oday, all across the United States, 16 hopeful writers are returning to their homes and real lives after having participated in the 36th annual Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop. On Friday, they critiqued their last manuscript; on Saturday, they bonded at their final barbecue; and now the life-changing experience is over, and they must each figure out how much they really want their lives to change after all.
After having spent six weeks in such a highly rarefied atmosphere, readjusting to the real world will be difficult. But they will have to do it. We need them to do it. Because as history has shown us, they are the future of science fiction.
Robin Scott Wilson (whose short story "For a While There, Herbert Marcuse, I Thought You Were Maybe
Right About Alienation and Eros" bears one of my all-time favorite titles) founded the workshop in 1968 at Pennsylvania's Clarion State College. Wilson, who had been asked by the administration to start a summer writing program, was intrigued by success of the Milford Science Fiction Writers' Conference, a workshop for professional SF writers that had been organized by Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm. Wilson thought that the intense critiquing techniques could be transferred to a program meant for writers still only aspiring to be professionals.
In Wilson's introduction to the book Clarion [1971], he had this to say about what he'd intended to provide for beginning writers:
I did not want another summer writers' conference full of middle-aged ladies in tennis shoes waving dog-eared manuscripts at literary lions. I did not want lectures and formality and reading fees and the exploitation of vain aspirations. I wanted people who wanted to write, not people who wanted to be writers.
And miraculously, that's exactly the sort of environment what he created. Though the workshop soon moved on from Clarion State College to Michigan State University (and spawned offshoots both in Seattle and Australia), the tenets of program remained the same. Give the students six weeks in which to live and breathe writing, free from the stresses of their day-to-day lives. Import professional writers and editors to teach them the intricacies of writing science fiction and fantasy. Challenge the students to write and write and then, when they think that they have no further energy to write, ask that they write some more.
I had the chance to witness this for myself earlier this month, because I spent a week in East Lansing, Mich. as the editor-in-residence. Clarion has always been able to put raw talent on the path to artistic success, and this year was no different. I read over 100 manuscripts in order to give feedback to these dedicated writers, and could see that even in the four and a half short weeks of the program which had passed by the time I'd left, the writers had made conceptual leaps which would have taken years without Clarion's nurturing.
Unfortunately, this might have been the last time that the noble experiment will occur.
The lack of money is the root of all evil
Michigan State University has been providing support for the Clarion Workshop for decades. Unfortunately, in an effort to balance its budget in an economic environment unfriendly to educational institutions, MSU recently decided that it could no longer afford to fund Clarion. That should be of concern to all of us, because Clarion is a common thread that runs throughout the fabric of science fiction, and without it, the field would be a much poorer place.
I can't be entirely unbiased here, because I have a personal interest in the program. Not only have I been a teacher there (in 1999 and 2003), but I attended as a student as well. The successes of the class of 1979, my class, are remarkable. More than 75% of the writers attending that year went on to publish professionally. I went on to edit Science Fiction Age, and was nominated for four Hugo Awards in the category of Best Editor. While in that role, I published two stories which won Nebula Awards as the best short stories published in their given years. As further proof of Clarion's effect, both of those stories were written by Clarion graduates (Martha Soukup and Mary Turzillo).
I can't think of any writing program in or out of the genre that has had a greater impact. More than one third of graduates have published since leaving Clarion. They include Ed Bryant, George Alec Effinger, James Patrick Kelly, Geoffrey Landis, Vonda McIntyre, Pat Murphy, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Lucius Shepherd, Bruce Sterling and countless others. Not only have Clarion graduates won more than their share of Hugo and Nebula Awards, but one, Octavia Butler, has even been awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Grant in recognition for pushing the envelope in her field.
I am sure that if the decision makers at Michigan State University were to examine the Clarion workshop on a pure cost/results ratio, the statistics would be astounding. I find it hard to believe there could be another program of any discipline at this or any other university which has resulted in so many of its participants going on to such great success.
Imagine the hole that would have existed in science fiction without Clarion. We'd have been deprived of the Mars trilogy and Schismatrix. There'd be no James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award attempting to influence the way the genre views gender relations. And considering the fact that Craig Engler, general manager of SCIFI.com, is also a Clarion graduate, you likely wouldn't be enjoying this site in quite the same way either.
Clarion has been threatened before, however, so we all must hope that the powers that be at MSU can be persuaded to change their minds. If you care about the future of science fiction, you should care about Clarion. At this critical time, make sure that your voice is heard.
Scott Edelman started his trek to the editor-in-chief position at Science
Fiction Weekly decades ago, when he began working as an assistant editor at
Marvel Comics. Between these two positions, this four-time Hugo Award nominee in
the category of Best Editor was the founding editor of the
award-winning magazine Science Fiction Age, in addition to editing
Sci-Fi Universe, Sci-Fi Flix and Satellite Orbit. Currently, he also edits SCI
FI, the official magazine of the SCI FI Channel. His short stories can be found in the recent anthologies Angel Body and other Magic for the Soul and The Book of Final Flesh.
