When you read and review old science fiction as a hobby, at some point you have to ask a certain question: “How come so many of these authors from fifty to a hundred years ago, who if fan letters are to be believed were seen as giants in their day, are obscure now?” This inevitably leads to some really boring follow-up questions, such as “What belongs in the science fiction literary canon?” and “Can there even exist such a canon in the first place?” These are boring questions in themselves, if only because they’re so old that the questions have crow’s feet and grey hairs, but they do at least imply something about SF literature that is arguably unique to it, which is that, far more than with fantasy or horror, the SF “canon” is fluid. There are exceptions, but even these exceptions (which I’ll get into) are far from immune to criticism, especially from younger fans, to the point where even the most rock-solid canonical author’s reputation could erode to the point where they’re, at best, considered something of a sore subject. We actually see this happening with Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov in real time, and I think it’s only a matter of time before Arthur C. Clarke’s reputation takes a serious hit—more for what seem to be a few skeletons in his closet than the importance of his writing. The reality is that the people (well, usually men) most influential in the development of SF as its own genre are only human, which is a diplomatic way of saying that these people have issues. That SF fandom has been, in all honesty, more proactive in recent years about how it should deal with canonical works and authors than some others is a testament to the fandom’s—and by extension the genre’s—ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Of the genres that involve fantastic or supernatural events, SF is the youngest, the most rebellious, and the most likely to question its own masters. Unlike fantasy and especially horror, which are (in my opinion) implicitly conservative genres in that they’re prone to defending the status quo against all sorts of change (the oldest fear, as Lovecraft puts it, is fear of the unknown), SF at least ideally wants the status quo to be shaken and even shattered. There’s a reason why most notable works of dystopian and utopian fiction are SF and not fantasy: they look on the status quo that is our world and cast either a hopeful or pessimistic light, or in the case of something like Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, a cautiously optimistic light. The single most famous work of fantasy (at least of the 20th century), The Lord of the Rings, is ultimately a story wherein the good guys bring back the status quo as much as they’re able to; it’s a story about a “rightful” monarch returning to the throne that he very obviously “deserves.” Yet perhaps its closest SFnal equivalent, the Dune series, shows the other side of the coin, wherein a young ruler-to-be fulfills a prophecy and the results are catastrophic. Frank Herbert had his own issues, namely his homophobia, but his staunch ambivalence towards authority figures clashes with Tolkien’s belief that there’s a “correct” ruler and that the status quo is something worth fighting for. SF, at its core, is about rejecting authority, which makes the considerable swath of conservative SF fans a bit perplexing. It might be more accurate to say SF is all about changes, whether they be for good or ill. In horror especially, though I love that genre dearly, pretty much any change that comes the protagonist’s way is to be taken as a threat; but for SF this is not so. The question is, then, what do you do with a genre that’s always changing? Or rather, what do you do with its relics?

When E. E. “Doc” Smith made his debut in 1928 with The Skylark of Space, it changed what was possible, for nobody had ever seen a spacefaring adventure of this scale before. “Space opera” was not even in our lexicon yet. There’d been stories about traveling beyond Earth, for example going to Earth’s moon, but there wasn’t anything in SF up to that point that was on the same scale of what Smith was doing. Soon what seemed like a one-off thing at first became a series, and then came the Lensman series, and then the rest was history—up to a point. From the tail end of the ’20s to his death in 1965, Smith was immensely popular with SF fandom; and yet he remained totally unknown outside of that ultimately small pocket of readers. When Smith died, the wind did not change direction, nor did the sun shine any less bright, nor did the seas wax and wane any differently. There used to be people who loved reading E. E. Smith, but they’re all dead now. His work stands now as a bunch of museum pieces, I would say for the simple reason that he was not a good writer; he was innovative, but that’s not the same thing as being good, although we have a bad habit of thinking a work of art must be good to also be innovative. When Alexei and Cory Panshin wrote The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence, a big Hugo-winning book that took over a decade for them to write, they felt the need to defend Smith, for fear that his reputation was going down the shitter, which it was. The World Beyond the Hill came out in 1989, and since then the SF world has very much moved beyond Smith. This is a case where someone was treated as canonical by the end of their life, only to gather dust and at times derision for decades afterward, for the straightforward reason that the author’s work does not hold up to modern scrutiny. Time has been unkind to E. E. Smith and some others of his ilk.

So someone loses their canonical status because they’re simply not that good a writer. It happens. But then what happens when you have someone who by all rights should retain that canonical status, yet who nowadays is somewhat and unjustifiably forgotten? There are too many examples of such a phenomenon to list. I said before that SF is prone to questioning its masters, as well as doing a good job of tossing aside work that no longer rings as good or true; yet SF is equally prone to forgetting its best. One of the most glaring examples of this has to be Fritz Leiber, whose fantasy work is still in print, albeit not that easy to find, but whose SF has been relegated to the museum. I’ve written about Leiber enough here already so that I don’t wanna repeat myself too much, but it’s hard to overstate, from the late ’30s until close to his death in 1992, how game-changing Leiber was. Not only was he an innovator in heroic fantasy, his Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series even getting parodied in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, but he was one of the finest wordsmiths of his generation when it came to SF, fantasy, and horror. Indeed he’s one of the few authors who handled all three genres with more or less equal craftsmanship. He won multiple Hugos, both during his life and also one or two Retro Hugos, and he’s also one of the few people to be a Guest of Honor at Worldcon more than once, in 1951 and again in 1979. Yet nowadays you’d be hard-pressed to find Leiber’s books, even at your local used bookstore, with many of his books straight-up being out of print. If Amazon and Goodreads numbers are anything to go by (and admittedly you should take a pinch of salt with those sources), barely anyone today reads Leiber. This is rather hard to justify. Mind you that the man was not perfect, between his alcoholism and at times messy relationships, and the fact that not everything he wrote was good (The Wanderer is enough proof of that); but surely he deserves better than this.

Sometimes an author falling into obscurity has nothing to do with the quality of their work or the moral fiber of their character; actually if anything we’ve learned that you can be a real piece of shit as a human being and millions of people will still read your books. (We really have to confront people more aggressively on why they feel justified supporting J. K. Rowling in any way.) It seems to me that losing canonical status has at least as much to do with bad timing, or circumstances beyond the author’s control, as it does with the author’s own actions. It could also have to do with the fact that SF fandom today is almost unimaginably larger and more varied in its makeup than even a few decades ago. Being hot shit among SF readers in 1980 does not carry the same weight as being hot shit among SF readers in 2025, because now there are so many more people from different backgrounds who read SF regularly. Fans tolerated or didn’t even know about Asimov’s harassing of female authors and fans when he was alive, but rest assured he would not be able to get away with such foolishness today. This is a good thing, mind you. We’re doing a much better job of holding each other accountable now than before. This then presents another problem, though. How do you rescue works and authors who once had canonical status from oblivion? Another problem is, what do we do with authors who nowadays are elder statesmen? Will someone who is considered a big deal today still be remembered in another twenty-to-thirty years? Will we forget about Ted Chiang, or John Scalzi, or Martha Wells? Will there be some invisible executioner with a line of riflemen, ready to take aim and fire? Who gets to be remembered? How much control do you have over your own legacy? One can certainly do a thing or two to demolish your own chances at being remembered (or at least remembered fondly), but securing said reputation might as well be left up to the directions of the wind.

When August Derleth and Donald Wandrei founded Arkham House in 1939, it was for the express purpose of preserving Lovecraft’s works, by way of giving them fancy hardcover editions. Lovecraft had died in 1937, in poverty and as an obscure figure in the grand scheme of American letters, and there was a pretty good chance he would’ve retained that obscurity (at least for a while) if not for Derleth and Wandrei’s efforts. Arkham House soon expanded its scope and brought other authors from the Lovecraft circle into book form, giving them similarly needed facelifts. Now Lovecraft is recognized as one of the most important writers of the 20th century, even getting a Library of America hardcover volume collecting his most essential work, and “Lovecraftian” horror is synonymous with cosmic horror. Yet there are other authors, like Henry S. Whitehead and Frank Belknap Long, whom Derleth and Wandrei had rescued temporarily, only to still languish in obscurity decades later. Someone with resources might come along to dig up your work after you’ve died and give it the “proper” treatment, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be canonized posthumously. There are too many factors going into one’s own assessment as a writer. I know this is a very “boomer” opinion to have, even though I’m only turning thirty this year, but it seems to me that people around my age who are earnest about SF are, in questioning the supposed masters of yore, too quick to throw the baby out with the bath water. As a fan myself there’s not much I can do about this, but at least I’m trying here.