[Home] [Meeting Info] [SIGs]
[Newsletter] [Interest to Fans] [Con Reports] [Fiction] [Directions] [Links] [Site
Map] [About Us]
[Editor's Note: This material originally appeared in FOSFAX, Issue #176, August 1995. It is reprinted with the permission of the author.]
Copyright 1995 Taras Wolansky
I-Con XIV was held the weekend of March 31, 1995 on the Stony Brook campus of the State University of New York, Long Island. Guests of Honor: Author, Nancy Kress; Science and Technology, Biosphere II's Taber MacCallum; Artist, Pat Morrissey; Comics, Peter David; Japanese Animation, mecha (cartoon robot) designer Yutaka Izubuchi. The [Raymond Z.] Gallun Award went to Forrest J. Ackerman. Announced media guests were: Siddig El Fadil and Andrew Robinson of Deep Space 9, Jerry Doyle of Babylon 5, and Sophie Aldred of Dr. Who; presumably at least some of them showed up.
As has been the practice for the last few years, the convention activities were divided among three, widely separated locations. Panels, movies, and the always excellent anime program were in the Javits Lecture Center (where the entire convention used to be crammed until it got too big). The huge dealers' room and the small art show (plus media guests) were in the basketball arena, upwards of a half-mile away. While at least some of the traditional nighttime activities, including a masquerade competition, were carried on at the official con hotel, a Best Western about twenty miles away to which I never made it. (I almost forgot to mention that gaming was carried on in several locations spotted around the campus.)
Looking over the schedule, I note a lot of interesting panels which I missed, either because they were too early in the morning, or because I was watching anime at the time, or because I was bargain hunting in the hucksters' room.
Saturday afternoon, Guest of Honor Nancy Kress mulled over the question of why she--or anyone--reads science fiction and fantasy. In her childhood, she said, "every book I ever loved is a fantasy book, even when it doesn't know it's a fantasy book"; from The Boxcar Children to Little Women to the Westerns of Zane Grey.
It took her some time to discover SF proper, however. In the 1950s, her public library kept the books with rocket ships on the spines in the boys' section; the girls' section had the ones with the hearts. There was a period, she recalled, when she was mad for Gone With the Wind and did her best to dress like Scarlett O'Hara. But a boyfriend's father had these strange books on a shelf. She read Childhood's End, and realized this was what she had been looking for all her life--but she still thought it was fantasy.
Among recent books, Kress recommended Parable of the Sower, Red Mars and Green Mars, and Humility Garden. She noted ironically that "the books I read before [she discovered the genre] were in many ways more fantasy" than what she is reading now.
If, as she believes, mainstream fiction is generally better written than SF, why read SF? Gregory Benford has places his emphasis on SF's ability to extrapolate from the present and thus, as far as is humanly possible, give us the future. But Kress is not looking for that.
Perhaps it is the size and scope of SF's themes. "It's large enough", she said, while most contemporary fiction is small. But then, Cormac MacCarthy's All the Pretty Horses is "large" while some SF, like the aforementioned Octavia Butler novel, is "small". (Later, I remarked to her that MacCarthy's novel is itself a genre novel: a Western.)
It is SF's "range", coupled with its "respect for the weirdness of human potential", that attracts her most strongly, Kress tentatively concluded. In the mainstream, she continued, paraphrasing William Faulkner, mankind endures; in SF, it prevails.
John W. Campbell had asserted that the mainstream is logically a subset of SF, I reminded her from the floor. "All of it is fantasy because all of it is lies," she said; thus, both SF and the mainstream are subsets of fantasy. "When we write fiction, we say so", Octavia Butler contradicted from the audience; so with no attempt to deceive, fiction is not a lie.
Saturday evening, various "awards", like a plaque and a lei, were given out to the Guests of Honor. "I'd like to thank the Academy ... " said Peter David. There were only about 100 people at his first I-Con, he said, and only two dealers' tables--with nothing he wanted to buy. Now there were fifty dealers' tables--with nothing he wanted to buy. Nancy Kress said it was her fifth or sixth I-Con. In her experience, she said, I-Con has the most interesting scientific presentations--and the most interesting arguments in bars! It was Yutaka Izubuchi's first I-Con but, through an interpreter, he told the audience that as a young fan he had actually helped run science fiction conventions in Japan.
Gallun Award recipient Forrest J. Ackerman expressed his pleasure at receiving an award named after the author of the classic and fondly remembered short story, "Old Faithful". In preparation for an intended reprinting in the magazine, Expanse, Ackerman had reread the story, and he found it still had the old thrill.
At Saturday's award show, science GoH Taber MacCallum had mentioned his "insatiable desire" to call up old high school friends and girlfriends, while he was mewed up in Biosphere II's three-and-a-half acre enclosure. His Guest of Honor presentation, early Sunday afternoon, permitted him to go into this and other matters at greater length.
Blaming the project's public relations people for over-promising its results, MacCallum saw two main purposes to Biosphere II. First, to prepare the way for space colonies and long-duration space flights; second, to permit ecological experimentation of a kind not possible in the open air, for example, on carbon dioxide circulation. The diverse ecologies included suggest that the latter purpose was primary. I was surprised to learn that they were set up while the structure was still open to the air; "misters" had to be used to prevent the rain forest from drying out in the desert heat, and this ecosystem was not completed until after the building was sealed. A marsh was trucked in in blocks (from a shopping center site) after their ecologists had given up trying to understand and piece together such an ecosystem. MacCallum said it took three weeks to convince state agricultural inspectors of the difference between mangoes and mangroves!
Biosphere II was not entirely airtight. In spite of a system of "lungs"--vast balloons--that kept the structure always at positive internal pressure, the atmosphere turned over at a rate of ten percent a year. Even so, oxygen had to be imported. And due to the excessive cost of solar power, electricity was also imported, to run the subsurface industrial plant.
One of the things learned, he said, was that "to maintain species diversity requires a lot of human input", for example, the personnel had constantly to trim vines in the "rainforest". The "ocean", a coral reef ecology sans sharks, MacCallum dismissed as little more than a "moderately well-run, very large aquarium."
The agricultural areas turned out to be less productive than had been predicted, primarily because the structure blocked more light. The Biosphereans had to slaughter their pigs because they couldn't afford to grow fodder on land that could grow food for humans. Thus, their diet was primarily vegetarian, with only one meat meal a week. "I never want to eat a beet again!" MacCallum cried. Living on just 1800 calories a day, he lost 60 pounds. Always short of food, the Biosphereans could well understand how peasants from time immemorial had lived their lives in tune with the seasons; and why occasional feasts and feasting were so important to them.
This sort of strain caused a political split in the small community, between what MacCallum called a management faction, and a science faction.
The question was, whether to stay as self-sufficient as possible, or bring in supplies to facilitate scientific research. MacCallum said he was on the side of food and science.
Sunday afternoon, "Survival in the PC Universe" brought together satirist James Morrow, whose Only Begotten Daughter and Towing Jehovah were designed to offend a lot of people; Cinefantastique and Aboriginal SF writer Dan Persons; and John Norman, enemy of all right-thinking people.
Both Norman and Persons, who spoke of the "glass ceiling of customary morals", testified to the way editorial prejudices condition what may be published and, indeed, what is written. Norman, whose hugely profitable "Gor" series was dropped by DAW Books, said he had been promised otherwise, but the promise was forgotten once Donald A. Wollheim was gone and Wollheim's daughter was in charge.
Morrow cast some doubt on the concept of political correctness, describing it with a little intentional hyperbole as a "Republican plot"; though he did concede that at times the Left is its own worst enemy. Norman reminded Morrow of the sad case of Democratic Gov. Casey of Pennsylvania who, in spite of his political prominence, was not permitted to speak at the Democratic National Convention in 1992 because of his pro-life views. Morrow also questioned Norman's account of his blacklisting; surely market forces would see that every book that could make money would find a publisher.
Norman responded that his agent had proposed he adopt a female pseudonym!
From the floor, I suggested that even though publishing Norman might make money in the short run, doing so might injure an editor's career in the long term..
For many years, I-Con has had an outstanding Japanese animation program, at least comparable to the specialized anime conventions that have recently sprung up. This year, however, there was an emphasis on commercially available, English-dubbed videos, instead of the fan-subtitled presentations that dominated previous years. Friday evening and Saturday afternoon, one could see nine episodes of the wry and charming science fantasy series, Tenchi Muyo, about the intergalactic entanglements of a young man and several feisty females. Saturday evening, a nine-hour marathon of Ranma 1/2, about a teenager who is cursed to turn into a buxom redhead whenever he is struck by cold water. With its emphasis on clever dialogue delivered with perfect, comic timing, however, this series does not come off very well dubbed, I'm afraid. (The Japanese American student who was checking badges at the door was of the same opinion.)
Among all the lighthearted adventures and comedies, one motion picture struck a much grimmer note. Grave of the Fireflies concerns two orphans, struggling to survive in the ruin and poverty of Japan just after the end of World War II. Not to give to much away, let me just say that it is singularly uncommercial.--Taras Wolansky
Back to Convention Reports main page
Return to SFABC Home Page