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Episode 159 -- Science Fiction Fandom, Episode I: Rise of the Slans (Patreon)

Published:
2026-10-06 06:52:11
Imported:
2026-10

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This fall, Moira and Adrian will take a deep dive into right wing fans. In recent years, right wingers from Milo Yiannopoulos to Elon Musk have leveraged science fiction fandom to stoke media outrage and build onramps to the far right. But when they have done so, they have built on something of a tradition. While we'll eventually end up with the kinds of "fans" who get upset about Black actors portraying elves or storm troopers, this first episode delves into the forms of fandom that right wing culture war skirmishes have traditionally drawn on, or as which they have camouflaged. What version of “fealty”, possessiveness and community come into play in these skirmishes?

Comments

Helen McCallum

*thousand yard stare* You dont knowwww man, you weren't therrreeee. I realise my sisters dog is now an old lady because I posted a picture of her online looking mournful with the message not all sad puppies are bad.

Charlotte

Oh my god, I'm so excited for this! I'm pretty involved in fandom culture (though mostly of small, niche properties, my main fandoms are a German TV police procedural, the books of a particular British historical romance author - and Lord of the Rings, which isn't small). But the fandom spaces I'm in are queer, leftist, and - due to being small and personal - largely drama-free. So it's always a bit of a shock when the wider, uglier fandom landscape comes in...

MWD

chuckling about adolescent discussions about the opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference. [Also this episode makes me think of Steve Silberman's take on early scifi mags and also ham radio culture and what communities work for autistic and ND folks when mainstream stuff was less accessible. But poor Neurotribes aged poorly...]

ニコニコする

I worked at a sci fi/fantasy bookstore (though in the gaming department) at this time so this is gonna be like hearing war stories from a fellow veteran to me… I’m so down.

Sebastian

Thank you for one of the best explorations of fandom from non-fan studies folks I've seen. It helps that Adrian is a fan, clearly. That insider position does work for this kind of thing. My work is pretty much all about connecting politics and fandom, so if you ever wanted to chat, or want pointers for more academics who specialise in that area, I'd be honoured to help. (That said, seems like you have it pretty well covered, starting with Stanfill and Gray.) There is a whole focus area now in fan studies around this. Still working on getting the political communication folks to listen...

Tobias Heal

Comic Book Guy is a great reference point from the Simpsons but my favourite will always be Professor Frink teaching kindergarten after the teachers go on strike and responds to one of the children asking if they can play with the toy "no, you can't play with it! You will not enjoy it on as many levels as I do"

ニコニコする

Also if you’re ever doing a tabletop gaming one and want anecdotes hit me up.

beesher

Enjoying this! I am both a relatively early adopter of the internet (1991-ish) and an early No-Thanks-er to online fandom. Admittedly, I ended up discussing things like fandom in Queer-first places, so I still had a place to discuss Buffy. But my early internet interactions with other Doctor Who fans was enough for me to decide, when it came to my nerdy interests, I was happy going it alone for the most part.

Ben Schwabe

Hey now, Chuck Tingle writes porn about much more than dinosaurs! I became aware of the sad/rabid puppies because they were freaking out about Anne Leckie's fantastic Imperial Raadch books. The main culture in those books use she/her as pronouns for everyone. Also the first book (Ancillary Justice) had a non-linear narrative from a character who inhabits mutliple bodies at once and thus switches perspective a bunch. You need to pay attention when reading it, which made them mad. I had always assumed the Hugos were named after Victor Hugo. TIL.

Rhianna79

Moira is right though about ladies and olden times though. Slash fiction is from women writing fan fiction about Kirk and Spock in the '60s and the short hand was K/S. Also, I totly come for Moiras social analysis and the hot takes like: Dolly Parton singing was mid. 💯 https://www.themarysue.com/first-published-slash-fanfiction/

Charlotte

Based on my experience, fandom - at least the part of it that writes fanfic and makes art and zines - is still mostly adults. I got into it in my 30s and there are so many people my age there, plus lots in their 20s, but also many who are older. And yes, it's full of women and non-binary people and trans people of all genders. I think there's something of a gender split of how people engage with their favourite media that's surely down to some kind of socialisation. I'm not the person who noticed this, but there's an idea that cis men tend to do more categorization and collecting (archiving, collecting facts and buying media; being interested mostly in the media as it is), whereas women and gender minorities tend to do more creative and transformative fandom (writing fanfic, making art, imagining AUs...). (Obviously this is not actually a binary split, just a tendency.)

Nana Porter-Honicky

I haven’t listened to the episode yet but I highly recommend the book Speculative Whiteness by Jordan S Carroll if you haven’t read it already. It covers this topic really well.

DamnYouVodka

It was often uncomfortable for me as a cis girl in the 90s who loved conventionally “boy” things - sci-fi being one of them. I swung back and forth between being embarrassed and hiding my fandom and labeling myself a “tomboy,” casting off anything ultra-feminine as uncool. (Now, as an adult woman, I bring my ultra-pink, sparkly water bottle into big meetings with C-suite stakeholders. Try me.) All these meandering feelings lead me to two thoughts: 1. I’m sad for that little girl who had to deal with all that bullshit gatekeeping 2. It’s laughable to me that J.K. Rowling thinks tomboys are somehow at risk of being convinced they’re trans, knowing how firmly I understood myself as a girl even while embracing the “tomboy” label

Nina V~

yesssss, adrian, drag us into the weeds! seriously, tho, as an afab queer person who's been a star wars fan longer than some of these reactionary dickheads have been alive, i have watched this entire debacle unfold with increasing horror, and it needs to be talked about critically

Rissa

“[Thiel] genuinely likes [LotR], whether or not he understands it” lol Also I’m on whichever side N.K. Jemisin is on.

Nina V~

also, i really want to emphasize HOW MUCH i appreciate real scholarship being applied to this. i remember watching gamergate form (insert "i was there, gandalf," meme), and all i could think was that nothing good could come of it. and, BOY, do i sometimes HATE being right 🫠

Zach

Great episode, although I confess that the title got my hopes up about hearing more about the weird politics of A.E. Van Vogt.

Veronica Beaty

For Moira and anyone else who likes lots of detailed drama from subcultures you’ve never heard, check out r/hobbydrama. For those us (there are dozens!) who had already heard about the Sad Puppies but were excited to hear In Bed with the Right tackle it — read any good sci-fi lately?

Nina V~

i was catching up on the murderbot series, but since the semester started, it's been all organic chemistry and calculus

Neighborhood Friendly Crow

Do people use “SJW” as a pejorative anymore? I feel like I was thrown back into my teen days online hearing that lol

pixlaw

Anything Martha Wells has ever written is worth checking out. Ditto Melissa Scott, who except for a couple of earlier works always centers queer protagonists of one kind or another. N.K. Jemisin recently was awarded Grand Master status by the SFWA, and got a MacArthur award back in COVID times, so that tells you how good she is.

pixlaw

In fact, Jerry Pournelle has been dead for 9 years, thank the various deities. Other than that, great episode. I'm looking forward to Pt. Deux, where I hope you'll discuss the various ways Pournelle and others promoted right-wing ideas in their work and lives (he, after all, heavily lobbied for Reagan's Star Wars back in the day). And if you spent an entire hour just negging Robert Heinlein, I'd be happy.

Ren

He said the words “sad puppies” and suddenly I was looking at a link roundup post on Livejournal (actually it might have been Dreamwidth by then). We had just barely started recovering from RaceFail ‘09 when all this went down…

Helen McCallum

Oh god RaceFail! I haven't heard those words for many years...

Ren

It’s actually how my white self learned about systemic racism so I’ll never forget.

Amanda Marcotte

Great ep, though I remain convinced Peter Thiel only watched the movies. But yes, he seems to derive what he conceives of as pleasure from them.

VerucaPepper

Suggesting that you might want to look into transformative fandom vs affirmational/curative fandom when looking at gender and fandom? As a minor fanstudies person (aka back when I was in grad school over 10 years ago now lol), typically female/queer/racial minority fans will engage with media via transformative fandom (fanfiction, fanart, podcasting, etc.) whereas male fans typically engage with media through affirmational fandom (how many issues of a comic a character was in, the dates they filmed all the Star Wars movies, etc.). This is typically because people engage with transformative fandom so they can see themselves in the media and also so they can explore and tease out dynamics within a specific media (what if Harry Potter was trans? How would the cast of Supernatural behave differently if they all worked in a coffee shop? What would the presence of Batman have on the Gotham economy?). Affirmational fandom is much more about not wanting the media touched at all because it already represents the fan ("the Ghostbusters can't be women because I'm not a woman!"); it's about instead obsessively cataloguing it and then claiming that knowing exactly how many times "ring" appears in the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy is more important than understanding like the most obvious message of the text. Because affirmational fandom is typically labelled as "boy fans" and transformative fandom is "girl fans", and "boy fans" are considered more prestigious to have, creators then praise the affirmational fandom practices and denigrate transformative fandom fans (see: the Sherlock season three press tour where they constantly had the stars mockingly read fanfiction and like torpedoed their entire fandom). Affirmational fandom is then considered the 'correct' way to engage with media, even though transformative fandom offers perspectives some creators desperately need (see: the final seasons of Game of Thrones where they knew where characters ended up but had no idea how to write the characters organically getting there because they did not understand the internal world of their characters; this is where transformative fandom practices would have saved their asses). Tl;dr right wing dudes have no critical thinking because using critical thinking when it comes to media is considered feminine girly shit and they're big strong Alpha males

Maxine Iglich

This is reminding me of the time that a (male cis white) ex of mine suggested I read HP Lovecraft with nary a trigger warning for me (immigrant/racial mixed family background). When I called him out on it he said “Well, the race stuff is kind of subtext,” 🥴 Not sure if you’ll get into the World Fantasy Awards controversy since there’s so much else to cover, but looking forward to the rest!

testosteronefemme

re: the whole "awards need to represent the field" thing, i think some of that might be a hangover from 2010s representation discourse. but also, not to be the guy that makes everything abt metal again, but like. that legitimately happened with metal at the Grammys. that's why the Heavy Music Awards are a thing, because people at the Grammys can't stop re-nominating Metallica and Judas Priest over and over and over again when they haven't been relevant to the fucking genre in decades. which i'm mostly mentioning bc that is an example of that concern actually happening. but, bc metal is such a niche genre, the Grammys will never actually represent metal. that's what the Heavy Music Awards are for. that's also what the Hugo awards are for. and blowing up the nomination process is a great way to not actually represent your field at all. like, to me this is just behavior of people who do not want to see sci fi as a whole thrive.

testosteronefemme

also lmao i am suddenly having flashbacks to my dad talking abt the sad puppies and complaining abt the hugos as a teen. bc my dad is a member of right wing sci fi forums 💀

Jeanne H-B

Ah, I blame my overpopulated generation, Boomers, for the Grammy folks treating metal like a comfy pocket of their own youth: nostalgia. They would rather see an endless string of tribute bands than engage with what folks are doing today. And, as AI makes more rehash trash, cheaply produced soulless ghosts will replace more artists. But, musical and literary innovation and virtuosity will, I hope, continue.

testosteronefemme

also when moira was searching around for a ship to think of and landed on draco & hermione i did have to yell a bit bc. kirk/spock! the entire reason "slash" is a term!!! which, i suppose the fannish behavior of star trek fans writing k/s smut is not the point of this but also, those are our foremothers!!!!!!!!

Wu Wei Wolf

A lot of the early conversation about fandom made me think about the furry community, which 20 years ago was universally described internally as the "furry fandom", but now is much more likely to be referred to as just "furries", or the "furry community", or something like that.

testosteronefemme

honestly i'm impressed that spiritbox and poppy have been nominated recently, but finding out that it took 20 years for gojira AND in this moment to get nominated was insaaaaaane. and for gojira, it's literally only bc it was the olympics, like, they wouldn't be there otherwise. but yeah, the generational overrepresentation is real. iirc, the charismatic voice looked into getting into the grammy nom process bc she felt so strongly that sleep token were robbed with take me back to eden, so ppl getting into it might shift things but the grammy's being frozen the way it is with metal only is so bizarre. like i was listening to doechii before she won, i knew abt chappell roan before she won, those wins made sense in terms of up and coming artists in hip hop & pop, but when u compare that to the metal noms ur like. what decade are we in?? lmao. all this to say, i think metal artists & fans tend to be into metal bc they enjoy the things that make the genre, which, imo, requires a lot of technical skill as a baseline. like, thinking of complicated riffs or technical drumming, not to mention the genre's move towards using both singing & harsh vocals pretty consistently demands a lot of technical skill from any vocalist. so i think the virtuosity/innovation will continue, bc that's the kinda shit that drives both musicians and fans into this genre in the first place.

Wu Wei Wolf

I think that there are many reasons for that change, but one reason I've heard from some people is that "fandom" implies that there is something external to the community, which that community has latched onto and is dependent upon. Although there is a lot of furry art that is basically fan art of movies or manga or whatever, it is much less dependent on, say, Disney continuing to release movies, as opposed to superhero comic fans who are very into characters that are exclusively Marvel or DC property. Basically, the community is (or perceives itself to be) much more reliant on internal amateur or indie activity than external media, and thus some people resent it being described as a fandom. I do wonder how that ties into the way that so many sci-fi fans have extreme reactions regarding IP that they feel emotionally that they own, but have no legal and little social control over. (Though the fact that furries are also a majority-queer community complicates the comparison.)

Cate Kneale

I'm still mad about the Ghostbusters remake hate. It wasn't a perfect film but it had great comic actors and some really fun bits and clearly it was made for 8 year old girls who want to bust ghosts and they deserve that! I have also watched Kate McKinnon's dance multiple times and I make no apology for that.

Cate Kneale

We also need a paper on how the Interstate enabled serial killers and fandom.

Ariel

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time series is interesting. I personally also enjoyed Service Model from him. Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch series was mentioned in an above comment, but it really is worth reading.

audioboy

Love you guys, this was a delight! Definitely interested in the Part 2 when it drops.

oh no

Great episode and topic! I love scifi but I had no clue about that hugo controversy. Really cool and unexpected to hear you guys talk about the genre and its fans, the podcast has become one of my absolute favourites in the last year and, you know, you‘re just getting better and better! Thank a lot and I’m very excited to listen to you dive into other fandoms soon.

Sam D.

Great topic - really looking forward to the series.

Ren

Proud to be “present” when Moira learned of Chuck Tingle’s existence.

William Knight

I do think there is something to the idea that even in an apolitical senses a lot of fan culture can be deeply possessive. After the Harry Potter movies returned to slavish fidelity to the plot points of the novels with movie 4 (or so I have been told, reconstructing this from what HP fans told me back in the day) movie adaptations have been really shackled to an incredibly narrow and literal minded idea of fidelity to the source material that I feel has made them bloated and pandering exercises in fan service more than actual movies that can stand on their own.

Casey Lau

Can’t wait for Part 2! Love this stuff

Rosie

Same!! Outstanding He's such an interesting guy, too I love the Ancillary Justice books. Came to them a bit later and remember reading them around the same time as the Wayfairers series by Becky Chambers, and Murderbot by Martha Wells. Similar character concepts, extremely different reading experience! I love them all. Audio narration for Ancillary Justice is good too, at least I liked it. For audiobook fans

Rosie

This makes so much sense, I hadn't come across the terms for it before. Thanks! And I suppose, once you discover the joy of critically enjoying books and transformative works, it's hard to see the point of purely affirmational/curative modes of fandom, so the cycle is self-reinforcing from both sides

Rosie

I appreciate the meta of Adrian telling IBWTR fans to go fourth and talk to each other in the comments, Hugo style

Rosie

Ooh who's the historical British romance author? You don't have to say

Rosie

Oops another thing (shouldn't have encouraged me) I really recommend book groups for ways to engage as a fan in meat space. I always found online fandom super overwhelming, even in the less toxic ones - constant misunderstanding/uncharitable readings and trying to one-up each other, gives me the autism tummyache. The Internet has given us a lot, but it has always been dominated by voices of people that enjoy that kind of confrontation/banter (even in its more harmless forms). And just, way too many people to actually empathise with

Charlotte

KJ Charles! I will sing her praises any day. I have read nearly all of her books and not disliked a single one. Several are among my absolute favourite books. And she has a fantastic supportive fandom.

Rosie

Locked tomb! Locked tomb! Aaaaaaa

Rosie

Ninefox Gambit is also a favourite - what if mathematicians were like wizards who could rewrite the laws of physics. (More harrowing than that makes it sound)

Lizbeth

Sooooo interesting!

Ben Schwabe

Someone get Beckie Chambers to publish more!

Ben Schwabe

That's when Jay Lake said "I adopted an asian kid so I can't be racist." right?

Rosie

Yess, maybe she's busy living her own low-stakes character-driven life. Hmm I'm trying think who has similarly gentle vibes There's Nghi Vo, Yoon Ha Lee (maybe less gentle!) Olivia Waite started doing speculative fiction recently Less cosy but Bethany Jacobs? And more in the fantasy direction: my wife likes TJ Klune a lot (I am too grumpy) Natasha Pulley, Victoria Goddard And I recommend Tamsyn Muir to everyone because lesbian space necromancy (humour + brain melt)

Roxie Vizcarra

Oh man, I'm awaiting Adrian's coverage of the mess that is the Star Wars fandom; one of the pettiest highly gendered in-fighting stories of all time. As a 40-year-old woman who has had a lifelong love of Star Wars, BOY have I seen waves of antis. It's *always* about gender at the end of the day.

Roxie Vizcarra

oh! and I know it's practically anecdotal and in no way evidence based, but I like to think of that 90's spike of women at WorldCon to be due to the popularity of the X-files and how many female fans it has always had.

pinch

Random bits of ephemera: 1, Chuck Tingle has started publishing phenomenal horror books, in addition to his porn. Check out Bury Your Gays and Camp Damascus, in particular. 2, After RF Kuang used her acceptance speech to call out the bullshit of naming the award for the best new scifi/fantasy writer after Campbell, the award is now called the Astounding Award, which is self-explainitory. 3, Scalzi hosts a killer dance party at every Worldcon

ZMS (she/her)

There are a few scholarly works I’d highly recommend that take on aspects of how science fiction has influenced tech leaders / its impacts on history, including: - The New Patriarchs of Digital Capitalism by Ben Little and Alison Winch (wonderful chapter on Elon Musk that explores, among other things, his interpolation with the MCU) - two collections edited by Alex Green, Mitchell Travis, and Kieran Tranter, Cultural Legal Studies of Science Fiction and Science Fiction as Legal Imaginary (fabulous collections that include a ton of analysis of the relationships between sci fi, law, culture, fandoms, etc) - Astrofuturism: Science, Race, and Visions of Utopia in Space by De Witt Douglas Kilgore (grounds this whole mess in a centuries-long set of social projects) - not academic but by an academic: The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore (explains the relationship of technocracy to governance and imagined futures, esp sci fi ones) Thanks as always for a great episode 💕

coolguybrad

Yay science fiction is starting!!!

Ren

Yup. The whole things started when a writer wrote a fantasy novel where the Western Hemisphere was populated by megafauna “instead of” indigenous people and a few people went “Huh, that seems slightly problematic” (not that we used that word back then) and all her sff writer friends got so offended on her behalf and then every blog in sff and Western media fandom talked about nothing else for months. Fans of color started talking about their experiences in fandom and I honestly learned so much but I know it was extremely painful for them. I’m pretty sure this was the genesis of the We Need Diverse Books movement.

Helen McCallum

I'd be surprised if we weren't friends on live journal :)

Jenny (edited)

Comment edits

2026-10-13 13:00 THIS! Also, notably, Archive of Our Own (the world's biggest repository of fanfiction) was founded by a group of women who grew frustrated with Lovejournal banning NSFW works/blogs out of corporate prudishness (read: advertising concerns). People who don't see themselves reflected in the original world have long organized and built their (our) own spaces for transformative imagination and expression. And this is VERY gendered!
2026-10-09 05:55 THIS! Also, notably, Archive of Our Own (the world's biggest repository of fanfiction) was founded by a group of women who grew frustrated with Lovejournal banning NSFW works/blogs out of corporate prudishness (read: advertising concerns). People who don't see themselves reflected in the original works have long organized and built their (our) own spaces for transformative imagination and expression. And this is VERY gendered!

THIS! Also, notably, Archive of Our Own (the world's biggest repository of fanfiction) was founded by a group of women who grew frustrated with Lovejournal banning NSFW works/blogs out of corporate prudishness (read: advertising concerns). People who don't see themselves reflected in the original works have long organized and built their (our) own spaces for transformative imagination and expression. And this is VERY gendered!

Laura

Yeah, as someone for whom the word “fandom” is shorthand for “transformative/participatory fandom” and has been for multiple decades it always jars me to hear people talk about “fandom” and then describe a bunch of practices that are nothing like what I would consider fandom. Definitely would be a very interesting gender lens to work from!

Louzie

Thank you so much for this short and concise lecture. I knew every detail of it, but in this subconcious way where I wouldn't have been able to put it in words or make sense of it. Now I can. <3

Louzie

I learned about Space Raptor Butt Invasion here and think I need to start a bookclub right away! But also, can I be part of the IBWTR fan crew while not standing inside the opera fandom circle?

Rosie

Ahh yes she is amazing! And she just keeps going! What is it about these authors I didn't actually realise KJ Charles was british, though it makes sense. I was thinking you might mean Alexis Hall, though I suppose they are mostly contemporary (his bake off inspired series is hilarious)

Alexis Nast

I attended the Hugo awards ceremony and sat next to George R R Martin on one of the Sad Puppy years. Really appreciated this episode.

Charlotte

I love a few of Alexis Hall's books, like some, and some are extremely not for me. I haven't read any of his more recent, I have to say. He's interesting because you never know what you're going to get - very love it or hate it, and different for every single book.

Rosie

Sure, they are all quite different. I wouldn't say I hated any, but definitely have my preferences. He has a great knack for characters, and third act twists that are more nuanced and organic/character driven than "...and then he found out! Conflict time!'. But of course KJ Charles is a master at this!

Astraea

I love IBWTR, but we need to talk about their problematic movie takes. Dissing 9 to 5 AND the Ghostbusters remake only a week apart? Guys. I freaking love the all-female Ghostbusters. Yes, it's very different from the original (and Adrian is right, the original does not age very well). Yes, it's very silly. But you get to watch Kate McKinnon channel Val Kilmer's character in Real Genius for two hours. You get to watch an honestly refreshing and much more nuanced depiction of female friendship (among middle-aged women!) than I've seen on film in a very long time. You get to watch Chris Hemsworth being very silly and kind of satirizing his own popular persona while he's at it. It's fun, guys!

The Smutty Guy

We need a link to Adrian's interview with Chuck Tingle! Or perhaps he comes on the pod soon?

Sam Baker

Did we ever find out who Adrian's favourite YouTube games reviewer is? And is it No Pun Included?

CassieWasRight

I think this episode gets the record for me yelling "Oh noooo!" out loud in the least amount of time Not the sad puppies!