knew that today would be a day of reflection simply because it's August 15 ... but more about that later. What I didn't know was how contemplative I'd become thanks to last weekend's World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow. It was the first time that I'd been in Scotland since the last Glasgow Worldcon exactly 10 years ago, and surprise, surprise, my mind works the way all human minds do. When enough years pile up to equal a decade, we assign special meaning to it. Though in reality, a 10th anniversary is no more special than a ninth or 11th, somehow we make it so, the way when we look up at the moon and subconsciously mold the terrain into a man staring back.
So even as I was enjoying living in the now of the convention, a part of me kept looking back to the past. But I wasn't entirely to blame. Yes, I'd made arrangements to meet with many writers and editors I hadn't seen since 1995, encountering them in the same hotels and restaurants. But is it my fault that I never seem to be placed on forward-looking panels titled "Where Do We Go From Here?" The programming itself had me abandoning the present and future for the past.
One program item, titled "Social Science and Social Satire: The Work of Robert Sheckley," had a group of us looking back on the long career of one of the convention's guests of honor, who was sadly unable to attend. I don't know which is more nerve-wracking—talking about a Worldcon guest of honor in his presence, or having to do justice to that presence in his absence. I didn't have a choice, and so did my best to explain to an audience who would have preferred to hear from the man himself the importance of those early classic stories and their impact on the field, while pointing out that 50 years after the publication of Sheckley's first short-story collection, Untouched by Human Hands, he is still doing important work.
Ten years is but the beginning
On another trip through history, "What Did the New Wave Do For You?", we paid homage to an SF subgenre that rocked the field in the '60s. The controversies surrounding that experiment seemed to have died down, but the discussion still generated heat as we remembered both high points and low.
In top of that, the convention even encouraged introspection by assembling photographic montages of each of the Worldcons that had been held in the United Kingdom. One afternoon, I came upon Robert Silverberg facing down his 1957 self (top). He seemed bemused by the brash, beardless upstart beside him. But luckily, he couldn't allow himself to feel too heavily the weight of the passing years, because the daily convention newsletter printed a note from 97-years-young Jack Williamson, who wished us all well as he told us of the two new books he had coming out.
Add these nostalgic moments together and it's easy to remember that science fiction is a continuum with a rich past. To attend a Worldcon is to step into that history, and to feel it still being written now.
But that's not the only reason I'm looking back today. I'm also doing so because (as I hinted at back in my first sentence) it's 10 years to the day since Science Fiction Weekly became an online presence (above). Since I already told you what if felt like for us to celebrate our our sixth anniversary four years ago, I won't bore you by repeating my words of pride and praise. I'll just say—thanks for sticking with us. I hope that you'll still be around in another 10 years so that we can celebrate together and look back on how the next decade turns out.
Scott Edelman started his trek to the editor-in-chief position at Science Fiction Weekly decades ago, when he began working as an assistant editor at Marvel Comics. Between these two positions, this four-time Hugo Award nominee in the category of Best Editor was the founding editor of the award-winning magazine Science Fiction Age, in addition to editing Sci-Fi Universe, Sci-Fi Flix and Satellite Orbit. Currently, he also edits SCI FI, the official magazine of the SCI FI Channel. His most recent short story appears in the new issue of The Journal of Pulse-Pounding Narratives.
