he day before this column appears, the 60th World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, also known as ConJose, was in its last day. The several thousand sci-fi fans and professionals in attendance will have sat through dozens of panels, heard speeches by guests of honor Vernor Vinge (writer), David Cherry (artist) and Jon and Bjo Trimble (fans). They will have screened hundreds of sci-fi or fantasy films and television episodes, examined original art and sculpture, bought out-of-print books, stayed up late, eaten poorly, hung out in the hotel bar and/or hallways and generally had a fine time.
New relationships will have been created; old resentments will have surfaced.
Careers will have been helped; some will have been hurt.
Numerous awards will have been given out, notably the Hugo.
Among those not present—me. Not that I wouldn't enjoy it. I have merely reached an age where family commitments sometimes (though not always) trump plans for business (all right, pleasure) travel.
Besides, I've seen my share of Worldcons. Phoenix in 1978. Denver in 1981. Baltimore in 1983 (where I attended the single best party I have ever attended in my life, and I've seen some good parties). Los Angeles in 1984 and 1996. Atlanta in 1986 (where I got to assume the role of "writer to watch for" because my first novel, The Star Country, was about to be published). San Francisco in 1993. Last year in Philadelphia.
All in all, they were good times. I met other people, for example, who would become lifelong friends. I had the chance to meet godlike writers like Clifford Simak or Robert Silverberg, who had been idols from my childhood. I helped my career—The Star Country would never have gotten published in 1986 had I not met the Doubleday sci-fi editor at Phoenix in 1978. I got to visit cities I would otherwise have never seen.
More importantly, I had the chance to see just what sort of community I belonged to.
Many meetings of the mind
Mystery fans have conventions, too, of course. So do readers of romances and westerns. But I think I'm safe in saying that no genre can approach the sci-fi world for the number and variety of conventions. It's rare that a weekend passes without three cons, ranging from smaller, local operations that are attended by a couple of hundred fans, up to gigantic media-related events that draw 10,000 members.
In size, the world convention ranks right in the middle of that scale. But it is, without doubt, the highlight of any sci-fi year, the one time when the most writers and publishing professionals, not to mention various media types, get together with their fans.
No matter what you write, whether it's short stories for the online equivalent of a small press, big blockbuster fantasy novels or television episodes, you are trying to communicate with an audience. And how many times do you ever interact with that audience? Yeah, your family and friends can tell you they liked that episode of Stargate, and you can read a review of your novel.
A convention puts you face to face with dozens, even hundreds of readers and viewers. Hearing from them directly, as a group, is a fascinating and valuable experience.
Another benefit, for a writer, is simply hanging out with other writers, who face the same artistic, professional and financial challenges you do. If nothing else, you can share gossip with people who know what you're talking about.
The late Gordon R. Dickson (I met him in Los Angeles, 1984, where he was guest of honor) once likened a Worldcon to the annual meeting of The Explorer's Club, where once a year those who had been off scaling K2 or digging ruins in Machu Picchu would meet with colleagues to swap adventure stories.
Bringing the fans face to face
There is, of course, a downside to attending conventions. A con to cons, as it were.
A very different sort of writer, Thomas M. Disch, once wrote that writers who regularly attended Worldcons shared certain attitudes and experiences, and even gave them a name: the Labor Day Group. (Everyone I know who was on that list hated the idea.)
Nevertheless, there are some writers for whom Labor Day weekend is indeed the highlight of a professional year. I have one friend, in fact, who structures his whole year around several conventions: he must be at OryCon, for example, then at ArchCon, or is it MidWestCon?
He's far from the only one. It's easy for a writer to forget this, but the majority of convention attendees are fans, and a good many of these also seem to follow a regular circuit of regional cons, always winding up over Labor Day at Worldcon.
(It reminds me of the Deadheads who followed their beloved band, the Grateful Dead, from concert to concert for years at a time. Maybe it's a coincidence, but my friend the con-going writer is also a Deadhead. Hmmm.)
So as those of you at ConJose wander dazedly through your Monday panels, thinking about the trip home or perhaps that dead dog party, I will be battling three deadlines and remembering conventions past:
That local convention in Tucson, Ariz., in the spring of 1977, where I heard a writer named Alan Dean Foster proclaim that there was a new movie headed to theaters that would change the way sci-fi was filmed and appreciated. "It's 'Doc Smith,'" he told his listeners, citing the classic writer of sci-fi adventures. The movie, of course, was Star Wars. Yeah, it would have been hard to miss, since it was featured on the cover of Time magazine when it was released some months later.
But thanks to Alan Dean Foster, I was looking for the film long before.
There was another convention where I happened to sit next to a more experienced writer (I had published two stories, he had published four novels) during a screening of George Pal's War of the Worlds. Both of us had seen the picture several times, so I listened as this writer critiqued it, noting the homage to Sergei Eisenstein's classic film Potemkin, pointing out places where the film had been flipped, so that the same piece of footage could do double duty. It was a fascinating, even formative experience for me.
Oh, heck, now I wish I was there. ConJose, is it too late to register?
Among Michael Cassutt's deadlines are a script for Showtime's Odyssey 5 and a novel (Tango Midnight) for Forge. His collaboration with astronaut Thomas Stafford, We Have Capture, will be published by Smithsonian in October.
