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Sub-Cultural Darwinism: Some Thoughts on the Rise and Fall of Fandoms « Ruthless Culture

Very interesting essay, really about science fiction fandom, but also discussing comics fandom.

(Wonder how much of this applies to manga and anime:  a lot of the kid-oriented stuff must be in the “now,” (ruthlessly audience-tested towards the current 12 year old) but a lot of the late-night anime and manga for an older audience does often target a fandom (otaku) crowd that is “bored” and looking for meta-takes on their favorite genres. Of course that goes triple for niche products like visual novels (see Saya no Uta, for ex)) As for sci-fi novels, to what extent is the literary genre viable without the infrastructure of cons? As long as people will buy, there will exist more novels, and if the old structure fades, a new one will come up, won’t it?