Current mood:	thinkative
Entry tags:	reading, spec fic, writer education

Everyone's Here, So Let's Be Civil
The whole world is online, economic inequities and censorship notwithstanding. When I make this post, it will be available to everyone, everywhere. The yak-herder in China. The industrial magnate in New Delhi. The schoolgirl in Belize. Most of them probably won't read it, and in practice I mostly interact with English-speakers in North America, but the post is available to the world.

Sometime last year or the year before, I reached a point of critical mass with my FList and general online reading. When a debate is going on in F/SF/H, at least in the portions I follow, I hear about it. This is good because it makes me more aware of issues that will presumably have some impact on my career as a writer, especially down the line when I've conquered worlds, stood astride the galaxy, etc., etc.

Even as a librarian and "information person," I still frequently forget the larger context for the debates. We hear so much of the positive rhetoric about the Web that it's easy (for me, at least) to forget how different from me some of the people I meet online are. We debate various issues in the library world, and I have miscellaneous arguments in person during the week, but in neither case do I meet the same range of people as are online.

We tend to look for points of similarity with other people, ways to communicate, and tend to be frustrated when we don't find common ground. Sometimes people are so hurt or angered they start slinging mud, and that's natural. At the same time, I don't want hegemony in SF. I want fiction from Nazis, queers, Khazars, feminists, furries, Quebecois, Republicans, rapists, Methodists, peaceniks, children, and (if possible) elephants. I want to read all of it, because that's why I'm here. Reading and writing. The rest of it's just the details.