Is SF fandom dying?

Cafe Society
21

John Corrado writes:

> 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.

In 1997, Disclave was at a hotel in New Carrollton. My impression was that the convention was holding together pretty good from year to year. That year, a group of people who were into bondage and discipline stayed at the hotel. I don’t know if they were actually members of the con or not. In the Baltimore-Washington area, cons in the early 1990’s were getting people who weren’t interested in science fiction but liked to hang out with other people who didn’t object to funny clothes. There was a group of Goths who would hang out at the con hotel at Balticon and Disclave every year, although apparently most of them didn’t buy a membership. We tolerated them and joked about them being “the barbarians at the gate.”

Anyway at the 1997 Disclave, one of the B&D people staying in the hotel decided to use the sprinkler system in the ceiling of the room to tie his girlfriend to. He ended up pulling down the sprinkler and it began flooding the room. He and his girlfriend immediately checked out of the hotel without telling anyone about the flooding in his room. (I was told that this guy was, as it happens, a New York City policeman.) When the people in the hotel noticed the flooding, they couldn’t figure out how to shut off the water. They couldn’t get the fire department there very fast and they didn’t think to call the national hotel office to ask about how to shut the water off. By the time that they finally shut the water off, it had caused a lot of damage.

The Disclave organizers couldn’t find any hotel willing to take them the next year, since the local hotels all blacklisted the con. It took till 2001 before they could put on a Washington-area con again. They had to change the name (from Disclave to Capclave) and the date (from Memorial Day weekend to October) so that the hotels would forget about the damage in 1997. (Balticon was happy about the fact that Disclave gave up Memorial Day weekend, since that meant that Balticon could change from Easter weekend to Memorial Day weekend.) Capclave is running well now, but it’s smaller than Disclave was.

22

If it’s dying, it’s because nobody’s into the good stuff. I’m 25, and it seems that any sci-fi “fan” I meet is into bad CG-fueled cable TV sci-fi shows and embarrassing franchise novels. Nobody within 10 years in either direction of my age knows Philip K. Dick, Thomas Disch, Roger Zelazny, Lem, etc. It’s all Stargate and crap.

23

Three dead guys and a 66 year old? If you think science fiction is dying it might be because the authors you like are.

Although I do agree with you in that I’ve always considered the science fiction in books to essentially be a different genre from the science fiction on TV or movies (or media tie-ins).

24

Heh. I’ve got a filk compilation CD with a song on it to the tune of “The Titanic.” It begins:

Oh, they held an SF con in New Carrollton, M-D
And there were some folks who were into B&D
When a New York City cop figured he would be the top
It was wet when that sprinkler came down!

It was wet
It was wet
It was wet when that sprinkler came down!
Disclave '97
Two drunken fen
Who were into S&M
It was wet when that sprinkler came down!

25

It surprises me you say that. I’m not a science fiction reader, but my husband is, and both of us have ended up in lots of conversations with people. Science fiction seems to be seen as grim and sterile. Fantasy is seen as childish.

26

Have people considered the possibility that the decline in science fiction convention attendence has nothing to do with science fiction but with the decline in many sorts of social organizations? Do you know the “Bowling Alone” theory of Robert D. Putnam?:

Putnam noticed that many sorts of social organizations have decreased in membership over the past few decades. It could be then that the decline in s.f. con membership is about the drop in social capital, not about anything to do with s.f. itself. Alternately, for those who don’t believe Putnam’s theory and think that, while some organizations have dropped in membership, others have increased, it may be that s.f. cons are one of the declining organizations, but the slack is being taken up by other organizations.

27

Dragoncon is still pulling them in by the tens of thousands. Of course, they’re open to goths, anime people, gamers, and people who just like to party.

28

It depends upon which science fiction you’re reading, and who you’re hanging out with. But my experience with SF is that a great deal of it is definitely optimistic. Practically all of Heinlein is. Most of the Old School was pretty optimistic aboutScience and Man. Even when the New ave came in it wasn’t unmitigated depression and paranoia. Certainly everything wasn’t optimistic (nor should it have been), but there has been a general sense in SF that Man can alter things for the best.

As for fantasy being “childish”, that’s an entirely different things. You can compile a pretty objective list of books and stories and rate most as optimistic or pessimistic and get most people to agree with you. But whether something is Childish is a judgement call. If you define any fiction with magic or supernatural elements as childish (even a long, well-thjough-out work with deep roots and universal concerns, like Lord of the Rings), then that’s all for it, and no further discussion can be had.

Lots of us don’t feel that way.

29

Very interesting thread! Thanks!

In Atlanta during the 70s Trekkies were the epitome of eye-rolling but they had their own cons and were well attended. Ok, they were part SCA but fun. The science fiction clubs were another matter and you kept your Trekkie interests to yourself.

Fast forward to the WorldCon in the 80s and it’s a different matter. Everybody and everything was flying the freak flag. I will never forget the lady in the Uhura uniforms (she had all of Uhura’s outfits and wore them in rotation) and made her miniature dacshund identical uniforms. But there was also giant K’nurr from C. J. Cherryh’s series as well. There was nudity and every genra was embraced, but that’s a WorldCon, right?

Fast forward again to Dragon*Con. Goths, furries, Harry Potters, fairies, families of Star Wars troopers, a phlanx of Storm Troopers, Ghost Busters, anime, robots, dragons, wizards, drum circles, pirates, ghosts, gypsies, comicbooks, day care, you name it. Roughly 25,000 attendees and one of Atlanta’s biggest conventions.

I think the dealer room tells the real story, as others have suggested. T shirts are king and actual books are in small corners, other than the manga. I feel bad to have contributed to this because I’ve been a hard core SF reader since the 60s but few of the newer writers interest me. The ones I like are less productive and more willing to use thier name in ‘shared universe’ projects. So I’ve moved more towards horror & occult because the field is livelier and manga because the stories are so engaging.

Can it be revived? The hardcore, hardback SciFi fans? I think they’ve expanded their interests since the publishing industry is ultra conservative and prices force the mid-list authors out. Now, if we could clone Heinlein, Zelazny, Bradbury, Pohl, Bester and all the old greats to get writing, dammit! we might have a plan.

Oh yeah, wake up Varley and Gibson and the other currently living guys and tell them to get to work! Raise the mighty Pen and smite the CGI!

30

Well, of course. If you read sf or fantasy, you weren’t among the people I was talking about.

Someone said that sf is wrongly perceived as optimistic by people who don’t read it. In my experience, people who don’t read sf view it as grim and sterile, and people who don’t read fantasy view it as childish.

31

Gardner Dozois publishes a Yearly Compilation of Sci Fi short stories that he always prefaces with a Summation of year for Sci Fi. Every year he makes the point of showing how SF is GROWING despite the many rumours of its death.

There are several sectors of SF in dire straits (specially magazines) but overall, every year there are more active authors putting out more material than the previous year.

Or so he claims.

32

Your intial post doesn’t make it clear that you were only talking about people who didn’t read sf or fantasy.

In any case, I still dispute it. Surely those people who see that upbeat Star Trek and Star Wars stuff don’t think of it as grim and sterile. And not everyone who doesn’t read fantasy sees it as childish.

33

My apologies. I thought context would make it clear, since most people don’t disparage the genres they read.

As has been pointed out, quite sneeringly in these threads, sf people don’t view Star Trek and Star Wars as sf, so they can’t be used as evidence of optimism.

And I did not at any time claim that “everyone” did anything, merely talked of my experiences in answer to someone else talking about his experiences. That’s why I said, “in my experience.”

34

Right, but, as we’re talking about non-sf people, it’s certainly how they think they’re picking up information about science fiction.

35

And they could also be picking up the sneering reactions by the sf fans. I used to read Star Trek books. I don’t know if I considered them science fiction, I just enjoyed them. I don’t talk about them much because of how contemptuous science fiction “purists” can be. Once you get sneered at a few times, you start to believe that the point of the fandom is whatever is opposite of what you like. So, if you get sneered at for reading a Star Trek book, you might believe that “true” sf must be the opposite of Star Trek. (I hang out with a lot of readers, and I don’t find this contempt very often in other genres. People have their favorites, obviously, but you don’t often hear someone say, “Harry Potter isn’t real fantasy,” or “Cat mysteries aren’t real mysteries.” The closest thing is the people who read so-called “literary fiction” looking down on genre readers, or poets looking down on Hallmark.)

People distinguish between TV/movies and books, too. So that, again, in threads like this you’ll see people moan about how TV shows aren’t “real” SF. It cuts both ways. If someone sees an episode of Star Trek but doesn’t consider it science fiction because it’s on TV, then they won’t extrapolate the general geniality of Star Trek to science fiction. For an example, I read mysteries. I was talking to a coworker about how I like to read mysteries and he said that he hated mysteries. Hated them. He hated how they looked for clues and caught the bad guys and it all revolved around crime, etc. His favorite TV show? CSI.

What’s funny is when each group tries to distance themselves from the other, using the same criteria. So an sf snob says, “Star Trek isn’t real sf because it’s on TV” and that’s an attempt to put Star Trek down, while a non-sf reader might say, “Star Trek isn’t real sf because it’s on TV” and that’s an attempt to build it up.