Once again, science fiction fandom shows us how to use the internet.
Here’s the bad news: there never was another universal town square for science fiction. The community splintered across many different platforms. While that was a real loss, it wasn’t an unmitigated loss. Those communities incubated all kinds of writers and readers who found the SFRT inhospitable or overwhelming.
But the other reason the community never recohered is that we kept trusting other businesses to own those communities, and they kept betraying our trust. Prodigy wanted us to “stop talking to each other and start buying things.” Livejournal purged its queers.
The most successful successor to GEnie SFRT is Archive of Our Own (AO3), a freewheeling, welcoming, volunteer-run, nonprofit fanfic site with a gaggle of pro-bono lawyers and a deep bench of community specialists and technologists.
- When the Town Square Shatters: Once again, science fiction fandom shows us how to use the internet.











