If you're pitching a book to an agent or publisher, they'll want to know what, if any, comparable titles exist *right now*. Comparing your work exclusively to classics, assuming it doesn't come across as arrogant, doesn't help to situate you in the present market.
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An upcoming SFF writer reading modern works is learning about their actual, living peers - people they might meet and befriend or talk with on panels or share industry contacts with - while a new SFF fan is learning about writers they could actually see in person, at events.
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Reading classics *if you want to* is fine! Go for it! But it isn't mandatory. And "reinventing the wheel" is far more likely to happen if you're so detached from the present SFF market that, for instance, you missed the 00s vampire craze & think your best comparable is Dracula.
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What I find most frustrating about You Must Read The Canon arguments is that it completely ignores both the breadth of the genre AND the individual tastes of readers.
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For instance: I enjoy SFF, but especially when I was younger, I skewed much more strongly to the fantasy side of things. Literally nothing about Asimov, Heinlein or Herbert appealed to me. Even if they'd been contemporary with my youth, I would've been looking elsewhere!
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I read LeGuin when I got a little older, but in terms of my personal development, I still felt like I'd been forced into reading Earthsea because It Was A Classic and not because I wanted to. I suspect I'd love it now, but I hate feeling like books are a duty, not a pleasure.
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But when I *did* start finding classic authors I liked, they weren't the ones I'd been endlessly told about since my earliest SFF days. I loved Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis series, and I devoured Eleanor Arnason after finding a short of hers reprinted in Clarkesworld.
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When I look at the unread classics I've added to my TBR shelves, not for duty, but because they looked interesting? There's Vonda McIntyre, C.J. Cherryh, James Tiptree Jr, Samuel Delaney; more LeGuin, more Butler.
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Since seeing her work adapted and after hearing the originals recommended by friends, I've picked up some Shirley Jackson, too. And I'm looking forward to reading it! But even in a pandemic, the eternal struggle of writers is having a TBR pile that stretches to the moon.
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There's always new books coming out, and I want to keep abreast of them. I want to support my friends and peers; I want to see where the genre is headed. And I cannot understand an attitude to SFF that situates doing so as *less* important than a singular, old, restrictive canon.
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Here's the thing: the recent past matters, too! And it always feels extremely conspicuous that it gets ignored when folks like Martin and Silverberg, per the recent Hugos disaster, think the only past that matters is exclusively 40+ years ago.
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Given that Martin, Silverberg and others have ostensibly been attending cons and participating in fandom *continuously* since the Good Old Days, I find it... let's say significant, that their much-vaunted anecdotes never seem to include the past two decades. Which is a long time!
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They don't get up and talk about multiple Hugo winners of recent years like Cat Valente or Seanan McGuire. (They mentioned NK Jemisin, but only to make out as if she's nothing special.) They don't talk about amazing new talents like Yoon Ha Lee or Charlie Jane Anders.
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The thing about the past is that we're always adding to it - but not in their recollection. The past is always singular, with a giant chasm of Nothing between their personal cutoff point and the present, and it's MADDENING.
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The only exception to this is their personal achievements, like they alone get to straddle the Great Nothing between their heyday and the now like living messages in a bottle.
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And what this says to me - the impression I cannot help taking away - is that, to them, the *recent* history of the genre doesn't matter except inasmuch as it represents a continued audience for their exploits. They want to broadcast to modern fandom, not engage with it.
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Which is, I think, desperately ironic, in that part of what they're grasping after is a legacy: a continued sense of relevance. But because they're not engaging with new fans or writers as people and peers, only as potential subjects, they're actively eroding their own relevance.
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If, as a new fan or writer, your formative impression of Silverberg is Dude Who Longwindedly Compares Himself To Jesus While Praising A Fascist At An Awards Ceremony, why the fuck would you bother to look up his writing? What's the appeal, there?
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If Silverberg understood how legacies work, he'd be encouraging new writers and fans, engaging with the modern genre, extending a hand to newcomers at cons and generally using his status for good, not sitting coolly on a pedestal and periodically bemoaning the state of things.
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But ego isn't a legacy; it's just annoying, like trying to insist in the face of all reason and evidence to the contrary that your personal entry points into the genre are The Only True Entry Points and therefore The Perfect Canon Forever, Amen.
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Anyway! It's beautiful day, and I'm going to go spend some (socially distanced) time outside with my offspring instead of ranting on the internet now. FIN
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