A couple of further thoughts here. A student at my alma mater once asked me, as
a visiting alum and a fellow reader of SF, what I thought of the popularity of
media spinoffs. I replied that I was happy that the people who read them were at
least reading something, which is more than can be said for many of their peers.
At the same time, however, I regret that they're not reading books that I
consider better examples of SF. Thus whenever I teach a course in SF I try to
promote these examples, and thus I really appreciate and recommend Mike
Resnick's ongoing column in F&SF called "Forgotten Treasures," because I've
encountered too many self-styled fans of SF whose interest in the field goes
back only to works published when they began reading it. If people want to read
spinoffs, fine, but I'd rather read more-original work and watch the shows or
the movies themselves.
Darren Harris-Fain
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