SciFan attempts to do three things: provide information, point to information, and point to books with information. The web represents a paradigm shift. Before the web, most information was stored on paper, and library science managed this information. The shift is moving information to electronic storage, and unfortunately, there are no librarians, only mindless search engines. Anyone wanting to do real research should stay in the world of printed paper and libraries. Web surfing is for casual grazers of words.

Our jobs at SciFan are essentially a cross between amateur librarians and bookstore owners, yet we have no books to catalog or sell. I remember watching after a power failure, several men getting out of their cars and directing traffic at some nearby intersections. They saw that chaos needed order and appointed themselves to be unofficial traffic cops until the real police arrived. Until the real librarians of the Internet emerge from the new paradigm, amateurs like Olivier and I are just jumping in and processing information. And as we work, we're stumbling onto the problems that must be solved by this new information science.

The web is not a library, but it will someday replace libraries. It is just a matter of time, because information can be handled way more efficiently on the web, and cheaper. Yet, the real reasons why the web is better are just starting to emerge. I'm going to explore an example that will illustrate why libraries are doomed.

I'm working on a theme section about robots in science fiction. I've spent hours looking at search engine results trying to find everything I can about the history of robots in science fiction. This is where the Internet now fails compared to libraries. All my best resources come from books. But the material is scattered through many volumes, most of which are out of print. If I did not collect SF reference books, finding this information at a local library would be difficult too. The point though, if all the reference books were online, and crossed indexed by appropriate software, then it would be instantly available to the whole world, and from only one copy. Why scatter information in countless physical sites and make people spend hours or days searching through piles of books?

So what is the perfect solution?

Searching the web, I wanted to find something like the article "Robots And Androids" I found in The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1977) edited by Brian Ash. This essay is exactly what I wanted to find, and is exactly what I'd love to have written. On the negative side, it's way out of date, and way out of print. I'm lucky to own a copy. The book is so good at giving the background I'm looking for that it depresses me. If this book was available on the web, SciFan would have little reason to create any SF theme sections, since it covers SF themes so well.

This presents two problems. First is the gigantic task of moving paper information to electronic forms. This is grunt work and will happen over time. The second represents the psychological shift of the paradigms. Because information was hard to find, many times people just reassembled it. If information is instantly available, we'll have to manage it differently. Say someone creates a very complete bibliography of the writings of Robert A. Heinlein. In the old days you might not find this bibliography, so you might just create a new bibliography on your own. With the Internet set up properly, anyone should be able to find the standard bibliography without trouble. So here is the essence of the paradigm shift: why reinvent the information wheel? Okay, someone might come along and know about another citation for Heinlein. Should that person put out a competing bibliography? Is it fair for him to copy the first, add his bit of information, and say, here's the new standard for Heinlein bibliographies? Or should he just email the info to the old bibliographer and say, "great job, but I found something you left out."?

The current Internet has no organization that arbitrates information, nor does it have an army of librarians developing a science around the topic. Do we wait until society figures this out and creates an industry to do the job? Or will old institutions take up the slack? Or will profit corporations commandeer a topic and make it their own to manage? I could understand if Hewlett Packard becomes the god over all information dealing with HP LaserJet printer drivers, but who manages the history of robots in science fiction? If SciFan sets up a site about this topic and convinces everyone interested in robots in SF to contribute, does that make us the official maintainers? If someone took the top reference books about science fiction, and combined all the information published by Locus Magazine, both in print and electronically, and threw in reprints from the major SF magazines nonfiction sections, it would create such an SF reference site that there would be practically no reason to look anywhere else for information on the subject of science fiction.

So why doesn't such a site exist? First of all is the issue of copyrights. How do all of these writers get paid? Second: who does the work? Just scanning in the text of all the books isn't good enough. Creating a structure, indexing, cross referencing, creating links to in print and out of print book dealers, and so on is a huge job. But lets still picture how it might be done.

Locus Magazine has been the supreme reference periodical for science fiction for years. I doubt if writing a SF reference book pays a great deal. They are seldom reprinted, and I've found a number of recent ones on the remaindered tables. Let's imagine all the writers of SF history and reviews giving up their claim on copyrights and giving their volume of knowledge to Charles Brown at Locus. Since this is idle fancy, let's imagine Mr. Brown being able to double or triple his staff. Pretty soon Locus Magazine would be the only place to go to get information about SF. SciFan could close up shop, and Olivier and I would have lots of extra time. So why doesn't this happen? Who knows, the process might be happening right now.

The universe formed out of the potentials that became subatomic particles, which came together to make larger particles, which formed atoms, which made elements, which made molecules, which made planets, where life started, and so on. Right now on the Internet, information is floating around like subatomic particles coming together into clumps to make bits of informational matter. We should be seeing the effect of informational gravity starting to take place, and clumps of information will start attracting themselves to other clumps. Imagine a SF book reviewer with hundreds of old book reviews sitting on his computer. He sees a website that reviews new books like Locus or SFSite. This writer might think, "hell I'm not going to get any money for these old reviews, and I hate to see them just deleted, why don't I give them to this website to use?" What site should he pick? More than likely the one that is the biggest and most organized--informational gravity in action!

Back to my essay writing. I hate reinventing the wheel, so why should I write a new essay when there is already one written that does a better job than I could? At my web site I could ask: want to know about robots and science fiction? Then I could provide a list of books to buy or find at the library. Our readers could then spend a lot of time acquiring the books. Of course, on the other hand, they'd just like to click and have some web server zap them over a copy of exactly what I wanted them to read. It would be easier if I could just scan in those pages from the books and put them online for all to read. But copyrights keep me from doing this. Copyright laws are made to protect intellectual property and help the writer make some money. But if a book goes out of print and becomes unread and forgotten, how is it being protected?

A possible solution for writers who felt that their work was no longer capable of earning money would be to put their writing onto the Internet, maybe with a new type of copyright. Books and articles maintained on the web would be the same as keeping the material in print. "In print" now means readily available, but for money. On the web it could mean readily available, but for free. A new type of copyright could allow for the free publishing of material on the web with permission of the author, but if the work was ever put into any kind of publication for profit, the author would then be entitled to royalties again.

Another solution would be to come up with a direct payment system. Want to read an essay, then zap a quarter over to the author's account. I wouldn't mind this, but many people want to treat the Internet like a library. They want the information to be free. This issue is widely debated elsewhere, but like the open source software movement, if one person is charging for a Heinlein bibliography, another will be offering a free edition. I tend to think this too will evolve, and there will be two classes of information. First there will be the free information: recycled old information, as well as information created by well meaning amateurs who work like the open source software developers just for the fun of it. Then there will be pay-for information, because some work is not fun and people will do it for money, or because amateurs can't provide the appropriate level of quality. You can find free novels on the Internet, you just don't find them with the quality of a Stephen King.

Here at SciFan, we struggle to organize and present information. Olivier and I work in our spare time. Time limits how fast SciFan can grow. If you have published articles about SF and would like to see them reprinted here at SciFan, please let us know. Maybe you would consider us having enough mass to attract your information.

We'd love to reprint articles by Sam Moskowitz, but have no idea who to contact that manages his literary estate. Brian Ash or Mike Ashley, if you have anything laying around that you can't make money off of anymore, let us know. Alexei Panshin wrote lots of stuff that would be useful. Alva Rogers' history of Astounding would make a great section, especially since it's cheap to print color covers on the web. And all those interviews Charles Platt did a long ago should be saved. I'd loved to read the old Ted White editorials from Amazing again. The list is endless.

SciFan can't pay for reprinting material, but we might be helpful. We'd be willing to promote your in-print books. And we'd just ask for the nonexclusive use of the material. Like I said above, Locus Magazine is the logical choice. So if SciFan is too new to trust, consider this idea for some other site, like The Science Fiction Writers of America, or a magazine site like Asimov's or Analog. The fiction magazines sure could use some help in attracting new subscribers.

Maybe fandom should start a sciencefiction.org or sflibrary.org to maintain the history of science fiction? I don't know what will happen, but I tend to think something will. If Locus Magazine and SFSite combined they might have too much gravity for any other site to compete with. Two or three years ago the net was wide open, but now things are different.

Informational gravity will change everything.