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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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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End of conversation
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