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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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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