With all due respect to the people involved

[james_davis_nicoll]

Can we defer the Jim Baen (and Baen Books) bashing until his status is resolved? And I don't mean in terms of finding out which hospital he is in.

Comments

Huh?

[seawasp]

Yeah, certainly. SF fan behavior can be wierd. Is it more extreme than ANY fans? No. Offhand I don't know any SF/F versions of that famous man Hinckley, who decided to shoot a president so a certain actress would notice him. Not an SF actress, either. Sports fans quite often beat each other up -- physically -- over sport issues. Cardplaying fanatics have shot each other over misplayed hands.

As a group, I really seriously doubt you can show ANY evidence that SF/F fans are any more messed up (in a DANGEROUS sense) than any other part of the population that has a strong interest in something. There's *ALWAYS* nuts, flakes, screwballs, and weirdos involved in just about ANY activity that draws human attention. Calling a particular group "fucked in the head" requires some evidence that there's something MORE screwed up about them than other groups.

Similar allegations have been made about, e.g., the roleplaying gamer community. Studies actually DONE on them have shown that they are, in fact, not noticeably different on most measurements, and certainly not more dangerous. I suspect that if you were to do studies of the SF/F fan communities, you'd find no particular increase in notably dangerous weirdness over the general population.