Invasion of sci-fi fans charts new path for hi-tech humanity
Stardate, 2014, London, England, Earth : –
Ten thousand future-watchers from across the planet have converged here in the biggest ever sci-fi convention, with one thing in mind: we must open our minds to all possibilities. The common thread across a constellation of different genres that mingle real and imagined science is the need for inclusivity.
The Listeners
Anti-harassment clauses feature prominently in the code of conduct and quiet rooms have been set aside where a band of trained volunteers called The Listeners will take time out with anyone who feels belittled, bullied or bewildered. This follows allegations of sexual harassment at earlier WorldCons (world conventions of science fiction lovers).
True to a fiction form that allows transcendence into high states of being, the bodies in the convention hall are often not conventionally ‘beautiful’. The average age is over forty with a high proportion of very large humans, as well as many using mobility aids.
Cyborg-style use of technology to enhance and enable, masquerade, costuming and build-your-own-lightsabre workshops allow an even greater variety of specimens to flourish and play with new identities so that no-one will feel ‘weird’ – except perhaps the uninitiated observers who wander in with a day pass to escape the London rain in the vague hope of collecting some Doctor Who memorabilia.
Futures past
In an academic strand that reads like the Hay-on-Wye book festival on acid, researchers discuss race, gender, sexuality and queering in every medium from anime to zombies. Transformative Fandom embraces topics such as ‘Queerbaiting’ ‘Geek girls and Wonder Women’ and the rather unsettling ‘ Being a fan of Problematic Things’.
In the more straightforward literary tradition, The Hugo Awards recognise excellence in writing. Iconic films – old and new – show that the futures authors imagined in the past have come true, but not in the ways we imagined. The 1954 BBC version of George Orwell’s totalitarian nightmare 1984 is on the programme and in 2014 its theme of surveillance takes on a deeper more sinister resonance, knowing what we now know about how the US National Security Agency and the British GCHQ spy centre snoop on individual citizens. The social uses of technology, if not the actual machinery, have long been anticipated.
Author and Guest of Honour Malcolm Edwards tells FI: “ Dick Tracy had a two-way wrist radio. That’s your cellphone. Albert Robida, back in Victorian times, predicted women soldiers and what we now call oxygen tents.”
Dick Tracy was a fictional detective in cartoon strips of the 1930s and Robida the French author and illustrator, born in 1848, of a massive trilogy depicting life in the twentieth century as he foresaw it.
Critic and fellow GoH John Klute sees this ‘back-to-the-future’ theme differently. ” Science fiction writers have a cultural understanding, a wisdom. They guess right about the nature of the world, but no-one predicts how it happens. Orwell’s 1984 and Stanley Kubrick‘s Clockwork Orange are here now. Philip K Dick predicted the information society in his book Minority Report – but no-one predicted the Internet.” How true!
In fact, the film set for Kubrick’s 1971 urban dystopian movie was just one mile east of the ExCel Centre where the sci-fi convention is held, a concrete ‘sink estate’ and failed social experiment called Thamesmead.
For some WorldCon diehards, this year’s event is a dystopia.
“Gender issues and sexuality have completely swamped the agenda. That’s not why people are here“, complains software engineer and amateur astronomer Gerhard Stenz, visiting from Munich with his wife Pietra.
“People want real science. We tried to get in to the workshop ‘The Fermi Paradox in the light of the Keppler mission’ but it was totally overcrowded – perhaps three hundred people in a room for one hundred. They’ve totally overestimated the interest in all this gender stuff – you see large rooms with just a handful of people talking about it.”
The couple preferred the smaller, less commercialised WorldCon of Glasgow 2005 and feel that the diversity debate is a distraction from – for example – the expert talks by learned leaders of the British Interplanetary Society.
Iain M Banks
This year delegates mourned the passing of author Iain M Banks (The Wasp Factory,The Bridge). Banks inserted the initial M in his byline to distinguish his science fiction novels from his better known detective stories. He died of cancer in June 2014 and would have been among the Guests of Honour at Loncon. Banks was honoured in a memorial whisky tasting and with a classical requiem by his friend Gary Lloyd, performed by the Worldcon Philharmonic Orchestra alongside the Star Wars theme and classical evocations of space such as Holst’s Planet Suite and Dvorak’s Song to the Moon.
Filk
As an antidote to the alienation that sci-fi fans may feel, speakeasy-style singalong sessions are scheduled throughout the four-day festival. They celebrate the genre’s own music – filk, a typographical error that started out as ‘folk’ and now represents the community tunes of fandom. Filkers use traditional melodies yet subverted with space-age lyrics. Filking is perhaps a way of grounding yourself with familiar tunes whilst showing-off the latest technological jargon and poking fun at the superheroes and the hype. Most filkers are just ordinary folk who can strum a guitar or write a rhyme but some achieve superstar status like writer, singer and squeecaster Seanan McGuire, the poster girl for Shamrokon, the European version of Science Fiction Worldcon hosted in Ireland at the end of August 2014.
Hear filker Michael Stein in action at Loncon3
Squee
Squeecaster? The urban dictionary defines the word squee as ‘the shriek of an over-excited fangirl’. SF fans may also identify with Squee, a character in a series described on Wikipedia as ‘an introverted and bullied little kid, fond of writing…whose mother is addicted to some kind of pill. She often forgets who Squee is, or even that she has a child.”
So Squee, the central character in Jhonen Vasquez’s comic book ‘Johnny the Homicidal Maniac’ becomes a byword for self-expression by the fan as well as a whoop of solidarity with the neglected child. It typifies the generosity of most SF enthusiast, who raise funds to ensure that impoverished fans can afford to travel to the world conventions.
Host venues are already vying for the next WorldCon which may be in Finland (home of the Moomins), New Zealand (film set for J R R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings) New Orleans (the real-life apocalypse of Hurricane Katrina) or Washington DC (The Pentagon).
Charity
The delegates also raise money for good causes outside their own community: many of those costuming as aliens or time travellers were rattling tins for the Dogs’ Trust. The timing is impeccable – just after the traditional Dog Days (forty days around the conjunction of the Dog Star Sirius with the Sun) and ahead of United States National Dog Day, August 26th. The Dogs’ Trust offers online pet adoption, proving that bots and droids are not yet man’s best friend. And as alien-watcher Brian Appleyard remarks, “On the Internet, nobody knows that you’re a dog.”
