Editorial
Editorial: The Long Road
by Trevor Quachri
For the sake of looking something up for this column, I recently logged on to social media, where I was quickly met with a silly discussion that I’ve also seen bubble up a few times in the past: “Authors who don’t read books.”
This time, it began when writer and English professor Aaron Gwyn (@AaronGwyn) posted on Twitter:
“Sometimes a student in one of my fiction writing classes will come see me during office hours and inform me they’re going to be a novelist. I always ask the same question: ‘Who are your favorite authors?’ An alarming number of students can’t name a single novelist. Not one.
They’ll tell me about video games or Netflix shows or mangas (whatever those are). Which is fine. But if you don’t have a favorite novelist by the time you’re a senior in college, you’re not going to be one.”
It seems to be a fairly uncontroversial statement to me (other than finding a middle-aged man who has somehow never even heard of the ubiquitous Japanese graphic novels that have dominated publishing sales charts for two decades. But still). Of course responses ranged from agreement to calling his opinion ableist or elitist and people showing off their bad writing to prove that you could indeed be a good writer even if you haven’t read widely (and inadvertently proving Gwyn’s point). But it would be borderline nut-picking (the practice of picking the most outlandish proponent of a position to discredit said position) if I were to pretend that those latter responses were the majority of replies.
(It doesn’t take much to see the warping effect of social media algorithms: they feed you more of what you engage with. If you angrily click on an inflammatory comment, congrats: you’re going to get more inflammatory content. Over time, you have a steady diet of nothing but, either genuinely espoused or disingenuously exaggerated for the clicks.
When faced with the Kobayashi Maru of having to choose between our online habits being monitored by foreign governments or “benevolent” tech moguls with incestuous ties to our own, our buttons all too readily pushed by bad actors, we should think like James T. Kirk and endeavor to change the terms of the dilemma.
So by and large, I try to ignore all social media apps, with a weakness for long-form video essays on YouTube the notable exception. Treating a twenty-minute book review or an hourlong deep-dive analysis of a favorite movie like a podcast while you wash dishes or drive is a good way to spend some time. Perhaps some favorite science and science-fiction channels will find their way into a future column—an easy off-the-cuff recommendation would be: https://www.you-tube.com/@pbsspacetime—but I digress.
While I didn’t find the immediate argument all that engaging, there were some elements to it that I did. At its core is the question: Can you make something of quality without having at least a solid foundation in what has come before? I’ll grant there are diminishing returns beyond a certain point in this particular example—Is somebody who reads two books a day much more likely to create great writing than someone who reads two or three books a week and also has a healthy intellectual diet of other hobbies? I doubt it—but if you don’t engage with the form you’re trying to work in at all, you’re stumbling around in the dark, trying to convince folks that the relative lack of bruises on your shins is proof you’re a cat. Trust me when I say that it’s obvious when you come across someone trying to write SF who only predominantly views SF.
Part of this blind spot for some people is a misunderstanding of where art “comes from.” It’s not uncommon to hear people ask authors, “Where do you get your ideas?” as if through divine inspiration rather than being steeped in something they love and thinking about it deeply and often. Another (I suspect larger) part is the sort of results-oriented hydra of anti-intellectualism that rears an ugly head too many places in contemporary American life.
It views writing (and any sort of expertise more broadly) as simply a product—an education only has value insofar as it can get you a job; writing only has value if it can output a novel that can be sold. The steps in between: the reading, the writing, the learning—the work—are to be skipped entirely if possible. The destination is the point in this worldview, not the journey. The problem for those folks is that they will arrive at the destination untested and soft from having avoided the challenges along the way. It’s notable that, in my observation, there’s more than some overlap between folks who rail against “participation trophy culture” and folks who—like a teenager who dreams of being a rock star in spite of never having picked up an instrument—need to be seen as some sort of expert, even without doing any of the legwork or steps to get there. Like I said: I enjoy a good YouTube video, but watching them isn’t “research.” Yes, there comes a point where it’s necessary to accept constructive criticism, whoever you are, but “you can’t beat someone having fun”: if you’re having fun, you’re more likely to stick with an activity, and if you stick with an activity, you’ll improve at it. Simple as that. It’s a long road, but there’s no other way, and the person who enjoys walking will go further than the person who just wants to reach the destination.
True, this particular pitfall has always existed to some degree. Not unlike Gwyn, I have been asked on multiple occasions how one becomes a writer, to which I say: you write. Like so much in life, it’s not a thing you are; it’s a thing you do. (We see the short hop to the way we think about being a moral person, yes?) But the advent of AI now makes it possible for those who do not take the long road to reach a sort of melted wax facsimile of the destination. The humanist in me believes that people will ultimately see the value in an authentic process creating the Real Thing (in whatever regard) but time will tell.
Positively, the young people who many might assume would be the most diehard early adopters of AI are proving to be more savvy than their elders, keenly aware of AI’s impact on the job markets they’re expected to enter and the arts that they love: multiple tone-deaf commencement speakers lauding AI to the graduating classes it will affect have been loudly and repeatedly booed this past season.
The kids are alright.
What we’re reading/watching:
Anyway, to bring it full circle (in subject, though not theme) the whole reason I logged on to social media for this column in the first place was to see if I could find some reviews of the novel, There Is No Antimemetics Division, by Sam Hughes (aka “qntm”), which I recently read. I wasn’t particularly interested in the reviews themselves, only in trying to get a sense of whether the online “BookTok” buzz about it was genuine or guerilla marketing. I’m naturally suspicious, but I have to say I enjoyed the book regardless. The jacket copy describes it as “Humanity is under assault by malevolent ‘antimemes’—ideas that attack memory, identity, and the fabric of reality itself” (sort of a distant relation to this past weekend’s film release, as I write this in May, Backrooms) and I found it a tight, self-contained little SF/thriller with some neat ideas that, happily, don’t remain unexplored once presented. Alas, it ultimately falls too close to the fantasy side of the ledger for me to recommend it to folks solely interested in hard SF, but I think anyone looking for some brain-bending thought experiments will be quite pleased with it.
Lastly, it’s not exactly an under-the-radar pick considering it was nominated for 15 Emmys and won five, but if I said there’s a show with well-developed characters, plenty of technical/scientific jargon, and incredibly realistic special effects, I feel like the typical SF fan would at least raise an eyebrow in curiosity. A new Star Trek? An adaptation of a beloved book or series like The Three-Body Problem or Murderbot?
No. It’s medical drama The Pitt.
Wait, hear me out!
Of course there’s no speculative element, so it isn’t really SF, but I’ve long maintained that some of the best exemplars of hard SF may not be SF at all—but they’re closer than a lot of folks might realize. (See also: the Breaking Bad episode, “4 Days Out”). A storyline where doctors increasingly pushed toward sophisticated AI-dependent procedures have to pivot to older analog methods after a server hack could easily be the basis of an Analog story if you squint a bit. Tell me I’m wrong! (Or, preferably, that I’m a genius who made a great point.)
Next time: Caves of Qud, the winner of the 2025 Hugo Award for Best Game or Interactive Work.
From associate editor Kevin Wheeler:
I’ve always had a soft spot for science-fictional horror movies of the 1980s. From classics such as The Thing and The Fly to far cheesier fare such as Chopping Mall and C.H.U.D., these films helped set the tone of my high-school years and deepened my appreciation for science fiction in general.
Lately I’ve been in the mood to revisit some of these movies. Director Brian Yuzna’s Society from 1989 is a bit of a “slow burn” as far as this type of cinema goes, as some viewers may be left wondering “where are the practical effects, the body-horror slime?” as they watch a California teen unravel the mysteries surrounding a friend’s death and the secretive social club his family participates in. Reader, I assure you the lack of practical effects is worth sitting through, as the last ten minutes of Society could be the most glorious in all body horror.