Kevin Ahearn writes about...

The real “hoax” on science fiction

Earlier this year, the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) boasted about how thirty of their members teamed up to write an intentionally awful novel to “hoax” PublishAmerica, a vanity press long considered a scam by many professional writers, editors and publishers. Based on a recent posting on Sci-Fiction, it seems that SFWA is stuck in its hoaxing ways.

Submitted for your perusal, “Guys’ Day Out,” a short story by Ellen Klages posted this month. It’s not that the story is badly written or poorly structured. On the contrary, it’s well-intended and heartfelt, but it’s not science fiction or fantasy. So how did this mainstream story, at twenty cents a word, get paid for and posted on Sci-Fiction?

Isn’t Sci-Fiction supposed to be the cutting edge of science fiction and fantasy in the New Millennium? Sorry, sci-fi fans, but Sci-Fiction is an SFWA “hoax.” Funded at $250,000 annually, it has become a literary slush fund for the SFWA, whose members take turns picking up paychecks for tired, dated writing samples which wouldn’t be worth a dime anyplace else.

Of course, there are exceptions. In the years I have been contributing to SFW Letters, I have seen only one entry raving about a Sci-Fiction story, and I wrote it. (Based on that story, the writer recently got a lucrative TV deal.) Smoking on BSG seems more relevant to sci-fi fans than Sci-Fiction.

But haven’t Sci-Fiction stories been nominated and won Hugos and Nebulas? Well, who do you think controls the Hugos and Nebulas? That’s right, the SFWA.

How sad all this is. Back in the days of the pulps, determined young writers competed in a fledgling, wide-open market. That’s how the SFWA got started. Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Dick and the rest of the grand masters honed their talents in a highly charged genre. Their hard-earned sales gave science fiction and fantasy its wings! But once flying high, the SF & F marketplace has crashed. Too many writers are chasing too few readers. (When was the last time any of you sci-fi fans even bothered to read Sci-Fiction?)

Science fiction and fantasy can only be about science fiction and fantasy. When it becomes about something else, it becomes something less. In determining whether or not an SF & F story is the best story of all those submitted, it’s either on the page or it isn’t.

That’s the way it used to be, but not today. The “closed shop” mentality of the “old boys and girls” SFWA, adopted in a desperate attempt at self-preservation, is killing the future of SF & F. The “hoax” is on us.

Kevin Ahearn

Copyright © 2005 by Kevin Ahearn

Thank you, Kevin. I wish you’d send us a bio sketch: we could make a bibliography of the essays, stories and letters you’ve contributed to Bewildering Stories for some time now. I’m sure our readers would be very interested.

So the SWFA subsidizes Sci-Fiction to the tune of a quarter-million dollars a year? That ain’t hay. Where do they get all that money? And big stashes of cash tend to act like a cultural black hole. As I like to quote: “Wherever there’s money, there are people trying to get their hands on it.”

Our readers can look up “Guys’ Day Out” for themselves. My opinion, worth what it costs ya, is that you’re right: the story contains no elements of science fiction or fantasy; it’s pure contemporary realism. I well understand your wondering why a website named Sci-Fiction would publish it. And at twenty cents a word? That boggles the mind.

While Bewildering Stories’ first love is science fiction, our title and mission statement give us a far larger scope than one would normally expect at websites that wear the name on their sleeve. If we had received “Guys’ Day Out,” we could and would have published it as a matter of course; content would have been no obstacle. And our on-line presentation would have been a darn sight better than Sci-Fiction’s, if we do say so ourselves.

However, the story itself raises questions. We might not have gone so far as to request a rewrite, but I certainly would have asked the author why she concentrates exclusively on the boy and his father without having the courtesy to kill off the boy’s mother.

To consider your larger points, Kevin: science fiction has grown up and left home. Science fiction has gone mainstream while mainstream has been moving into science fiction venues. Paradoxes abound: science fiction’s success has been followed by a dwindling of its market and readership; meanwhile, some determinedly mainstream publications have sprouted a siege mentality and circled the anti-science fiction wagons.

You also charge the SFWA with inbreeding; it may be a symptom of a more general malaise or even greater cultural change in the making. Where do we go from here? That’s something that science fiction can talk about.

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