I will however admit to a be more leeriness about gamers, especially when I recall some years back the couple of times I checked out the local SF society and all they did each time was play RPGs. And over the years I’ve seen the local SF bookstore convert to almost entirely RPG events, etc. I know there’s money and enthusiasm there on the part of the gamers – but dang it some of us are here for the SF!

my experience with attendees at what I refer to as commercial cons goes back decades.

Yes, I was using a broad brushstroke – no two fans are alike – but I don’t think it is all that far off the mark.

In fact, the alternative you offer – the stars – is a part of the symptom I was was discussing. I’d put just about anyone who gushes over actors and makes that the focus of their con-going activity into the class of folks who want to experience, rather than do.

I don’t go to conventions to “meet the authors or the artists” I go to hang out with my friends in a relaxed environment. Some of my friends happen to be fans with a long and venerable history in fandom; others happen to be authors and artists of varying stature, and still others are just average, everyday jo-phans. They are interested in the same things I am, they explore their world and bring back interesting things that they find and they are at least marginally capable of articulating their experiences.

Wanting to meet or listen the the “stars” is so foreign a desire to me that I can barely comprehend it. They may be good actors, but I’m much more interested in the people who put the words into their mouths. The “stars” don’t do anything except appear in front of the camera (and the green screen).

I don’t want to come across as being mean-spirited or dismissive in my response to you. I’ve spent a good portion of this past year trying to get to know the kinds of folks you are describing because I want to find effective ways to reach out to them – but if the only answer is for an SF con to bring in actors, I strongly suspect that the divide is far too wide and deep a gap to bridge.

Yes, we know traditional SF cons have a way to go towards effective marketing, but on the other hand, I suspect the younger crowd of having more and better online contacts than I and more and better uber googling skills than I. Typing “science fiction convention” into the search bar brings up a wealth of information, including multiple regularly maintained lists.

But then looking for a “real” convention is one of those ‘do’ things I was talking about in the piece. There’s just no way for me to visit each and every potential fan in person with a hand-engraved invitation.

The one thing that I wish to pass on to you, in all seriousness, is that you are more than welcome to your fun and your friends and doing what interests you – far be it for me to say you shouldn’t be enjoying the things you decide to spend your money on. But don’t fall into the trap of believing that what your are participating in is in someway “fandom”; it isn’t. It is a commercialized and heavily marketed popularized version of fandom. The real loss, I believe, is that the substitute is being mistaken for the real thing.

Don’t get mad at that statement. What you are doing at your cons is just as valid as anything else. All I’m doing is making a distinction about what your activity is called. In decades past there was a very hard and fast line between “real” cons and commercial cons. These days, the lines have been deliberately blurred, so that the commercialized cons can draw on the history and appeal to folks who might be looking for a convention but aren’t really sure what one is. Sorry. A Toyota is not a Ferrari. They both are automobiles, and share many things in common, but they just aren’t the same thing.

I hope I explained that without pushing any of your buttons. If I have, please come back and let me know.

My own personal feelings are that ‘fandom’ is getting lost in the hype (ooo, lot’s of people like this genre stuff, let’s roll out the cookie cutters for – clothing, movies, music, websites, toys, conventions…) and I don’t want to see that happen.

I don’t have the resources to cut through red tape or finance an alternative (would love to, even if it was a ’show em how it’s done’ venture). I regret the loss of history and shared community that goes along with what I know as fandom – and a big part of that is conventions run the “right” way (no real commercial interest).

I know that Worldcon can become what it ought to be; the problem with accomplishing that seems to be, mostly, the very nature of fandom itself.

My real fear over the long term is that anything and everything about fandom will be run and “controlled” by the money interests, which win most of the time anyways. I don’t want to see that happen.

The thing is, there’s not (here comes the blasphemy) anything wrong with that, as long as someone DOES want to organize, plan, volunteer and do the detail work, of which there’s a ton. There’s a successful model for commercial conventions, but it’s unlikely to work for fan-based cons because commercial cons cost a lot of money and they expect profit and… you know the rest.

The smaller the con, the easier it is to put together and run, and – if can eliminate the self-importance gene from it’s DNA – the more fun for everyone it is. It’s when a group says “we want to be big, popular, respected and give prestigious awards” that things get problematic.

Sure, they’re willing to wait in line for 2 hours. That doesn’t mean they like waiting in line for 2 hours. It just means there’s something they’re willing to make that tradeoff for. They’ll make the best of it by getting in line as a group with their friends or bringing something to do, but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t really prefer, in an ideal world, to spend those 2 hours some other way and then still get into whatever event they were waiting for. They know what they like and are perfectly capable of reading the pocket program and finding it. It’s just that a huge percentage of the convention often wants to go to the same thing.

The #1 reason people go to media conventions is for the big-name stars. That’s the point of a media convention. However, I submit that the #1 reason the proto-fans who also read don’t go to anything but media conventions is that they don’t know Worldcon or its regional bretheren exist. Heck, at the really big ones, a lot of people coming in from out of town don’t even know that their own local media convention exists.