I read all of it. I mean A L L. Cleaned out the Gold Room at Powell’s. Not just Asimov and Heinlein; I tracked down vintage copies of Galaxy and Weird Tales. Read “The Comet” by WEB DuBois and works like it on PDF.

I thought I had to, to break into this business. https://twitter.com/atgreenblatt/status/1290032885508894720

I was a card-carrying need my whole life, but I got quizzed and papered constantly by boys who didn’t believe I really knew Star Trek. Or D&D. Or Marvel. I didn’t realize the test was bullshit and I could walk away. I passed the test because I out-read them all.

I did the same as I became an adult. I’ve swallowed so much sword and sorcery that it took me years to write any fantasy that wasn’t a parody of the genre. Bad sequels, Piers Anthony at his most panty-obsessed. I read it.

I read it because I would NOT be caught out. I would show up to this battle armed and armored, and nobody could tell me I didn’t belong. I did the work. I was prepared.

You can probably guess where this is going.

In conversation about Larry Niven, about Jack Vance, about Christopher Priest, I got treated like a noob. Talked over. Ignored. Turns out, gatekeepers don’t care if you know or if you don’t. They instinctively know you don’t belong.

In my own work, when I gave nods to Dick, to Raphael Carter, to Atwood, to Welsh mythology, to ANYTHING, it was assumed a fluke. A naïve accident. How could I know?

On panels, when I’ve talked at length at writers like Lovecraft, like Heinlein, like Stephen King, I’ve focused on specific examples from within the text of their failures and repugnance.

Those are three authors by whom I have read every fucking thing they’ve written.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

It doesn’t matter that I’ve read it.
It did not gain me the respect or even the less-disdain of the old guard.
They don’t care what I know or even what I write. They decided on sight that I don’t belong.

Most importantly: reading all these books and stories gave me a rich and deep understanding of what science fiction WAS. It did not show me what it is or what it will be.

As a writer, it motivated me over half the time in a negative sense: I knew who I did NOT want to be like.

It was wholly unnecessary. It did not benefit me or my craft in some irreplaceable way. It was a history lesson I chose because I thought it was required.

It’s an elective.

You do not have to do this.

You are absolved.

You and your career are far, far better served by reading the current market, reading broadly from living writers, and from refusing to submit to anybody’s purity test over Dune or Vernor Vinge or Ender’s Game.

I did the reading so you don’t have to.

We are in a new golden age. One where SFFH is variegated and diverse and spectacular.

The classics of genre are like those old cookbooks you see in screenshots: some timeless dishes, LOTS of jello salad and ham wrapped around bananas.

Close those yellowed old pages and invite yourself to a fresh feast.