Is SF fandom dying?

Cafe Society
1

Inspired by posts #8 and 10 in this thread – which has already spawned this thread, but I’m starting this here thread to speculate about the future of SF fandom as a subculture and range of amateur appreciation activities, as opposed to the future of hard SF as a literary genre.

Is the community of SF trufen really aging, without replenishing its ranks with younger recruits? Exapno Mapcase and RealityChuck seem very sure they know what they’re talking about. OTOH, I go to a lot of SF cons and I’ve never been to one without large numbers of teenagers in attendance. (In fact, I once went to an anime con in Tampa by mistake, thinking it was a general SF con, and an overwhelming majority there were teenaged or even preteen girls dressed as anime characters – but that’s rather a fringefandom outlier phenomenon . . .)

If the SF fan community really is dying/aging/shrinking, why?

Can anything be done to save it?

2

Stroon.

I agree – I’ve beenm to quite a few cons, and the membership isn’t made up of doddering old fansd like myself. I’ve met quite a few young authors as well, but no big names among them.
I don’t doubt at all that the field is changing – I don’t recognize half the names at my local B&N anymore. But I can’t say that the number of books or authors have shrunk. Even discounting the Star Trek/Star ars/ what have you series and the comic and manga sections, the SF/Fantasy section doesn’t seem noticeably small at all. It’s one of the largest sections in the store, in fact.

3

Are these “media” cons or “book” cons which have all the young people? Just wondering…

Sir Rhosis

4

Having run a con since 1994 (Albacon), definitely. Most of the people I see at them are people I saw back in '94, and even ten years before that. The younger fans tend to be gaming or anime or comic fans; if you look at the literary programming, the audience is small and older. In addition, the younger fans tend to come once and do not return.

We have a special rate for college students to attract younger readers. I don’t think we’ve ever had more than a half-dozen people taking us up on it – total.

One answer is to bring in people like the anime fans you mention. Anime first was featured at general SF cons (back when they were still calling in “japanimation”), but the literary fans tend to be suspicious of it.

As for the aging: Locus runs a reader’s poll each year (now a general online poll), and the age stats clearly show those responding are aging.

Clearly, tapping into the gaming/anime/webcomic fans would be a good way to go. The problem is bringing them in. We’ve done them all, but our attendance has remained steady.

We’re skipping a year – not due to any problems, but because we’re running World Fantasy Con* in 2007, and can’t do both – but we’d love any suggestions for 2008.

*WFC, BTW, is one type of literary con that works: it gets attendance of around 1000 and focuses entirely on written works – no masquerade, no video, and no media panels. But it’s also more a professional con for writers and editors (though fans are welcome). And the price of attendance – currently $125 (but worth is) plus hotel – is a hurdle for younger fans.

5

From my understanding, that kind of movement is what killed Disclave, the Washington D.C. area sci-fi convention; 70% of the con-goers in the late 80’s to early '90’s were media fans and general fans - Trekkies, Japanimation watchers, D&Ders and LARPers, etc.

The old-schoolish sci-fi fans hated the media and general fans, considering them “Not real sci-fi fans” and generally immature and uneducated about what real science-fiction was. And because the old-schoolers ran the convention itself, they pushed for more and more upscale hotels to try and price out the younger media fans. Unfortunately, the upscale hotels weren’t interested in putting up with the ‘antics’ of science-fiction fans, and the old-schoolers refused to go to cheaper hotels that would take the business, and so Disclave stopped running.

But I have that all second-hand via rumors and innuendo, so maybe Wendell Wagner will come in here to set the story straight.
In any case - I think a lot of it has to do with public opinions of what “science fiction” means. It isn’t just that it’s a geeky interest; the rise of manga and comic book movie over the last ten years has proven that geeky interests can still be growth markets. The problem is that there’s a general perception that science fiction is optimistic. There’s too much clean-cut, square-jawed, heroic figurehood about it… same reason that Westerns - aside from the occasional “realist” picture like Unforgiven or “ironic” pictures - no longer appeal. The mass culture is too cynical and jaded to accept stories of man’s indomintable spirit in the way that it did in the '50’s and '60’s.

6

No, what killed Disclave was kinky sex.

Really.

A couple of fans – not convention members, but hanging out at the con – took a hotel room and decided to have a little kinky fun by tying the woman up.

To a sprinkler head.

The sprinkler snapped and the hotel flooded, causing upward of $50K of damage (Here’s a picture). Fire alarms went off (at 5:00 am) and everyone was evacuated.

Though these weren’t con members, the hotel didn’t want Disclave back. Hotel negotiations are very tricky these days, and they were unable to get a replacement (since any hotel probably called the one they left, it was an uphill battle).

After a few years, they came back again as Capclave.

7

Well, that’s what I was kind of alluding to in the “upscale hotels weren’t interested in putting up with the ‘antics’ of science-fiction fans”. Disclave could have survived that and moved forward, but only by switching to a cheaper hotel; but moving to a cheaper hotel would have meant allowing more of the “riff-raff” along (like those same fans who destroyed that room), and so they decided to simply not hold a con rather than do that.

Again, I’m getting that information from a friend who was involved in Disclave, and who claimed that she could have gotten a hotel together for Disclave with no problem, but that the con staff simply wasn’t interested in something too “low rent”. It’s quite possible she was distorting facts to match her opinion, but she and several other people involved in trying to clean up from that fiasco held the opinion that Disclave could have survived if it weren’t for the giant rift between the poor, college-age media fans and the upper middle-class middle-aged sci-fi fans.

8

Granted it’s been about 6 years since i’ve been but I always saw a nice mix, young and old, media and print at LosCon in Burbank.

9

I’m not much of a congoer, but I did go to the World Convention this year, held at the Anaheim Convention Center.

That probably skewed attendance, since many people brought kids along because the con center is literally across the street from Disneyland. Even allowing for that, there was a nice mix of ages in sight.

The real question is what the interests were of the younger fans. I spent a lot of time helping out at a table in the dealer’s room that sold only books. Virtually no young fans stopped to look. They walked by on their way to other things, but I don’t have a good sense of what they’re buying.

As Chuck says, people who have been going to cons for years - my first was in 1969 - can’t help noticing that the average age of congoers has increased by a couple of decades. And younger fans are overwhelmingly media/gaming/anime fans rather than book fans. It’s hard to imagine anyone in the field saying something different. I certainly haven’t heard a single person say otherwise in decades, but have listened to endless discussions of what we can do to reach the younger fans, all fruitless.

Everybody is holding their breath waiting for the Harry Potter effect to kick in. Potter is a true cultural phenomenon. The first Potter novel was published in the U.S. in 1998, which means that her core fans are just beginning to be independent enough to go to cons on their own. Will they? Will even one percent go? One percent of the Potter audience would probably double the size of active fandom. I haven’t heard of any signs that the oldest trailing edge of the fans who first picked up the books are continuing with genre published fantasy.

It may happen. I think it would be great for the field if it does. I’m not optimistic, though.

10

Part of the problem may be declining intrest in science, & poor science education.

11

Then what’s the state of fandom in other countries where science education is better?

12

Good question!

Non-Yank Dopers?

13

Sci-Fi fandom died when people stopped mailing each other mimeographed (and dittoed) fanzines.

14

Why assume than convention numbers are an accurate indication of the number of SF fans? I’ve been reading science fiction for over thirty years and have bought thousands of science fiction books. But I’ve never attended a single convention or had an interest in doing so.

15

That tallies with my experience in fandom (which ended roughly 1994). If you weren’t a “book” SF fan, you weren’t a real SF fan – movies, games, other media just didn’t count.

And it was the book fans (at least in my area) who did the fanzines and such. The gamers, anime, media fans just weren’t interested in such things.

I do think the book SF fandom is dying – but since books aren’t the only form of SF, there will be other fandoms growing.

All of which is just MHO based on my experience.

16

IANASMOF.

In my opinion, the short answer is yes, traditional SF/F fandom is declining, and barring some sort of massive social change, it is not likely to spontaneously revive.

Why? In one word and one article or less: the internet. Almost all of the functions traditionally performed at conventions can now take place on-line.

Want to discuss the political implications of Honor Harrington’s latest naval adventure? You can log onto any number of chatrooms or discussion forums.

Want to show off media to your friends? We have YouTube for that.

Want to get fandom-related items from dealers that you can’t get anywhere else? Well, with Amazon.com and eBay, there is extraordinarily little available in dealer’s rooms that you cannot purchase for flatly less elsewhere.

People can talk online, game online, and in some cases can even directly communicate to their favorite authors online, and get a rapid and personalized response. More and more, the primary reason to attend a convention is solely to attend a convention.

The Harry Potter effect was mentioned. I humbly submit that people expecting this effect to kick in examine the truly staggering amount of Harry Potter slash available online. Folks mature enough to attend conventions are interested in Potter, and in massive numbers. But just because they are SF/F fans does not make them congoers. If conventions are to survive, they need to provide a service that the Internet does not provide for free or for cheaper. Some cons do this. Others do not.

17

You fall into the category of the MITSFS slogan “We’re not fans, we just read the stuff.” Me too.

I haven’t been to a con since Noreascon in 1972, and I wonder if some of the problem is that reading sf is no longer an odd and different hobby. When I was in high school, there was still one older bio teacher who made fun of my reading choices. Who today would look oddly at anyone reading an sf book?

I don’t even remember the last time anyone defended sf as being more than “Buck Rogers stuff.” Being an sf fan these days for most people is no more controversial (or engaging) than being a baseball fan.

I wouldn’t have much hope for Harry Potter fans. I wonder how many legs it will have after the last book and movie come out. Unless there are a lot if spinoff novels :eek: the questions will be answered and people will move on.

18

But science fiction has never had much to do with science; science was just the trappings of the story.

I agree that the Internet has replaced conventions as the place where SF fans meet. The problem is not just that book readers find comrades online, but that there are fewer people reading books. Again, the people who, back in the 60s, would be reading SF books are more likely to be gaming, or into anime. People are just more visually oriented.

The “We’re not fans; we just read the stuff” contingent was always there, and only a small percentage of SF readers went to cons at all. I never did; my first con was in 1979, when I was 27, and I didn’t go again for another five years (when I was published and started attending regularly). I can’t see why the ratio of those who go to cons to those who read SF would have changed drastically

Fandom is going to evolve and be more and more an online community, with a handful of successful conventions a year. You’ll have a Worldcon, and World Fantasy, and major regionals like Boskone, Lunacon, and Westercon, but the small conventions are going to struggle. We made money in the early years of Albacon, but we lost our cushion in one year two years ago, when we moved to another hotel (and there were no cheaper choices). When I ran it last year, we were buying rooms at the last minute to meet our room-night quota. This despite being well-regarded, with a massively popular Guest of Honor (Terry Brooks – not my cup of tea, but if sales meant anything, he should have drawn the casual fans) and an excellent facility. We did a little better this year, and should be in very good shape for 2008, but it boils down to one or two planning errors and we’d be out of business. We have tried all sorts of things to draw people in – gaming, anime, webcomics, etc. – but our attendance remains stagnant with a core group coming every year and a few people showing up once and never returning. People who show up and who return are few and far between, and are usually made up of authors who had a good time and long-time fans who decided to give us a try and liked it.

Cost is a big problem: hotels used to be willing to cut a convention a break, since they didn’t get much weekend convention bookings, especially for holiday weekends. But now they can fill rooms and SF cons are at a disadvantage. Memberships are around $50 and increases are difficult, since people are paying their own way. That contrasts to a business convention that can charge $400 to join, and will get it since most people are on expense accounts. Since the business convention pays more, it gets priority.

So the economics are dismal.

19

Well, ok, in the category of “things conventions can provide that the internet can’t”, how about masquerades? I attended my first Arisia when I was 3, and I’ve probably seen ten or fifteen Arisia masquerades by now. They’re always great fun, and the video is never as good as the real thing.

20

Not many cons run big masquerades anymore. There are several reasons for this, which include budget, (a good masq takes up your main auditorium/function room for over half a day, including set-up and tear-down) lack of entries, and lack of interest on the part of the convention committee. There may not be an active local group that costumes and knows -how- to run a masq to support the con.

However, SF costuming is not dead. There’s an active interest organization, the International Costumers’ Guild. There’s an annual convention just for costuming, CostumeCon (CostumeCon 25 will be in 2007 in St. Louis, come visit!). In the entire SF costuming circuit, there are only two conventions that are considered ‘international level’, CostumeCon and WorldCon.

The local SF lit con, Archon, throws a beautiful, well-run masquerade. I’ve worked it backstage, and the amount of organization and heart that goes into it is astounding. This year it had over 35 entries, a staggering number for a lit con. It’s worth noting that Archon has survived as a lit con by diversification - making the anime fen welcome by offering a small anime programming track, inviting media guests in a limited way, providing a well-appointed gamer’s area.

Right now, the SF costuming crowd is experiencing a bit of culture shock as they run into the anime cosplay crowd. Both groups know they can learn from each other, but there has been a bit of friction as adjustments are made. Still, things look promising with CostumeCon and the ICG making an effort to be anime-friendly and the cosplayers being patient with the old dinosaurs and asking for advice for their conventions and events. A lot of the older folks are discovering they really like anime, and that helps, too.

Sorry to go on for so long. I’m actively involved in both anime fandom and the costuming fandom, so this is something I could really answer.