'Got that feeling...'

Hello everyone

Let's talk shopping this month. There's lots of other subjects I can and am planning to talk about but it depends which grips me most first of all.

You know how it is. So many words, only one pair of hands until the vivisection experiment, as Dr. Frankenstein is wont on telling me.

So why shopping? Well, I don't know about you all but I suspect the majority of SF fans are like myself. Namely, we like seeing what we're buying and tend to buy out of impulse cos we like what we see.

Sorta feelie and buyee if you like. That's, of course, assuming that the money is there but what SF fan hasn't got some small nest egg just waiting for the right thing? Next to reading and watching SF, we like to go shopping for SF products. It gets into the blood and is often more important than replacing clothes.

Why get a new pair of trousers or jeans when that beautiful - put your favourite item name here - is begging to go home with me? So many things, next to money the biggest problem is space but that's a different frontier.

The problem these days is wandering into anywhere from a high street shop to a specialised media shop and coming out empty handed. Not because there wasn't some nice things in there even if they were expensive. Just nothing that say, 'You belong in my collection.' Am I getting older, have I got it already, too much diversity or simply it's not the item for me.

Is it me or since when does a talking snake-hunter Steve Irwin doll constitute as an SF icon?! Our local Woolworths seems to be getting the better deal with SF items!! It gets placed in a media shop simply because it's deemed a novelty that would fit there. As my trips out of town to the nearest city are few and far between these days.

Impulse buying tends to be the right way to go simply cos there's no guarantee that anything will be there next time. Media shops especially can't possibly stock everything that's available. They tend to end up catering far more for their regular turnover than taking any risk with things that might not sale - even, oddly enough, with a sale or return basis.

Everything ends up fighting for a position in any shop. Just because it's not there, doesn't mean it's not available, just that different means has to be used to locate it. Saying that, it's also disconcerting that SF and fantasy artbooks are decidedly missing in such places where you expect to find them.

Even a vague shopping list for books doesn't mean anything if they don't have them to sell. I'm not entirely convinced as we get older, the urge to buy dies off either although we end up being more selective. Either that or because we've already got it or a memory that this is the umpteenth model kit I've bought that I've yet to build that I ought to hold back.

The market for pre-made models is there - especially judging by their prices - but this is going to run into problems when the shelf space runs out. There can't be many collectors who have the money let alone space for a complete collection of anything anymore. Show me someone with a complete collection of 2000AD and we're probably talking of a major fire hazard.

It's no wonder that the limited edition market is flourishing. What do you do when you know you want something and still can't get it? There's always the Net. Even if the name isn't known for certain, most search engines end up pointing in the right direction. If you know where to look, anything can be found and often at good prices in the Internet global village.

How often have we British got a better price for something off our American cousins than in the UK? It's a no-win situation for our media shops outside of impulse buying. There's always someone there willing to sell at a price closer to what you're prepared to pay as well as having it in stock.

The picture of the product is the closest you can hold whatever it is until it arrives. This tends to destroy the feelie principle and makes it just a tad harder to poke around and find something that everyone else has missed in a shop. I've had some remarkable success locating books that I've been after for decades and getting in a matter of weeks that it could spoil my instinct for the hunt. Next to shopping itself, the hunt is part of the fun.

The problem is with the change in shops' need to make money, the hunt isn't always successful. Ask any Predator. If you want to hunt humans, you have to go out in the jungle or streets. If the hunt isn't successful, you can't always go into a shop and buy a previously pulled skull and spine for Mrs Predator.

Behind every great buy of an interesting find, there is a memory or tale. We've got caught up too heavily into being regarded as a commodity market for manufacturers and shops alike. The only slight blessing is that at least we often get better quality tat these days. I do think our shopping instincts are changing.

In many ways, the Internet is making up rather too well for the deficiencies in the real shops who don't appear to be making much effort in return. The biggest drawback is that as we become more secular and less communicative. Pop into a media SF shop a few years ago and it was possible to get into a good-hearted conversation with either the staff or other customers. These days, too many keep their heads down, rush in, buy something and dash out again.

Maybe I talk too much? Me talk too much? As if that would scare away a captive audience when I'm holding that nice pulse rife with the safety off! Thing is, as SF becomes more publicly acknowledged it's getting harder to tell the difference between those who buy simply cos it's the in-thing to buy and the genuine SF fan. There must be some of them around.

Hopefully, I'm talking to a good number of them here if our subscriber list numbers is anything to go by. The public image of Science Fiction tends to see if for space adventures or whatever is on the box or the cinema at the moment. Oddly enough, ask them to name any of these and outside of the current promotions and usually it's the worse cases of SF films and TV series that get mentioned as opposed to anything else that might be considered, well, interesting.

We end up being tarred with the same brush. Whereas, I suspect, many of us see SF as an intellectual exercise for the brains, we're also facing a dumbing down for the general public to make it more 'acceptable'. In some respects, it's great that SF is being regarded as more than an oddity cult but at what price to our interest when we're seen more as an open-wallet cash cow? The big question here is is the general public that dumb?

Does making SF like any other product on the market make it lose its magic that appealed to us in the first place? If SF is to survive as more than purely a marketing force, then we have to take it upon ourselves to show that there is more than the local craze or we're going to find ourselves sunk one day.

That day isn't that far off really. Science Fiction as a genre is getting compartmentised enough as it is. We're already a series of ghettos than one effective force with each often casting the wrong kind of scorn on the other ghettos.

The problem is us generalised SF lovers who tend to give most of it a chance can hardly drag unwilling ghettoists out into the light. They're likely to go back and get under their stones and never come out again. So what has this got to do with shopping? It's the main common interest where even the ghettoists congregate in the same place at some point during the month. Every time you want a particular current item and can wait, order it from your local media shop.

A lot of the time, the distributors end up sending out in pairs so the shop has to put the second copy on show. This will at least improve the chances that a ghettoist will see something and the nudge, 'I want that in my collection' will kick in. If nothing else, distributors will also note a change in the buying pattern and will at least suggest a different kind of variety than is currently in the shops.

If you want to look before buying, then media shops have to survive or we end up looking like that curio shop in 'Gremlins'. I'm not saying this is the best solution but all answers to problems have to start somewhere and I'm not entirely sure if getting people talking is the best solution.

Come to that, Predators don't exactly have a wide vocabulary either. Thank you and good night.

Geoff Willmetts
editor and general catsbody

PS For those wanting to know my progress through the ebook samples, I'm now back logged to the end of last October - sorting through an entire month's worth. Thanks for being patient - you're not forgotten.

SFCrowsnest e-mail: gfwillmetts@REMOVE.FOR.SPAMhotmail.com
terrestrial address:
74 Gloucester Road,
BRIDGWATER, Somerset TA6 6EA, UK.
SAEs (International Rates: include at least 2 IRCs or enough to cover return of manuscripts if sending in material) will always get replies.

About the H&T (handsome and talented) Geoff Willmetts

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