dr_phil_physics | Say It Ain't So, scifi.com!

SciFiction Is Done

slithytove reported that the superb online short SF market SciFiction, edited by the most excellent Ellen Datlow, is going out of business. Here's an outpouring of emotions and support for Ellen (and her responses), and quite an all-star list of supporters.

Here's my own e-mail sent to feedback@scifi.com:

Taking the SciFiction out of "scifi.com"

Philip Kaldon to feedback

Dear Sirs:

It is 2:13 am EST and I really need to go to bed -- but I just read online about the demise of SciFiction and that Ellen Datlow is again looking for work. Obviously as a business you are going to do whatever you want, and it really doesn't matter what the SF community thinks, but you are once again shooting yourselves in the foot, and for no good reason that we in the community can tell. Economics? Sure -- it's a reason. But there are other solutions and other methods. I fear this is another short-term triumph of the bean counters over another piece of our culture. The erosion of culture and dumbing-down of literature, even in the backwater which is science fiction, is damaging our future. Talent will go elsewhere -- or never get started.

We are all the worse off for this development.

For a company with "sci fi" in its very name, the move to abandon SciFiction shows me that SciFi Channel and scifi.com are not part of the future -- they are part of the problem.

I will no longer have any reason to visit your website -- as I increasingly have fewer reasons to watch your cable TV channel. Color me "deeply disappointed".

Dr. Phil

--
Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon
Western Michigan University
Department of Physics
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5252