{"id":5181,"date":"2012-01-17T20:28:11","date_gmt":"2012-01-18T01:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=5181"},"modified":"2012-01-17T20:28:11","modified_gmt":"2012-01-18T01:28:11","slug":"connie-willis-causes-the-most-surprising-comment-ive-read-all-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2012\/01\/17\/connie-willis-causes-the-most-surprising-comment-ive-read-all-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Connie Willis causes the most surprising comment I’ve read all day"},"content":{"rendered":"

As soon as it was announced yesterday<\/a> that Connie Willis had been named the next SFWA Grand Master, the Internet exploded with a wide range of chatter, ranging from “It’s about time!” to “Wow, I suddenly feel very old” to “Already?”<\/p>\n

That was to be expected. Science fiction fandom doesn’t speak in one voice on anything.<\/p>\n

But what I didn’t expect was to find some science fiction fans who had no idea who she was<\/em>. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s just one example, from Reddit<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Wow… Never heard of her, but she’s never written a series; it’s all short stories and individual novels, by the look of her wikipage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How very unusual… And unmarketable, which is presumably why I’ve never heard of her.<\/p>\n

Will look her stuff up, though.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How interesting to think that to some readers, if you’re writing short stories, or if your novels are not part of a series, you’re invisible—even if you’ve won seven Nebula Awards and eleven Hugo Awards.<\/p>\n

I’m not judging the commenter, I’m just … surprised. <\/p>\n

Damon Knight used to say that science fiction was the thing we pointed at when we said “science fiction,” but these days, science fiction is so fragmented that Damon would throw his back out trying to point in a thousand directions simultaneously.<\/p>\n

And I keep forgetting that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As soon as it was announced yesterday that Connie Willis had been named the next SFWA Grand Master, the Internet exploded with a wide range of chatter, ranging from “It’s about time!” to “Wow, I suddenly feel very old” to “Already?” That was to be expected. Science fiction fandom doesn’t speak in one voice on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[140,142,141],"class_list":["post-5181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-connie-willis","tag-damon-knight","tag-sfwa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}