Load Bearing Fans
Fragility, disruption, and genre pillars in the speculative fiction landscape
Peter Ball
It seems disingenuous to say ‘the systems we rely on are more fragile than they appear’ in the year 2026, after a decade that included two Trump presidencies, a global pandemic, extreme weather events, and a few major wars. We all know systems are less resilient than they appear. The unexpected fragility of things we thought permanent shouldn’t be surprising anymore, yet I’ve recently found myself shocked by two pieces of news in the speculative fiction space.
First, the Aurealis Awards — Australia’s premier speculative fiction award for science fiction, fantasy, and horror —moved under the aegis of Queensland Writers Centre and debuted a new slate of entry requirements. This move introduced new fees, changed rules, and proposed major judging changes when compared against the panels of volunteers that adjudicated the awards for the last decade. The changes came without warning and, from the point of view of Australia’s science fiction fandom, quickly drew widespread condemnation.
At the same time, the US-based Subterranean Press announced that it was beginning a structured shutdown, intending to close its doors in 2027. Still considered a small press within the field, despite putting out 45 titles a year, Subterranean has been a vital small press for much of its existence, with both the publisher and its numerous authors being honoured with some of the genre’s top awards. There’s no indication of why the press was winding down, but recent years have seen an explosion of special editions across the industry which used to be Subterranean’s stock-and-trade, to say nothing of ongoing supply disruptions and uncertain tariff environments that have made publishing more difficult for everyone.
Notably, for me, is the vintage of these two entities. The Aurealis Awards and Subterranean Press both launched in 1995, giving them a similar legacy in the speculative fiction landscape. Certainly, they’ve been omnipresent since my own interest in writing speculative fiction began. In many ways, they were foundational pillars as I considered my early ambitions—I both wanted to win an Aurealis Award and to be published by Subterranean at some point. They were, for lack of a better word, foundational pillars in the genre.
Now one of those pillars is shaking and, if it doesn’t topple, it will at the very least reconfigure itself to support the local genre scene at a new angle. The other is going away for good, leaving behind a legacy of beautiful special editions, novellas, and short story collections.
***
One of my favourite tropes is the Load-Bearing Boss – the character’s whose death or defeat triggers the total collapse of a location, forcing the protagonist to make a hasty exit before the clock runs out. More recently, in the corporate world, I’ve become interested in the concept of the load-bearing employee – the one with decades of institution knowledge, without whom the entire office grinds to a halt.
I’ve spent enough time around genre communities to notice the existence of load-bearing fans as well – folks who make things happen for the good of the community, often burning their own personal capital out of love for the genre and the community that built around it.
That these individuals arise out of genre communities is no surprise – as Kim Wilkins notes in her study of Australia’s speculative fiction small press scene, there is a subset of fandom that frequently serves as both consumer and producer. This fandom is ‘defined by its passionate investments in texts, and those investments are rarely passive: fans have long been known for their prosumptive practices, where texts are enjoyed creatively and communally.’ (Crowd at our back). The passions of genre readers, Wilkins argues, are ‘dynamic and productive’, even if it isn’t necessarily professional. In speculative fiction, we see this prosumptive engagement manifest in fan fiction, fan events, amateur and semi-pro presses, zines, criticism, cosplay, community building around events, clubs, or online groups, and more.
In the case of small presses, this proscriptive engagement is a part of the tightly linked network that makes up the genre of science fiction fandom. They may operate at the fringes of traditional publishing models, but also provide those active within the genre space to experiment or release work unsuited to a larger publisher’s economies of scale. For Wilkins, this is one of the aspects of small press publishing that is most interesting: outside of genre, the movement from a large, established press to a small press (or self-publishing) may be seen as an admission of failure, but writers of fantasy and speculative fiction move fluidly move between small and large presses. They are a place for established writers to publish collections, experimental works, and other projects that hold little interest for larger publishers whose economies of scale aren’t suited to such titles. They develop emerging talent and provide early publication opportunities.
And presses such as Subterranean, which published special editions, also serve as a key source of sub-right sales for established authors whose books attracted a significant fanbase.
These presses may not be major pillars, but they are important. As Wilkins notes:
The genre community is already oriented towards prosumption, and small presses afford specific opportunities for writers to work in specific ways, enriching and developing their individual craft, and enriching and developing the genre as a whole.
That this needs to be stated catches me by surprise. I’ve been immersed in the speculative fiction genre for so long that the implication that small press doesn’t occupy this role in other genres strikes me as odd. I am very familiar with small presses occupying an outsized space in the genre I love, routinely presenting work that is well represented among awards lists and other markers of cultural value.
Yet the demise of Subterranean doesn’t come as a surprise, as every speculative fiction fan is familiar with the fragility of the small presses that produce work they love. Notably, there are three key small presses cited in Wilkins 2017 essay – Twelfth Planet, Ticonderoga, and Fablecroft – each is identified alongside the primary editor/ publisher who ‘were already fantasy readers and were established members of the Australian fantasy fandom when they launched their various publishing ventures.’ While none of the three have officially closed, their most recent publishing efforts are several years in the past.
Ticonderoga’s most recent publication appears to be L.L. Hannett’s Songs for Dark Seasons (2020), and Twelfth Planet’s anthology Rebuilding Tomorrow came out the same year. Fablecroft’s most recent anthology, The Art Of Being Human, debuted in 2022, and many of the incidental publishers mentioned by Wilkins have either fallen by the wayside or had similar fallow periods. These presses were of interest to Wilkins they ‘represented presses with a presence within genre that belied their size’, and I mention their lack of releases not to berate their publishers, but to make a key point: Any press that relies on the passion and commitment of a single person – or even a small group of employees – is subject to catastrophic shocks when personal or professional circumstances change.
In his study of the contemporary book industry, Merchants of Culture, Thompson identifies the five forms of capital leverage used by writers, publishers, and other players in the industry to generate affects. He breaks these down as:
Economic Capital, representing ‘the accumulated financial resources, including stock and plant as well as capital reserves, to which publishers have access’ (5) in addition to the potential capital that can be raised from their current starting position.
Human Capital, representing ‘the staff employed by the firm and their accumulated knowledge, skills, and experience’(6).
Social Capital, Thompson’s catch-all for the friendships, contacts, and networks that can be brought to bear in the publishing field, and the ability to generate favours.
Intellectual Capital, which in publishing terms is essentially the intellectual property one has the rights to publish and exploit.
Symbolic Capital, which represents ‘the accumulated prestige, recognition, and respect accorded to certain individuals or institutions’ (8), an intangible capital that can be highly valuable and something many publishers court (and many writers crave almost as much as financial reward).
Major presses and the presumptive passion-projects of genre fans alike draw upon these same five pools of capital, but the resources available to smaller participants are naturally shallower. Small presses and rewards are generally cash-poor, with their economic capital largely relying on the contribution of time without expectation of financial reward rather than chunks of cash. Similarly, the human capital they rely upon to keep the project running are often centred on a single person, and that capital can be diminished by changes in personal circumstances.
When catastrophe strikes, a larger press can use economic resources to fill gaps in the skillset or distribute a staff member's task. A small press doesn’t have that luxury.
Nor, should it be said, do many volunteer-run awards.
***
I don’t presume to know why the Aurealis Awards shifted to new management, but it isn’t a surprise. Queensland Writers Centre will be the fourth administrative team to take over the awards in the two decades I’ve been active within Australian speculative fiction, albeit the first to emerge from outside the presumptive pool of self-identified fandom. While I cannot cite specific reasons, I would happily lay money on the fact that the driving force of the Awards over the last few years – a load-bearing fan – could no longer devote time and effort to be the driving force of the awards.
It’s not the first time the awards have lost such individuals, nor the first time the new management has caused some sturm un drung with proposed changes to how the awards are run. The nature of community-driven awards means load bearing individuals are common. But it is interesting to look at the changes to the Aurealis Awards proposed by Queensland Writers Centre through the lens of the capital exchanges involved.
In many ways, the proposed changes are an attempt to increase the resiliency of the awards which have relied on volunteer labour – and in particular, load-bearing fans who volunteered time to administer the awards. The movement to an established organisation with the capacity to expend multiple forms of capital on administering the awards is promising.
On the other hand, critics of the move immediately pointed out the flaws in their approach. As horror author Alan Baxter noted in an open letter to the new award admins, ‘The new structure will ensure that many works worthy of consideration will not be submitted, and favours larger publishers and well-established authors’ while also laying an impeachment ‘on judge impartiality and artificially restricts works that blend genre or that cross categories.’
Thankfully, Baxter’s open letter – cosigned by many writers, former judges, and other professionals active in the speculative fiction space – seems to have prompted a significant rethink of the proposed award guidelines put forward by the Writers Centre. Yet the necessity of drafting such a letter highlights how easily an administrative entity can disrupt a cornerstone of the genre community. Queensland Writers Centre’s revised guidelines do much to address the issues, but the tension between the two approaches remains.
In many ways, Alan Baxter is correct: the original changes to the awards were a reimagining of what the awards have been, moving them away from a prosumptive exercise that is maintained as a gift to the genre community and towards a membership-based non-profit who has paid employees, a board of directors who answer to the core membership, and a state-based remit that slants the awards in a direction that could be read as bias. In short, a move shores up access to other forms of capital to ensure long-term viability of the awards without a load-bearing individual driving them forward.
Where the proposed plans failed is the way in which they diminished (and misunderstood) the vital role that symbolic capital plays in the perception of the awards.
***
Psychologically speaking, the opposite of fragility isn’t strength, but resilience. The ability to withstand shocks to the system and continue on, unimpeded. The question of how we build resilience into the awards, presses, and events that are important to our genre communities is a recurring pre-occupation of mine, especially after years of seeing events and organisations I treasured – and thought quite resilience – become very different entities when key participants moved on or burnt out.
I wish I had good answers to explain how this can be achieved, especially in a country like Australia where we are geographically dispersed and economies of scale inhibit growth. I believe Thompson’s modes of capital provide an interesting starting point assessing both what our pillar events, presses, and awards need, but also what we can offer in terms of support.
Ultimately, though, the long-term solution is a move away from building around load bearing fans and instead training up load-bearing teams. This isn’t an easy shift, especially with regards to anything involving writers. Cory Doctorow recently lamented the notion of writers moving collectively in The Reverse Centaurs Guide to Surviving Life After AI, noting that ‘creative workers commonly don’t believe they are workers. Instead, they see themselves as small businesspeople, engaged in business-to-business transactions with firms that are, in reality, their employers.’ We may be proud members of our communities, and even desire to give back in the form of volunteering or offering advice to creatives who come after us, but we value the role of the individual rather than the group.
The recent rise of self-publishing – and successful authors who take on part of the publisher's role, albeit with a major corporation handling distribution – only compounds the problem.
I’ve been immersed in speculative fiction fandom for some time, and I am a believer in the power and importance of presumptive engagement with the genre I love. I want both a rich awards scene, and a host of small presses producing interesting work that wouldn’t find a home in larger publishing houses. I do not write this to disparage the efforts of those load-bearing fans who kept small presses and awards alive. Indeed, we should celebrate the load-bearing individuals who make our genre communities run.
Rather, I argue that continuing to rely on those individuals and their presumptive impulses risks vital parts of the community. In an ideal world, they should be supported rather than exploited, with access to capital that amplifies their impulses rather than burns through their personal resources.
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Peter Ball is an author, publisher, and RPG gamer whose love of speculative fiction emerged after exposure to The Hobbit, Star Wars, David Lynch’s Dune, and far too many games of Dungeons and Dragons before the age of 7. He’s a former GenreCon convenor, literary festival programs manager, and writing teacher. Currently he’s the brain-in-charge at Brain Jar Press, delivers regular advice for writers at GenrePunk.Ninja, and publishes his own work under the GenrePunk Books imprint. Find him at PeterMBall.com
REFERENCES
‘Aurealis Awards – Program Guidelines.’ Queensland Writers Centre. queenslandwriters.org.au/aurealis-entry-guidelines
Baxter, Alan. ‘An Open Letter from members of the speculative fiction community to The Queensland Writer’s Centre regarding the recently announced Aurealis Awards.’ Alan Baxter, 11 July 2026 (edited 18, 20 July, 3, 13 August, 2 September 2026). alanbaxter.com.au/an-open-letter-from-members-of-the-speculative-fiction-community-to-the-queensland-writers-centre-regarding-the-recently-announced-aurealis-awards/
Doctorow, Cory. The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence – ``Before It's Too Late. New Left Books, 2026.
‘Letter to the Members of Australia’s Speculative Fiction Writing Community.’ Queensland Writers Centre, 1 September 2026. queenslandwriters.org.au/aurealis-awards-open-letter
‘Subterranean Press to Close.’ Locus Online, 8 June 2026. locusmag.com/2026/06/subterranean-press-to-close/
Thompson, John. The Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century Book. Polity Press, 2013.
Wilkins, Kim. “‘A crowd at your back’: fantasy fandom and small press.” Media International Australia, 170(1), 115-125. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X17743524