An uncomfortable truth about SFF - which is, I suspect, also true of most other creative niches/fields - is that it's always going to be cliquey. When your peers are your peers because you share an interest that is also your joint profession, friend & professional circles merge.
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It's a feature as well as a bug, which means that, while you can't eradicate it, you absolutely have to be *aware* of it, because while you might not notice Your Circle forming? Everyone on the outside of it sees its circumference lit up in neon.
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So, what do you do with all those circles? Ideally, you try to make them into chainmail, not polka dots: you want connections that links groups together in a way that acknowledges both overlap and difference, not variously-sized, solid-colour blocs broken up by gaping spaces.
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The past is important, but it shouldn't be elevated at the expense of the present, nor lauded to the exclusion of the future. And when GRRM and Silverberg get up and tell the same six stories every year, that's what they're doing: speaking just to Their Circle, the glorious past.
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I don't know what Worldcon will look like in the future, because I don't know enough about conrunning to comment. Can the Hugos be detached from it? Is there an enduring core of people who keep making the same mistakes each year, or is it the lack of same that's the issue?
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All I know is, given that SFF pro/friend cliques are inevitable, we need to aim for chainmail, not polka dots. And right now, I don't think the same old guard of dudes can be trusted to achieve that.
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But even though it frequently exasperates me, I don't want to give up on SFF fandom entirely, either. It matters a lot to me that the writers I grew up respecting welcomed me into the genre - that they were all, unfailingly, polite and kind, even if I only met them for a moment.
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GRRM was disinterested that first time we met; we've met subsequently, too - even had an actual conversation one time, though probably not one he enjoyed or recalls - and I would be startled if he knew me from Adam.
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I briefly met Silverberg in 2018 at San Jose; he looked through me, not recognising my name even though I was on the list of Best Fan Writer nominees he was set to read out that evening. Neither man was rude, per se; they just weren't interested.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
I’ve met Silverberg, naturally, at every Worldcon I’ve been to. I was nominated at a lot of them, from Novel to Fancast, up & down the list. Not only did he look through me each time (even when I was nominated 3 times on one ballot) but he’s never remembered me once either
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Replying to @fozmeadows @catvalente
Someone, who I won’t name because they didn’t ask to get tagged, said they’d been told by an editor? (Maybe?) that Silverberg wouldn’t bother to remember them until they had at least two Hugos. My response was basically “then who the fuck cares what he thinks?” but that’s me.
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