FANTASY & BEYOND – a new forum INTERVIEW with creators ScarletBea and Magnus
For me the biggest hugest find of the last ten years or so has not been anything as mundane as career progression, or impending retirement, or any other landmark of life. It has been finding a vibrant online community of like-minded fantasy aficionados.
I remember the first time I wrote to an author – Audrey Niffenberger who wrote The Time Traveller’s Wife. I wanted some reassurance from her about the outcome of the story and what kind of life the protagonist might have been doing and enjoying off screen/off the page as it were. I got a reply which I guess gently made the point that readers can construct their own meanings to a text in the gaps left by the author and indeed sometimes over-writing the author’s intended meaning.
A few years later I picked up Prince of Thorns on impulse in a bookshop and discovered Mark Lawrence’s work around the same time as I discovered Twitter and Facebook – and suddenly, with Mark as something of a gateway drug – I was drawn into an addictive immersion in the fantasy-sci-fi community.
Together with Geoff Matthews – a colleague from school – we discovered the fantastic Fantasy-Faction website. I particularly enjoyed the Fantasy-Faction forum with the monthly short-story competitions that gave focus and impetus to my writing. Geoff started writing articles and reviews for the Fantasy-Faction website and I followed him in – and then later (as you can tell) joined the Fantasy-Hive team to deliver a similar mix of reflection and review.
It has been a particular extra pleasure to be able to meet up with various people from those online communities in Grim Gatherings, Bristolcon and Worldcon conventions. To be human is to connect with others. Social media platforms can be a desperately flawed medium for exchange, but fantasy fiction has always delighted in the trope of the ‘found family.’ The interconnectivity of social media has enabled many of us to find our own sprawling extended, massively diverse, new found families.
Sadly the original fantasy-faction forum has suffered from a fatal technical glitch. However, two of its champions ScarletBea (motivation) and Magnus (technical wizardry), have worked together to launch a new book forum for speculative fiction called Fantasy & Beyond ( https://fantasyandbeyond.net ) for people to meet and exchange views and ideas about books. ScarletBea and Magnus have joined us today to answer some questions about this new venture.
Q1 I like the cool name, for me it had shades of Star Trek (space the final frontier) and Toy Story (Infinity and Beyond) in how it alluded to the full spectrum of speculative fiction.
How did you come up with the name? Were there any other rejected ideas?
SB: I’m really glad you enjoy it! We wanted a name that showed that we aren’t restricted to just Fantasy (although that remains a big focus of the place), but also cover Science-Fiction and others. As you know, there are many online places with ‘fantasy’ in the name, so we sounded several options until we hit the “& Beyond”, exactly for the reasons you mention.
Magnus, do you remember the rejected ideas?
M: Ah yes, the many names! I managed to dig out a few examples of me desperately trying to allude to both genres with suggestions like Dragons & Supernovas, Cosmic Fantasy, and the Outskirts of Imagination. I think I came up with ‘Beyond Fantasy’, but we realised that suggests fantasy is excluded—and it turns out it’s also the name of a documentary on the porn industry. (oops! – I’m glad you dodged that bullet, Theo) So we opted against that. Bea spoke up for Fantasy & Beyond, which I initially thought was a little too clunky (and tough to put into a domain), but it grew on me. It’s suggestive of imagination, the fantasy genre, and the broader field of speculative fiction all at once! And from what I’ve seen so far, it seems to put exactly the right idea into people’s minds. So I am very happy with it.
Q2 What were the best bits/experiences you had in the old Fantasy-Faction forum that made you determined to create a new forum?
SB: For me it was the community aspect, hands down! You mentioned “found families” in your intro and that’s exactly what I feel about the members after being in the old forum for 10 years, with many sharing that decade with me. When it broke down I really felt its absence – with many people telling me they missed it a lot as well!
M: Yes! I found myself checking in on FF regularly even if I wasn’t always active with posting. For me it was a nice quiet spot away from the breakneck speed and knee-jerk reactions that make up so much of social media today. It was the equivalent of coming to your local café and chatting with the regulars as opposed to grabbing a coffee to go from some faceless coffee chain at the mall.
SB: Great image!
M: Thank you. Maybe I should give up this web dev thing and go be a writer!
Q3 There are various and varied avenues for members of the spec-fic community to connect with each other. There are Facebook groups, twitter accounts (yes, I still call it twitter, Elon), discord (hmm – how does that work again) and the sprawl of subs that is reddit. What differences in interaction can a forum approach like Fantasy & Beyond offer?
SB: I think the main advantage is to give people time: time to process the question or comment, time to think about a reply, time to add thoughts later on. Many of us (me included) don’t function well with immediacy! Things move so quickly on all those other places that the pressure to comment right away, without proper thinking, makes people sometimes say things they later regret.
Also on a forum things don’t disappear, they can be used as reference for later. For example, there’s a thread there from a member who mostly reads SF asking for Fantasy recommendations, based on a series of prompts about what they liked in the past. The replies there have already led another member to add to their own TBR, and the comments will remain there for future members too.
For me the forum organisation into sections and threads also appeals a lot to my sorting mind, haha. You won’t get a comment about a SFF film mixed with a book review, which then follows a personal life reply and back to talking about the books you’re reading now.
M: Agreed. A classic forum gives you the time to respond without being in a hurry, the room to express yourself without a restrictive character limit, and a smaller, more tight-knit community that is easier to moderate. All of those are important to me—and at the same time almost completely absent in modern social media. Out there, speed, brevity, and click-through rates are more important than providing a platform for thoughtful discussion and friendship. Sure, those things are still possible, but they aren’t facilitated by the medium.
Q4 – I think we are all more aware of issues around online safety and playing nicely or not at all in the various groups that we belong to. How will you keep the new forum a safe space? What will be the core rules and how will admins enforce them?
M: Our core rules are mostly what you would expect from most sensible communities today: no hate speech or bigotry, no trolling or harassment, no spam or gratuitous ads, no misinformation, and so on. I’ve been a community manager, admin, & moderator on several projects before, totalling decades of experience. I’m taking all that with me and hoping to use it to shape F&B into a place that can be open, inclusive, and respectful.
It is my experience that people who say something hurtful don’t actually intend to do harm or just didn’t realise they were crossing a line. So when circumstances allow, I prefer to give people a chance to correct themselves. However, harm can be caused regardless of intent, and there are always people who are unable to accept that their actions have negative consequences for other people and who refuse to adapt to that fact. And I’ve learned that there’s such a thing as being too soft. So when the situation demands it, we are ready to come down hard on people who refuse to adhere to our community standards.
Of course, ours will be a fairly small community, miniscule in comparison with any of the popular social media sites. But that’s part of the point. It makes moderation easier, not just because there will be fewer incidents, but because when people are acting in a space populated by familiar people (and many they call friends), they are much more likely to self-moderate. For a lot of people, it’s easier to be nasty to random strangers. Because we humans are silly like that!
Q5 – What broad sections or subdivisions will the forum be divided into – like I’m not expecting the dewey decimal system or anything, but how will people find their… er… people?
SB: We’re not big and don’t have that many members (yet!), so we didn’t want to create a lot of sections that might end up just with a couple of threads. At the moment it’s just split into Books, Other Media, a Book Club and a Writers’ Corner.
I also feel that this focus allows people to discover books that they might not have considered if it was split by genre to the nth degree – and that’s another can of worms, how to define genre, haha
M: Our first topic on genres and subgenres hasn’t spawned yet, but you can safely assume it will surface sooner rather than later! I remember some interesting (and quite long) threads on the subject from FF. But no, we don’t intend to split the forums up like that unless the number of posts makes it absolutely necessary. So we will allow categories and subforums to grow organically as the need arises—as opposed to trying to predict what people will talk the most about.
And the more we can avoid an ‘us and them’ feel between any groups in our community, the better. For example, I think it would be a mistake to divide the main category into separate forums for fantasy and SF. It would alienate those groups from each other and might even serve to spawn friction between them. I did mention that we humans are quite silly, right? One aspect of designing a community is accounting for the built-in human silliness!
Q6 – I see there are already options for non-fantasy related discussions, including space to talk about “life’s ups and downs” and another for “politics & other ailments of the real world” (I can feel my keyboard fingers itching at the mere thought). What other developments do you have in mind for the forum both within and beyond the speculative fiction theme?
M: We will let the forum grow with the community. The topics that draw a lot of attention, combined with suggestions from the community, will help shape the future of F&B! However, we did also set out with a specific goal in mind: “to build and maintain an open, inclusive, and friendly community where people can engage in meaningful discussion about SFF books and a variety of other topics”, so we’ll take care not to stray too far from that.
I do have a bunch of other developmental plans, but I would prefer not to mention too much about them. I need to make sure I can actually implement them first! I’m an amateur web developer and I admit I’m a little bit in over my head, so I try not to promise too much.
SB: I’d just like to make a comment about those sections you mentioned. First, they can be hidden by a profile option if you’re not interested in these issues (especially if the Politics section takes off, haha). But mainly I’d like to say how important they are to us – sharing my ups and downs, having someone there to listen and sometimes say “oh, me too!” is super essential to me (it’s ‘saved’ me more than once in the past), and part of the “found families” mentioned before!
Q7 – Will there be a Malazan book of the fallen discussion section? (and if so, will it be quarantined from the rest of the site?).
SB: As a big Malazan fan I’m not going to complain about that question, haha! It does seem to appear in all fantasy-related discussions and recommendations, doesn’t it?
The old Fantasy-Faction forum had a very comprehensive guide to Malazan, built organically throughout the years as people read it. It’s (yet another) thing that I’m really sad we lost and I think it’ll be very hard to replicate it.
Anyway, we keep discovering new authors, new series, new books, from the ones that tend to always be recommended – regardless of publication year – so I’m sure people won’t miss the Malazan section!
M: Is that the strange British bread topping everyone loves to hate? Oh no wait, that’s Marmite. Sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about, haha.
Q7 – Having navigated the forum I’m impressed with how well it works but also over-awed at how technically complex it must be to code. How have you managed the technical and financial constraints of setting up and hosting a new platform like Fantasy and Beyond?
SB: I’ll let Magnus answer that one, he is the tech wizard and the one who invested most of the money – later we had a very generous donation from a member who wants to remain anonymous!
M: I am very glad to hear that you like it! As I mentioned before, I’m an amateur web dev. When I took on this project, I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I’ve run into trouble at almost every corner, and it has been incredibly frustrating at times. I’ve had to learn a lot more than I expected. The core of the forums are phpBB, an old (some would say ancient) forum solution that is free and open-source. However, the F&B forums look nothing like a standard phpBB forum because I’ve added a ‘style’ for it, which is essentially a total conversion. On top of that, I have modified the style quite extensively, including learning CSS so that I could create my own theme. So F&B has its own unique look! And I will continue working on it at my own pace, but I’m still learning. People will just have to be patient. The main thing is that it’s up and running!
When I started out I paid all the setup costs. Bea and our generous anonymous benefactor have helped balance the finances so they are not too far in the red, and our current hosting is paid until June. Using F&B is free! If people enjoy the site, they are welcome to send a small donation to help pay for the running costs.
Q9 – How and where do people sign up?
SB: Just go to https://fantasyandbeyond.net/ and click “register”.
Q10 – What question do you wish I’d asked but didn’t? and how would you have answered it?
SB: I can think of two:
“As a newbie, how will I fit in a group of established friends, as it sounds like in places?” Don’t worry, we love new people! If not, we wouldn’t be advertising the forum to the world. Anyone who talks about Fantasy things (and beyond!) is very welcome, and bringing new fresh ideas is always great.
“Do you welcome published authors?” Of course! One of our most active members is Davinia Evans, author of the Burnished City trilogy. Published authors are people like everyone else, haha, (Yeah, I know! crazy isn’t it how normal they are – insofar as any of us are normal! Theo) People who read, comment on other books, share stories, etc. All we ask is please use the dedicated section to self-promote your book, rather than posting that everywhere.
M: And we have several other published authors! I love the dialogue between authors and readers, particularly when it’s on a more personal and relaxed level—as opposed to book signings and market talk—and I hope we can provide more of that in the future.
Other than that, you seem to have us pretty well covered. The one thing I’d like to add, or perhaps emphasise, is that we care deeply about this community and vow to look after it as best we can, and that includes giving it room to grow into something of its own. We provide the space, the direction, and moderation. And while you will see us posting there regularly, our members will play a big role in shaping this community into something new—hopefully familiar and fresh at the same time!
Oh, and one question I’m glad you didn’t ask is “what’s your favourite book?”. I never understood that question. I’ve read thousands of wonderful books, and you want me to pick just one? Impossible.
SB: Yes, it’s like asking to choose a favourite child, haha!
Thanks, Theo!
TO: You’re both very welcome!
[…] The old Fantasy Faction forum is back as Fantasy & Beyond! It’s great news for me as this was one of my favourite places on the internet and I’m sure it will go from strength to strength now that it’s under control of new management – see this interview with Bea and Magnus for more. […]