The Heirs of Anthony Boucher Marvin Lachman

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The Future of Mystery Fandom
Future of Mystery Fandom
Twenty-five years ago, many mystery writers and editors were pessimistic about their
future. In 2005 the mystery is far healthier, and this improvement has proven rewarding
to fans also. There is more for them to read and more avenues in which to
pursue fandom.
The growth of Bouchercons in the 1980s and 1990s has not been reversed, though
Bouchercons have not gotten larger than, say, Monterey in 1997. The more intimate
conventions that began with Malice Domestic in 1989 have grown but still are small
enough, compared to Bouchercon, to provide pleasant contrast. Regional conventions,
especially Left Coast Crime, continue to thrive, and have been joined by conventions
in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Nebraska, New Jersey, and
North Carolina, among other states. There are also smaller conventions in Canada
and England.
At a 1995 Cluefest panel, I questioned where we would find young fans willing to
perform the scholarship and organizing that had been done since 1967. In MDM, editor
Bob Napier echoed the pessimism of my panel, wondering if active fans weren’t
an endangered species. However, he and others wisely suggested that with so many
mystery readers, there had to be “New Blood.” Ronnie Klaskin and Len Moffatt were
prophetic in predicting that the internet would be the source of future fans.
There are now more than 800 mystery-related websites, allowing an unprecedented
level of communication by fans. If the scholarly articles in magazines such as TAD
are no longer being written, knowledge is exhibited on the web in the form of bibliographies
and essays that speaks well for the future. Though material on the internet
may seem ephemeral to older people such as this writer, one must remember that
different generations have different means of communicating. For example, there
is enthusiasm about short fiction published online that I seldom find about short
stories published in magazines or book anthologies.
More mysteries than ever are published—and by more publishers, and that is
without tapping the full potential of print-on-demand services. In the late 1940s,
about 250 new mysteries a year were published. Early in the 21st century, estimates
are of about 1,250 new mysteries. Some worry that quality is not keeping up with
quantity, but reviewers on the web and in magazines have no trouble finding many
books to recommend.
The books being published are not all modern. Two publishers—who are also
fans—have found niches reprinting material from the past. Doug Greene’s Crippen
& Landru Publishers, in its Lost Classics Series, brings out short story collections
by writers in danger of being forgotten, including Helen McCloy and T. S. Stribling.
Rue Morgue Press, the offspring of Tom and Enid Schantz, reprints in paperback
neglected novels, most more than fifty years old, that most readers never expected
to find except at high prices in used bookstores or on eBay. To cite one example,
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