Why We Fight, or, Someone Gets Us!

From NYRSF ISSUE #240, August 2008

As we were preparing this, our Twentieth Anniversary issue, we received the following letter. The flattery in it turns our modest little heads; but even more than that, if we had set out to write a summary of what we hope to accomplish in publishing this magazine, we could not have done better than Dr. Gannon does. As such, we will let it stand as our statement as we celebrate the arrival of our third decade.

—David G. Hartwell, Kevin J. Maroney, 

and the eds.

Charles E. Gannon, St. Bonaventure, New York

Just a week before Balticon, I found myself laid low by a bout with bronchitis. Dismal, but it provided me a long-overdue excuse to get to my back-reading—some of which has been languishing on my shelf for four or even five years. But despite using every moment of illness and then recuperation to achieve this end, I failed. The fault was not mine: it was NYRSF’s. Why? Because it was too damned interesting to speed-read.

There’s something about reading several years of a periodical’s or journal’s publication all at once which imparts an intense (as if distilled) appreciation of its broader content and significance. So although I did not come away from this condensed reading experience with any new sense re: the excellence of the individual articles (they are almost always superb), I did discover that I had obtained a macrospective view of NYRSF that was both far stronger and nuanced than any which I had enjoyed before. In the first place, it was a delight to find myself quickly caught up in the crests and swells of five years of flowing and learned (as distinct from “academic”) discussion of sf/f literature. Having recently withdrawn from full-time tenured classroom work (and the often fustian and highly mannered scholarship which such a career makes advisable, even obligatory), this was not only a singular treat but a great reassurance: you have succeeded in your evident quest to keep sf scholarship from becoming solely an academic enterprise. In my (limited) knowledge of literary studies, I can think of no other publication which functions so successfully as a generally accessible forum for, and record of, the evolution of any field or genre of literature. And it is worth adding that the fashion in which it achieves this is even more remarkable and unprecedented: open to all opinions, and all contributors, it nonetheless has created its own oeuvre, which might best be described (paradoxically) as laid-back belles-lettres. Over the course of two days, I found dueling opinions on the social impact of sf, of the (un?)likelihood of the Vingian singularity, of “mundane sf,” of the “true” meaning of “space opera.” And yet, despite the many theoretical thrusts, ripostes, and parodic feints, NYRSF never devolved into the terse and bitter range wars that can dominate academic criticism, nor veered into the trackless chaos of rants, flames, and personal denunciations of the blogosphere. In a world where arguments and issues seem to become increasingly polarized, and debaters have become almost reflexively hostile and quick to snatch up the saw-toothed flechettes of ad hominem attacks, NYRSF remains a bastion of not only learned, but civilized discussion.

One final observation: it is rare that any literary field leaves a chronicle of its own evolution—of how the matrixed variables of changing market realities, cultural sensibilities, personal careers, and reclaimed manuscripts (and much more) blend together to shape its ever-changing identity. Thanks to NYRSF, sf/fantasy/speculative fiction (insert your own term here) possesses such a chronicle, and more. For whereas a chronicle is but a collection of events, arranged in their order of occurrence, NYRSF in toto is a history built in part from learned observation, and in part from the reports of individuals who have worked within the field. This is not to say that, read in its entirety, NYRSF offers an “objective depiction” of the field: not only do I doubt that there is such a thing as a truly “objective depiction,” I consider it as oxymoronic a concept as one is likely to encounter. However, in both its breadth and depth of view, and in the profound catholicity of its editorial vision, the NYRSF is as fine a resource and a record as any one could hope for in any field of literary study—whether academic or not.

Hmmm: I guess I’ll renew my subscription after all.