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[Editor's Note: This material originally appeared in FOSFAX, November 1997. It is reprinted with the permission of the author.]
Copyright 1997 Taras Wolansky
LoneStarCon 2, the 55th Worldcon, was held August 28th through September 1st, 1997, at the San Antonio Convention Center, and nearby hotels, in San Antonio, "Republic of Texas". Guests of Honor, author/editor Algis Budrys and author Michael Moorcock; Artist, Don Maitz; Fan, Roy Tackett; "Master of Toasts", author Neal Barrett, Jr.
San Antonio has got to be one of the most convenient convention cities I have ever visited. You don't even have to cross the street to go from the hotels to the convention center: you just walk along the canal, below street level. Or go along the canal in the other direction and you come to the handsome Rivercenter Mall; walk through the mall and you are half a block from San Antonio's most important historical site: the Alamo.
I visited the Alamo Thursday morning, and ended up staying into Thursday afternoon, missing the beginning of the convention. The outer wall of the fort is gone, buried by the city's expansion. The main building, the old mission church, has been given a roof (which it lacked in 1836) and has been made into a museum; the other surviving building, the Long Barracks, has also been made into a museum, and is the more informative of the two. It contains several remarkable letters, including Col. Travis' desperate request for assistance. I was also interested to learn that in Texas in 1836, Americans vastly outnumbered Mexicans. After all, the reason the Mexican government had been offering American colonists 4000 acres free of charge and no taxes for six years was because Texas needed Indian fighters, not peasants.
One of the more touching displays at the Long Barracks was a list of all the men who died, with their places of origin. They came from all over the United States; but also England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany--and one fellow from Denmark. Thus it is appropriate that the visitors, too, come from many countries. At one end of the Long Barracks, I heard people talking in German; in the middle, in French; at the other end, a young woman asked a question in Russian.
Late Thursday afternoon I attended my first panel of the convention: "Alternate Histories & Alternate Futures", with William Sanders, who admitted to writing a few; fan critic Evelyn C. Leeper, one of the judges for the Sidewise Award for alternative history; FOSFAX editor Tim Lane, who puckishly urged us to "forget about minor details like literary qualities"; Brian Burley, who has written but not published alternative history; moderated by historian/SF author Harry Turtledove, who said "unusually rash" editors have actually published his.
I don't recall if anybody mentioned Murray Leinster's seminal 1934 story, "Sidewise in Time", which gave its name to the aforementioned award. The book that got Harry Turtledove started came out a few years later. Lest Darkness Fall, by L. Sprague de Camp (1939), starts out as a time travel story and turns into alternative history as the protagonist, Martin Padway, tries to prevent the disasters he knows are about to engulf sixth-century Italy. Other than starting him on the road to his career, his marriage, and his three children, said Turtledove, Lest Darkness Fall didn't affect him at all!
Lane thought that part of the appeal of the genre lay in the way slight changes could lead to wildly different outcomes. For example, generals used to lead from the front, so a stray bullet could easily change the course of history.
Sanders liked the term, "cliological fiction", which someone had dreamed up. He wondered why alternative history is considered science fiction at all: certainly, if time travel is involved, or if aliens invade, as in "Winds of War of the Worlds, or whatever it is", Sanders said, chaffing Turtledove over his alternative World War II series, "Worldwar". Most SF fans are history freaks, he said, and alternative history is a way to sneak it into SF.
Leeper, who had attended the same Readercon presentations by Kim Stanley Robinson that I had, quoted a Robinson aphorism: "Science fiction is the history that we cannot know." (Robinson conceived of SF as jumping off from any point along the time line of recorded history. Alternative history differs from most other SF only in its jumping off some point in the past, instead of taking off from the present moment. And then there is prehistoric SF. At one point Sanders said, "I was going to write one of those prehistoric romances and call it Hominid Nurse!")
In fact, alternative history predates the science fiction genre. The earliest known example, said Turtledove, is found in the works of the Roman historian Livy, who wondered what would have happened if Alexander the Great had marched on Rome. (He concluded they would have kicked his ass, big surprise.) Like the modern writer of alternative history, Livy sought to "change one thing, and extrapolate from that."
Many SF writers--Heinlein, Asimov, Anderson--have done "future histories", noted Lane. As they are overtaken by events, future histories turn into alternative histories, agreed Turtledove. But what precisely made Heinlein's future history suffer this fate, he questioned. Space travel proved more expensive than expected; the raising of environmental concerns was unexpected; society has become increasingly risk-averse. Heinlein himself said he considered his work as alternative history, Burley reminded us. (Speaking of being overtaken by events, when the Berlin Wall fell, S.M. Stirling had a contract for a World War III novel, he informed us from the audience. At least he got paid!)
San Antonio's most famous monument is associated with plenty of "alternate history" itself, Lane pointed out. The conflicting stories of the eyewitnesses to the fall of the Alamo have perplexed historians for generations. Similarly, there are "lots of alternate histories" in the memoirs of Civil War generals, said the author of Guns of the South.
Remarking on all the Civil War spin-offs of recent years, Leeper said, "Ken Burns has a lot to answer for!" A touch defensively, I thought, Turtledove explained that he was half way through the writing of Guns when Burns' TV series was first broadcast. He felt, refugee historians like S.M. Stirling and Judith Tarr--and himself--naturally tend toward writing alternative history.
An unusually, even surprisingly well-qualified panel turned out noon Friday for "Vox Popula/Vox Ex Machina: The Politics in SF". Michael F. Flynn was a Democratic committeeman in Colorado, and his latest novel, Firestar, deals with politics. (Flynn, with a twinkle in his eye, on hearing that this panel is one of the few not being officially tape recorded: "I guess we know where we stand!")
Elizabeth Anne Hull, a 1996 Democratic Congressional candidate (presumably in a hopelessly Republican district), teaches an SF course which includes political novels like Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Starship Troopers. Frederik Pohl, SF writer and editor extraordinaire, a Democratic committeeman in New Jersey for years, managed the Congressional campaign of the aforementioned Ms. Hull, his wife. (But call her "Mrs. Pohl" and you'll get a chewing out.) Joe Haldeman, writer, teaches an SF course at MIT which includes such books as LeGuin's The Dispossessed and Heinlein's Starship Troopers. ("I disagree with everything in Starship Troopers, but I can't stop turning the pages!")
Allan Cole, fourteen years a newsman, whose "Sten" series is heavily political, is collaborating with a Russian author on an alternative history in which the Cold War didn't end. And lastly, John Gibbons, a new writer, pointed out that science fiction mostly concerns itself with the extremes of politics, not the day-to-day reality.
Flynn agreed with Gibbons' comment: politics in SF is all corrupt or all noble. In real life, "the opposite sides firmly believe in the rightness of their cause" and have reasons for the positions they hold.
Once again the discussion turned to Heinlein, as Gibbons brought up Double Star--in which an unemployed actor impersonates a political leader--as an example of a good political SF novel. Before he turned to science fiction, Heinlein actually ran for Congress, noted Haldeman. And his opponents smeared him, alleging he was the relative of a Nazi gauleiter, added Pohl. Pohl thought it was interesting to compare two of the books already mentioned. LeGuin's Dispossessed concerns the failure of utopia; and the libertarian society established in Harsh Mistress eventually falls apart, Heinlein tells us several books later. In Heinlein's work, said Gibbons, freedom can only survive on the frontier.
Calling himself an anarchist--though he later hedged--Haldeman thought the anarchic Internet was a model of how the future of politics will be. He has "no idea of the shape" it will have, but it's "inevitable". (To me, it sounded more like the expression of a faith than a reasoned conclusion.)
By contrast, Pohl's hopes were more modest. His novel of urban life in the future, Years of the City, contains some ideas he'd like to see tried, like the "selective service Congress"--which appears to be a serious application of William F. Buckley's wisecrack about preferring to be ruled by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book than the faculty of Harvard. Experience has made Pohl less optimistic: once, he had thought women politicians would be different (he should have studied his history), but then Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher came along.
The state of democracy at the end of the 20th century came up for discussion. We may be getting a distorted picture, said Flynn, because of the "'boredom factor--when politics is working well, there are no headlines." To a chorus of disapproval from the other panelists, Allan Cole questioned the universal value of democracy, in all societies and all times. Flynn objected to what he (pejoratively) referred to as the idea that while we can handle democracy, those inferior people over there can't. (If we really believed in democracy as fervently as we say, it later occurred to me, we would abolish the Supreme Court and the Bill of Rights.)
Late Friday afternoon, "The Future of Liberty" was examined by panelists from all over the political spectrum: Howard V. Hendrix, who made a point of telling us his novel, Light Paths, is "a civil libertarian utopia" (liberal wimp!); Brad Linaweaver who, tongue in cheek, announced that the panel is "brought to you by--Free Space", the (small-l) libertarian SF anthology edited by him and Edward E. Kramer; Jack McDevitt, who said as far as censorship is concerned he is "unaware of external influences" on his work; Victor C. Milan, whose inexplicable absence from the aforementioned anthology was never accounted for; and Gene Wolfe--in black suit, bushy moustache, and wide-brimmed hat, not the Gene Wolfe I'm used to--who urged us to study Sparta, the antithesis of liberty.
Addressing the topic of the panel, Hendrix sought to differentiate himself from the libertarian position as he understood it. We are not "atomic" individuals, he said; liberty is possible only within the context of a society.
The "future of liberty" is (the obverse of) the future of the State, said Linaweaver. While he loved seeing the red flag come down at the Kremlin--for him, this justifies the Reagan Presidency--nonetheless the American Empire remains alive and well.
Not for long, said Milan. The government will collapse soon: it can't pay its own bills! But governments have never been able to pay their own bills, Linaweaver responded; that's why war was invented. If government does collapse, what will take over the role of government, worried McDevitt; and anyway, his impression is we're freer now than ever before. Governments paying their bills is "a real non-problem", said Wolfe. They can print all the cash they want.
Will the vast wealth created by continuing economic growth lead to greater liberty? Linaweaver was pessimistic. For Milan, the issue is, do you believe government can run your life better than you can. More to the point, said Wolfe, the vast majority of Americans believe the government can run other people's lives better than they can!
Perhaps a member of Wolfe's vast majority, McDevitt said our freedom is threatened not by the State (from the audience: try not paying taxes!), but by religious groups.
At one point, Wolfe had expressed the wish that 1st Amendment supporters (e.g., the ACLU) and 2nd Amendment supporters (e.g., the NRA) would learn to work together in support of the Bill of Rights. After the panel, I said this assumes the 1st Amendment supporters are really in favor of freedom; as opposed to using selective application of free speech as a political weapon, as I suspect. I'm very much afraid you're right, said Wolfe.
Saturday morning, more politics, with (somewhat incoherently titled) "Ethics in SF: Activism--Every Action is a Political Action". The panelists were: superfan Jay Kay Klein, who said "politics makes strange bedbugs"; Martha A. Bartter; short story writer Beverly A. Hale; academic Bradford Lyau; and moderator J.R. Dunn, who said that where a left-winger is called an "activist", a right-winger is a "fanatic". Both Lyau and Dunn have worked in political campaigns; "at opposite ends of the political spectrum" and with greater success on his side, said Dunn.
The question of science fiction as a source of ethics was raised. Following Theodore Sturgeon, Dunn differentiated between ethics--duty to species--and morals--duty to other people. However, he noted that the utilitarian ethics associated with Analog magazine had given birth to the stereotype that hard SF is "heartless". And just to prevent any such pejorative rumors from arising about the present company, Dunn announced, "We're doing this panel for the children!" Much laughter.
For purposes of argument, moderator Dunn brought up the notion that fantasy is a rejection of both ethics and politics. There was a lot of disagreement expressed, but I waited in vain for a single example of a fantasy dealing with politics. Later, during the Q&A, I questioned this: Hale said that her fantasy novel has a variety of political systems--and religion, too (after someone else pointed out the lack of that in fantasy).
There are "fewer feudal empires in space than there used to be", Bartter noted approvingly. The typical heavy is now capitalist greed, as in Elizabeth Moon's Remnant Population. If capitalism is the only economic alternative left standing, said Dunn, the SF writer's challenge is to think of ways to make it better.
However, an audience member from "socialist" Norway disputed the inevitable dominance of capitalism. We just have to wait for the collapse of Norway, said Klein, slowed by its capitalistic elements. You'll have to wait 5000 years, insisted the patriotic Norwegian. The Vikings were the original capitalists, Dunn interjected mischievously. China is still communist, another audience member said. I disagreed: in reality, China is a mixed economy, and becoming more capitalist every day. Socialism and the market go in and out of fashion, someone else said, as the people living under each learn its flaws.
Samuel R. Delany and he are both fans of Robert A. Heinlein, said Lyau, even though they are not libertarians, not NASA supporters, not members of the Church of All Worlds. Instead, the lesson they drew from Heinlein's work was: "know the facts." Virtually every Heinlein book has a different political system in it anyway, said Dunn. Bartter and Hale recalled Heinlein's TANSTAAFL principle--"There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch"--as an influence.
Unlike most SF writers, said a woman in the audience, Heinlein pays attention to how children are to be taken care of. The typical SF protagonist is "an only child and an orphan", said Dainis Bisenieks, also from the floor.
Saturday afternoon it was time for "Alternate Space!", or how the space program might have gone, or might go in an alternative world. The participants: Allan Steele, author of The Tranquility Alternative; Michael F. Flynn, whose near-future Firestar is seen by some as alternative history; Richard Garfinkle, whose Celestial Matters is a tale of space exploration in a geocentric universe of crystal spheres; John E. Stith, author of the relativistic adventure, Redshift Rendezvous; Stephen Baxter, whose Voyage, about the U.S. continuing to Mars in 1986, made him two-for-two for the Sidewise Award; Evelyn C. Leeper, a Sidewise Award judge and fan reviewer; Stanley Schmidt, who has published lots of alternative history as editor of Analog.
A lot of old SF stories, especially the more realistic ones, are "very quickly becoming alternate history", said Steele. Take the movie, Destination Moon (1950), screenplay and technical advice by Heinlein, about an atomic rocket; or Heinlein's novella, "The Man Who Sold the Moon".
Flynn identified two major historical turning points that left us with a space program that has achieved much less than it could have. One was Harry Truman's decision to stop development of long-range rockets; Vannevar Bush said they were impossible. The second was John F. Kennedy's turning the space program away from X planes and into a political stunt.
Baxter recommended William Barton's "In Saturn Time" as a good alternative history, tinged with nostalgia and loss. He also wondered about all these stories coming out at the same time: "Why now?"
Steele said, Baxter and he were of the "same post-Apollo generation"; thus his Tranquility Alternative and Baxter's Voyage--which he was relieved not to have to write, himself! He compared it to the "Great Martian Land Rush", a few years back, when it seemed everybody was writing novels about Mars. (Baxter noted that he is now the same age as Neil Armstrong was when he landed on the Moon.) "We do have these waves" of similar ideas, agreed Schmidt, like 12 stories submitted in one week about kudzu taking over.
On the subject of alternative Russian space programs, Baxter mentioned a story about Yuri Gagarin being sent on a one-way trip to Venus; I believe it was "Fellow Traveller", by William Barton. Also, Baxter described a story of his own, "Arena", about a cover-up of cosmonauts marooned on the Moon, a sufficiently plausible-sounding scenario to cause a stir in some paranoid corners. "No point in being a science fiction writer if you can't cause a panic now and again!"
On the Russki subject, nobody mentioned Norman Spinrad's Russian Spring, or Harry Turtledove's A World of Difference--which was also part of the "Great Martian Land Rush"! But closer to home, from the audience somebody described a story, "Mairzy Doats", in which Robert A. Heinlein succeeded FDR as President--more plausible than it sounds--and sent men to the Moon on the pretext of fighting (nonexistent) Nazis. (I gotta read this story!)
On the Sunday morning after Saturday night, it was perhaps not too surprising when only half the scheduled panel, J.R. Dunn and Andrew C. Wheeler, showed up for "The Most Important Events of the Second Millennium". Dunn, a deep student of military history, came up with an offbeat turning point: approximately every 300 years, he said, horse barbarians--Huns, Vandals, Turks--knock down civilization; the Romanoff dynasty of Russia ended the cycle. He referred us to The Caucasian Battlefields, by Allen and Muratoff. (Later, somebody asked about horse barbarians in America; the Indians ate all the horses native to America, said Wheeler. But once they got horses from the Spanish the Indians were a threat for a time, another audience member said.)
Wheeler selected a more conventional choice, the printing press, which really had the effects currently claimed for the Internet. For just one thing, the availability of cheap Bibles in the vernacular was explosive. An audience member added a footnote. In the manuscript era, it was acceptable to copy material from other writers in your own work; the notion of plagiarism arose in the printing era.
Dunn's next turning point was the Founders: the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. From the floor, I commented that reading Polybius' account of the Roman constitution makes it obvious that the Roman Republic, not Athens, was the model for our government. Also from the floor: three accidents brought about the establishment of democracy in America--the ideas were in the air; Washington refused a crown; and he left office voluntarily. "This country is the triumph of the Enlightenment," said Wheeler. If we'd had this panel ten years ago, he continued, we'd have been talking about communism and Karl Marx!
Early Sunday afternoon, several packs of quick-striding people could be seen wandered the halls of the convention center, looking for the small and obscure room where the Libertarian Futurist Society's Prometheus Awards were to be given. Eventually some of them found it; and Prometheus editor Anders Monsen introduced the "toastmaster", Greg Benford. (The Hugos may have had the bigger room, but at least as far as toastmasters go the Prometheus Awards were definitely ahead.) Physicist Benford mathematically calculated that with n libertarians in the room, that meant n times 6 opinions on any subject. Still, he would call himself a libertarian. As he is not a political novelist, libertarianism doesn't play much of a role in his work--"but I do have a beard and a moustache".
Benford read the 1997 Prometheus Award nominees; once again you could make the case that the Prometheus had the Hugo beat: Michael F. Flynn's Firestar, Steven Gould's Wildside, James P. Hogan's Paths to Otherwhere, Victor Koman's Kings of the High Frontier, Brad Linaweaver's Sliders, and Ken MacLeod's The Stone Canal. There was no suspense as the winner had already been announced: Koman's Kings, which is available only from www.pulpless.com on the Internet. "The fact we cannot get a New York publisher to make a deal for this book proves we're in enemy occupied country," said Brad Linaweaver.
Koman--think of Jesus in a coonskin cap--gracefully accepted his award. He spoke of how Heinlein had made him a believer in space exploration; though he had thought it would be privately funded: "Heinlein wouldn't have lied to me!" Later, he was in ROTC until, as he put it, he realized there was no more space program; but he has been an enemy of NASA only since the fall of Skylab.
Next the Hall of Fame nominees were announced: Heinlein's Methuselah's Children (1941-1958), Niven & Pournelle's Oath of Fealty (1981), Piper's A Planet for Texans (1958) and Little Fuzzy (1962), and Vance's Emphyrio (1969). (It only later struck me that the motto on the cap I had brought to the convention, "Finuka Disposes", comes from Vance's tour de force.) J. Neil Schulman, accepting for the thoroughly absent Heinlein, said that the "Future History" of which Methuselah's Children is a part "establishes Heinlein as a prophet"; take a look at the projected headlines for April to June, 1969, or the very fact Heinlein designated the 1960s, the "Crazy Years"!
Kings of the High Frontier is a real pioneer, Schulman continued, a novel that has won recognition--a rave review by Charles de Lint in Fantasy and Science Fiction, as well as the Prometheus--without ever appearing on paper. And given the economics of electronic publishing, the 300 copies of Kings sold so far have returned a revenue to the author equivalent to that from 8,000 copies of a $5.95 paperback.
After the awards, and a few photos of the presenters and accepters ("Can you look a little more demented ...") we continued with a presentation by co-editor Ed Kramer about the anthology, Free Space. Several of the authors were, or had been in the room (Greg Benford had a scheduling conflict): J. Neil Schulman, Brad Linaweaver, Victor Koman, William Alan Ritch, perhaps one or two others. Editors Kramer and Linaweaver got into a tug of war with the publisher over Bill Ritch's story. It seems the book had come in too long and the publisher was looking to dump every story that was not by a well-known writer. "This is a book with nothing but big names--and me!" said Ritch.
Sunday afternoon, a coolly and impartially rational panel considered "Why Do People Believe What They Do?": Dan Gallagher, whose new novel, The Pleistocene Redemption, involves all religions (sez he); Paul Preuss, whose new book examines the question of suspension of disbelief and quantum theory; Lynn Ward, a small press writer whose day job is speech and language pathologist; Rob Chilson, a "thoroughgoing rationalist raised in a fundamentalist family"; moderated by the always moderate Hal Clement.
In the interest of full disclosure, the panelists were put to the question about their own beliefs and disbeliefs. "Far more people believe in the supernatural" than in UFOs, said Gallagher. "You didn't answer the question," said a woman in the audience. Gallagher said he has sensed a "loving entity". What don't you believe, asked Evelyn Leeper from the floor. That UFOs are extraterrestrial, said Gallagher.
Preuss doesn't believe in UFOs or cold fusion; he "suspends disbelief" in God. He quoted LaPlace: "I have not had need of that hypothesis." Later, he pointed out that our language permits statements that are grammatical and syntactically correct but have no meaning.
Turning a skeptical eye on skepticism, Ward said she disbelieves anyone has "a monopoly on the truth". Though under the influence of John W. Campbell Chilson started out believing in telepathy, he doesn't believe in it any more--and has been attacked by SF fans for his disbelief.
"I have been wrong terribly often in the last 70 years," said Clement. He has learned to be "doubtful", skeptical.
Gallagher thought skepticism can go too far. For example, in Charles Pellegrino's Return to Sodom and Gomorrah, naturalistic explanations of Biblical "miracles" are taken as tending to disprove the existence of God. For Gallagher, there is no reason why God could not work through such "miracles".
From the audience: Are all beliefs fundamentally subjective? My snap answer would be yes, said Clement. (I was disappointed by his answer; though presumably he did not mean all beliefs are equally subjective.) Ward simply said, "I don't know." "Truth is immutable", said Gallagher; either something exists or it does not.
Noon Monday, "Quantum Physics Weirdness: The Best Game in Town" was mostly physicist/SF writer John C. Cramer's show. Cramer is the founder of the transactional interpretation of quantum theory, which involves "handshakes" between particles, both forward and backward in time. His second was mechanical engineer Ron Collins, who described himself as "kind of a hack quantum physicist." (Two other panelists didn't show.) Referring to the legendary difficulty of expressing quantum theory without mathematics, Cramer said, "I'm going to wave my hands a lot!" He gave a list of three ways in which quantum theory violates our common sense in a significant way: 1) wave-particle duality and the uncertainty principle; 2) wave function collapse; and 3) nonlocality. The last is of particular interest to the SF writer because it seems to point to faster-than-light communication or travel: "It's tempting to think we might get into that game!"
In response to a question, Cramer went over the three interpretations of quantum theory currently in use. He insisted that the three interpretations do not result in different predictions; rather, all three are ways of understanding the same experimental results. The first is the Copenhagen interpretation, which might be described as observer-created reality. The second, the Everett-Wheeler or "many worlds" interpretation. The third, Cramer's transactional interpretation, described above. For an SF writer, which interpretation you pick depends upon what kind of SF story you want to write.
As in Cramer's first novel, Twistor, quantum physics plays a role in his second, Einstein's Bridge. As he described the witty plot, time travellers from the future interfere in our history, preventing the building of the Superconducting Supercollider, and causing other odd events such as the selection of Sen. Dan Quayle as Vice President, and Pres. Bush throwing up on the Japanese Prime Minister.
Early Monday afternoon, at the tail end of the convention, Michael F. Flynn played Donahue with a microphone for "Calamities and Bright Futures", with John Moore (and two no-shows). As Flynn likes to do, he debunked certain simple-minded doom-sayings. Overpopulation? The most densely populated large are in the world is--Europe. "Giant corporations taking over the world"? National governments have all the guns. He held up liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith for well-deserved ridicule, for insisting in a series of best-selling books, some years ago, that large corporations like IBM and General Motors and the Bell System are immune to competition! And from his experience as a business consultant, he said later, "even the largest corporations quake in fear" over decisions of mid-level government bureaucrats.
For the floor, a variety of potential catastrophes: bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics; crop monoculture creating vulnerability to devastating blights; Earth-crossing asteroids. I contributed a couple myself: the possibility of plagues with 100% fatality which once would have burned themselves out in a single tribe or village, now carried all over the world by modern transportation; and the hollowing-out of our ethical systems. (For example, poor people are more and more likely to lie about their income to welfare authorities, so public policy is increasingly being made on the basis of bogus statistics.)
A twelve-foot model of a monstrous "Bug" from the upcoming motion picture, Starship Troopers, had been placed in the exhibit area with ropes around it but without explicit identification. Presently a sign appeared hanging on the rope: "Megablatta domestica -- Lesser Texas House Roach".
Thursday afternoon, I spoke with DragonCon maven Ed Kramer. I asked him about the DragonCon/NASFiC 1995 art show fiasco, in which the display panels were squeezed so close together that only one-way traffic was permitted. The woman who designed the art show was working with a new software package, Kramer explained, and simply got the scale wrong!
During or immediately after an early morning panel, Paul Preuss said he liked the film, Contact, with Jodie Foster. But Foster is too whiny, I protested. Preuss, who knows Jill Tarter, the SETI scientist upon which Foster's character is based, admitted that Tarter is not the least whiny.
At 11:30 PM on Saturday night I was wandering the party hotel when I heard--the distant, faint sound of bagpipes. I was, of course, irresistibly drawn and, with a little luck (it was on a different floor) found the source. In the elevator lobby on the 31st floor, a young black guy in kilts was playing to raise the dead. I listened as long as he played, though I had to back some distance away from that incredible SOUND. In addition to bagpipe standards he did requests; some wag asked for "In-a-gadda-da-vida". East Coast or West Coast, remarked the piper, somebody always requests that!
I heard the fellow play again the next day in the convention center's cafeteria area, where a stage had been set up for the regular use of musicians and filkers. A middle-aged Scotswoman sitting nearby looked somewhat down her nose at him--I think she thought the raucous noise that emerged every time he prepared to play was bad form--but, she believed, he had only picked up the pipes for the first time at the Glasgow Worldcon in 1995, so his progress was remarkable.
I did only one "kaffeeklatsch" at this convention: Allen Steele's, Sunday afternoon. Because of a screw-up in the arrangements--people signed up for it both by phone and in person--we ended up with close to twenty people instead of the customary ten. I didn't take notes but one thing I remember is Steele defending the use of contemporary popular music (the Grateful Dead, to whit) in Orbital Decay, a book about the building of a solar power satellite in the early 21st century. He also handed out really neat "SPS-1 Construction Team" patches--I got one--but because of the unexpectedly large gathering he had to hand out some IOUs.
Written on the FOSFAX party flyer, Thursday night: "Tim Lane and his merry crypto-falangists".
From the party board for Sunday: "Christian fandom ... [Bldg.] TBA ... [Time] TBA". I've heard of trusting in God, but this is ridiculous!
In the tradition of the Ace Double Novels of yore, the convention newsletter was actually two convention newsletters, facing in opposite directions: Domino (named after an AI in Algis Budrys's Michaelmas) for serious business like program changes and Hugo winners; and Newsbringer (from Moorcock) for more fannish stuff like party lists.
The Hugo Awards--themselves and the ceremony--were pretty dismal. Neal Barrett, Jr., was probably the worst Worldcon toastmaster I have every seen. Nor was there much to applaud in the awards themselves; if I had to guess, I would assume that people had not read the stories and were voting according to authors they recognized. One curiosity is that in the fanzine vote Tangent led Mimosa by a wide margin right up to the last round; when picking up the File 770 vote Mimosa squeaked ahead by seven votes.
Going down the stairs in the north wing of the convention center, toward the end of the convention, I passed by a girl about fifteen, moping on the stairs; around the corner, a boy about twelve, also moping. For them, is a science fiction convention just another boring adult function their parents drag them to?--Taras Wolansky
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