About a week there was a discussion happening on Twitter about the importance of Twitter. Actually, there were many such conversations happening and many probably are still happening. One of these discussions was of specific interest to me, however, as it was focused on the importance (or not) of Twitter to the current era of short speculative fiction consider by many to be a golden age1I would consider myself one of these many people., at least in content if not in its contributions to writers’, editors’ or publishers’ bank accounts. In response to that discussion I wrote a long thread about the very important ways I had personally seen Twitter contribute as an important tool to the creation of this golden age. The rest of this post is a cleaned up adaption of that thread posted here so that it will continue to exist if Twitter doesn’t and for anyone else interested in this history.
Here is the quick and dirty version: do I think Twitter has been important to the development of the current golden age of short speculative fiction? Yes, absolutely. Not question. More importantly, I think it’s important to consider WHO it has been most important for.
If you don’t start with the money to back a short fiction magazine you need a way to get supporters and things like Kickstarter and Patreon need a way to get eyeballs over to them. If starting a magazine requires having all the seed money yourself then who can do that is very limited. Put even more directly: How many SFF short fiction magazines that existed before Twitter or didn’t use Twitter heavily to get started & build an audience were owned/operated by LGBTQIA+ or BIPOC folk? Twitter has been a powerful tool for marginalized people in many arenas and short fiction is not exempt.
Let’s talk specifics. This is basically a rundown from my own point of view of what I’ve seen in this field since about 2012. It won’t be complete and I don’t have insider knowledge about the magazines I’ll mention nor can I or am I attempting to speak for them.
In 2012 I learned, on Twitter, of a magazine trying to use this newish cool thing called Kickstarter to create a new short fiction magazine dedicated to paying writers well (way above pro rates at the time). That magazine was Fireside Fiction. It succeeded in getting funded and began publishing. Eventually, it moved away from Kickstarting it’s funding and for a decade, through ups and downs, it published great fiction from new and established authors, and paid them well. We’re going to come back to it in a moment.
In 2014 another absolute pillar of the modern golden age of short sff, Uncanny Magazine, launched. At the top of the masthead are married couple Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, who, I think it is important to point out here, are both queer.2Lynne M. Thomas’ bio inlcudes “bi/queer” and Michael Damian Thomas’ lists both He/Him and They/Them pronouns. They’ve won the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine 6 times since 2016. They used Twitter to create their audience and funnel people to their (various) funding mechanisms too. Their publisher/editors have publicly stated that Twitter has been the most important tool for them to establish themselves. They are so established I assume they have a good chance of surviving the potential destruction of Twitter, but what about the next Uncanny?
Back to Fireside. In 2016 they commissioned a report that rocked the world of short SFF, or at least parts of it. The #BlackSpecFic report revealed the systemic bias that existed in the field and the fact that Black authors were facing a serious uphill battle to get published.That report circled widely because of Twitter. Would it have had the reach and impact to help change the entire field and community without Twitter? I don’t think so, and I do think it did exactly that. It was a vital document in the shaping & creating of this golden age. The #BlackSpecFic report helped spur a better awareness of internal bias and changes at many established magazines, but it also spurred something else landscape changing.
That report ignited the passions of a collective of Black writers, editors and artists to create FIYAH Literary Magazine. FIYAH, an all-Black magazine, also used Twitter to get the word out to find both an audience and funding. I myself have used Twitter on multiple occasions to buy gift issues and subscriptions for complete strangers to support them and I wasn’t the only one. At one point, when the call went out via Twitter that the magazine needed more support, many people used their platforms on here, big and small, to share their love for the magazine and to buy and share gift subscriptions and issues for people.
I am not privy to the inner financial working of FIYAH (or any magazine) but they are still here years later and not only is it one of the premiere magazines in the field (2021 Hugo winner for Best Semiprozine) it created a highly regarded virtual con and a new series of awards for SFF.
Fireside (until it’s recent shuttering), Uncanny and FIYAH are probably the 3 biggest & most successful magazines to grow up in the Twitter era but they certainly aren’t the only ones and of particular importance many of the new magazines are run by & for marginalized communities.
Anathema Magazine, Augur Magazine (who have also successfully created a con space of their own), khōréō magazine, Apparition Lit, Baffling Magazine. These are just some of the ones out there. I found them through the community on Twitter; I’m sure most of their audience is the same. Would none of these have existed without Twitter? I can’t say that. But in some cases some of the people responsible for them have. The potential size of the net you can cast on Twitter to find those readers and backers and writers who want to be a part of these magazines is unique.
Should it be the one and only tool used forever by such magazines? No. But no other tool allows people to create a platform and reach an audience like Twitter and for marginalized communities it has been vital. I don’t think it can be overstated how Twitter as a tool has allowed people who would never otherwise have been able to create these spaces that are the structure of the short fiction golden age or for them to flourish, or at least attempt to.
Also, Twitter hasn’t just provided the key tool of communication needed to support the endeavors of small, marginalized independent publishers but it has also been the vital tool to growing some of the less heralded, and less visible, but vitally important parts of the field: Many magazines over the years have reached out to Twitter to find slush readers.
I myself answered a call that I only saw because I was on Twitter to read slush for Nightmare Magazine when it was originally added to the Lightspeed and Fantasy stable. Reading slush for short fiction magazines is widely, and rightly, regarded as an excellent training ground for would be writers, editors and reviewers to learn and improve their understanding of the craft of short fiction and many magazines have found their teams by getting the word out through Twitter and, of course, Twitter has also allowed many people (many from marginalized groups I am sure) to find these opportunities to get into the actual workings of the field and improve their own craft and skills this way.
I am sure the field has benefited from the wide recruitment net Twitter has provided. Going back to the bias revealed in the #BlackSpecFic Reports, many magazines came to realize they needed to have more diverse voices inside their decision making process to help combat the systemic bias poisoning the field. Going to twitter and calling for slush readers let them, I am sure, find more of those voices whose take they vitally needed to learn to consider and of course it gave people who would never have even known where to start or that such options existed or how to find a way in.
Reviewers and recommenders, a thing I dabble in personally, as you probably know, have also relied on Twitter to both get into the work and share the work they do. Yes, I could throw my recommendations up on my blog and on other social media sites, and I do. None of them generate the attention for my recommendations that I get through Twitter. Almost all traffic to the posts here comes from there. And I am not just small potatoes! I’m tiny! But other reviewers have made important contributions to shouting out and sharing and providing criticism for the field and have primarily used Twitter to spread that work.
Twitter is the closest thing we have to a place where everyone is. (Not literally, I know it’s niche in it’s own way) Nowhere else provides the opportunity to find the small but vital communities of support SFF magazines need to have a chance to thrive. This just gets more true when we talk about marginalized creators and publishers and the problem with “we survived before X” and “we’ll survive after” is there are always people who won’t be in that we and those people matter too. People will still write and publish short fiction without Twitter. Some will still do very well, but it absolutely has been the key tool of opportunity that was needed to create the current diverse and wonderful landscape that is this golden age of short SFF fiction, and I strongly suspect the landscape will be lesser without it.
Perhaps it will one day flourish as beautifully or even better, but to pretend that parts of this community aren’t in danger of withering without the unique opportunities of Twitter is wishful thinking at best. The field is big, but much of it is fragile, and we will come to regret it if we lose all those smaller, diverse pieces that are a part of it. I hope, with or without Twitter, that people