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[Editor's Note: This material originally appeared in FOSFAX, Issue #186, date 1997. It is reprinted with the permission of the author.]
Copyright 1997 Taras Wolansky
Lunacon '97 was held the weekend of March 7th at the Rye Town Hilton--dubbed the "Escher" Hilton by fandom--in Westchester County, New York.
Writer Guest of Honor, C.J. Cherryh; Artist, David A. Cherry (her brother: the "h" was for effect); Fan, Michael J. Walsh (bookseller and publisher); Media Guest of Honor, Michael O'Hare (Babylon 5).
This is my first Lunacon report since 1994. I didn't write about this convention for a couple years because I was so irritated by its alphabetical pocket program, which every year wasted an hour and a half of my time looking things up. However, this year the concom has regained its sanity and put the schedule back in chronological order, so I'm happily writing up Lunacon again.
Or rather, I would be if I hadn't missed half the convention: I had to drive my little brother, the film prof, to Kennedy Airport on Saturday.
Between the anime program (see below), my airport shuttle service (see above), and many interesting conversations (see below), I find I have material to report on only one panel discussion: "'Down With Rambo'--Alternative Military SF". The panelists were: Susan Shwartz, who has written historical fantasy about the First Crusade; C.J. Cherryh, who has set several books during the "Company Wars"; HarperPrism editor John R. Douglas; Israeli Russian-language SF writer Leonid Reznick; and moderator Alexis Gilliland.
Shwartz said she never really had to get "beyond Rambo": she never had illusions to lose about the common soldier's life, having read Gordon Dickson's military SF classic, "Lost Dorsai", early on. She even can't help thinking about what happens to the ground troops in the Star Wars movies, she said.
By contrast, Cherryh noted that many of her books deal with war on the strategic level, and rarely from the tactical viewpoint. The strategic level brings in the reasons for a war, the cultural clashes that help spark it, and the efforts at peace-making that eventually end it. She sees trade and war as two ends of a continuum, with diplomats working away busily in between.
Douglas discussed commercial aspects of military SF. With the right cover and content, he said, a certain volume of sales is guaranteed. However, to use SF as a means to seriously examine war and the causes of war is riskier; in a sense, it's a conflict between commercialism and literary experiment.
Having traded one militaristic society (the Soviet Union) for another (Israel), Reznick tries to avoid this in his work. However, he has written about a world peace enforced by laser satellites: no utopia results, he said.
Moderator Gilliland brought up the technology of war. So many spaceships, he said, are really sailing ships: they stop and change direction with ease and without considering inertia. Shwartz, who has written both historical fantasy and military SF (White Wing), noted a similarity between ships in the two genres. She called it "the isolation of the actions": sailing ships and interstellar vessels are both largely out of contact with their home bases, with the result that "commanders are independent operators".
Future weapons will contain artificial intelligence, Gilliland pointed out; before you can fire them at something, "you have to persuade your munitions that it's the right thing to do!"
Question: What military reading have the panelists done. Cherryh said she used to teach Caesar's Commentaries. Question: Why are we always fighting aliens? In war, said Gilliland, we make aliens--monsters, subhumans--of our enemies.
Toward the end, appropriately enough, the discussion turned to how wars end. Earlier, Cherryh had warned, "Never start a war with people you can't talk to." "When both sides agree on their relative strength," said Gilliland, "the war ends."
I was going to say that this year's Lunacon Japanese animation program was weaker than usual, consisting mostly of commercially available juvenile stuff. But then I was reminded that the program had included a fan-subtitled excerpt, several episodes long, of the extraordinary Legend of Galactic Heroes, which might be called the thinking man's Babylon 5. This lengthy series tells of the long duel between Reinhardt von Lohengramm, the Alexander of an autocratic Prussian Empire reborn among the stars, and Yang Wen-Li, who just wanted to be a historian but ends up stuck with the job of defending a hopelessly corrupt democratic federation. Any anime program that shows any part of this series is above criticism, as far as I'm concerned.
As I said, this year's Lunacon Pocket Program went back to the sensible practice of a chronological listing of program items (in addition to a program chart); and in general seemed very well arranged, with not only information on what's what in all departments of the convention, but also guides to local restaurants and services. However, while I never use such things myself and would not have noticed, Michael Flynn pointed out to me that the index of program participants in the back is too inaccurate to use. The thumbnail-paring biographies were witty, though, if at times baffling: "Orthodox Jew/Geek Orthodox" "'Only architect in fandom!'" "Techno-Babe Supreme" "Ellen Datlow's cat sitter (ret.)" "Chesley nominee/Illustrator/Mom/Granny/Biker Babe" "'Schenectady's Leading SF Writer'" "Liaison to Faerie".
The souvenir book was above average, too, with color covers--and a four-page black and white portfolio--by Artist GoH Cherry. It contains the usual appreciations of the Guests of Honor, and a slightly puzzling English-language only bibliography of C.J. Cherryh's work. A bonus was three cartoons about funerals by Alexis Gilliland, who also wrote the Michael Walsh appreciation.
New Jersey fandom had turned out in force for this year's Lunacon, and I ran into most of them at one point or another. One of the places was the "Meet the Fans" party, Friday evening, a promising innovation in which representatives of various local SF clubs and conventions manned tables in one of the larger ballrooms.
Party-hopping one evening, I ran into the Gillilands. Lee Gilliland was wearing an extraordinary torque she had made of many tiny, interlinked metallic emblems and bits, something a Bronze-Age princess might have worn. (Well, perhaps without the smiling suns wearing sunglasses!) My reaction convinced me I can never be an art critic: most editors would not consider "Wow!!" a satisfactory review.
What with a late Saturday and having to check out of the hotel on Sunday, I did not arrive at the convention function space until a few minutes before noon on Sunday. So I was killing time sitting on a couch in the Westchester Ballroom lobby with New Jersey fan extraordinaire Leo Doroschenko (who witnessed what happened next), when I spied Susan Shwartz walking by, looking dapper.
I remarked to Doroschenko, "Oh, there's Susan Shwartz." In that way people have of hearing their name spoken even at a distance, she heard this and approached us. I stood; we smiled and greeted each other, shaking hands. Essaying a bit of polite flattery, I said I was sorry she didn't correspond with FOSFAX any more, which could use some more liberals; that it's more fun to discuss things with people you disagree with. Shwartz retorted that she felt it was pointless to "interrupt a circle-jerk" (her exact words).
What she said did not immediately penetrate; so still in a friendly way I suggested she was rationalizing her retreat from the continuing discussions in FOSFAX. At this, she accused me of offending her, drew herself up and stalked off in a huff.
A few minutes later it occurred to me to take down some notes on the exchange while it was still fresh in my mind. Only then did I realize just how grossly offensive and insulting her response to my friendly greeting had been; belatedly and briefly I became very angry. I'm still astonished that she said what she did. It would appear that my surmise, about her rationalizing her retreat from arguments she still smarts from losing, was right on the money.
When Shwartz was corresponding with FOSFAX I often had the feeling that as a "pro" of sorts she expected a certain deference from lower orders (i.e., fans) and was displeased when she did not receive it. I still remember one strange letter in which she speaks of how some fans, through long service, attain a status something like "sergeant major" within the field. Perhaps, like Harlan Ellison, she thinks she is a member of a higher caste, privileged to make abusive remarks to members of lower castes, to which they may respond only by humbly bowing their heads. I am as certain as I am of anything that she believes I offended her!--Taras Wolansky
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