Steampunk World's Fair: Convention Report

I had not planned on attending the Steampunk World's Fair. Not for any specific or single reason except that I had a lot of conventions on my list to go to and felt I needed to prune that back a bit so that I didn't spend all of my money (new car payment that I didn't have last year) and the Fair was the one that was to have been cut. Except that

Euphorbia wanted to go. She has something of an interest in steampunk, of course, but I think she is must more interested in how conventions work so that she can leverage that knowledge to her own advantage in convention construction. In any case, I know that she would also like for me to join her. And, if I was going, I was going to take the opportunity to show off my Victorian Spaceships and Mystery Airships presentations. I got on the schedule. And then, as the con approached, Euphorbia's work required her to cancel. It was too lake for me to cancel since I was committed to programming.

 So much for saving a little money.

With Euphorbia not going, Gunner decided that she would go. But, as with last week, she had to work half a day and we could not leave Pittsburgh until 11:30

Driving. Arrival. Check-In. Getting dressed. All the typical motions gone through for any convention. There were a number of interesting presentations I wanted to attend on Friday, most especially “Demonology and Ghosts”, but the space was somewhat confined and if you hadn't stood in line in the hallway, you might not find a place. Nearly all weekend, every presentation was standing room only. Additionally, the air-conditioning of the rooms was insufficient for the numbers of people in the rooms. And, with most in waistcoats or corsets, the rising temperature became quickly unbearable.

Friday was mostly a shopping day, though. The tent with antique phonographs also had a number of old books. I found one called “The Law of Psychic Phenomena: A Working Hypothesis for the Systematic Study of Hypnotism, Spiritism, Mental Therapeutics, Etc.” by Thomas Jay Hudson (1893). One of my intentions is to develop a presentation on 19th Century pseudoscience and hoaxes and it is books like this that will provide examples for my presentation. My “working hypothesis” is that those who forget history have repeated it. Much of the pseudoscience of the 19th Century was debunked by its contemporaries. Science was in some ways still in its infancy yet it was still sophisticated enough to demolish the claims of homeopaths, spiritualists, phrenologists, faith healers, perpetual motion engineers, faerie photographers and the like. Yet, the dross was able to cling to life until the mid 20th Century when, with everyone who might have remembered that it was already bunk passed away, a new and ignorant generation could rediscover these old books and revive these suppressed secrets of the universe. One need only read the Amazon.com reviews of this book to realize that people still fervently believe this hokum.

Watch this space as as my hypothesis develops.

The dealer I bought the psychic phenomena book from also had the most makeshift Tesla coil I had ever seen. Sort of. He didn't know what he had but it was based on a transformer with a label indicating that it was some sort of battery charger. Mounted on top were a pair of screw-in fuse sockets (it was a battery charger after all) except that one fuse had been replaced by what looked like a metal light bulb. A wire was wrapped around the base of this bulb and was bent to hold a bracket about a quarter inch above the surface of the bulb. Clearly, when energized, an electrical arc would leap the gap. Not a Tesla coil but capable of a similar arc of high voltage.

It looked dangerous as fuck and the owner had never plugged it in to find out if it worked. He was offering it for $50 and I might have come back on Sunday to see if his price had come down except that I knew I could do better for less that $50.

Of course, there was a certain aesthetic style contained within it's completely slipshod construction.

Other dealers had some very nice boxed ammeters, some old telephones and steam gauges. I could have spent a lot of money except, even though she was not there, I could hear Euphorbia's voice saying “Where would we put it?”

I also bought a new translation of “The Castle of Transylvania” by Jules Verne (1892). Zombies. 'nuf said.

Saturday had more interesting presentations, some of which I was even able to attend in spite of the confined spaces. I particularly liked the presentation on the World's Fairs (the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and the 1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago) and the Steam 101 presentation that talked about how steam engines work. I may build a similar presentation as I have not seen any such educational presentations on this side of the Alleghenies. I might have asked the presenter for his notes but he snapped at a guy in the back he thought was recording on his smart phone so, aside from the open source idea of a presentation on how steam engines work, I am on my own.

Mark Donnelly did several presentation in the evening that I was able to attend. For one he read the chapter from his book “Inventors and Impostors” which described how Edison didn't even remotely invent the light bulb. His other presentation featured material for an upcoming book that he hasn't even started writing yet on some of the more bizarre inventions of the 19th Century. This such as the self-tipping hat, the alarm clock that repeatedly drops something on your face to wake you up, a pill on a string that you swallow to "fish" for tapeworms and the parachute that straps to your head to aid in leaping from burning buildings.

Thanks to Dr. Who, the fez has become almost ubiquitous at steampunk conventions. I had wanted a fez before the doctor declared it “cool” and now they are everywhere. But at some point during the say I suddenly realized that I had a way to take it to the next level. I have some motors and gears and stuff that I had intended to put of a cane. I thought such mechanics might work well on a fez to become a Turkish thinking cap.

I bought another fez for that purpose.

I was thinking of buying some gear buttons to replace the buttons on my tail coat but when I went back to one dealer that had buttons I had been interested in from the day before, that had been sold out.

Between the two hotels of the con were a number of dealers and groups operation out of tents. One such tent had popcorn and soda for sale. They had bottles of Boylan's Root Beer for $2.50 a bottle. That's about what I can find it for here but I saw that he had cases. I asked him if I could just buy the case. After being somewhat taken aback that I would essentially buy him out of his stock for the day, he offered to sell me a 24 bottle case for $30.

Upon seeing this, Gunner went back to him and bought a case of otherwise difficult to find birch beer for herself.

At Jaymee Goh's round-table discussion "Envisioning a Better Steam Society" things went sour. What set it off was one statement about how pith helmets are an offensive symbol of British imperialism and oppression and then someone else's statement essentially that sometimes a hat is just a hat. At some point I attempted to step into it with the opinion that before we are offended by something we should take a moment to consider whether we should actually be offended and, in so doing, offended people. Visibly and dramatically in the form of hunching forward, a sharp intake of breath, a narrowing of eyes and hands shooting up into the air so that I could be rebutted thoroughly and put in my proper place. When the hour in the boardroom was over there was an additional hour in the bar where I submitted myself to be surrounded by half a dozen people, again telling me how wrong I was.

I cannot relate all the twists and turns of the discussion so I will relate some of the points with which I had, and still have, an issue. Firstly that when someone is offended, intent is irrelevant. If you step on my foot, whether you meant to or not, my toe is still broken and nothing you say will fix that. So, if I do something you you find offensive, whether I intended to offend or even knew I was doing something that might offend, it is my fault and even an apology is insufficient and the offended party is fully justified in whatever response they might have.

To use the phrase of 19th century orator Robert Green Ingersol, "I deny it."

When someone is killed, society does not judge or respond to that crime regardless of intent. Should someone kill another intentionally, with malice aforethought, then it is called 1st degree murder and the penalty is severe. If someone attacks another and kills them with the intent to do harm but without the intention of killing them or perhaps was acting with willful recklessness then the charge might be murder in the 2nd degree and the penalties less. Killing someone accidentally, completely without intent or perhaps even knowledge that someone had come to harm might be constituted as manslaughter or even no crime at all. Society considers this to be a moderated and fair response. This is commonly called Justice. This principal of a measured or relative response is utilized at all levels of human interaction, including what we find offensive.

To use a personal example, I find the Confederate battle flag to be an offensive symbol of slavery. But my response to a bumper sticker with the stars and bars and the phrase "Fighting Terrorism since 1861" garners a completely different response from me when compared to the same flag being carried by a miniature soldier on a Civil War game board. The exact same symbol with a completely different intent and thus a different response.

Symbols are not fetishes. There is nothing inherently magical in the symbol itself that gives it power. It has only what we ascribe to it. A pith helmet is only a pith helmet. And the people at the World's Fair that took offense at the symbol were not actually taking offense at the symbol itself but at the idea behind the symbol. More so, they were taking offense at their own pre-conceived notion of what was behind the symbol instead of the intent of the owner of the so-called symbol. And they actually admitted as such without realizing it when one person invoked Professor Elemental's wearing of a pith helmet. If the symbol itself had power, his wearing of the helmet in an ironic or satirical manner would be irrelevant. The offense would be given regardless of his intent. The fact that his use of the pith helmet was ironic or satirical was a direct acknowledgement that intent is relevant.

The same is true for probably one of the most offensive symbols; the swastika. Or rather, it is not the symbol itself, for it was acknowledged that the swastika is also an ancient symbol of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism and it is only when used in the Nazi context that it is found to be offensive. Verbally slapping down a neo-nazi white supremacist for displaying the swastika is justified, a Jainist not so much.

And this is why I advised taking a moment. If you are offended, take a moment to consider why you are offended and, better yet, determine if you are justified in your offense by the intent to the offender. If you do not, you are acting in exactly the prejudicial manner that you rail against.

The other issue I wanted to address is the assertion that because I am a privileged white male, I am to shut up and listen.

I am not The Man. I am merely a man. I am an individual human being and, as such, I deserve the respect and dignity of being heard. Invoking Ingersol again, "I am a believer in liberty. That is my religion — to give to every other human being every right that I claim for myself, and I grant to every other human being, not the right — because it is his right — but instead of granting I declare that it is his right, to attack every doctrine that I maintain, to answer every argument that I may urge — in other words, he must have absolute freedom of speech." With that, I do not accept the concept of STFU.

I do accept that minorities have been marginalized by society and it is incumbent upon society to correct that inequity. Sometimes with affirmative actions that seem to grant additional or so-called "special" rights to the marginalized group, that seem to give a greater voice to a minority. It is right and just to do this because societies are constructions that sometimes require the application of unequal tools. But when I am talking to you, I am not society. I am symbol of an oppressive society only in your mind. I am a human being. I am your equal.

But when you outnumber me six to one and, as the majority, insist that i be silent and listen to you, when you interrupt me when I try to explain myself or you demand that I "cut to the chase" rather than take to time to explain a complex series of thoughts, when you discount my claim of being a writer by pointing out that you are published while I am not, when you dismiss my membership in a minority because you are also a member of that minority and haven't personally felt yourself to be marginalized by it, and when, after several hours of mob rule when I am worn down into silence, you pat yourself on the back, saying that it was a good conversation and that I have been educated, you have done a terrible disservice to liberty and to your cause.

"That is all."

With that I missed the full concert performance of Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band. Thankfully, I had seen their short performance earlier in the day and had gotten their new CD then.

I returned to the room, got a shower and spent some time re-organizing my notes for my Victorian Spacecraft presentation. At the Steampunk Empire Symposium I had misjudged the time and not been able to cover some of the things I really wanted to cover so I cut out a number of extraneous details so that I could stay on target.

I went to bed after midnight but didn't get to sleep for a long time, thinking about the “Building a Better Society” panel and composing in my head the relating posting above. At 2am, just as I was getting to sleep, the hotel fire alarm went off.

I spent nearly half an hour standing outside in the parking lot, barefoot and shirtless, waiting for the fire department to arrive. The national average for fire department response times is something about 4 minutes, 15 in rural areas. That night in Piscataway, New Jersey it was between 25 and 30 minutes. Additionally, the alarms were only in the atrium area near the elevators and not in the rooms. I heard of a significant number of people who slept through the alarm or were only awakened when con security pounded on their door.

Good thing there wasn't actually a fire.

Sunday morning at breakfast I got a chance to talk to the guy who had made the “sometimes a hat is just a hat” comment and left mid-way through the discussion when he rightfully felt he was being ganged up on. I also talked with Jaymee Goh but the topic of conversation was the fire alarm rather than social politics.

I thought of buying “Varney the Vampire” by James Malcom Rymer (1845) with extensive footnotes by Curt Herr from the annotator himself but he was sold out and I decided that I had enough unread books cluttering my house to get another one shipped in the mail. It was also partially that I am not so enamored with Gothic fiction.

I wonder if the Verne I bought the day before falls into the Gothic category.

Just before my Victorian Spaceships presentation, Major Girth of the Imperial Amerikan Air Corps presented on building a steampunk world. It was a guide for "leaving a trail of breadcrumbs" when writing alternative history so you do not break the reader's suspension of disbelief by merely waving a magic wand. This was split into four major influences: global air travel, global media, accelerated industrialization and world decision makers. Change any one of these things, even slightly, and it is easy to see the cascade of cause and effect which can change the world dramatically.

I had seen the IAAC at previous conventions but never found out if they did anything beyond cruising the halls together. I should have liked to have seen this particular presentation earlier so that I would have known that I would probably like to hang around with these guys to talk about history, politics and writing. I am certainly already putting some of their ideas to work as I develop and alternative American Civil War history for Lord Bobbin's TeslaCon 3.

I purchased their chap book preview of their upcoming collection "Steam Powered Tales of Awesomeness."

My Victorian Spacecraft presentation went very well. I covered everything I wanted to cover in the time allotted and the audience was appreciative. There were about 15 people in attendance, down from the packed rooms that had been going on earlier in the con but it was Sunday afternoon and people were beginning to clear out so that anyone came at all was a plus. After it was over, I spent the next hour before my Mystery Airship presentation talking with people in the hallway. Some were people random people finding a cool place in the hallway. Others had seen my earlier presentation and were sticking around to see the next. Some were people who had missed the first one but didn't want to miss the airships one.

It was like there was a switch on my back that had been set to “on”. I was in my element and I was happy.

The Mystery Airships presentation also went well. Most of the seats were filled and there were even people standing in the back. Not quite a “standing room only” crowd but the difference was negligible.

Immediately afterwards it was into the car and home, having to do it all again in a week in Dearborn.