All Dream Again

We have to rise up, stand up, speak out, and most of all dream. If we do not, then the future is indeed lost, but not because of destiny, but because we have let it follow that path.

Dream again, and dream big. Find something to be for, not something to be against. We are strong and imaginative enough to rise above any darkness that comes upon us. Rise up! Let’s take our future back!

This post was inspired by The Lost Art of Speculative Fiction, which I originally posted on March 14, 2008.

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In Memoriam | HQ Updated | 3 types of SF Fans | Netflix news | HD DVD wounded | New Videos in the HQ | A Warning to Writers | Fox Sues | New Line Sued | G.I Joe shoots, new recruit | Free Shows | Clone War to begin soon | and Wings of Destiny takes flight Today on the Project: Shadow Informant.

• R.I.P Tom Lantos (P:S Symposium)

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• New Features in the HQ(P:S Symposium)
• Three Types of SF Fans (P:S Symposium)
• Windows Media Center plug-in puts Netflix in living room(via Crave)

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• HD DVD/BluRay
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• Tolkien Trust Sues New Line (via Sci Fi)
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• Clone Wars
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars In Theaters and on Television in 2008 (via Star Wars)
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  • Video: Introducing Star Wars: The Clone Wars (via Star Wars)
• Big Gay/Dirty Jobs- Free on iTunes (P:S Symposium)

Books/Writing

• Fates Harrow 3: Wings of Destiny is with Amazon
• BookWise Branches Out (via Writer Beware)

Music

• New Videos added to the HQ
  • Cradle Of Filth – Babalon AD (So Glad For The Madness) (P:S HQ)
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Wii Virtual Console

• Wii virtual console releases for this week (via Crave)

• Harvest Moon (1997, SNES, 800 Wii points)
• Lords of Thunder (1993, Turbografx 16, 800 Wii points)

Webcomics

• Kukuburi ep57, ep58, ep59

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Every since I first entered fandom in the 90’s, I noticed that not all fans are the same, and, in fact, not all those who call themselves fans actually are.

A fan is a fanatic. An easy way to figure out if you are a fan is to ask yourself one question: “Is there anything that I just cannot get enough of?” If the answer is yes, then you are a true fan.

Most people actually fit in the class of Enthusiast or maybe even Buff. An Enthusiast is some one who is excited by a certain series, but can be satisfied by what they can find. A buff is someone who may know a lot about a particular subject but has no emotional attachment to the subject.

Why am I making such a big deal out of this? Because, I am tired of finding SF blogs and sites that claim to be run by fans, but are not. And even when I find one of those few golden sites that is actually run by a fan or fan community, I then discover that they are not the same type of fan as I am.

Over the years, I have sought out a good site/blog, and I have found that Fans fit nicely into three categories:

1. Fans of the Spectacle: Fans who are interested in action and special effects, typically of Space Opera, Disaster/Monster/Action Movies, usually watches movies, some series, rarely reads.
2. Fans of the Specifics: Fans who are interested in the nitty-gritty details and their accuracy or consistency.Typically of Hard Scifi, Military Scifi, and High Fantasy, usually reads the books, watches the series, and nit-picks the movies
3. Fans of the Story: Fans who are interested in the story, the characters, and Typically Soft Scifi and Sociological Fantasy, usually reads or watches the series, and watches the movies.

We are of the third type. Honestly, I bounce around on the spectrum depending on what we are talking about, but for the majority of things that I love, I love them for the characters, the setting, or the meaning I find in the story itself.

Being a fan of story helps me set my expectations for a book, series, or film. For example, I didn’t expect much more out of Transformers than a Spectacle. Giant robots blowing stuff up, and that is exactly what I got from the film. So I liked the film. I knew going into it that there wouldn’t be much of a story or the specifics that I had grown to love from the Transformers.

There are very few blogs of this third type. I would love to learn about others, but I have yet to find them. I write out of a sense of what I love, rather than what I can mock for a cheap thrill. I hope you are as excited as I am about exploring this rich world of SF stories with me. I can barely wait to get started.

Technorati Tags: fans

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