![[info - personal]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
norabombay for a hard drive dataswap and pancakes. We learned that a shot of amaretto is an excellent addition to pancake batter. I saw lots of WSFAns, and hung out with many new people whose online handles I neglected to get. *So far I am two for two on the Friday after Columbus Day coinciding with work wackiness. But this year I didn't have bronchitis! A vast improvement. Next year I will pre-plan and 1.) take October 15th as my optional holiday, 2.) schedule Friday overtime, or 3.) be in grad school.
Ultimately, I made it to only two programmed events at Capclave: the "Fandom: Losing by Winning?" panel, and the Small Press Award presentation.
The Losing by Winning panel may be summed up for biased and comedic purposes as:
PANEL: Why are none of the young people reading the SF classics? Dune, Asimov?
NORABOMBAY: Because they suck.
ASE: Have you read Foundation recently? Interesting idea, bad plot, bad prose. No girls. The cool parts have been mined by other authors.
PANEL: Space isn't romantic anymore. No one reads hard SF. Why are all the younger fans into unskiffy anime and stuff?
NORABOMBAY: Seriously? You have answered your own question.
ASE: Can I invoke the neocolonialist attitudes of steampunk now? Please?
More seriously, the panel complained about the loss of rigor in science fiction translated to TV and movies (because a key point of 30s pulp series were their realism, uh-huh), and about the death of the romantic notion of meeting alien life-forms as we explored our solar system and discovered that Mars has no canals, Venus has no rainforests, life not on Earth is going to be "viruses" ("bacteria!", I hissed, but now I think something from archaea is more likely), and gave me lots of time to tag-message
norabombay on her Palm Trio. If I were going to take any part of the panel seriously and make some guesses about what the current big fannish culture is, I'd go with remix culture: music mashups, song vids, fan fiction, etc. I'm making some broad assumptions when I say that - changes in the value of novelty vs conformity, hi-fi reproduction and the communications revolution making genuine novelty a lot harder to achieve - but I think we're way past the model that the ghetto has fallen and the kids of science fiction fans have assimilated and moved to the 'burbs.
I was surprised that non-English S.F. was, IIRC, completely not discussed. India and China represent a third of the world's population, but the self-appointed centers of fandom have little or no representation in those markets. So briefly, I think fandom has won by winning, and spread some of its cultural memes, which is really all you can ask for from your social movement. Battlestar Galactica version two lasted four seasons; everyone knows spaceships are cool; Lost and Heroes are network anchors. We won. Enjoy the Heinlein by way of Japan.
The award presentation ceremony was brief, and featured cake. I wish I could say nice things about the winning story, Greg Siewert's "The Absence of Stars: Part One", but I didn't make it past the first paragraph. It begins: A hand gripped commander Trevor Kimberly's shoulder and shook him violently awake. "Pluto is gone." I went to the "Nine Billion Names of God" place, with bonus WIP dread, and unfortunately couldn't bring myself to finish it. After the announcement, I read the end of the story, and I think part 2 would be more interesting than part 1, but I may be projecting my starry visions of Humans Later Vs Humans of the 20th Century culture clash onto a blank canvas.
In conclusion, a weekend made awesome by people. Go people.
- Mood:
relaxed
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
Comments
I think part of it is that I'm conceptualizing old school fandom as a network of friends who at one point were all into a specific thing, but now may or may not be as into that original hobby, but still like hanging out together. The "new school" of fandom is the next wave of people who like hanging out together, who have an overlapping interest set. There's an age overlap, but one can see it as a generational split too. I think of this as the "did'ja notice people - gurls - wrote awesome Heinlein fic for the annual Secret Santa last year? Ew! Autonomous women in Heinlein!" theory.
Maybe I can get programming to do a "fandom: winning by winning" panel next year? If I were running it, I'd set it up as examples of failure to integrate n00bs versus successful integration. Say, that convention with the really restrictive kids policy versus anime conventions versus Wiscon. Unfortunately, I've never been to an anime con, so I'd need other panelists who are totally into them.
But yeah, during your copious spare time in Law School Year 3, come down and chill at Capclave. It'll be good times. Unless I'm in grad school, in which case all bets are off.
"Fandom: Refusing to Stop Losing." Or else, "Fandom: Complaining. Note that Fandom: Finding Solutions is a different panel."
Oy.
there's an entire side thing on the mostly-white raucous Erfworld crowd and some oblivion to giving the guy with the mobility issues some right of way, but that comes under the heading of "young people need to be educated" not "death of fandom oh noes".
Indeed.
that convention with the really restrictive kids policy versus anime conventions versus Wiscon. Unfortunately, I've never been to an anime con, so I'd need other panelists who are totally into them.
Your segue from that into "come down and chill" is remarkably unsubtle. *grin* Kidding.
Anyway. Yeah, Copious Free Time is always the real sticking point. But we'll see.
And I do mean all ages. From 15 year olds on up.
"I like my niche, go away."
-- Michael Walsh
Is that an effect of specific sub-genres (anime vs tv/movie vs lit), or the nature of social fandom as founded in entertainment media? Inquiring minds. I'd totally believe that Change Is Hard (tm), but is that an effect of human nature even more than fandom?
On a tangential trackm the gossip is that hardcore music fans (Tori Amos, U2) are even crazier than SF fans. But one must also consider, say, U2's wide appeal or Tori's target genre.
Maybe it's just me, but that's always sort of been how I see fandom itself, in all its guises.
Admittedly one of the reasons I sort of gafiated was that I am far more interested in attending a book festival for or heavily including genre/commercial fiction as opposed to engaging or identifying with the fannish subculture, and there's a lot more of the latter option around even in the conventions which are welcoming to newbies.
Where are these books, could you recommend some? I'd love to see a modern take on psychohistory. (I did ask this question at the panel too).
re: realism of 30's pulps
And this, I think, is the biggest problem with 'when I was younger..' discussions. People fail to separate a) the different things that sci-fi used to do differently (e.g., pulp action-adventure from sciencey sensawunda) and b) whether some of the things they personally miss (like old-school pulp) were generally good or just fit a specific taste.
re: remix culture
It is indeed awesome and was unacknowledged. However - and I say this as a remix-culture fan myself - new content and ideas need to come from somewhere; we can't remix the same sources infinitely. But then again, many of the best remix products do produce new ideas, original characters, pieces or aspects of worlds. So... yeah. Lots of thinky thoughts, nothing final to say yet.
re: non-English SF
If it hasn't been translated - and I certainly haven't noticed any, either in stores or in recommendations online, have you? - then how exactly are we supposed to acknowledge it? Yes, it probably exists. No, I don't read Chinese. Sorry?
here, have the World SF News Blog, which also covers works in translation.
Viz and Vertical are publishing sf, fantasy, and horror translated from the Japanese. Yen Press is also putting out a few titles, mostly those with anime and manga spinoffs (you may have heard of the Haruhi Suzumiya series, which is quite metafictional.)
(Almost started something similar to the read 50 books by POC challenge, except for translated fiction, because so many people fail at reading about cultures of white people that aren't theirs as well--but the timing was really, really bad. Maybe in 2010.)
I'm guilty of avoiding translations, because I get insane purist heebie-jeebies: what if it's translated wrong? At a certain point you have to get over that and accept that, well, Sailor Moon's cousin wasn't her cousin (or whatever) in the original Japanese.
and sff is everywhere around us, even in yucky girly stuff like romance which is eating the traditional genre for lunch.
And that brings us straight into the "feral fandom" discussion in other circles. Knowing all the people and in-jokes in your fannish pond is very cozy - I mean, seriously, I can crack some fans up with one sentence - but it can also quickly become stifling.
and sff is everywhere around us, even in yucky girly stuff like romance which is eating the traditional genre for lunch.
Seriously: we won the culture war. But nothing stands still, so: here we are. People have played with the original toys and made them more awesome. I always think of The Left Hand of Darkness when I think of redone SF: my favorite part of the original is actually when they're on the Ice. The gender stuff is... not that groundbreaking, now, and other people have done similar things better. (Give me a week and I might actually have some good examples.)
which is totally true, as it also applies to sports fandom--but at least in sports fandom, we know that there are millions of other people who are just as into their specific teams as we are into ours.
The myth of fannish exceptionalism has probably screwed up the literary artform more than even I give it credit for.
No, you're complaining about people complaining about programming, in their personal (if public) journal. I am very hurt.
I think that's already been done elsewhere, and if anyone's listening, feel free to pipe up with examples other than "Wiscon: greatness or awesome?"
Because I've been kind of gafiated from WSFA since June, and because of club shenanigans then and more recently, I was not interested in getting involved with programming, with the possibility of further drama. (Bill gets major kudos for having a drama-free - from my perspective - con.) I wish you would not frame this as "ase, you showed up and complained afterward, shame on you", because I feel it miscasts my experiences, and because it doesn't make you look good. I think you're a better person than this comment makes you sound, and I really wish we'd had this discussion offline.
I think a new media workshop would be well received, and also the discount memberships were a great idea. Something to think about: how does scheduling affect the new or casual-fan market? Jobs, classes, etc., are going to affect Friday afternoon attendance significantly, and may impact Sunday stuff as well. What are the fannish prime times?
Speaking of younger fans: are Capclave members in general ready for what "younger fans" really will mean? It's a lot more energy, but also possibly more rowdiness, and there's going to be a generation gap. Older fans might be able to afford cooler electronics, but who's texting and twittering and blogging the parties and panels and starting the Saturday 2 AM flamewar on the LJ comm? For a fairly extreme example, get
I'm really interested to hear final numbers on the discounted memberships, but I think that's
Another part of the answer is dependent upon how individuals veiw "the short form". There is discussion about adding new media workshops as they relate to web comics. Some will veiw this as a divergence, I think some of the web comics are a distinct but still true form of short story telling. An alternate history board I am on had a link to "The Least I Could Do?" where there was a several day arc dealing with alternate history and the killing of Hitler. I have been a daily reader ever since.
We had 25-30 Student and Military members. We may have had a few other day trippers as well. Many of those attendees came for Rob Balder's Erfworld announcement. The old and new artists did a great job of making an exciting event. This is something that could eventually lead Capclave back into the world of Art Shows as well.