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mishalakOr some commentary on a commentary followed up by what I think needs to be done about it.
Mark R. Leeper writes in SF Crowsnest a commentary entitled Worldcons of diminished expectations. He actually makes a good preemptive strike against this being a complaint without merit by writing, "...I do not have the ego to suggest that Worldcons change to match my interests." And he goes on to list reasons why he is not personally thrilled with Worldcon and the reasons they cannot do what he would like to see in many cases.
He points out that Worldcon is no longer a venue for seeing movies or previews of things that can be found nowhere else. Hollywood now sends their people and trailers to events like San Diego Comic Con, which has 150,000 attendees. There probably is just no way that Worldcon could compete with an event that has about 30 times as many members. The point that he did not make and I have been thinking about lately is that speculative fiction has hit the big time in entertainment. Part of the purpose of fandom was to evangelize about these great stories and introduce them to a wider audience. While fans can argue endlessly about how good the products are that make it to the big screen or the little one the undeniable fact is there is a lot more of it. And with DVDs, the Sci-Fi channel, and the internet it is not nearly as hard to get the stuff anymore. It used to be when I went to a dealer's room at a media convention there was stuff there that I simply could not find in my day to day existence. Now it is just an opportunity to actually see it before I buy rather than my only opportunity. I remember paying a ridiculous amount for a Director's cut of The Abyss on VHS. Now there are few movies that cannot be ordered from Amazon.
Media conventions generally are much larger and better attended than the general SF convention. This is because we're focused on books. Our excuse might be that we'll have anyone we don't have to give a speakers fee to, but really it is because we book lovers don't want to be reduced to being an asterisk. As in "Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, Reaper, and more!* (*Writers most of you have never heard of.)" Also as Mark R. Leeper points out we're more comfortable with smaller conventions. And this is not to say that we exclude media stuff, it just will not play as prominent a role at conventions that don't pay to get in media stars. (I say we because Worldcon is similar to the sorts of conventions I do actually go to and the one I work on, MileHiCon, coming up fast.)
With big name authors (who in the scheme of life are small names to most people given how little most people read) and social glue keeping conventions together it is no wonder that we're relatively gray (which is another thing he comments on Worldcon). Plus all sorts of social changes for younger people who do read and might go to conventions, but do not because they do not have groups of friends heading for them. Really. I think the biggest reason I started attending conventions in my early 20s rather than in college was because there was not anyone in college that I knew who might have gone with me to conventions to reduce the price (of driving, hotel rooms, etc) and to make it less scary to go to an event where otherwise I would have known no-one.
Right I've blathered on for a while about this sort of thing. I think that if we older fans (I'm 30 now) want younger fans involved earlier we need to do some seed things to get college age social networks of SF enthusiasts going.
1) Significantly reduced price memberships for individuals who are members of a school or college Speculative Fiction club. Why? This gives a great incentive to get these clubs started and keep members. Plus if they get in the habit of going to conventions when young they might keep it up for a lifetime.
2.) A group unconnected with the con committee might offer help organizing crash rooms and fan caravans. Rooms with 4 or more attendees in them can be trouble for the concom. They don't help greatly with getting to the room nights and sometimes younger fans are trouble. Young people do stupid things, are louder the older fans, have less well developed social skills in many cases, and so I think to reduce their work load a number of conventions do not discourage young fans, but they don't do anything specifically to reach out to them on an economic level where they can attend. If a group that is not part of the concom does the job then it gives the convention deniability cover as well as bypassing fannish politics. On the down side the convention will be blamed by the hotel if anything goes wrong regardless of how it was organized. Personally I think the local SF club would be the group to do it and I'm going to see about launching such a thing through DASFA.
3.) We need some serious education about what fandom is and how it works. Not how we wish it to work or how it should work, but how it actually is. Since we are trying to get people to join fandom we need to put it in a good light, but we need to be honest when doing this. Otherwise young people will try it and find, "Hey, this is not what I was told it was like." Fandom is a great way to meet new friends, be part of a community, to meet authors/artists, and a rewarding hobby (or even a way of life for some). Someone or some group needs to put up a page on why someone on the outside looking in should join fandom or their local speculative fiction club. I suppose if I get off my ass that person should me and the group should be DASFA (yet again). Also some advertising on campuses might not be a bad idea to get people to know that the website or convention exists. Good advertising is shorthand education.
4.) Get some college age fans on staff at the cons to be part of brainstorming program items/guests of interest to them. They just might not have the same interests as older fans. How to do this if you don't know any college age fans? First step is to websearch for individual pages/blogs of people with interests at the local university. The second is to keep trying to make contact with the college/HS students as the turn over is quite high. Though hopefully it will get easier when some of that might be delegated to new leaders in the young SF societies.
That's all I've got for now.
Mark R. Leeper writes in SF Crowsnest a commentary entitled Worldcons of diminished expectations. He actually makes a good preemptive strike against this being a complaint without merit by writing, "...I do not have the ego to suggest that Worldcons change to match my interests." And he goes on to list reasons why he is not personally thrilled with Worldcon and the reasons they cannot do what he would like to see in many cases.
He points out that Worldcon is no longer a venue for seeing movies or previews of things that can be found nowhere else. Hollywood now sends their people and trailers to events like San Diego Comic Con, which has 150,000 attendees. There probably is just no way that Worldcon could compete with an event that has about 30 times as many members. The point that he did not make and I have been thinking about lately is that speculative fiction has hit the big time in entertainment. Part of the purpose of fandom was to evangelize about these great stories and introduce them to a wider audience. While fans can argue endlessly about how good the products are that make it to the big screen or the little one the undeniable fact is there is a lot more of it. And with DVDs, the Sci-Fi channel, and the internet it is not nearly as hard to get the stuff anymore. It used to be when I went to a dealer's room at a media convention there was stuff there that I simply could not find in my day to day existence. Now it is just an opportunity to actually see it before I buy rather than my only opportunity. I remember paying a ridiculous amount for a Director's cut of The Abyss on VHS. Now there are few movies that cannot be ordered from Amazon.
Media conventions generally are much larger and better attended than the general SF convention. This is because we're focused on books. Our excuse might be that we'll have anyone we don't have to give a speakers fee to, but really it is because we book lovers don't want to be reduced to being an asterisk. As in "Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, Reaper, and more!* (*Writers most of you have never heard of.)" Also as Mark R. Leeper points out we're more comfortable with smaller conventions. And this is not to say that we exclude media stuff, it just will not play as prominent a role at conventions that don't pay to get in media stars. (I say we because Worldcon is similar to the sorts of conventions I do actually go to and the one I work on, MileHiCon, coming up fast.)
With big name authors (who in the scheme of life are small names to most people given how little most people read) and social glue keeping conventions together it is no wonder that we're relatively gray (which is another thing he comments on Worldcon). Plus all sorts of social changes for younger people who do read and might go to conventions, but do not because they do not have groups of friends heading for them. Really. I think the biggest reason I started attending conventions in my early 20s rather than in college was because there was not anyone in college that I knew who might have gone with me to conventions to reduce the price (of driving, hotel rooms, etc) and to make it less scary to go to an event where otherwise I would have known no-one.
Right I've blathered on for a while about this sort of thing. I think that if we older fans (I'm 30 now) want younger fans involved earlier we need to do some seed things to get college age social networks of SF enthusiasts going.
1) Significantly reduced price memberships for individuals who are members of a school or college Speculative Fiction club. Why? This gives a great incentive to get these clubs started and keep members. Plus if they get in the habit of going to conventions when young they might keep it up for a lifetime.
2.) A group unconnected with the con committee might offer help organizing crash rooms and fan caravans. Rooms with 4 or more attendees in them can be trouble for the concom. They don't help greatly with getting to the room nights and sometimes younger fans are trouble. Young people do stupid things, are louder the older fans, have less well developed social skills in many cases, and so I think to reduce their work load a number of conventions do not discourage young fans, but they don't do anything specifically to reach out to them on an economic level where they can attend. If a group that is not part of the concom does the job then it gives the convention deniability cover as well as bypassing fannish politics. On the down side the convention will be blamed by the hotel if anything goes wrong regardless of how it was organized. Personally I think the local SF club would be the group to do it and I'm going to see about launching such a thing through DASFA.
3.) We need some serious education about what fandom is and how it works. Not how we wish it to work or how it should work, but how it actually is. Since we are trying to get people to join fandom we need to put it in a good light, but we need to be honest when doing this. Otherwise young people will try it and find, "Hey, this is not what I was told it was like." Fandom is a great way to meet new friends, be part of a community, to meet authors/artists, and a rewarding hobby (or even a way of life for some). Someone or some group needs to put up a page on why someone on the outside looking in should join fandom or their local speculative fiction club. I suppose if I get off my ass that person should me and the group should be DASFA (yet again). Also some advertising on campuses might not be a bad idea to get people to know that the website or convention exists. Good advertising is shorthand education.
4.) Get some college age fans on staff at the cons to be part of brainstorming program items/guests of interest to them. They just might not have the same interests as older fans. How to do this if you don't know any college age fans? First step is to websearch for individual pages/blogs of people with interests at the local university. The second is to keep trying to make contact with the college/HS students as the turn over is quite high. Though hopefully it will get easier when some of that might be delegated to new leaders in the young SF societies.
That's all I've got for now.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-02 03:35 pm (UTC)Then there's the rise of real-world geekdom. We no longer get lots of people into fandom because it's the only geek-positive place they have access to. This is a *good* thing in the broader view, but it's going to make fandom smaller.
Then we get fandom's overly-tolerant treatment of various sorts of trolls and social maladroits, which raises the cost of hanging out here. I don't see that we can do *too* much about this without pulling down the structure on top of ourselves.
In Minneapolis as a whole, we've had quite a few recently-post-college people come into fandom over the last decade. Some of them have even found and become involved with Minn-StF (there's now also Convergence's parent group "Misfits").
The population in *general* is graying, as the biggest demographic bulge in history goes past (that'd include me).
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-02 05:34 pm (UTC)This might only be a problem in Denver and to some extent with Worldcon.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-02 04:11 pm (UTC)The graying-of-fandom worry is something that people have been apparently worrying over since before I was born 42 years ago, and the fact that the population as a whole is aging would lead one to expect that the fandom community in which I socialize is also older. At BASFA last night, there were jokes and puns made that I think would have left anyone under about age 25 or so scratching their head saying, "Why is that funny?"
Despite what the above might imply, I am not dismissing your concerns. There's no reason not to keep welcoming new people to our community. I've never thought too hard about deliberately organizing the things you suggest, though. During my entry to fandom in the 1980s, I was one of the people privately organizing these room-sharing arrangements. (Which included telling people to stow those bags in the closet and help us tip the maid so that she doesn't take official notice that we seem to have brought our sleeping bag collection with us to the con.) That was after other people brought me in with similar help. (Mind you, I don't ever want to have to sleep twelve people to a room again.)
Reduced-price memberships for "newcommers" is something with which I've struggled for a long time. I don't know any way to try to implement it that wouldn't lead to so much system-gaming "because we can" as to make the attempt useless. Maybe tying it to club membership at a school would help, as long as it didn't lead to silly situations. (Think of inventive ways fans have of gaming systems.) I thought that L.A.con IV's "trial memberships" plan was a good idea; indeed, I was part of the discussions that led to them offering it. Unfortunately, L.A.con IV then didn't collect enough information from the people taking advantage of it for us to be able to draw any meaningful conclusions about the test.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-02 05:52 pm (UTC)If a bunch of college or HS students establish a club just to get reduced price Worldcon memberships I would call it a success. The goal in my mind isn't just to get in any ol' fans younger than age 23. It is to get in young people capable of organizing and the sort that might establish social ties that would keep them coming year after year once they're out of school and working. If that's the sort of gaming you're thinking of. If you're thinking of membership transfer or straw purchases I'm not sure what to think about that. How are child memberships handled?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-02 05:59 pm (UTC)I'd probably also require that the memberships not be transferable, lest people decided to arbitrage the memberships -- buy them cheap, sell them dear. This happens. L.A.con IV gave program participants (plus a guest) free memberships. At least one guest-of-guest sold her membership to someone else, which is IMO blatantly unethical.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 12:11 am (UTC)UK University SF clubs and convention attending shrunk when student loans were introduced, as SF fandom and especially cons were viewed as luxuries. One problem is the gap between big hotels with function space and university accomodation which older fans tend to distain, especially as universities have upped their rates a lot.
I don't know whether American students are poorer now than 20 years ago, but anything to help reduce their costs would be good. Arranging room shares would probably give the greatest benefit.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 12:23 am (UTC)And with the overall rise of geek culture, folks who read SF aren't as ostracized as before. I think among readers that admitting to reading romance novels is more likely to get you snobbish looks than SF. Because there are some true literary works in SF, and if you use the term speculative fiction instead of science fiction it encompasses more mainstream works. And most readers have given up on what the non-readers think :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 01:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 06:42 am (UTC)And a few years back Leah Zeldes Smith mentioned that when she started going to con Room Parties she was usually the youngest person in the room. Now, she's usually the oldest person there.
But the point you're making is the important one. Nowadays the group that could be called "Youngfans" in a fanclub or at a Convention average at least a decade older than such a group did back in (most people's version of) The Good Old Days. (Yeah, I'm ignoring a few kids-of-fans, who are mostly having fun, nice people, but just enjoying a Family Outing, without much participatory understanding.)
And, Yup, Conventions have mostly priced themselves out of the range of students and lower-middle-class people -- which is where Fandom used to be _centered_. Fortunately -- for the individuals concerned, though not for Fandom itself -- other demographic & social changes have been at work. Fandom is no longer the only game in town for people who like to read science fiction and don't have good social skills.
Good luck with any attempts you might make to Improve The Situation, but I have to add my opinion that what fandom needs is not just more bodies (young or not) but more of the right kind of individuals. (Which might mean "The kind who wouldn't think of trying to define that last phrase.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-04 01:51 am (UTC)I suppose I'm a latecomer to convention fandom. There weren't any cons I could get to as a student, not even in college. I didn't even start going to cons until about 6 years ago! But I've always been a reader of SF, and knew about cons from reading fan magazines back in the day.
Economics is a big factor for many folks, not just the young. But I agree that there are many other factors keeping younger fans away from SF cons. There are so many other things that they can do, and so many other things to spend money on!! An unfortunately, for many of us working-class fans, it's just a matter of not always being able to get the time and money to go to cons.
The "graying of fandom" is not just happening in SF. I've noticed it in the SCA, too, though the next generations seem to be coming along nicely, and being able to hold demos and other smaller events seems to help get new blood into that group.
What can be done? I'm not sure. There's no quick band-aid, I'm sure you know, but an effort should be made to reach out to people who would love to be part of fandom if they just knew where to find it. What exactly that entails is still open to debate.