scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/2pq9xz.md

Promoting Rationalist Fiction

• Author: u/embrodski *

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2pq9xz/promoting_rationalist_fiction/

• Score: 11

• Created: 2014-12-18T22:43:24

Post:

When I was a kid, SteamPunk basically didn’t exist. The Difference Engine had come out, sure, but there wasn’t a recognized genre. Nowadays even people who aren’t big into SF/F know what SteamPunk is.

We like Rationalist fiction. I would like for it to be a genre, so I could go and pick up a novel marketed as “Rationalist,” rather than having to hope someone stumbles across one and shares with the rest of us. We’ve adopted several books/author’s as Rationalist (Watt’s “Blindsight”, much of Greg Egan, most of Ted Chaing), but it’s not a recognized genre in the wider culture, and none of them self-identify as Rationalist writers. There are those who could accuse “You’re just appropriating especially well-written SF and trying to use it to make your genre look good!” We currently only have one really exquisite and shining example of self-identified Rationalist fiction, and it can’t be published via traditional means for legal reasons.

So what can we do to promote rationalist fiction? I think the most important step is to continue what we’re already doing – promoting HPMoR via word-of-mouth. It is/will be to Rationalist fiction what Perdido Street Station was for New Weird – the amazing ground-breaking work that gets a core base excited and wanting more. But this alone isn’t enough. Right now, only rationalists read Rationalist fiction. OTOH, a fair number of people regularly read SteamPunk and New Weird, even if they aren’t hardcare fans of the genres, because the genres exist and are accepted in the SF spectrum. They are genres that writers write in. They are genres that publishers publish. And both of these things are true because people are willing to pay money to read those genres.

To expand from a niche internet interest to a full genre there must be money in the game. There are people whose job it is to find stories that they think readers will be willing to pay money to read, and buy those stories from authors. If they are right, and the works are popular, and readers start asking for similar stories, those editors will start to pay attention to the label being used to describe that type of story. “The last rationalist story was well-received. I should try getting another one of those.” And as other authors are exposed to the same works, and find them intriguing, they’ll want to write stories in that style as well. Most SteamPunk writers didn’t create the idea Ex Nihlo, they discovered it via reading and decided “This is really cool, I want to do something like this too!” And when this happens enough times, a genre comes into being.

Right now a lot of us are cutting our teeth, figuring out how to write a thing. But eventually we need to up our game. Maybe you don’t much care if it becomes a recognized genre, you prefer the close-knit community of internet publishing. If you’re like me though, and you want this to bloom, take that next step – try to get published in a recognized market, while publicly identifying your work as “rationalist fiction.” Ideally in a pro-paying market, which SFWA guidelines say is $0.06 per word or more. Failing that, semi-pro is a good close-second.

Yes, it’s hard. It’s painful to be rejected over and over again, often after months of waiting. But it makes you better. It makes the writing better. And it will help the genre to become established. We can’t all be Eliezer (some people would claim only one of us can be!), but we can help expand the genre in other ways.

Comments:

u/alexanderwales [+14] Time flies like an arrow (6 hours later)

There's a big problem, and that problem's name is fanfic.

If you go to look at the rationalist canon, to the extent that such a thing exists, something like 90% of it is fanfic. Speaking in general terms, fanfic has very little respect. A fair amount of the reason for this is that fanfic is also relatively devoid of editors, and the average quality suffers a lot as a result. But it's also because so much of what falls into the category of fanfic is utter garbage in other ways - stuff that you could never publish in a million years, even if the work were in the public domain. Fanfic is not something that most people want to have their name attached to, either as readers or as writers. (This is probably where someone quotes Sturgeon's Law at me, but I'm not a big believer in that.)

So if you want to go with the current rationalist canon, you'd have to defend fanfic at every turn. If you've recommended HPMOR to people, you've probably already had to say, "No, but this is one of the good ones", or maybe even give some explanation of what fanfic is, which inherently detracts from the recommendation. You'd end up fighting a war on two fronts, which is bad strategy.

I don't know. Publishing is hard, and if you're going through the traditional routes, it takes a lot of time. So if I were to finish up my manuscript and get it into its final form today, it would still be three or four years before it saw print, assuming that I could even find an agent or publisher. And then people here, would argue about whether it even fits in the genre (which might be in question since I don't tend to think about genre while writing).

u/eaglejarl [+3] (a day later)

A fair amount of the reason for this is that fanfic is also relatively devoid of editors, and the average quality suffers a lot as a result.

I think you're being generous. I would say that the primary problem with fanfic is that most of the authors are terrible writers -- not surprising, since most people are terrible writers.

u/embrodski [+4] (17 hours later)

I don't think fanfic is a problem. Exhibit A: HPMoR. But there's critically-accepted/acclaimed fanfic works in the industry. Watts's "The Things" and Scalzi's "Redshirts" are both fanfic, and they were both nominated for the Hugo Award (Scalzi won his, and Watts should have won, but was robbed). SF fans aren't strangers to fanfic.

And fanfic isn't a requirement by any stretch. Sword of Good, Three Worlds Collide, Study of Anglophysics, and Last Christmas are all good non-fanfic rationalist works.

Publishing is hard, and takes ages. I dread the day I finish a novel, because I know it'll be years before anyone else will see it even though it's done and ready! I've delayed starting one partly for that reason. But it can force us to up our game. And IMHO the benefits are worth it.

u/eaglejarl [+2] (a day later)

Publishing through a dead-tree publisher is ridiculously hard, but my understanding is that publishing on Amazon is much easier -- write it, you can post it. "Getting published" shouldn't be the difficult step.

The difficult step is "writing something that people want to read." That requires three things:

1. Imagination sufficient to come up with a good plot / characters / etc
2. Writing chops enough to realize those ideas
3. A lot of effort fixing the mechanics of the story -- proofreading, etc

Then you also have the issue of promotion. The value of a publishing house is not that they put the words onto paper for you, their value is in the QA and promotion that they provide. They have finite time, a stable of writers that they've worked with before and can be confident will produce profitable work, and a vastly oversized slushpile of new authors, so it's hard to break in. If one can handle the QA and promotion though, publishing is relatively straightforward.

And yes, I'm aware that I've just handwaved off a huge amount of work. :> I've got a romance novel that I've been editing for months. I've done easily a dozen passes and I keep finding typos, grammar errors, and missing words. It's infuriating. I have incredible respect for professional editors. I don't know how they do it.

u/None [+2] (a day later)

You forgot step (4): actually find an audience who want to read your stuff. This is the part where the internet can really help.

u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)

cough,cough

Then you also have the issue of promotion

u/embrodski [+1] (a day later)

If you can get short fiction published in a periodical, that comes with a built-in readership. Authors often find their first readers from publishing short stories. It's how I learned of Seth Dickinson.

u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (7 days later)

I have incredible respect for professional editors. I don't know how they do it.

Not that it is that simple but not having written the text you are supposed to edit helps a lot. Have you tried asking someone trusted to do some proofreading for you?

u/eaglejarl [+1] (8 days later)

I don't really have anyone to ask that of -- specifically, no one with the skills + time + good enough relationship. I can find any two of the three, but not all three. Also, since I publish every week and haven't managed to build a buffer, it would require unreasonably tight turnaround times.

I don't know that I will have a buffer anytime in the foreseeable future, either, since the majority of my time will be devoted to writing for filthy lucre. ;>

u/mhd-hbd [+1] Writes 'The World is Your Oyster, The Universe is Your Namesake' (11 days later)

Not to mention, most fanfic is speculative fiction. Speculative fiction lives in the speculative fiction ghetto. Fanfic lives in double-ghetto land.

Anyway, examples of epistemically rationalist canon: Worm, Pact, Ra. Although Ra isn't very rational, just mostly.

Instrumentally rationalist fiction is hard to come upon, unfortunately. But writing such as speculative fiction emphasizing it's importance is fairly easy: give the main character motivation superpowers, like never growing bored and never needing sleep, and write a story about that.

u/None [+6] (14 hours later)

Why would we promote it? In broad experience (as in, someone in my local LW meetup group actually bothered to measure), people basically either do have the necessary personality traits to be a science nerd/rationalist type, or they don't. There are some traits that add up to a "proto-rationalist personality". Most others do not.

If you're trying to "raise the sanity waterline", what you really want is to promote rational thinking in media works not marked or marketed as "rational", which are exciting to normal people for their reasons.

u/embrodski [+4] (17 hours later)

I think it'd be cool to have a recognized Rationalist genre. And I think it'd have more influence if it was a recognized genre. There are a lot of novels and stories nowadays that have Steampunk influences, even if they aren't Steampunk. There's even (heaven forbid) a lot of stories that have Dystopian YA Romance influences, even if they aren't Dystopian YA Romance stories, simply because it is a thing. Tons of darker fic is influenced by the popularity of Lovecraft fic. You can even see New Weird streaks influencing standard storylines, which is really neat.

I'd like to see more works of all stripes be influenced by rationality - I think it would make the stories themselves better, and I hope it helps nudge the sanity waterline a bit - and that influence comes from having a full-fledged Rationalist Genre.

u/StefanGagne [+3] City of Angles Municipal Government (21 hours later)

It can't hurt to promote it. Pushing for raising the sanity waterline is great, and one of the ways to push is to get works of art out in front of the public which endorse rational thinking.

If in the Glorious SuperFuture(tm) there's no need for a "rationalist" genre because everything's generally rational, then hooray! But for now it's not a bad thing to band these works together and present them to folks.

u/StefanGagne [+3] City of Angles Municipal Government (21 hours later)

I'll admit I'm a newbie 'round these parts; I've got two non-fanfic rational works here and here and that's it. But I can speak to the experience of being an independent author in general, and the difficulty promoting your work.

"Web Originals" or "Web Novels" or "Web Serial Novels" or whatever variant you like have exposure problems, because they're generally completely independent works which don't follow any traditional publishing channels. Few have eBook and fewer have print book availability, so they're overlooked by the fiction community as a whole. Lack of editors is another issue, as many can't afford to hire on an editor and rely on crowdsourced editing. (I do a mixture of the two.) The end result is a book which isn't quite polished, isn't available in standard formats, and isn't seen as a result.

I can think of two things that may help rationalist authors. Authors in general, really.

One, if the community bands together to assemble a resource list for would-be authors to dip into, with tips for proofing and publishing and releasing. There's a number of tools like Kindle and CreateSpace out there which make the process easier than you'd think.

Two, if the community bands together to promote the stories they love outside of /r/rational, to other communities and other forums. I watch my web traffic like a hawk and whenever someone posts to some random webcomic's forum I see a traffic spike. Anything that can be done to raise awareness raises the overall profile of a story and gets more eyes on the work.

Once more rational fic "beachheads" are established and awareness is raised and materials are available, its status as a genre may be raised as well.

This will be a rough road, though. I've been at it for twenty years now and I've yet to figure out the ideal formula despite tons of experimentation with formats, release methods, promotional avenues, etc. I welcome any suggestions from other authors or readers for how folks can get their work out there and pushed as a cohesive genre.

u/CalebJohnsn [+2] Theoretical Manatician (a day later)

Well we could always try to one-up the Twilight fanfic writers that reworked Fifty Shades of Grey with wild success using our own "Bayesian Conspiracy" that creates independent publishers and aids in the rebranding of popular fanfictions into original works.

The Transformative Works and Culture article "Fifty Shades of Fan Labor" goes into this somewhat, but primarily discusses how fandoms become divided when pre-existing gift economies are undermine by more traditional capitalistic economies where major works cease to be available to the community as a whole, a betraying of loyalties and lose of trust that can greatly shake fanfiction communities.

Now if we could sidestep some of those issues I think that this whole set up could give us a lot of valuable exposure

But before we get to that stage we could try promoting pre-existing proto-rationalist works, get some rationality specific writing circles and doujinshi-style convention circuits going where possible, promote improved education efforts, sponsor some rational charity events, work our ways up in select publishing houses, and start holding panels on at minor then major conventions relating to fan culture and rational fiction, and then we will have secured for ourselves a solid platform for the promotion of rational fiction in general.

If we build this stuff up properly I think we have a real shot at getting rational fics on the map.

u/CalebJohnsn [+1] Theoretical Manatician (4 hours later)

I think we need to go back to our E.Y. roots and consider the parameters of the question you are actually asking so we can better identify a solution that actually meets those conditions.

So what are all of the conditions that define the problem that we need to take under consideration before arriving at a meaningful conclusion? Let's set some end goals here.

For instance, we want the public at large to be aware of rational fiction as a genre, but are their any preferences regarding how should we be known?

Steampunk is recognizable for its style and real world meet-ups, memorabilia, and major works involving alternate histories and Victorian era influences all around with off-shoots into dieselpunk and many others.

How might this apply to rationalist works? What are the defining characteristics of our "brand" that we would like to advertise to the general populous and what barriers might we have to overcome in order to do such?

The current tagging system proposes a number of useful short-hands for posible early points of contention, such as the differences between rational and rationalist, but we'll ignore those for now and look at the major categories of works that our community regularly findings interest in.

We see preferred genres that take their rules very seriously, as shown by the emphasis on hard science fiction and hard fantasy genres. And to better make use of these hard rule sets most prominent rational works allow for a certain level of deconstruction and munchkinry, granting the characters a more realistic level of self-awareness and general competence which the reader finds engaging and relatable.

More importantly though, these various actions that the characters follow through with are something that the reader can actually understand from the beginning in a realistic or practical sense. I would even go so far as to say that these themes can motivate the readers themselves to feel motivated and take on their day to day life in much the same way.

May even be what motivates our community to feature non-fictional works or educational pieces, they let us get a better recognize how this world works and we might better recognize and orient ourselves with respect to it and be the best we can be and from there build up higher goals using the things that we've learned from that process.

And if things like that are what our little community represents and we want to encourage its continued growth and wider recognition by the general population we need to better exemplify those ideas by being more successful while making those ideals more accessible to the public so that the works we feel exemplify those ideals can be more successful. Maybe network a bit so we can spread the word, put in the hours, and see what happens.

As far as I can tell, that'll be good for each member of our ranks individually and if we properly apply ourselves it could raise up the entire community.

So I guess the real question is how do you think you can best apply yourself to keep the ball rolling where you are how do we connect the dots so everyone else can do much the same given their own individual circumstances.

u/embrodski [+2] (17 hours later)

So I guess the real question is how do you think you can best apply yourself to keep the ball rolling where you are how do we connect the dots so everyone else can do much the same given their own individual circumstances.

Well, at the risk of sounding repetitive, I think that at least trying to get something published in the traditional industry is a great first step. It doesn't take much work to convert a doc to Standard Manuscript Format and then submit it online to one of the dozens of paying markets.

As for how we can help each other, maybe a writing group wherein we read and critique each other's works isn't a terrible idea. I joined a local SF writer's group about a year ago and it has improved my writing tremendously in a relatively short time. This sort of thing has quite a venerable history behind it. Tolkien and Lewis were in a writer's group when High Fantasy as we know it was invented, and IIRC Gibson, Sterling, and others did something similar when they created Cyberpunk.

u/CalebJohnsn [+3] Theoretical Manatician (18 hours later)

True, the RaNaNoWriMo was very interesting to begin with and IRL meet-ups seem like they could really help the community grow stronger locally.

However, after thinking about it for a while, I feel that better community organization around worthy causes may be a more marketable idea just in general.

By promoting and working with/on the Center for Effective Altruism's various associated groups such as Give Well, Giving What We Can, the Life You Can Save, among others, so that we can better exemplify rational values in the real world by gaming the system, getting things done and getting the world out while collaborating with like-minded persons.

Clearly these pre-existing organizations also desire that the general public be made more aware of rational thinking, as evidenced by the Effective Altruism Outreach Plans under consideration at this time, so why don't we try and work with them?

We already promote stories about The Amazing Peter Parker so why not stand by those ideals and help to create practical, real world changes that people can really appreciate.

Bronies and Reddit as a whole have become well known for championing their own causes and have gradually been recieved by the general population with a greater level of acceptance because of that, so why not our online community?

It's worth a shot, right?

u/None [+1] (a day later)

Bronies and Reddit as a whole have become well known for championing their own causes and have gradually been recieved by the general population with a greater level of acceptance because of that, so why not our online community?

I'm only going to interject some snark and note that these are three heavily-intersecting communities.

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