Episode 326: After ICFA

Gary is back from the International Conference on the Fantastic in Orlando, where he chatted quite a bit with guests of honour John Kessel and Nike Sulway while managing to not attend some very interesting talks and panels. We touch upon the problems of identifying an SF audience in today’s fluid environment, and the feeling of some older writers that their books may be no longer part of the overall discussion. But is there an overall discussion anymore? Has the SF readership atomized into so many different readerships, some more vertical than horizontal, that even when senior writers are still being read widely, it’s difficult to find out who those readers are.  Have we gotten to the point of “everyone their own canon,” where only a handful of books each year make it into the general discussion of where SF is headed?