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Wednesday, August 30, 2006

The Icken or the Chegg?

Susie Bright wrote: "Science fiction would have curled into a historical corner if it wasn't for the Internet crowd that created a resurrection." Laurie Mann wrote: "So while I don't believe that the Internet revived SF, I do believe that SF readers 'made' parts of the Internet. It's very true that SF is popular on the Internet, but that's not the same thing as saying that the Internet revived it." I wrote: "Susie, Laurie is absolutely right. I've been on the 'net since it was the net - dns servers? The address space was a flat file of twelve count em twelve sites. Now, who worked at the twelve sites and the ones that followed? People who wore hiking boots in the machine room, programmed on the bare metal, lived on caffeine and hypomania, divided the world into winners and lusers, \& \ldots ---in other words, readers, writers, and editors of sf&f. You have it dead backwards, just as Laurie (who knows her stuff) said. f&sf created the Internet and the w^3, not the other way around. The genre was in no danger of death or disease. It keeps on breeding with every branch and aspect of literature, constantly producing healthy offspring."