H2O #69: In Which We Discuss Staying Relevant
We are in a time when it seems the geeks have inherited the Earth. And yet for all of the massively successful web sites, blogs, TV shows, and other media out there — those of us who cover the genre rather than create it — it seems there are some that have fallen on hard times, fallen into disrepair, or fallen into disuse. At what point did we stop paying attention to Ain’t It Cool News? At what point did Entertainment Weekly and the Los Angeles Times feel like it was beat worth covering?
We discuss the need to stay relevant, and what it takes in this era of geek journalism where it seems like you need deep pockets to survive…
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“I want to physically hold the book.”
Sure. I get it. You want to hold the book.
You’re a tactile person. You want to feel the pages under your fingers and sniff that ‘eau de library’ book smell. You want to hear the gentle riffle of pages, and the soft thump of the book’s closing at the end of the tale. You have the soul of an poet, are the inheritor of Donne and Blake, possess an artistic sensibility too refined to commune with the written word through the churlish black plaque of an e-reader.
Really, though?
I mean, think about it. You’re reading a Star Wars novel, This is not high literature. It’s not even middling literature. We’re talking about reading a book derived from a movie franchise. Even within the context of genre fiction, you’re pretty much bottom feeding. But using an e-reader would be far too coarse; would cheapen the experience?
Hey, I love printed books too. Lots. For the same reasons. But I’m a forward thinking SF geek. I understand the benefits of both e-book and paper book. Some works deserve paper, but paper books are environmentally expensive to produce, print, bind and to truck hither and yon. Like Jean Luc Picard, value the printed word – however I use the 21st century version of the data pad for the day to day stuff.