Tangent Online 2023 Recommended Reading List

A Question of Balance

For the most part, the literary aspect of the science fiction field proceeded as usual in 2023; the general machinery operated well enough to keep the magazines and books appearing on reasonable schedules, and SFWA (the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, formerly for decades since its 1965 inception the Science Fiction Writers of America) the field’s one and only member-funded 501(c)(3) tax exempt administrative organization, was still alive and kicking, though to my mind and due to external “real world” politics, took a wrong turn that gave the outside world an entirely misleading picture of the organization as a literary organization, but instead revealed its political advocacy (or lack thereof) on any given issue.

For a number of years now the literary SF field (primarily magazines but inclusive of conventions as well) has undergone an incremental series of highly detrimental changes, the singular cause being the intrusion of real world politics into the field as never before in its long history. To explain how I have arrived at this observation I will need to set the stage with a brief mention of one of the field’s early fan clubs and the genre’s first World Science Fiction Convention in 1939, and then by noting that females were never excluded from any SF-related activity because of their gender and were present at the beginning of the genre (writers, fans, editors), by way of dispelling the false myths that the field has always been sexist (using the false metric of pure numbers to prove this sexist claim), and that pervasive politics inside the SF field has always been with us, claims much believed in both cases through decades of repetition and a time proven modus operandi certain Real World political ideologies have used with an Us against Them strategy to attain its goals by first winning the hearts and minds of potential new members to its causes. Following this and other related commentary the expected introduction and the year’s recommended reading list can be viewed as usual.
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