Last time we questioned where the men are, so lets take a look at where they've gone. The above video continues the recent trend in the last few years of the return of adventure stories outside the mainstream. Where are the men? They're reclaiming what's been lost.
It's hard to understand if you don't know or remember what it was like back when I wrote The Last Fanatics, but at the time such things were not ever discussed. The pulps, fairy tales, penny dreadfuls, and basically anything that wasn't "approved" billion dollar corporate IP, was thought of as complete worthless trash with no value at all.
You'd have folk bragging about the "woman who wrote the original draft" of the Space Battle movie, but said people would never read a Leigh Brackett story, if they even knew what her name was. And of course Flash Gordon and the old serials are trash and valueless, because people who hate adventure stories told them they were years ago. No one ever confirmed any of this, it was just assumed to be true. The people in charge would never ever lie to you, after all. Right?
They did, though. I grew up raised on a lot of different forms of art and I never cared about age. I was as likely to watch Rocky & Bullwinkle as I was to watch the new (at the time) Spiderdude series. What mattered is if it was good. But we all know there was a push to declare "Kids wouldn't engage with old things" at the time, and it wasn't because they wouldn't. It was because those in control of said billion dollar corporate IPs didn't want competition. So they made sure they didn't have any, which ended up chasing a lot of normal people away. Though this isn't a new phenomenon.
But that kind of Big Lie doesn't last forever. As mainstream entertainment declined in the '00s before completely falling to pieces in the '10s, men still wanted to have fun and blow off steam. They wanted stories of exciting adventure and derring-do, of cool settings and strange places, and protagonists that weren't going to mop--they were going to do what needed to be done. Basically they wanted what had died when the men's adventure industry was strangled to death back in the 1990s and the Thor Power Tool Case obliterated the backlog of classic adventure stories in the 1980s. In the modern age there are really only two places to find it now.
The first is to scour used bookstores and online shops for old men's adventure books (like the above video goes into), digging for treasure that the mainstream doesn't want you to have anymore. The other is to go digging through independent and NewPub writers to find new stories in that vein that otherwise wouldn't be allowed to exist either. Regardless of which path you choose (I recommend both!) if a male wants to find an adventure tale to get his blood pumping, he is going to have to fight for it. There is simply no other choice if we wish to reclaim what was lost and build something new.
It's not going to be easy, but this is the point we have to build from in order to make a space for an audience that was more or less left behind over a quarter of a century ago. Remember that even mega-popular franchises like Goosebumps that did manage to reach males were also sabotaged and never explored by the publishers, because they just don't care. You will never find this material from any of the people in charge of OldPub. They do not want it.
And yet, it still exists. Not only as buried treasure from the past but also in the present. You only have to be willing to dig and your efforts will be rewarded. The important part is that we never give up, because only we at this point can't turn things around. No one else is going to do so, especially not in the dying industry being left behind.
So keep your chin up. The men are here, and they're staying. No matter what OldPub says or does, we're sticking around. Now to build back what was lost to show them just what they've lost out on. We can do it, because nobody else will. It's up to us.
Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time. Have a good weekend!
Today we're going to look into the question as to why males have been not only cast out of the book industry, but are actively ignored and looked down on as readers by those still inside. This is not a new issue. Where did all this hostility come from, and why is a growing problem?
First, I will direct you to author Kristin McTiernan's Substack and her recent interview with Louis L'Amour's son, Beau. It's quite an interesting read. If you do not know who Louis L'Amour is, well, then that is very indicative of the very problem we are facing today. Let us just say he is the top selling and most influential western writer of the 20th century (the only ones who come close are Max Brand and Zane Grey), and that he isn't as well known today is a sign of what we are talking about. There is an ambivalence, at best, to even bothering to approach half of the population as potential customers. That is not a sign of a healthy industry.
This isn't a new problem, but is one that is finally being addressed today after over a quarter of a century being blatantly ignored by the top dogs in charge of the old industry. Why don't mean read and why does an entire industry seem uninterested in learning why?
The above video attacks the most recent blow-up over the "Men's Fiction" problem and what to do about it. She isn't the first one to talk about this, not even recently, but it is a sign that more and more folks are waking up to the issue and wish to do something about it.
I recommend both the video and the interview linked above, but we all well know there is a bias against men in writing, specifically men who don't want to write for women or middle-aged urbanite women's grievance study pet projects. But this is the nature of OldPub and what it has allowed itself to become, which is a gatekeeper for letting in mediocrity at best above all else. They use their trope checklist-adled brains to check the right boxes both for the author their eyes are set upon and for the works they want to pump out to their increasingly microscopic readership.
This is who runs the industry now:
And they'll take their dying husk of an industry with them to the grave. There is no returning from this level of tone-deaf behavior. OldPub is dead and not coming back.
You might lament that it ended up this way, but that's how it was always going to be when the industry didn't select for intent, ambition, or sociability, only on those who faked it until they made it. Once said people got in, the mask dropped, the gates swung shut, and now you've been subverted. The only thing that happens now is terminal decline.
Should have kept vigilant! But they didn't, and now they are paying for it, swirling down the drain to irrelevance. It cannot be stopped now because there is no one in charge with the desire to change course. Like all cultists, the need to go down with the ship far outweighs the desire to turn before barreling into the rocks. This result is what they want.
Of course, this is all only if you're still focused on the old industry. OldPub is dead because old things die. It was always going to happen, we just didn't know how or when, and while lamenting about how it happened is natural, eventually we're going to have to accept it's gone, never to return. And at that point we will have to move onto something new and built on sturdier ground. Most of us already have: it's called NewPub.
So what is a good way forward out of this? Perhaps this response from McTiernan's interview with L'Amour's son should help clear it up:
And this is exactly the sort of thing that is going to carry NewPub forward into the future. There is no other way, if we want to both connect to the past and find a new road to travel down, then to use the last ideas that gave any sort of success as to how to reach abandoned audiences.
We have our path forward, and nothing is going to stop us. Especially, not anyone who still clings to a dead industry while pretending it is still vital.
At the end of the day, this destruction isn't anything new. We all know who is doing it and why, and they have no problem telling you themselves. Now that we know it, we can work to building something much better than what we're leaving behind.
It's that time of year again: the new issue of Cirsova is out! Not only is it out, I'm in this issue myself, and it's for quite a doozy of a story.
Before we get into it, lets get the issue summary out front so you can see all the talented writers and their cool stories in greater detail. for those curious, the beautiful cover is also drawn by Wistmoor. It's quite a packed issue.
Now, lets get to the stories:
Flight From Reckoning (Part 1) By MICHAEL TIERNEY The Wild Stars hope to find some sign of their distant cousins beyond the Milky Way, humanoid races descended from other extragalactics! Rather than friends or allies, however, an ancient enemy lies in wait at the scene of a long-ago bloodbath!
The American Dream By RODICA BRETIN Kayla Blackmoon’s life is about to be turned upside down when Russell Morgan, a mysterious huckster politician, appears in her town of Dartmouth ready to promise the stars…
Salt Roses By JIM BREYFOGLE After her family is killed by merfolk, Aelia, a young diver, seeks out a legendary sunken treasure that is said to have the power to restore both emperor and empire!
Waegnwyrhta By WILLIAM SUBOSKI Ill-thought out regulatory changes catch up with the new Principal Administrator Waegnwyrhta when she finds herself stranded and at the mercy of her rescue crew!
The Siege of Verisa By RICHARD RUBIN The evil cult of Dewi has kidnapped Burke Fletcher’s wife Llana, forcing her to aid them against Baron Amalrik… whose Alchemist Stone Llana and Burke stole!
Void Railway By JD COWAN Things may not be all they seem on a routine escort gig when a mysterious woman approaches Galactic Enforcer Stone with a glowing gem and an offer of a side job!
The Demacron By GARY K. SHEPHERD A Peacekeeper on the Demacron, a hollowed-out planetoid that is home to a dwindling population of myriad species, must find a repairman who has gone missing!
Machine Dreams for Wired People By JAIME FAYE TORKELSON A family infiltration team is hired to break into a cybernetic AI factory to rescure the itinerant daughter of a wealthy benefactor before her mind can be liquified!
Cracking the Cyber Ziggurat By KEVAN LARSON A band of cyber pirates has been given the job of a lifetime: breaking into the central databanks of Abraham Kursk, one of the wealthiest men on or off the Web!
Paying the Doctor’s Due By WILLIAM DRELL Mickey Vance is due for a tune-up on his illegal military-grade wetware, but his doctor is dead! Can he and his doctor’s assistant evade a bounty hunter on his trail?
In the Last Days By JAMES HUTCHINGS
A lot of great stuff, as usual.
For my story, you might have been able to tell, but it is another Galactic Enforcer story. This time, however, you might have noticed the main character's name is a little different. This is because this story introduces a few new characters into the mix that will be important going forward. Well, if they survive, that is.
The protagonist of "Void Railway" is Detective Brandon Stone, a giant lummox of a man who does not seem to take his job as seriously as our usual protagonist, Detective Renfield, and in fact has rumors going on about him. This is what causes him to be approached by the mysterious woman at the story's start and his personality clash against hired merc Shiro. But when the chips are down and the safety of the Railway and the passengers becomes in doubt, can he rise to the challenge, or is that Renfield guy really just full of hot air about things like this? You'll have to read it to find out!
The stories I've written in the Galactic Enforcer series so far have been more or less standalone adventures that have little relation to each other, though there is some carryover. The ones written since Star Wanderers, however, are more tightly connected, even though they can still be read standalone. Void Railway's events actually does have direct repercussions for later stories, though it might not be in obvious ways. At least, not at first.
I also wanted to expand the world around Detective Renfield more while still keeping the encroaching darkness that exists around the corner due to the nature of his job. You might have remembered the introduction of Dana from Star Wanderers working to lighten up his life when he's outside the fray, well, there are others now dealing with what he has run into out in the abyss away from the safe roads of home, and it might be more than any of them can handle.
In other words, if you enjoyed Star Wanderers, you really should check out "Void Railway" in the new issue. It is the next step forward for the series. There will still be standalone adventures, as there always are with this series, I'm hoping to drastically expand the scope with the next batch of stories going forward. You might have seen hints of that before, but now we're really going into it going forward. It's a wild galaxy out there: how can you possibly tame what can't be tamed?
The goal of the Galactic Enforcer series has always been the quest to explore the idea of enforcing law against the Unknown, and we're about to see just how that can be done so far from home. How do we hold our ground with no firm base to stand on? The Green Hills of Earth are far away from here, after all . . .
You can read all about it, as well as many other exciting tales of adventure and wonder, in the new issue of Cirsova! Check it out today!
It should also be mentioned that this is the tenth(!) anniversary of Cirsova. They've been in operation as a publisher for a decade now, and with no signs of stopping. I could highlight the many releases other than my own they've put out, but I would be here for ages. Suffice to say, head to their website and check them all out for yourself after picking up the new issue. There is no shortage of great stuff to dig into.
That's it for today! Thank you for checking out the blog and supporting my work. It makes all of this a lot more fun than it would be otherwise. And I've got a few more surprises up ahead! I can't wait to show you what's coming . . . but it'll have to wait for now. They aren't all just my secret to divulge, after all.
Once again, you can find the new issue of Cirsova here. I'll see you next time!
We've gone over before the idea that certain segments of the arts and entertainment don't look as good as they used to, but we've never taken a deeper look into how specifically things might have changed since. Why can't we seen to remember how to make things look their best? The above video on the decay of film might help with that.
While watching The French Connection for Cannon Cruisers (Yes, there's a spoiler of an upcoming episode for you), one of the questions that came up was why exactly films just plain don't look this good anymore. William Friedkin and his crew didn't have even a fraction of the technology available to us today and yet the movie looks, sounds, and feels, far more different than if a similar movie was made today. In fact, its quality is light years beyond what we can do with current digital technology. But why exactly is that?
Of course the easy answer is "we're losing the talent and means to make good art" but then the elephant in the room, the one that is never answered, becomes how it is being lost this fast? In our technology obsessed culture, why are we glorifying inferior technology that doesn't make art better? From cell animation to arcade design to the short story, we are losing valuable parts and origins of the arts we were raised on, and we do not seen to care even as we complain about how the modern material is not only not holding up but is also beginning to turn younger generations away from art altogether. This is a serious issue that is just plain being ignored.
I don't really have the answers for dealing with the decline except to first acknowledge it is happening in the first place and then to encourage those in said industries to preserve said techniques before they are pointlessly lost forever. Art is meant to build on the past, not to reject it for the ideologically hollow and terminally sneering mess of an industry we have today.
At the very least, unlike, say, a decade ago, everyone is very keenly aware of these problems now. I've met plenty of zoomers who love these old methods of creation and even attempt to revive it themselves. It's admirable, but they can't do it alone. The change rests in all of us working together to strive for a better field, and the younger generation can't do that alone. Gen Ys, in particular, finally need to put our selfish pride away and go in for more than nostalgia bait IPs that should have been left to rest ages ago, and expend more effort building something new.
Again, it's not about abandoning the past, but building on it. Those old IPs were built and things that came before. We need to do the same now in order to finally move forward. We cannot continue to peddle dead IPs whose time has already come and gone. We need new blood and we can't get any if we keep deliberately elbowing the new generation out so they have no space at the table. Otherwise we are headed for a dead end, just like the mainstream industry.
You can't put new wine in old wineskins, and yet that is what we insist on doing with nostalgia culture. We need fresh takes and new angles on classical archetypes and frameworks. We can't can't do that if we refuse to move on from dead IPs.
The 20th century is over, remember, so too, must we put behind the childish ways from then that led us in the gutter today.
What kind of industry is this supposed to build, exactly?
We also refuse to move on from considering the audience, our fellow man, as anything less than walking wallets to be pried into at our convenience. As if they are little more than plebeians to be lectured to, that they must Shut Up And Listen, to anything we have to say.
No, I won't go into another tirade on Fanatics, I've done that enough, but to emphasize this isn't a problem with one industry. It's all of them. The aging theater kid mentality that was chased out normal people, reviles male audiences, and obsesses over "updating" old IP for modern sensibilities at the expense of creating anything new, has reached its end. Everyone sees this now. It's unavoidable, and it is being recognized, but there is still no plan in action to correct it.
I realize I've made a lot of enemies over the years for being blunt about the way things are. The thing some of these people get is that I never went in with the intention of wanting to blow anything up. I went in with a mentality of wanting to understand the growing disdain for normal people, the anti-social celebration of destruction that is modern art, and the obsession with Kool Kid Revenge of the Nerds mentality. Essentially what I learned is what we all already know. Nothing can be created through destruction, blind hatred, and arrogance, never mind all together in a wrecking ball mislabeled as "art" that has unable to make anything sustainable.
The first step to doing all of this is to stop with childish clique-ism and shrinking the field to feed our egos. It's to find ways to build new ideas based on classical ideas in a culture trained to hate it all. We should be working together, not managing decline.
Until we do that, we're destined to keep bashing our heads against the same brick wall for at least another decade as our industries swirls further down the drain. If we don't finally act, we risk losing much important. At that point, we might not have any solid foundation left to build on, and then what can we build?
Hope you've had a good week. I've been knee-deep in multiple projects, one of which I can't even hint at yet. That aside, lets talk about the current entertainment landscape, and how it's been changing recently. We are finally seeing the last embers of the 20th century extinguished and what we are being left with has yet to be seen.
Let us explain why that is.
We've gone over a bit about the slipping quality of corpo entertainment and its various reasons for it current terrible state before. In fact, it's been a constant theme. The Cultural Ground Zero effect is real. Of course, we have the usual reasons/excuses for noticing this trend: the "nostalgia" argument, the "changing tastes" argument, and the "catering to the market" argument" are all the most common. And yes, some of those might apply, but are not enough to paint the bigger picture. None of the give the full view of what's going on.
For instance, no Zoomers or younger gens care about mainstream entertainment anymore, just as much as no one except aging "Geek Culture" Cultists desperately holding onto their youth even look twice at it anymore. Some passively consume the slop, but none pay it any real mind anymore. It's like how a Baby Boomer goes to the television to think. It's just expected and passively consumed. No one actually cares about this stuff anymore, and they haven't for a long time now.
You won't find any shortages for the reasons behind this, but I think the video from David V. Stewart above highlights all the potential arguments and explanations as to why things have changed. This is before he gets into the main crux of the issue. I'd suggest watching it for good reason. He has a very good way of getting things across.
That aside, I do see a hard turn coming in the future due to both how fragmented our culture is and how those in charge both dumb down and belittle real creativity at the expense of ambition. It's going to lead to a generation that is just plain going to ignore "fiction" entirely. They will see it as a waste of time, much like we basically already do now.
What will happen is because of how vapid, predictable, and repetitive, mainstream entertainment is, as well as the cratering emphasis on "imagination" (We're a long way from the silly "Reading Is Magic!" punchline of the 1990s), on top of the lack of interest in 20th century IP among younger gens, will all lead to a fracturing in the overall.
You're going to see the mainstream focus more on "reality" entertainment (A growing trend since the end of the '90s) with things like streamers, reality programming, and video essays, taking the air out of the room. At the same time, anything "fiction" related will struggle unless it a flavor of the month supported by one or more of the above things.
The reason for this is the mainstreaming of "tropes" since the Geek Culture '00s have made Following The Formula Right the only thing a corpo needs for you to hand over their wallet. What the formula is depends on how you were trained to consume your entertainment. What you then have are Gen X to Millennials begging for scraps, whether they be rehashed tired formulas, endless subversions of the same handful of ideas, or More Of The Same.
None of these groups desire stories, they desire their youth resold to them forever, like Baby Boomers buying endless Beatles merch and products well into retirement age. The old IP is all they want, quality has nothing to do with it. This is because the "quality" to them is merely in repeated names, aesthetics, and actors/voices saying what they want to hear. The core story, the morals and the deeper meaning, don't matter as much as the surface level. If it did they would engage in other things outside the IP. But like Baby Boomers, it doesn't matter how good something is, because it isn't John, Paul, George, and Ringo. At the end of the day that's all they care about seeing.
Evergreen meme for a reason
How did this come about? For many reasons. We all know it's real, but it's hard to put a finger on what exactly is to blame for it. This is because the explanation is multifold.
Those among these older generations, present company included, are to blame for the current state of things. We cheered for vacuous slop, meaningless pop cult references, and selling our youth back to us forever. We made fun of the Big Bang Theory for being "geek blackface", but Scott Pilgrim was no different in pointlessly catering to "Geek Culture" vapidity. Just because one is better made doesn't make them both slop. Slop is about intent. There is no meaning to either except ego stroking and pandering to a generation that deserves neither.
What we have here is not only the End of Pop Culture, but the end of the 20th century influence on culture as a whole. Those days are gone and they're not coming back.
The elephant in the room is also that Western Culture has been built off negativity, subversion, and bitterness for over half a century now. It has lead to a low trust society, fracturing political and religious outlooks, and mainstreamed misery into common discourse. Politics didn't cause this: it lead to the current sociopolitical situation everyone hates.
I don't tend to address politics here directly, because it's really a dead end discussion point. The second someone sees a buzzword, their brain clicks on to a certain track and you become Friend or Enemy. At that point, you might as well be speaking backwards. But this isn't about Friend or Enemy, it's about understanding where we're headed.
And this is all due to where we've already come from.
I'll be blunt. The Right sees the arts as useless and a dead end. They refuse to support anyone even remotely on their side, ceding the ground to people who hate them. They would much rather support grifters who put out low quality versions of "based" calendars, political talk shows, or vapid entertainment stuck 20 years ago. No one is investing in any real countercultural efforts (and if they are, they are very much the exception to the rule). There is nothing even remotely approaching art here.
The Left is no better. They see the arts as an opportunity to promote whatever new thing they were told to support by their favorite TV/online personalities, and morphing their own works to comply with these updated slogans. They are convinced that something like naming a villain Tonald Drump is high art to be applauded and high brow commentary on par with the best Russian Literature. They also happily subvert their own IP for updated messaging at every opportunity. There is nothing approaching art here.
Surely, that's everything? After all, we've addressed both "sides" of the discussion, right? No, we're not done.
Centrists pretend to be above it all, saying they want no morals, lessons, or politics, and just want Entertainment. This is impossible. There is no piece or art without meaning, without something to say, and in fact any art worth engaging will have these elements in them deep inside on some level. The actual problem should be that there is little focus on what is being said, how to say it, and how to connect with the audience. Instead, the focus is on returning to the *Insert Decade Here* standard where everyone was Sane and Not Weird, even though they were and we just didn't notice because we were kids back then. There is nothing approaching art here.
This leaves you with the three modern views of how art is seen: to be taken for granted, to weaponize against your neighbor, and to consume mindlessly between sugar binges. That's it. There isn't anything else. What you are left with is an upcoming younger generation whos see all of this and has no reason to engage. Art is clearly meaningless because that's how we see and treat it. Therefore, the younger generations will turn away from it.
It will also lead to the more common usage of AI generators for entertainment, because it gives the bare minimum. This will be good enough for them, and we've given no valid argument against them doing this. What else is consuming art for anyway? We don't have a good answer for this that isn't a cliché from the 20th century since proven incorrect by how things have decayed.
The ignorance of the Right lead to the belittling of art, the arrogance of the Left lead to the pamphletization of art, and the mindless consumption of Centrists lead to seeing art as novelty, trope checklists to follow or subvert. Don't get me wrong, none of these positions are exclusive to any of these groups, but those are the main three views of entertainment that has lead to the irrelevance of art on modern day living. The younger generations have internalized this and are ready to apply it to their own position.
And, again, what reason have we given them to think of anything else when all we focus on are things we should have let go of long ago?
20th Century IP has no meaning to those born outside of it. No, not even if you "update" the morals, and not even if you Go Back To the old morals. It has no relevance for the 21st century man living in uncertain times caused by the previous century, and the more we cling to it the more younger generations will turn away and move on without us. The 20th century is not the center of the universe, and we're quickly learning how irrelevant it's most likely going to be in the long run. We should be preserving what worked now before it all gets disposed of.
We've treated existence and reality as a novelty for so long it has turned our outlook cynical and barren, matching our entertainment. The only way to move forward is to take what we learned and apply it to the present. This requires letting things go, but also looking forward to the generations before us who need a guiding light. We have to be there for them, not ourselves. We're not kids anymore. We need to start acting like it.
Thanks for reading. That's it for this week!
See you next time, and please be sure to support smaller and independent artists trying to make a difference. It's the only way we'll see any change.
