Question of the day

[james_davis_nicoll]

Should SFWA consider opening membership to writers of comic books and graphic novels?

[Wow, that was a dull way to frame that. Please add "Why or why not?]

Inspired by a discussion on one of the blogs that I read regularly, which I will not name for the moment so that people will not run over there and have their reactions influenced by the discussions that have already occured.

Comments

[andrewwheeler.livejournal.com]

As Glenn Haumann pointed out a few months ago, the guy who adapted V For Vendetta into a screenplay is both eligible for SFWA membership and was nominated for a Nebula for that work, while Alan Moore, who wrote the V For Vendetta graphic novel to begin with, isn't eligible either way.

I suggest that SFWA should either decide that they're purely for prose writers -- in which case they should stop with the sloppy tongue-kisses of Hollywood, eliminate the "Script" Nebula and quit allowing screenplays to be a qualification for membership -- or realize that comics writers may not be as glamorous as Ron Fucking Moore, but what they do and how they interact with their publishers is a hell of a lot closer to prose SFF.

To put it another way: should Brian K. Vaughan be a member of SFWA for writing Ex Machina, or for being yet another dink in the writer's room for Lost?

But I am a known cynic and grump.