The Common Tongue
Jul. 20th, 2006 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat_sochoGod knows I'm not trying to dredge up the dead and extremely stinky past here, but I was mulling over the concept of the canon as it applies to contemporary SF&F fandom, partially as a result of what ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
windelina had to say in this post (sorry, it's f-locked) about her reaction to some younger fans who didn't quite get the mockup of HAL9000 that sat outside Main Programming this year at Convergence. It occurred to me that every time we get a big influx of fans, part of what leads the mainstream -however you define it at the time- to exclude the neos is that they just don't speak the language. There are just too many referents to films and TV shows they haven't seen, books and stories they haven't read, and all that sort of thing.
Nowadays, of course, I suppose it's not such a big deal, because there are sufficient ghettos within fandom that you don't really have to deal with anyone outside your circle of Trek fans, Harry Potter fans, or whatever your particular fandom might be. On the other hand, when you venture out to a convention, especially a ginormous Gathering of the Tribes such as Convergence, squatting in your little familiar circle is really a waste of time and money. So as we approach the end of the seventh decade of SF conventions, what is the canon? What do fans need to have experienced to interact intelligently with most of the other fans at Convergence? Is there a canon any more, or has the very notion of a central body of knowledge in fandom become obsolete? If there is a canon, what do you think belongs in it?
windelina had to say in this post (sorry, it's f-locked) about her reaction to some younger fans who didn't quite get the mockup of HAL9000 that sat outside Main Programming this year at Convergence. It occurred to me that every time we get a big influx of fans, part of what leads the mainstream -however you define it at the time- to exclude the neos is that they just don't speak the language. There are just too many referents to films and TV shows they haven't seen, books and stories they haven't read, and all that sort of thing. Nowadays, of course, I suppose it's not such a big deal, because there are sufficient ghettos within fandom that you don't really have to deal with anyone outside your circle of Trek fans, Harry Potter fans, or whatever your particular fandom might be. On the other hand, when you venture out to a convention, especially a ginormous Gathering of the Tribes such as Convergence, squatting in your little familiar circle is really a waste of time and money. So as we approach the end of the seventh decade of SF conventions, what is the canon? What do fans need to have experienced to interact intelligently with most of the other fans at Convergence? Is there a canon any more, or has the very notion of a central body of knowledge in fandom become obsolete? If there is a canon, what do you think belongs in it?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-20 09:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-21 05:13 am (UTC)isn't about reading the "best of" - you need to read
some of the "less good" stuff too in order to be a
bit more well rounded, and to understand some of
the evolution of it all.
I was going to comment on Wombat's "the bible should
be part of it" and ask if he was including that in the
fiction part of things, but that is likely a very different
set of blog entries ;-)
doug
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-21 02:23 pm (UTC)You know me better than that. ^^ I was thinking that it belongs in the larger canon of Western civilization, of which SF&F is only a part, because (like Shakespeare) so much of what comes after it draws on it, often in ways we're not conscious of.
Your point about fans needing to be aware of the not-so-good stuff is a valid one, too. Lots of the stuff I like (Saberhagen, Laumer, Christopher Anvil, David Drake, etc.) isn't award winning literature by anyone's definition, but it's still good entertainment, tasty brain candy. The Thomas Covenant novels (well, the first ones, anyway) definitely fall into that category.