For a genre writer, one of the great mysteries of the universe is why God decided to give us fans.

     Fans are not exactly obsequious, to begin with.  Even when they like what you've written – and often they don't – they're apt to underscore their appreciation by contrasting it with your earlier work (“So much better than your Old Testament”) or, worse, your later (“How come you haven't written anything as good as Genesis lately?”).  Writers who come into the field without prior exposure to fandom are often shocked to discover that fans are prone to believe themselves possessed of an intellectual and moral stature equal to or better than that of published authors.

     Over the years, fans have rescued me from the side of the highway and performed emergency repairs on my car, helped find a flat for me on the Garden Ring in Moscow, fed me, bought me drinks, and become (some of them) good and true friends.  But these were things they did as human beings, rather than as fans.

     So why fans?

     I discovered the answer in a place called the Book Barn in rural Chester County, Pennsylvania.  The Book Barn is that most sensible of institutions, a barn filled with books which visitors are permitted to buy.  I was done browsing and brought my purchases to the register.

     There was one customer before me.  A tweedy gent, he seemed fascinated by a short stack of a local-interest book by the cash register, Weekend Rambles Along the Brandywine or the like.  As the clerk began ringing him up, he picked one up, squinted at it, and remarked, “Maybe I should pick up a few more copies.”

     The clerk said nothing.

     “I'm down to my last four.”

     It struck me that the clerk was working the cash register  faster than he had been a moment before.  But he still didn't look up.

     A note of desperation entered the man's voice.  “I wrote this book!”

     The clerk looked up.  His eyes were those of a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.  “Oh?” he said.

     “Yesss.”  The author happily hooked an elbow over the counter.  He dumped the book back on its stack.  “You see, I...”

     I decided to give the Occult and Religious section another once-over.  When I returned a half hour later, the author was gone and the clerk was in a distinctly surly mood.

     Here, then, is the purpose of fans:  They exist in order to put on conventions at which writers can recognize each other's existence.  It takes so little to reassure a writer that he exists.  A ten minute conversation with Terry Bisson or Nancy Kress will do the trick, and it's not even necessary that they comment on your work.  They're real writers, and if they accept you as one of their number, then so you are.

     Thanks to fans, SF pros don't need to harass innocent booksellers.

     The fans themselves believe that they put on these conventions in order to get together with their friends, have a few laughs, meet congenial strangers for conversation, romance, or erotic adventure, and maybe – if they have the spare time – listen to some of their favorite authors hold forth on panels of general interest.

     They are, of course, entitled to their opinions.

__________________

Copyright 1993 and 2009 by Michael Swanwick; a slightly different version appeared in the New York Review of Science Fiction.