Modern Monday - The Ultra-Fans!

 

            The Ultra-Fans are comprised of those X’ers and Millennials who grew up on all the science fiction television shows and video games that made the genre great. They know what the fans love, and so they serve it up – red hot! They go beyond the usual tomes to bring favorite themes new life, and while flirting with esoteric writing styles, keep the story concepts recognizable.

            A typical Ultra-Fan book will be a more traditional sci-fi story, such as a space opera, a robot tale, or an interstellar military drama. It will have the kind of raw, unabashed profanity that young people today are accustomed to, use plain language with sharp witticisms and champion put-downs (college humor type stuff), and frequently pay homage to the great science fiction of yesteryear. For example, remote-controlled robots might be named “Threeps,” after the Star Wars character C-3PO, as John Scalzi did in his novel, Lock In. Or an entire novel might reference a beloved sci-fi franchise, as Scalzi again did with his novel, Redshirts. Or a main character might make references to numerous other science fiction works as Jo Walton did in her book, Among Others, or Ernest Cline did in Ready Player One. Dennis E. Taylor in his book We Are Legion (We Are Bob) named many of his replicant characters after sci-fi characters, like William Riker or Admiral Akbar. There are so very many examples.

            Ultra-Fans tend to appeal to the sci-fi masses, not the judges of literature or the editors of major publishing houses. It isn’t unusual for Ultra-Fans to go around the editors and market their fiction directly online. This is not high literature, nor is it meant to be. It is deliberately designed to be fan favorite material, and to hell with what the English Lit. majors may say.

            The most successful of these has been Charlie Jane Anders, James S.A. Corey, Ernest Cline, and John Scalzi. It should also be mentioned that there were many Ultra-Fans in the visual arts as well, such as J.J. Abrams, Joss Whedon, and Kevin Smith. But there are many others, such as Corey Doctorow, Hugh Howey, and Dennis E. Taylor, just to name a few.