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Worldcons of diminished expectations
01/10/2007 . Source: Mark R. Leeper 
One of my friends - one whom I see almost exclusively at the World Science Fiction Convention (or Worldcon) each year - announced this week that he was not going to the Worldcon any more. He says that it no longer is meeting his needs, and his answer is to go instead to San Diego Comic-con each year. He invited his friends to join him in this change of habit. Well, I am not going to do it. I will probably continue to go to the Worldcon each year. But I have to admit that part of my Worldcon-going habit is just force of habit. The fact is that at one time I derived a great deal of pleasure from going to a Worldcon and a great deal of the pleasure has fled from the experience. And I am asking myself why.
I should point out that this essay could be interpreted as a complaint about how Worldcons are run and an attempt to influence them. That is not the case. I really would like to stay out of fandom politics. And I do not have the ego to suggest that Worldcons change to match my interests. I thinking about why I do not feel a strong sense of loss by missing Worldcon this year and just looking at the trends of Worldcons and examining why my reaction to them is not as positive as it once was.
Certainly part of what is going on is the repetition. One does not expect the 30th potato chip to taste as good as the first one did. There is too much commonality between conventions for me to find each one fresh and new. I have been a steady attendee of Worldcons. Of the last 32 Worldcons I have missed only three. For some reason I feel the Worldcons of the 70s seemed to have more verve. Somehow Worldcons seem more staid and less energetic as there are fewer young and active attendees. I will get to the changing demographic later.
My interest in science fiction is probably as much in film as it is in literature. Worldcons used to have very good film programs. Frequently the first thing I would look up in the film program is what films do they have that I had not heard of before. Also they would have in-depth behind-the-scenes presentations of upcoming films. Worldcon would be the first place I would have heard about many forthcoming films and I will have seen props and production sketches for the before most of the public. I am told there are still such presentations at San Diego Comic-con, but it is hardly worth the studios' efforts to send production people to the Worldcon.
A large Worldcon is one with 7000 attendees. San Diego claims to get 150,000 people, at least by their accounting. The similar film presentations would have to have huge audiences. A presentation to an audience that big must be projected on a screen and then it becomes a lot like watching television - live television, but television nonetheless. It is the scale of a San Diego convention that is the most off- putting thing about it. So I would not like the presentations there, but I am not seeing them at all at Worldcon any more. Instead what Worldcons are getting is a reel of trailers, most of which I will soon be seeing in movie theaters. Seeing them early is of some interest, but not a lot.
But what I miss from the Worldcons of the past is the introduction to already existing films I have not been able to see or perhaps have not even heard of. I had seen a lot of the classics shown on TV. But no TV stations had or would show MAD LOVE with Peter Lorre. It was a little too weird for general audiences I would guess. A convention was where I finally caught up with it in 1977. I don't think I got another chance to see it until the 1990s. Other films like MALEVIL and THE APPLE WAR I have seen nowhere but at a Worldcon. Now if I want to see rare films I do so mostly through home video. The video revolution has allowed me to see some obscure films, but the obscure variety that used to be shown at Worldcons are not on video and are still out of reach. The film programs at Worldcons, if they have them, offer fewer obscure films. And frequently those are on video.
Too many people have been allowed to exploit the convention for political purposes. Many of the panels have been politicized by people with an axe to grind. There is gay fandom, fat fandom, feminist fandom, all wanting to make political points. The whole world is politicized. I go to Worldcons to get away from that. There are fewer panels about the sense of wonder and more of people trying to get some political gain.
Another effect of the changing times is that the star power of the professionals is wearing off. At one time at conventions I was seeing people like Isaac Asimov, Jack Williamson, Hal Clement, R. A. Lafferty, and L. Sprague DeCamp. Of the old guard there are still a few who are alive and who go to Worldcons. The foremost of these is the mellifluous-voiced Robert Silverberg and seeing him is always a pleasure. But these days the stars seem to be writers I have never read. Perhaps they are good writers, but they are of a modern group of writers who are (for me) not as much fun to read. However good a writer like Charles Stross is, it is hard for me to get excited about seeing him at a convention.
In fact, most of the authors who are currently writing do not seem to have such a strong following proportionally among the younger fans. Their prose is heavier and lacking in "sense of wonder." It appeals more to serious older readers. But fewer young people are going to Worldcons. I think there is also a factor of a generation brought up on video and computer gaming that is more interested in the visual media. For people of my age science fiction was the escape from what we had to read in school. These days science fiction was what kids were forced to read in school when they would have preferred to be playing computer games. Written science fiction just is not the kick for them that it was for us. They want media and computer games.
As the Worldcons have less focus on the media, conventions like San Diego with a membership in the hundreds of thousands and Dragoncon in the tens of thousands can afford to offer a lot of film programming, a lot of television programming, and a lot of gaming programming. It may also have the literature programming of a Worldcon, but if so it is lost in the competing types of programming. Younger fans less enamored of reading may not miss it. It seems these mega-convention events are siphoning off younger Worldcon attendees already in short supply. (Rising membership fees I assume uniformly make all conventions costly.) The result is that Worldcons seem to have an average attendee age that gets older with time.
Not helping the demographic problem is the occasional foreign Worldcon. Foreign Worldcons are just not going to attract young people from the United States. I really like going to see another country for the first time and then at the end of my trip going to a Worldcon, but the truth is that foreign Worldcons are harder on the younger United States fans than it is on the older ones. Foreign Worldcons require and investment of time and money. As security concerns and waiting times for passports increase, more domestic fans will be discouraged.
As I grew older I found I could expend both more time and money on travel. I also had more of a taste in the exotic than many younger people have today. I did not have the time or the money to go to Heidelberg, Toronto, or Melbourne in the 1960s and 1970s. I still could not go to Melbourne as late as 1985. I would have liked to go but did not have the funds or the vacation time. Since 1985 I have been able to afford the vacation time and cost for every international Worldcon - certainly more than younger working fans could. I would see the country and then go to the convention.
This year's Japan is the one exception because I have already seen Japan and if I go again I will not want to spend several days in a science fiction convention. I do not think whatever is happening at the Worldcon can compete with just going out and seeing the Japanese culture. In any case I think that foreign conventions are a factor in the rising average age of Worldcon attendees.
As I say, I am not advocating any change to the policy associated with Worldcons. I do not want Worldcons tailored to me. I am not suggesting, for example, that we need to or should abolish foreign Worldcons. I am just exploring why I am less satisfied with Worldcons as time goes by.
Mark R. Leeper
© Mark R. Leeper 200
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