This is going to be brief, since most
of my free time right now is absorbed by a fiction writing project,
so the following will be a bit disjointed.
One of the most striking things I'm
seeing in discussions with the Pulp Revolution/Superversive crowd of
Sci-Fi/Fantasy is the the sheer variety of influences that people
reference.
Let's create a strawman and call him an
“Average Sci-Fi Fan” who checks out a lot of the stuff that gets
talked about by the enthusiast press. So he's familiar with Game of
Thrones, Stranger Things, the Marvel and DC movies, Star Wars, Doctor
Who and Harry Potter. Certainly the Lord of the Rings movies and
maybe the books.
Occasionally word of mouth will get him into something off the beaten
path, like the Dresden Files or John Wick, but by and large, the
genre fiction that he consumes is centered around big franchises with
a lot of media marketing pull and reputations as “Must-See”
because they're happening NOW and this is what's important NOW.
There's nothing inherently wrong with
that, but its very narrow. Television, Film, and Books with ties to
the former dominate that fan's attention. Video Games are in there
too, nowadays, frequently represented by new editions of long-running
franchises. This strawman is by no means indicative of all Average
Sci-Fi fans, if such a thing even exists, yet it seems to be all
anybody paying attention to enthusiast media (websites, blogs,
reviews, etc) seems to talk about. Our strawman might be content with
the popular content he has access to, but there's a darker
implication: With enough advertising and ideology backing up specific
Big Franchises, why would an enthusiast press that profits from
stories about these franchises encourage anything else when they can
gatekeep people into advertiser-friendly articles?
By contrast, I'm seeing the
PulpRev/Superversive crowd being fully aware and involved in all of
the above series, but then going off on widely tangent topics. I can
guarantee that right now at least two people are arguing about Anime
on Twitter. A month or two ago, people were having a serious
discussion over whether or not Dune was a good book or not. Old pulp
novels, old comics, new comics, mythology, even radio dramas are all
mixed into a slurry of ideas sloshing around in people's heads.
Yesterday I was talking with people about the Lone Wolf gamebooks
from the 80s. I've seen heartfelt theological discussions. There are
at least three people I know of who will fight to the death for the
honor of Car Wars. There's even a subfaction of Furries who're
getting along well with most everybody. Furries.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one, but they're all
right.
There's
a reason why Harry Potter similes and metaphors are met with “READ
ANOTHER BOOK.” There's a near-infinite well of speculative fiction
to draw from out there, if you know where to look. There's no need to
settle for keeping up with what the popular kids are telling you to
read.
The
cross-pollination of ideas in the Pulp Revolution and Superversive
movement is going to lead to an avalanche of creativity within the
next six months. You can bet on that.
2 comments:
This post makes me want to broaden my reading. Which is a good thing for a post to do, I think.
Thanks!
I'd say read anything that catches your eye. No such thing as a guilty pleasure when it comes to reading.
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