by Eric Flint
But—yes, I know this is cold-blooded—those people are and always have been a small share of the market.
Beyond that, there are some people for whom the various bells and whistles really matter. I know one regular reader who swears to me—and I believe him—that he actually prefers to read electronic text. But people like that are few and far between.
And that won't change much, or quickly, because the advantages they point to are simply marginal for most readers.
I can easily bookmark a page electronically!
Uh, yeah . . . and I've been doing that with a bookmark or a pencil—or, usually, just a scrap of paper I find somewhere—for half a century. So have and do most people. It's honestly not the labors of Hercules that's being saved here. For this, I should spring the money to buy an e-book reader and put myself at the mercy of e-book manufacturers and software developers?
With a backlit screen, I can read in the dark!
Uh, yeah . . . and how many people, except kids staying up past their bedtime and surreptitiously reading under the blankets with a flashlight, really need that particular advantage? Mind you, I hold those youngsters in very high esteem—having been one myself, at times past—but the cold-blooded fact remains that they're a tiny percentage of the market. The reason they have curfews to violate in the first place is because they are too young to have much in the way of a disposable income.
I can easily search for text!
This is true—and, as I will examine in a later essay, it's the reason that many people (including me) like to also possess an electronically formatted version of a book. There are times when being able to search for text is indeed handy.
But being able to search for text is a fairly trivial advantage to e-books, all things considered, especially when you factor into the equation a basic reality: By far the two largest sectors of the publishing market are fiction and popular non-fiction. (The latter category includes things like practical manuals—cookbooks, the Idiot's Guide to everything including idiocy—any and all manner of self-help books, popular biographies and histories, true crime stories, etc.)
Look, let's be realistic. I dote on Louis L'Amour westerns. I dote on any number of science fiction and fantasy authors. I dote on a smaller but still significant number of mystery authors.
I have read every single Nero Wolfe novel that Rex Stout ever wrote. But the number of times I have even vaguely pondered the advantage of being able to search the text of those novels is . . .
Exactly zero. Same with Louis L'Amour. Same with Robert Heinlein or Arthur C. Clarke or Ursula Le Guin.
Granted, I also read a lot of history books, and being able to search for something specific is indeed very handy for someone like me, who needs to use history books professionally. That's why most history books have something called "indexes." No, the indexes are not perfect. Yes, sometimes—not always—being able to search for something electronically would be easier.
But . . . but . . .
Only someone whose enthusiasm for electronic publishing borders on sheer solipsism can honestly think that the advantage of being able to do a somewhat quicker search of text for that relatively small percentage of books he or she would want to search in the first place, is enough by itself to cause an ancient and solidly rooted technology like paper publishing to collapse like a deck of cards.
Or that being able to read in the dark would do it, or that being able to bookmark electronically instead of by using a physical device, or that . . .
I could go on, but I'd just be belaboring the point. It's a simple fact—and no technology foreseen will change this fact, either—that the only QUALITATIVE advantage of ebook reading over book reading is storage for most people, and the ability to get around (better, at least) one or another physical handicap for people who suffer from them.
Thazzit. The rest, being blunt, is just bells and whistles. And no technology in the history of the world has ever supplanted a pre-existing technology simply because it offered some bells and whistles. Certainly not a technology as deeply-ingrained into a society's culture as paper books.
I can visualize in my mind a number of people reading this essay who, by now, are hopping up and down—figuratively, anyway—and deeply indignant because I'm gliding right over all of the subtleties and complexities involved in this issue.
No, I'm not—but I'll deal with the subtleties and complexities in later columns. Right now, it's time for the ax and the bludgeon. I do not for one moment think that electronic reading won't become increasingly important. Of course it will. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be the editor of this electronic magazine and the publisher of another. (That being the Grantville Gazette, a specialty magazine devoted to my 1632 series.) But, for the moment, what needs to be established is a level-headed sense of what the future holds.
Growth, yes. Expanding significance, certainly. But a new technology that is on the verge of inundating traditional paper publishing?
Oh, hogwash.
And my opinion has the great benefit of being supported—year after year after year—by the facts.
People have been predicting, year after year after year, that "very soon now" electronic reading will take off like a rocket and become to be the dominant form of reading.
And, year after year after year, they are always proven wrong. They remind me of certain religious enthusiasts who keep predicting the end of the world or the return of the messiah "very soon now." Who are always wrong, year after year after year—but still retain their blind faith.
And that's what it is. Blind faith. There is no rational reason to believe that e-books and electronic reading will have an explosive growth in the foreseeable future. (Again, outside of some specialty areas.)
The reason I've spent time on this is because it's not simply an interesting intellectual debate. Underlying this issue of how rapidly and to what extent electronic reading will grow is a different issue, and one that has much darker overtones.
With very few exceptions—there are some, but not many—people who insist that electronic reading is about to undergo an explosive growth are also alarmists concerning what that will mean for publishers and authors. They are also people who advocate or at least look sympathetically upon "tough" anti-piracy measures. They are also people who predict that authors will soon be faced with enormous financial pain and challenges because of the advent of electronic reading.
The logic is not hard to grasp. Stripped to its essentials, it goes as follows:
Because traditional paper publishing is on the verge of joining the dodo and the passenger pigeon, rigorous and extensive measures must be put in place very quickly or disaster will befall us.
Right. This is, at best, a recipe for error. It is—at best—guaranteed to produce a lot of half-baked and poorly-thought-through policies and laws. More often than not, it is also a recipe for undermining basic political and civil liberties.
The reality is quite otherwise. Yes, electronic publishing is growing and will continue to grow—not simply in absolute terms, but relative to the size of the publishing market as a whole. But, except for a few areas, the growth is incremental. And—I put a stress here, because I will devote a whole column to this aspect of the problem—the form is predominantly takes is NOT—not not not—that of electronic publishing replacing paper publishing. The principal form it takes is that electronic publishing is increasingly supplementing paper publishing.
The point being, we've got plenty of time. Plenty of time to experiment with different measures, and try out a multitude of ways by which publishers and authors can not only withstand the pressure of electronic publishing but actually benefit from it.
What we don't need is panic. What we don't need are policies, laws and practices that undermine the long-established traditions, laws and customs surrounding copyright.
The Literature of Fandom
Written by Mike Resnick
There has always been a close tie between fandom and the wor
ld of professional science fiction. Many of our greatest names—Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, Judith Merril, Robert Silverberg, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Donald A. Wollheim, Harlan Ellison, tons of others—were fans before they became pros. Most—in fact, each of the writers I just named except Isaac—published fanzines. Fandom not only has a long and honored history of turning out topnotch professional writers, but it has a long and honored—and well-codified—history, period.
Indeed, never has a hobby been so thoroughly researched and written up. Even Mike Glyer's Hugo-winning fanzine, File 770, is named for the most famous fannish party of all, held in Room 770 of the 1951 Worldcon hotel in New Orleans.
But as science fiction has become big business, we are no longer written almost exclusively by former fans or read exclusively by fans (at least, not in the sense of being members of organized—or disorganized—fandom.)
So I thought it might be interesting and informative not merely to mention that science fiction has the best-documented fandom of any field, but to discuss those books—over 50, believe it or not!—that have codified it for future generations. Now, this doesn't pretend to be a complete list, not by any means. It's just what I have managed to accumulate during my 45 years as a fan and a pro (which, I hasten to point out, are not mutually exclusive. I am, always have been, and always will be, a fan—the IRS's claims to the contrary notwithstanding.) You won't find more than a tiny handful of these at your local Barnes or Borders, or even on Amazon.com—but go to the dealers from a science fiction convention, or check out bookfinder.com, abebooks.com, albris.com and some of the other bookfinding services online, and eventually you'll be able to find most of them.
HISTORIES
The first book of major import has to be The Immortal Storm, by Sam Moskowitz (published by the Atlanta Science Fiction Organization Press in 1954, and later reprinted by Hyperion). It is nothing less than the history of American science fiction fandom, culminating with the first Worldcon in 1939, all described in incredibly minute detail. Now, for those of you who may not know it, things did not go as smoothly at that first Worldcon as the participants might have wished. Moskowitz himself (a/k/a SaM, just as Forry Ackerman is a/k/a 4e) barred Don Wollheim, Cyril Kornbluth, Fred Pohl, Robert A. W. "Doc" Lowndes, and John Michel from entering, and the latter part of The Immortal Storm, told in the third person (though with Moskowitz as a major player), is an account of events leading up to, and including, what has come to be known in fannish history as The Exclusion Act. Sometimes it's difficult to remember that these are not Kissinger and Disraeli SaM is writing about, but just a bunch of acne-faced kids with delusions of grandeur.
L. Sprague de Camp calls it "An extraordinary (if quite unintentional) study in small-group dynamics." Harry Warner, Jr. adds that "If read directly after a history of World War II, it does not seem like an anti-climax." An unnamed fan is quoted in All Our Yesterdays as calling it "Badly translated from the Slobbovian," a problem SaM would have again and again with his prose over the years. Damon Knight devoted a short chapter of his book of criticism, In Search of Wonder, to The Immortal Storm. The title of the chapter was "Microscopic Moskowitz." How microscopic?
Try this brief excerpt on for size: "The membership never exceeded the original five, and since these five promptly split into two factions . . ."
I should add that there's a companion piece of sorts. It's Jack Speer's Up To Now, available in A Sense of FAPA (which will be discussed later), or as a stand-alone chapbook published by Arcturus Press in 1994. It's Speer's version of fannish history in the 1930s, and actually pre-dates Moskowitz's book. Is it any gentler and kinder?
Well, according to Joe Gilbert, it's "as if someone had gathered up all the hates, prejudices and petty jealousies that have clogged the pipes of the stream of life since the world was first begun."
So is it possible to write a history of fandom that doesn't gather up all the hates, prejudices, etc.? It is if your name is Harry Warner, Jr. Harry took up where SaM and Speer left off, and covered the next two decades of fandom in two volumes. The first, dealing with the 1940s, was All Our Yesterdays, far better written than its predecessors, and without any axes to grind, since Harry's primary interaction with fandom was through fanzines and letter-writing.
It's a fabulous, informal history, covering all the high points, reporting on (for example) the initial meeting after the war between DAW (Wollheim) and SaM (the man who barred him from the first Worldcon), filled with well over 100 photos, even indexed. It's a true treasure of fannish history and anecdotes.
Advent published All Our Yesterdays in 1969, and was set to publish A Wealth of Fable a few years later when Harry pulled the manuscript because, as he said in a letter to the Hugo-winning fanzine Mimosa), "(Editor) Ed Wood submitted a list of things which he thought I should insert in my manuscript. Every one of these items had one thing in common: they concerned Ed Wood's activities in fandom or matters with which he had been closely associated."
Anyway, it was Joe Siclari and his Fanhistorica Press to the rescue. Joe mimeographed A Wealth of Fable and turned it into three "issues" of a fanzine in 1977, and that was the only form in which it was available until SCIFI Press and editor Rich Lynch finally brought out a fine-looking hardcover at the 1992 Worldcon.
It's not even a sequel, but rather a continuation, of All Our Yesterdays, heavily illustrated, obviously written by the same hand, chock full of the anecdotes that almost instantly become fannish legend.
A fascinating, though very localized history, was written by F. Towner Laney back in 1948. It was called Ah! Sweet Idiocy!, it was about his few years in LASFS (the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society), and it pre-dated Sen. Joseph McCarthy in accusing almost everyone the author knew of being either a homosexual, a Communist, or both. The villain of the piece seems to be 4e Ackerman—yet it was Ackerman who footed the publishing bill. Ah! Sweet Idiocy! appeared serially in FAPA (the Fantasy Amateur Press Association), and was later included, in its entirety, in Dick Eney's massive collection, A Sense of FAPA.
Laney soon dropped out of fandom. He was married four times, and theoretically died on June 8, 1958. I say theoretically, because in the early 1980s I saw the name "F. Towner Laney" on the masthead of a computer magazine published in New York, and how many F. Towner Laneys can there be in the world?
Well, I've referred to A Sense of FAPA twice now, so I might as well tell you about it. Back in 1962, Dick Eney collected some of the most interesting items that had ever run in FAPA—fandom's very first apa, which is still going strong in 2007—and published them before they could be lost forever. Its 370+ pages encompassed tons of artwork and articles, including Speer's history and Laney's idiocy. In a way, it's a rival history of fandom, by people who had no idea they were contributing to fannish history until Eney put all their old articles and cartoons together in one fat fannish volume. You'll also find "Mutation or Death," John Michel's propaganda tract that drew the battle lines between the Futurians and New Fandom, and some wonderful excerpts from Redd Boggs' immortal Skyhook, young Bob Silverberg's Spaceship, and other now-classic fanzines.
DICTIONARIES AND ENCYCLOPEDIAS
The first fannish encyclopedia—a dictionary of fannish terms and their origins, actually—was Jack Speer's Fancyclopedia, published in 1944 by Forrest J Ackerman. It ran over 100 mimeographed pages.
It was succeeded in 1959 by Fancyclopedia II, edited by Dick Eney (and with co-editorial credit to Speer). Fancy II (its fannish nickname), one of my two or three favorite fannish books, runs 184 single-spaced pages, with 19 pages of Additions and Corrections and 24 pages of The Rejected Canon. A fabulous book, which is equally adept at discussing the X Document, telling you how to mix an Atomic cocktail, or displaying the floor plans to the Tucker Hotel. Jack Chalker's Mirage Press printed a facsimile edition in 1979.
Eney also published the Fancyclopedigest, which was to be a bridge to Fancyclopedia III. When he ceased publishing, the project was taken over by some Los Angeles fans, who announce
d a pending publication in 1984. As I write this, it's only 23 years overdue, nowhere near as late as The Last Dangerous Visions (also a Los Angeles project, now that I come to think of it), and I still have some slight hope of seeing it during my lifetime.
A more recent and somewhat less ambitious publication is Elliot Weinstein's The Fillostrated Fan Dictionary, published in two parts by "O" Press in 1975. It comes in two volumes, totaling 171 pages, and may even have more definitions than Fancy II. But the reason I prefer Fancy II is that it gives anecdotes and histories of the terms, while Fillostrated simply gives definitions.
Halfway between a (small) dictionary and an (equally small) encyclopedia is The Neo-Fan's Guide, written by Wilson "Bob" Tucker back in 1955. It has been reprinted a number of times, to the best of my knowledge without ever being updated. The most recent copy I've seen was published by Mike Glyer in 1984, though I've been told that Ken Keller published the authorized 7th edition in 1996. I think its popularity is a combination of two things: Tucker's continuing status as fandom's most beloved member until his death a year ago at age 91, and the fact that, unlike, say, the Fancyclopedia, is it quite small and hence inexpensive to print.
Finally, there's Roberta Rogow's Futurespeak: A Fan's Guide to the Language of Science Fiction, published by Paragon House in 1991, and much too limited and media-oriented for my taste.
PROCEEDINGS
For a while there, I had high hopes that I could revisit every Worldcon since 1962 just by reading the transcript, but alas, it was not to be. Still, three of them did see print.
The first was The Proceedings: Chicon III, the complete, heavily-illustrated transcript of all the panels and speeches from the 1962 Worldcon, edited by Earl Kemp and published by Advent in 1963. To me, the highlights of this book are Robert Bloch's lecture on Hollywood, and Theodore Sturgeon's Guest of Honor speech.
Then came The Proceedings: Discon, the 1963 Worldcon transcript, also with close to one hundred photos, edited by Dick Eney and published by Advent in 1965. The best thing in this one is a panel with Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, Willy Ley, Leigh Brackett and popular sf cover artist Ed Emshwiller, that addressed the question, "What Should a BEM Look Like?" There's also a fine Guest of Honor speech by Murray Leinster, who seems to have been forgotten a little faster than most of our giants, and if you never experienced Isaac Asimov as a toastmaster, this will show you what you missed.