THE EYE OF ARGON: The Toxic Fans Aren't Who Most People Say They Are
Starting in 2014, I began an odd tradition, I began reading Jim Theis’ The Eye of Argon every year. Some people read Jane Austen’s Persuasion every year, okay that’s also me, but I make room for this amateur oddity. Before I read a single word of the book, I had been informed, either in print or by word of mouth, that it was the worst fantasy novel ever written. I’ve read some pretty poor fantasy novels in my day and decided to give it a whirl to see if I agreed, and to see whether I wanted to join the chorus of those who have mocked Theis over the years. After I read the book, I began to rethink a lot about my relationship with fandom. People talk a lot about toxic fandom today, as if it is a narrow scope of the fanbase who hate that the thing they purport to love has found a wider audience. I’ve never found that to be the case. I have found that toxic fandom is often representative of broader fandom.
Reading The Eye of Argon, and listening to those critiquing it, removed a kind of scales from my eyes and a venom from my tongue. The foundation for the revelation had been set earlier, to be certain. When my friend J (the nickname really is just the letter) told me that he stopped attending Horror Movie Conventions because the conversations at them were dominated by people trying to one up one another and insult the taste of others, I heard him but I didn’t HEAR him. Yet those word lurked in the back of my mind. When I reread Watchmen and felt uncomfortable with the disdain it held for the genre I love, and remembered my own glee at reading those criticisms in the past, I still had the scales and justified my appreciation with statements that Watchmen was more literary than prior comics instead of acknowledging it as an anti-Ditko rant. That doesn’t mean that Watchmen is bad, and I don’t think it is, but it is a product of the “too cool for school” and “list of things you are supposed to like” mentality. When a professor teaching a class on Fantasy and Science Fiction literature critiqued a student for liking Dragonlance novels, I let that slide for similar reasons. I still love that professor, as a mentor and a friend, but they were cruel and wrong and I had yet to acknowledge that fully.
It took reading The Eye of Argon to make me realize that toxic fandom was the norm, rather than the exception, and that was really driven home when I read about how fans used the book…but more on that later.
Is The Eye of Argon actually “The Worst Fantasy Novel Ever Written” and what does the answer of this question have to do with fandom in general?
TL;DR?
It isn’t the worst fantasy novel ever written and I kind of like it. It is my The Room of fantasy fiction and those who have ridiculed it over the years have shown the real face of far too much of fandom.
Since I read it the first time, I find myself returning to the book once a year for pleasure and not to mock it. I enjoy reading the sincere imaginative thoughts of a forthright 16 year old and I find it inspirational. I wish other people did too. I wish most people would review things in ways that weren’t designed to tear others down. If you don’t like something as entertainment, it’s not a moral failure on the part of the author. If others don’t like the thing you like, that doesn’t make them immoral. The more of your review you spend discussing the people (either author, actor, or critics), rather than the art, the less the review is a review and the more it is a polemic against real people. I have very little time for that in my reviews, which is why you’ll see positive comments in reviews of things that are deeply flawed. If I choose to review something, it’s because I found something redeeming in it. I don’t have a lot of time for complaining about things, though I will make an exception when it comes to the industrialization of complaints that has occurred in the modern era or if it is Ulysses’ Gaze.
Encountering The Eye of Argon for the First Time
I’ve long been a fan of science fiction and fantasy, and I’ve long been a person who is pretentiously opposed to pretense. In a way, I’m like an angry Pollyanna who aggressively argues against those who mock the “juvenile” or “popular” things in SF/F. I love “skiffy” and have experienced no greater sense of wonder than reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’ writings of John Carter. That’s right. I believe that ERB’s tales of Barsoom are as imaginative as (possibly more than) Iain Bank’s Culture novels, and I love those too. I’m the fan who loves both the Dragonlance stories and Malazan Book of the Fallen. I love the genre at its most literary, at its most imaginative, and when it falls into the “written by an over-enthusiastic fan” territory.
I’m so positive in my passion about genre fiction and geek culture that I wrote an approving review of I, Frankenstein and have been reminded by my editor at The Robot’s Voice that I need to bare the fangs every now and then because I am usually so enthusiastic.
As you might guess from the lead in to this piece, I did find something that really aggravates me after I read The Eye of Argon. It’s how cruel SFF professionals and fandom can be and how “toxic” fans are more the rule than the exception. There are plenty of examples I could pull out of a hat, often dealing with the treatment of female fans as being “fake geek girls.” As the father of twin girls who love Pirates, Pokemon, Paladins, and Princesses, I find that whole “controversy” infuriating. That’s why I’m not going to write about that topic. It would be very difficult for me to avoid expletives on what has been consistently a G-rated or PG-rated blog.
Instead, I want to focus on how professionals and fandom have treated on particular enthusiast of Sword and Sorcery fiction, Jim Theis the author of The Eye of Argon. Because, let me be clear, it is Jim Theis they treated this way…directly and indirectly, and not just the work.
When I first read the book I did nightly out loud readings of The Eye of Argon. I did one chapter, or half chapter as the book has half-chapters as well, per night. I thought it would be fun to do. I heard that the SF/F community had regular readings of this poorly written work of fiction that were the book equivalent of MST3K...and it had been mentioned by the MST3K crew...so I thought it would be fun to do my own midnight readings with my wife.
My takeaway from the experience was that the SF/F community are cruel, judgmental, and full of themselves. I also came to believe that I was part of the problem. By participating in my own personal midnight reading, I was being an SFF bully.
My sister bought me a the Wildside Press version of the book, which has a long introduction by Lee Weinstein that discusses the search and discovery of the real Jim Theis. There had been some speculation that Theis was not a real person and that Argon had been written by a published author as a joke. Weinstein mentions that the search eventually led to him finding an interview on a local (Los Angeles) radio show/podcast called Hour 25 where Jim stated, “that he was hurt that his story was being mocked and said he would never write anything again.”
I’ll be honest with you. I initially fluctuated in what I thought about this phenomenon. I thought that either the whole thing is a hoax, or SF/F authors and fandom are cruel. Scratch that. Even if the whole thing had been an elaborate hoax with false scholarship creating a plausible back story of a 16 year old writing the story for OSFAN, SF/F authors and fandom are still cruel. Some, like Lyssa Chiavari, have claimed that Jim was “in on the joke,” but his friend Walt responded to Lyssa’s post stating, “I have a lot more to say about this topic — including how I believe science-fiction fandom actually killed James Theis through its relentless ridicule — but that’s needlessly dramatic for now.”
It didn’t matter that Jim Theis turned out to be a very real person and not a fictional character created as part of SF fandom cosplay, what matters is that the community has spent over 40 years mocking him. I picked up the book intending to become one of those people and it makes me feel terrible. The anger I feel toward myself more than outweighs the joy from any of the small chuckles I experienced during my reading of the work. And I did enjoy reading the book. I would have bought more books by Jim Theis as his writing improved with experience.
After my first encounter with the text, and realizing that Jim Theis was a real person with real feelings and that I had been a jerk to want to relive the ritual mockery. I decided to track down that issue of OSFAN. I initially looked to see if the Eaton Collection at UC Riverside had a copy, but it did not. They had issue 11 thanks to a generous donation by former UCLA librarian Bruce Pelz, but no issue 10. I was eventually able to track down a copy at Fanac.org and am including it here for your perusal. His story starts on page 27, but he has a short zine earlier where you get a glimpse of his 16 year old personality.
According to the Weinstein essay in the Wildside edition, Theis remained an active fan of SF/F for most of his life. Can you imagine what it would be like to attend conventions where there was a midnight event dedicated to mocking you? It would be one thing if Theis embraced that mockery and made it his own, finding some way to leverage it into a positive thing, but that Hour 25 interview seems to imply the opposite. Theis wasn’t able to pull off a Tommy Wiseau or James Nguyen and transform sincere amateurism into beloved cult status. Instead, the mockery killed Theis’ desire to become a writer. That’s right, the SF/F community’s mockery shattered a fan’s aspirations. To me, that is the biggest crime that any professional or fan can do. No matter how “bad” a writer is at writing, they are never wrong to aspire to become a published author. They may never become one, but the aspiration should remain.
Yes The Eye of Argon is poorly written, but not much more so than Lin Carter’s Thongor stories or Gardner Fox’s Kyrik tales. Unlike Theis, Carter and Fox don’t have the excuse that they were 16 when they wrote their books. Unlike Carter, Theis wasn’t a brilliant editor. Neither was he a foundational comic book writer and editor like Gardner Fox. But if an editor as brilliant as Carter was can write entertaining drivel (Thongor is very entertaining) and still be a vital contributor to the field as a whole, who is to say Theis may not have evolved into something more? I can tell you from experience that there are some sentences in Argon that hint at some talent, if only Theis could set aside his Thesaurus for a moment.
When my wife was in film school, one of her classmates stated that she wanted “to be one of those writers who writes terrible movies” and wanted to know how to do that because it seemed like an easy way to make money. It was a statement filled with pretense and disdain that also lacked an understanding of why and how things are created. I don’t think anyone writes with the intention of creating something terrible, baring those things that are done as parody. Instead, most writers are attempting to entertain others and to share their own personal feelings and joys. Jim Theis, like Lin Carter and Gardner Fox, clearly enjoyed his Robert E. Howard stories. Heck, he might even have enjoyed Carter’s Thongor stories. It seems that a 16 year old Thies wanted to share his love of those tales with others by creating his own version. What was his reward for exposing himself thus?
He was publicly ridiculed for over 40 years.
For a community to spend 40+ years making a game that amounts to nothing more than “Taking turns mocking one’s own” is something for which I have nothing but I have disdain. I’m not saying to end the readings of The Eye of Argon. There is humor to be found in the mixed metaphors and odd misuses of words that Theis clearly didn’t understand. But there is also an enthusiasm to the writing, a sincerity, that should be acknowledged. Readings of The Eye of Argon can be humorous and educational experiences, but they should exclude mockery for mockery’s sake. Acknowledge the enthusiasm of the author. Point out how his errors are the errors that many new authors make. And remember that the writing in The Eye of Argon is so “bad” that many of the early myths of its origin required that it be written by someone of respected talent.
Jim Theis died 24 years ago at the age of 48, but 10 years ago he acquired a fan. I hope that he can acquire more. He’ll never know that we exist, but he deserves the basic humanity that we should all aspire to give. So too do all those who create and all fans who critique. Critiquing The Eye of Argon for its writing isn’t cruel, but turning readings of it into performative mockings is.