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08/09/2005: "Interaction reflections"
A substantial part of the last 5 days has been spent at the World Science Fiction Convention at the SECC/Armadillo. I'd like to take refuge behind the excuse that, as a panellist on a few items, this was really work, but the reality is, it was a gratuitous exercise in wallowing in SF geekdom. A few observations:
1. They say never meet your heroes; I say 'meet them if you will, but be prepared for the consequences'. Closest things to hero-meetage on my part were Ken Macleod & Alan Grant. Ken M was fine - though amateur neo-cons be warned, he's a bit of a firebrand on panels! - and Alan G was a nice down-to-earth bloke too, but he did shoot some holes through some of my teenaged theories about Judge Dredd. The famous 'Democracy' storyline in particular, far from being some philosophical allegory on Tiananmen Square-type demos, was cobbled together in seconds after the 2000AD editor (was it Pat Mills at the time?) torpedoed the first storyline, which involved a protest by radical nudist activists.
One of my companions, though, had an altogether less uplifting encounter with one of her heroes - I will mention no names, but if you were to combine thoughts of floppy hats & giant world-bearing turtles, you would probably not end up a million miles away.
(Greg Bear is an unbelievably nice guy, but his 'hero' status is somewhat undermined by the fact that I've never read any of his books! Needless to say, this was strategically omitted from our conversation.)
2. Much of my favourite fiction could be classified as science fiction, but I'm far from sure that I consider myself a 'science fiction fan', still less a 'science fiction Fan'. I'm not sure about the former because it carries connotations of a sort of indiscriminate affection for an utterly vast array of things, many of which are truly risible. I'm a fan of well-written, thought-provoking fiction that explores interesting philosophical or political or scientific ideas, & much of this is to be found in the SF canon. But I'm just as interested when such ideas are explored in historical or contemporary fiction, & in this regard, I draw no arbitrary lines between 'Deadwood' & 'Battlestar Galactica', between 'Bladerunner' & 'Goodbye Lenin'.
Capital-F Fandom is a remarkable phenomenon, & one in which I have a degree of anthropological interest, much as I would with any sub-culture with its own established traditions & etiquette. But it's the interest of an outside observer. That said, I'd certainly take up cudgels to defend these guys against the geek-bashing 'mainstream' community. They've carved out a little niche for themselves despite (because of?) societal ridicule, they seem to revel defiantly in their stereotypes, & they seem a damn sight more accepting of non-standard body types & diverse sexualities than pretty much any other community I can think of (with the possible exception of the fetish 'scene', with which this bore quite a few immediately obvious similarities).
Anyway, is a 25-stone transvestite in an original Star Trek uniform really any more ridiculous-looking than a 25-stone middle-aged beer-monster in a football shirt with the name of some super-athletic 20-year-old on the back?
