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[Editor's Note: This material originally appeared in FOSFAX, Issue #151, September 1990. It is reprinted with the permission of the author.]
Copyright 1990 Taras Wolansky
Westercon 43 was held from July 5th through July 8th, 1990, in Portland, Oregon, at the Red Lion Jantzen Beach and the Red Lion Columbia River. The guests of honor spanned the spectrum of SF from A to B: Ursula K. Le Guin, Vonda N. McIntyre and Kate Wilhelm. Fan GoH was Art Widner; toastmaster, Steve Perry.
I think of this convention as Aerobicon because of the long, healthful walks one was forced take both between and within the sprawling con hotels. In keeping with the West Coast's "laid back" tradition, however, program items were scheduled to run one hour and fifteen minutes with fifteen minutes allowed for travel. (A brisk walk, I found, took you from one hotel to the other in about half that.) This confused the panel moderators no end.
But don't think of walking anywhere away from the hotels! For a while there I began to think I had entered the world of David Keller's "The Revolt of the Pedestrians". On one side the hotels verge on the Columbia River. On the other a web of roadways, liberally trimmed with fences and "No Pedestrians" signs, leads to the major bridges linking Portland and Vancouver, Washington. (The parking lot that connects the hotels actually runs under the bridges!) The convention literature warns the pedestrian to exercise extreme caution crossing local streets. And I found on several occasions, when I set forth to vary the hotel cuisine under the "Denny's" sign or golden arches that beckoned in the distance, I had to fall back, frustrated by the maze.
The program was wildly uneven, varying from fascinating to abysmal. (Looking at my notes, I find under one Sunday panel merely the comment, "I was punished by God for not attending [the] GoH [speech]".) So I will confine myself to the higher ground.
"Viability of Interstellar Empires", Friday morning, featured novelist Stephen Goldin and scientists Howard Davidson, Andrew Nisbet, and Rob Quigley. It was dominated (perhaps more than it should have been) by Nisbet, who had come down from Mount Sinai with "one-year turnaround time" graven in stone. History shows (he said) no empire can grow past the point at which it takes a full year to send a message from the capital to the most distant domains and back; which makes an interstellar empire impossible at sublight speeds.
From the floor it was objected that the reason historical empires did not extend much beyond one year travel time is that one year's travel took you just about as far as it was possible to go on the Earth's surface. Furthermore, Goldin pointed out, if people live longer (a likely prospect) their mental time horizons will be longer, too.
From there the discussion moved to _why try to establish an interstellar government; or, for that matter, why travel to the stars at all. Nisbet said the largest empires were all based on trade, but he wondered what civilizations capable of interstellar flight would find to trade.
From the floor it was argued that the possibility of relativistic weapons, missiles too fast to be seen coming, might make the Earth refuse to tolerate independent colonies. (It occurs to me this is roughly the rationale behind A. E. Van Vogt's Golden Age classic, _The _Mixed _Men.)
Nisbet pointed out, following Buckminster Fuller, that 75% of the American population are millionaires by 19th-century standards. In a few centuries our descendants may laugh at the cost of interstellar travel.
"Implications of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in SF and Reality", early Friday afternoon, gave us a group of panelists diversely qualified to speak on the issue: Howard Davidson, Rusty Dawe, Saul Jaffe, Sara Stamey and Milton Wolf. It started out as the sober examination of the future of AI (and virtual reality) the title promised. Half way along, however, it turned into something of a romp as, at Wolf's instigation, the subject became artificial or virtual _sex.
Wolf mentioned research he had done on dildoes and other sex aids. ("For the military?!" a wag interjected.) To put it delicately, male and female sexual devices are entirely incompatible in the matter of size.
What would it mean to human psychology and society if people no longer needed a partner to obtain a fully satisfactory sexual experience. Or would virtual sex merely be used as training for real sex?
From the floor it was suggested that virtual sex could ameliorate the impact of males widely outnumbering females due to sex selection, a growing trend especially in India. The panelists piously hoped the attitude toward having daughters would eventually change. "But that," said the audience member earnestly, "would still leave a bulge in the population." A half-second for it to sink in, and everyone fell on the floor.
"Is There a Trend Away from Hard Science", a little later Friday afternoon, opened with Karen Joy Fowler saying she had not been an SF reader before she embarked on her writing career. She felt the hard-versus-soft SF distinction is meaningless, because science is just another way of understanding the world, no better nor more special than other ways. (Somewhat tentatively, I nominate Fowler as the perfect example of the SF carpetbagger, one for whom SF is nothing more than a market for her work.) Thus, it should surprise no one to hear she had nothing more to contribute to the discussion that day.
Physicist Howard Davidson proposed the narrowest definition of hard SF: the characters in the story must come to understand some kind of scientific point. In that case, Greg Bear described himself as a writer of "meta-hard SF", because writing about the future you must write not about today's science but future science.
Another subject aired was how lack of knowledge of science, both on the part of readers and writers, affects hard SF. Jerry Oltion remarked that he finds it easier to sell weaker hard SF stories than fantasies, presumably because of the lack of competition. John Dalmas said that even a writer with a good science background (such as himself) can't know everything about everything; he sends out his stories to be vetted by people knowledgeable in particular fields.
I think it was Bear who criticized science education for giving people the impression science is something reserved for the handful of the elect. If he applied himself, anyone in the audience could do the job of, say, a Dr. John Cramer, until recently the director of a major physics laboratory. A few minutes later, a voice at the door: "I was told to come here and say, 'No, it's not true that anyone can do my job!'"
But Cramer was not yet finished Bear-baiting. Toward the end of the panel Bear was exploring the inadequacy of scientific knowledge even in the self-selected audience for such a panel. He asked, rhetorically, "Does anyone know why tensor calculus is no longer used in relativistic physics?" Cramer immediately piped up, "Everyone I know doing relativity uses tensor calculus!"
"Why is Fandom So White?", noon Saturday, made no headway as far as answering that question is concerned (one can get in serious trouble answering questions like that); though panelist Richard Dutcher noted that California's Green Party, to which he belongs, is in the same situation.
Steven Barnes got there a few minutes late, crying "Where are the chitlins! They promised me!" He spoke to the perennial issue of what we might call book-cover apartheid. He had once chased the chain of responsibility for portraying characters who are black in the book as white on the cover. The artist blamed the art director; who blamed the editor; who blamed the sales department; who blamed the truck drivers who actually put the books on the shelves, and who give better placement to books with whites on the cover.
Black authoress J. T. Stuart (well, she said she was black; you couldn't tell it by me) reported on Greg Bear's struggle to see that the black characters in his latest book stay black on the cover. A compromise was eventually reached: there are no people at all on the cover!
Stuart also reported that Stephen King had to fight to keep the major black character in the movie version of _The _Shining, over Stanley Kubrick's objections.
Getting a bit off the subject, Barnes said he has found he has no problems with white women--unless their husbands are present! It made him think of "warriors of different tribes butting heads". Yelled a woman in the audience: "It's your shirt!!" Which garment revealed Black Belt Barnes' muscular shoulders and much of his manly chest as well.
"Sunshine, Dioxin and Game Theory--Ecology in SF", Saturday afternoon, was put together and moderated by "Green" Richard Dutcher; but the hard-headed pragmatists on the panel--Greg Bear, George Harper, and John Dalmas--had him on the defensive much of the time.
Bear opened the discussion by insisting, tongue in cheek, that he wanted to talk about "eco-feminism, intromission, and the failures of God and Man in society." Dalmas, who has I believe a doctorate in ecology, described himself as an ecological optimist: our current problems will in the end be a "footnote in history". Harper, another old ecologist, said the Earth is currently at a peak in speciation, and that what one species considers pollution or waste, another species eats! But humans change too fast for waste-eating organisms to catch up, Bear averred. Harper admitted his own idea of an optimal human population for the Earth is about 500 million.
Bear said he agreed 90% with the Greens, but asked, is the Earth a perennial--or an annual? Does it produce seeds and die? "Both ways are natural", he said.
Dutcher spoke of his admiration for the "sustainable" lifestyle of the mainland Chinese. Which instantly raised the question of whether ecological radicalism is anti-democratic; for no people in on Earth live that way if they have a choice. Dutcher said, in its internal operations, the Green Party does everything by consensus. "A consensus of the 'vanguard of the proletariat'?" asked a wag in the audience.
Near the end Dutcher spied a small, gray-haired woman entering the room and began praising her for raising the ecological consciousness of SF in works such as _Always _Coming _Home. Who the embarrassed-looking woman was, I don't know; but she wasn't Ursula LeGuin!
"The Origin and Evolution of Science Fiction Fandom and Conventions", late Saturday afternoon, provided the interesting tidbits such panels usually do. Mel Korshak, who attained a certain notoriety as head of Shasta Publishers in the 1950s, explained why the second Worldcon was held in Chicago, far from the East Coast, where most fans lived: in the fierce fannish feuds of the time it was neutral ground.
Ben Yalow spoke of a worsening problem for fan historians: a lot of the early material is being bought up by collectors.
And no material is more sought after than anything with Ray Bradbury's name on it. From the audience, Forry Ackerman contributed an anecdote about him. It seems the young Bradbury, not sure he would survive the ecstasy of his first wedding night, took the opportunity to burn two million words of his early work that he did not wish ever to become public.
"Ethics in Fantasy, or Why Can't the Wizard Just Wave His Magic Wand?", Sunday morning, gave us several major fantasy writers leading a general discussion on the theory and practice of fantasy.
Ursula LeGuin wondered why fantasy tends to promote severely hierarchical and racist systems, especially in "high" or pseudo-medieval fantasy; her new novel, _Tehanu, is a reaction to this. Most fantasy is wish-fulfillment, said P.C. Hodgell.
Vonda McIntyre was tired of reading about "camps with no camp chores, animals you don't ever feed ..." She criticized the Tolkien pastiches which turn Tolkien on his head: he destroyed the "ring of power"; they embrace it. In most fantasy, power _doesn't corrupt, said LeGuin.
The idea of medievalistic fantasy that does not exclusively concentrate on the upper class was aired; but from the floor it was suggested that there is no reason to write this kind of fantasy at all, except for the lords and ladies! Another member of the audience pointed out that urban fantasy, so-called, concerns itself with common people.
LeGuin felt fantasy compares unfavorably with real folk-tales, which have no "moral", except that appropriate behavior lets you stay alive another day. She also said she can think of _no fantasy in which neither side is "bad".
The Art Show was not really what I expected, in a four-day regional convention. It was not as big, and much of the art was more fannish than professional. Good fannish, but fannish nonetheless. Big names were notable for their absence.
(Perhaps I've been spoiled by the East Coast cons' fortuitous proximity to Manhattan and the publishing industry.)
I was particularly impressed by a series of dioramas (if that's the word) by Al DelaRosa and Dick Stanley. One, titled "The Art Show", displayed tiny art works on tiny panels being ogled by various weird aliens wearing convention badges.
Notable among the pros present were the Dharmic Engineers: Ray Pelley (orcas drift through bourgeois living rooms); Milo Duke (ordinary scenes of people with animal heads); Rob Schouten (a stony waterfall composed of--double take--stone nudes).
I had an interesting conversation with some of the Engineers during the art show reception, Friday night.
Like the art show, the dealers' room was quieter and less populous than I had expected. For one thing, it was as far from the programming as any such room I have ever seen. As a result I only made it there briefly, a few mornings, on my way to programming in the other hotel, and after the official close of the convention. (I promised a dealer to do what I could to publicize the location issue!)
Standing on a balcony at the dead dog party I had a long, fascinating talk with a liberal academic [NFP: Bradford Lyau] about such subjects as why China failed to have an Industrial Revolution, and whether Jerry Pournelle is really a "fascist".
I felt that Pournelle is unfairly vilified; why is he notorious but not, for example, John Brunner, defender of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The academic felt Pournelle forced his views on you, while Brunner just walked by with his nose in the air, not deigning to recognize your existence. From all of which I concluded that, where Pournelle had whipped the academic in an argument (every time a right-winger wins an argument with a left-winger, another "fascist" is born), Brunner had simply snubbed him!
Perhaps Westercons are gathering places for fanzine fans; at any rate I ran into more people I knew from fanzine activity at this convention than ever before. I had a nice talk or two with Jean Lamb and tried to convince her it's a lot easier to sell a first SF novel than a first fantasy novel. I said hi to Alexander Slate and rug rat: who likes to crawl into busy doorways and idly dangle one tiny pink sneaker in the air, till her father grabs it and drags her back out of harm's way; then the process begins again. In the course of several long conversations, fan insider D*n F*tch (I must protect his identity) bared to me the esoterica and secret horrors of the uncanny fannish syndrome, Corflu.
I was especially pleased to meet Kathleen Woodbury, who helped me put out _InterdiMensional _Journal in the early eighties. (I edited, she published). Now she concentrates on helping aspiring writers get started, with her SF and Fantasy Workshop
(1193 S. 1900 East, Salt Lake City, UT 84108). Heedlessly I asked her if she had any successful "graduates". "Why, yes," she said, extending her hand toward her companion, Kathy Tyers.
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