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The last WorldCon that I attended was the Millennium Philcon in 2001. A typical con membership is $30 to $50 but WorldCons tend to run around $200 so I’m disinclined to spend that much money on a convention. But Euphorbia wanted to go and dislikes long drives on her own so I agreed to go as well.
Except that it didn’t go well to start off. Not that the 8 hour drive to Chicago was a problem but adelheid_p’s employer chose not to properly staff the department such that when she went on vacation they could not actually operate with her gone for a few days. That meant that she had to work when we arrived at her brother’s place outside of Chicago and also had to abandon our plans to visit the Shedd Aquarium so that she could spend her afternoon in the basement of the museum utilizing their free wireless.
Eventually that was mostly sorted out and we checked into the hotel Thursday afternoon and then went over the bridge to the con itself. As it was late in the day, most of the Thursday programming was done and I couldn’t find anything that caught my attention so I went on my first pass through the dealer’s room before it closed down. Many dealers had already closed up shop but I did see a few things I would need to come back for.
Friday was a busy day and I found programming to keep my interest all day long. One such panel was "The Steampunk Genre" with Jay Lake (author of “Mainspring”), Paul Genesse and Michael Coorlim (authors whose work I am not familiar with) and Sarah Hans (also an author but with whom I am more familiar through the Airship Archon). As this was WorldCon and not a steampunk or media con, the bend of this panel was much more literary. Much more from where I started with steampunk.
According to Paul Genesse, K. W. Jeter, James Blaylock and Tim Powers wrote their “gonzo futurism” stories to piss off their Cal State instructors. They were writing alternative history because they didn’t know any history.
N-Rays were mentioned.
Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders was mentioned.
“The Log of the Flying Fish” by Harry Collingwood (1851) was mentioned.
The panelists were asked what they want to see less of in steampunk. What overused tropes should authors move on from? London, for one. Authors should move out of England because the 19th Century happened to the whole world. Airships are overused as a transportation method. We need a new paradigm for that. Pirates. Airship pirates. And zombies. Zombies have been overdone as a trope in general, we certainly don’t need more zombies in steampunk.
“Zombie Airship Pirates of the Thames.” This book must now be written.
As I stood in the hall before the panel, I recognized a conversation concerning the imperial symbolism of the pith helmet. I also recognized the person speaking on that as one of the people who had joined the mob to deliver a dressing down to me at the Steampunk Worlds Fair concerning the same topic.
The people she was lecturing to in the hallway seemed to be trying to avoid it all. One woman, who I recognized as being from the Archon, actually fled. This was not merely an impression based on her leaving but I had a chance to talk to her later and she let me know that she actively left rather than become involved in the argument.
I, also, avoided saying anything and was glad that she did not attend the panel I was waiting in line for. I should not have liked it to devolve into yet another “you are offending me” rant. (See my report on the SWF for my opinions on that.) Only later did I learn that the reason she didn’t attend this panel was because there was a concurrent panel elsewhere named “Aspects of a Pith Helmet” on which she was a panelist.
Yea. Even if I had noticed that one in the program, I would have chosen to be somewhere else.
There is not a lot of cosplay at WorldCon. There was myself and a few others but, for the most part, participants were in t-shirts and jeans. WorldCon is also an older crowd consisting of people who have been in science fiction fandom for a long time and probably consider themselves too old and too literary to be running around in costumes.
The panelists on the "100 Years of Edgar Rice Burroughs" panel were all pretty much agreed that ERB was not a particularly good writer. Some went so far as to say he was a lousy writer (Read a few Tarzan stories and note that they are really the same story with names changed.) But what ERB did was describe interesting worlds in a way that’s perfect for a young reader. A gateway drug, as it were.
I’ve noticed this myself. I fondly remember the Martian series in spite of my recognition, even at the time, that it was highly formulaic. Reading some recently I realized that the writing really was kind of crappy and John Carter is an arrogant jerk and not terribly interesting as a character.
The "1632: Weird Tech" panel consisted of a bunch of authors from the “1632: Ring of Fire” series hating on steampunk. While their interest in technical accuracy in their stories is welcome and I got a lot of useful information about things like hydrogen embrittlement, they were uniformly of the opinion that steampunk was fantasy and was completely unlike what they did.
One of the things they specifically hated was that sails do not work on an airship. And the recoil of canons would be problematic. And boarding actions are right out. Now, I haven’t read the entirety of the steampunk corpus but I have never read a steampunk story where the airship had sails. In fact, it sounds to me that the things they hate the most about steampunk is off of an Abney Park album cover.
Give it up, guys. Your airships are powered by steam so you are writing steampunk. Your stories may be more “hard science” than many others but you’re still part of the genre whether you build a straw man off of a piece of art or not.
To get back to some of the useful things I got from the panel, I learned that you cannot store hydrogen in steel containers. The hydrogen molecules will work their way into the crystal structure of the steel and quite literally poke holes in it. After weeks or months, the metal will become brittle and catastrophically fail. You need to store hydrogen in pure copper or copper-lined pressure vessels.
And though the 1632 guys would dismiss the idea as pure fantasy, that has me thinking about storage problems for aetheric or sub-hydrogen elements. I recall that John Worrell Keely used a spinning sphere for his multiplicator compound disintegrator. The descriptions I’ve read mention using a steel sphere but the models I have seen have all used copper. Would the molecular structure of copper be sufficient to properly contain atoms smaller than even hydrogen? How might that relate to the green crystals used to create NB Gas for the airships of the Sonora Aero Club?
Fantasy, yes. But there is no reason to be dismissive. The 1632 series begins with its premise that a 21st Century West Virginia town is transported to the middle of 17th Century Germany through the crystalline byproduct of alien art installations. They have no place to be dismissive of the “fantasy” of steampunk.
They also talked about wicker nose cones on semi-rigid airships. They talked about how important is to keep the nose from deforming when moving against the wind and wicker provides that rigidity without being too heavy. The thing is, I haven’t seen that being an issue in any of the historical airships I am aware of. Most of the pressure envelope (non-rigid) airships of the time tended to have pointy ends that wouldn’t have issues with deformation. Perhaps if the airship were much larger with a rounded front end, like the rigid-frame zeppelins, then deformation would be a problem but, the way they described it, their 17th Century airships were still the smaller 100-200 foot ships.
It was also mentioned that today, filling an airship with helium can cost $17,000 whereas using hydrogen will only cost $300. How amazingly economical if we could only address that “ball of flame” problem.
On Saturday I went to another "1632 Alternate History" panel. Mostly the same people. Definitely the same attitude concerning steampunk.
I went to a discussion on Karel Čapek’s play “R.U.R.” (1920) It was very interesting and John Hertz really knew his stuff but I’ve never read it so I’m sure there was quite a bit lost on me. Since it’s a play, though, I should be able to download it and read through it fairly quickly.
That is, after I get through the stack of other things I have to read. Going back to the dealer’s room I, of course, bought books. I picked up a reprint of “Edison’s Conquest of Mars” by Garrett Serviss (1898) from Apogee Books. I have a 1st edition hardcover (1947) but having a paperback allows me to reference things without resorting to either an ebook or risking the very fragile slipcover on the original. I also picked up “A Honeymoon in Space” by George Griffith (1900) which has some fantastic Stanley L. Wood illustrations. And also from Apogee I got “Around the World in 65 Days” which chronicles Griffith’s 1894 expedition to follow in Phileas Fogg’s footsteps.
I picked up a small press novel called “The Thunderbolt Affair” by the apparently pseudonymous Geoffrey Mandragora. Based on the cover art and back cover description I suspected that this would be a steampunk novel fairly well grounded in history and period technology.
I also picked up David Malki's "Dispatches from Wondermark Manor”
David Malki was on a number of panels. On the “Airships: The Reality” panel he had little opportunity to participate because the moderator took the bulk of the time lecturing on airships rather than giving the panelists an opportunity to comment. Malki acted as moderator for the “Victorian and Edwardian Science Fiction” and "Turn Up the Steam" panels and did a great job. He kept the conversation going. Selected other panelists and asked them direct questions. Kept things going. Did what a good moderator should do.
Rudyard Kipling’s “With the Night Mail” (1905) was mentioned.
“Beyond the Gaslight” by Hilary and Dik Evans (1985) was mentioned. I have a copy and am in the process of reading it now.
“Angel of the Revolution” by George Griffith (1893) was mentioned.
“Land of the Changing Sun” by Will Harben (1894) was mentioned.
In the “Turn Up The Steam” panel, Ken Hite (author of a number of GURPS RPG supplements) put forward the idea of steampunk as a modern fairy tale. Much in the same way that the 19th Century retooled Grimm’s dark fairy tales filled with rape and cannibalism (Malki invented the term “rapeibalism”) into the more child-appropriate Disneyfied versions we are familiar with today, so too does steampunk take the 19th Century itself and repackage it into something more palatable to modern sensibilities.
It also takes the modern, alienating, bewilderingly complicated “black box” technology of today and domesticates it, reshaping it into a simpler form from a time when an average person with common tools could actually fix the machines he used on a daily basis.
One of the dealers had videos including a significant selection of Godzilla DVDs. I have been trying to complete my Godzilla collection and, where there is no general market release of a movie I have been downloading them via bittorrent and ripping them to DVD which has some failings, especially in terms of subtitles. The thing was that I didn’t have a list of what I did and didn’t have on my shelf. So, since I had just been upgraded to an actual “smart” phone, I used the power of technology to call home and have my daughter check the shelf when she stopped by to feed her lizard and then send me an email of what I had. With that email I ended up buying “Godzilla vs. Megalon”, “All Monsters Attack”, Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla” and “Godzilla vs. Destroyah.”
Sarah Hans ran into me in the hallway and was surprised that I wasn’t on panels. I have been doing presentations at steampunk cons but I haven’t done anything at a more generic sci-fi convention (such as Marcon) or at WorldCon, likely because I don’t know anyone on the concom. I was on panels at the WorldCon in 2001 because I knew people on the concom and, knowing well in advance that I was going, they put me on some panels. In the Start Trek panels (with Lawrence Schoen) and the costuming presentation I did on my own I was competent and prepared, but on the Godzilla panel with Bob Eggleton I was completely out of my league. Sure, I know a bunch about Godzilla and have been on a few con panels but Eggleton can listen to a Godzilla roar and identify which movie it’s from.
Bob Eggleton is a kaiju god.
Anyway, I’ve been wanting to get on more panels at conventions but haven’t had much success. My decision to go to WorldCon was late in the process but I am contacting all the steampunk cons I’m going to, offering my presentations and also asking about being added to panels. I’ve noticed that those cons work a little differently from more general sci-fi cons. At those, the concom comes up with a list of panel topics based on trends and (sometimes) on those who might be invited as guests. As the guests return their acceptances, the concom will put the guests on panels they think would be appropriate. That means sometimes a person is on a panel for tenuous reasons.
For steampunk cons, I haven’t seen how they run in the background but it seems that most of the panels are set up by the panelists and presented as a package deal. I know enough that I could probably sit on any airship panel but, at steampunk cons, the tendency would be that a club would have an airship presentation/panel already worked out rather than the con saying “let’s have an airship panel, who do we have coming that knows about airships?”
Chicago really is a windy city. I’ve been to Chicago a few times before but usually only for a day. Yea, it was windy but it didn’t really sink in until I spent an entire week there and it was windy every time I stepped outside.
There was a panel on the resurgence of pseudo-science in the 21st Century that I would like to have attended if I were not attending another panel at the same time. I am in the process of developing a presentation on pseudo-science of the 19th Century and have found that many of the things that were debunked in their day are being revived today. For example, homeopathy was junk when Sam Hahnemann came up with the idea in 1807. Even given the state of medicine at the time, what with bloodletting and the miasma theory of disease, they understood that if you dilute something it becomes weaker and not stronger. Amadeo Avagadro put an actual number to it by 1811. Queen Victoria’s physician Sir John Forbes called homeopathy “an outrage to human reason.” By mid century, even committed homeopaths were abandoning the actual homeopathic formula.
Yet, in the 1970s, homeopathy exploded back onto the scene to become a multi-billion dollar industry after lurking on the fringes for over a century. Why? I have some theories but I would have liked to see what the panelists had to say on the topic.
In the video room I watched “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind”, “Spice and Wolf” and the spectacular “The Special Duty Combat Unit Shinesman”.
“Steampunk and Cosplaying: Boon, Threat or Menace?” was one of the last programs I went to on Monday and I probably should have guessed where it was going. It started off with the characterization that, to have steampunk, you only need to slap some gears on it but, in short order, ended up talking about . . . pith helmets.
While the dead horse got beaten again, I thought it was an interesting addition to the conversation when an Englishman spoke up and indicated that this conversation doesn’t happen in British fandom. They realize that it is just a costume and think that Americans are simply overthinking things. Panelist Leigh Ann Hildebrand countered that, being English, he was at the core of the imperialistic attitudes and, being so privileged,of course would not recognize his privileged position. When the English fan was asked about how these things play out amongst recreationists of the English Civil War (attempting to set the parallel the American Civil War, which is apparently fraught with these issues) he responded that they don’t care either.
Sarah Hans said that, while she had no problem with someone wearing a Confederate uniform, she told a friend of hers that she would not associate with her at a con if she were wearing such a uniform. That tells me that you do have a problem with that person. Hildebrand said that she would never tell someone what not to wear but, really, that is what she had just spent her stage time doing; Telling people not to wear things that offend her. She wouldn’t say it to someone’s face but she felt perfectly comfortable standing on a stage and attacking the straw man.
Since pith helmets and Confederate uniforms were to subtle to make her point, Hildebrand brought up people wearing Nazi uniforms. She said she had never seen someone at a con wearing one but implied that it would be a major issue. I have seen such uniforms at several cons and they were not the issue she made them out to be. An older gentleman spoke to me privately and said he didn’t understand the fury over costumes. He understood that they were just costumes, and this coming from a man who had family members killed by Nazis in Poland.
So, let me take another swing at this dead horse.
A symbol has no inherent meaning. It is ink on a page. A piece of cloth. A hat. Tear it apart and you will not find fibers of imperialism mixed in with the pith. It has only the meaning that we ourselves ascribe to it. And, as an outside observer, I might not necessarily know the meaning you have intended in deciding to display that symbol. For me to be offended by the symbol itself without understanding the context in which it is presented is both unreasonable and unreasoned.
For example, as an atheist, it would be very easy for me to be offended by the Christian cross. The crucifix itself is an ancient device of torture and execution. We can throw in crusades, inquisitions and witch hunts and there is a lot to be offended by. But the cross on a simple gold chain around the neck of a believer has a different meaning than the overly large, fake-gem encrusted cross worn with a dozen other gold chains around the neck of a gangsta’. The cross on a grave stone in a cemetery has a meaning different from the roadside memorial cross. The cross on a church steeple carries a different meaning from the cross burning in a black man’s front yard late at night. The context is vitally important and before I am offended it is incumbent upon me to understand if I am right to be offended and temper my response accordingly.
This fixation on pith helmets and other perceived symbols of Victorian imperialism tells me that these easily offended people aren’t really concerned with understanding.
Let me say this one last time: Symbols have no inherent meaning.
*sigh* I’m sure this will be coming up again.
A zombie horse.
For dinner on Monday night we went to The House of Blues. Usually when I pay $20 for an entrée I feel hat I’ve been ripped off. With the lobster mac and cheese I didn’t feel quite as ripped off as I usually do.
WorldCon was an expensive weekend. $200 for membership. $1000 for the hotel room. $200 just for parking. There’s a reason I don’t do this annually although Euphorbia has already volunteered to help the next WorldCon with electronicising their newsletter. She’ll be going to San Antonio. I will not.
I wonder what it would cost to go to Dragon*con?
Except that it didn’t go well to start off. Not that the 8 hour drive to Chicago was a problem but adelheid_p’s employer chose not to properly staff the department such that when she went on vacation they could not actually operate with her gone for a few days. That meant that she had to work when we arrived at her brother’s place outside of Chicago and also had to abandon our plans to visit the Shedd Aquarium so that she could spend her afternoon in the basement of the museum utilizing their free wireless.
Eventually that was mostly sorted out and we checked into the hotel Thursday afternoon and then went over the bridge to the con itself. As it was late in the day, most of the Thursday programming was done and I couldn’t find anything that caught my attention so I went on my first pass through the dealer’s room before it closed down. Many dealers had already closed up shop but I did see a few things I would need to come back for.
Friday was a busy day and I found programming to keep my interest all day long. One such panel was "The Steampunk Genre" with Jay Lake (author of “Mainspring”), Paul Genesse and Michael Coorlim (authors whose work I am not familiar with) and Sarah Hans (also an author but with whom I am more familiar through the Airship Archon). As this was WorldCon and not a steampunk or media con, the bend of this panel was much more literary. Much more from where I started with steampunk.
According to Paul Genesse, K. W. Jeter, James Blaylock and Tim Powers wrote their “gonzo futurism” stories to piss off their Cal State instructors. They were writing alternative history because they didn’t know any history.
N-Rays were mentioned.
Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders was mentioned.
“The Log of the Flying Fish” by Harry Collingwood (1851) was mentioned.
The panelists were asked what they want to see less of in steampunk. What overused tropes should authors move on from? London, for one. Authors should move out of England because the 19th Century happened to the whole world. Airships are overused as a transportation method. We need a new paradigm for that. Pirates. Airship pirates. And zombies. Zombies have been overdone as a trope in general, we certainly don’t need more zombies in steampunk.
“Zombie Airship Pirates of the Thames.” This book must now be written.
As I stood in the hall before the panel, I recognized a conversation concerning the imperial symbolism of the pith helmet. I also recognized the person speaking on that as one of the people who had joined the mob to deliver a dressing down to me at the Steampunk Worlds Fair concerning the same topic.
The people she was lecturing to in the hallway seemed to be trying to avoid it all. One woman, who I recognized as being from the Archon, actually fled. This was not merely an impression based on her leaving but I had a chance to talk to her later and she let me know that she actively left rather than become involved in the argument.
I, also, avoided saying anything and was glad that she did not attend the panel I was waiting in line for. I should not have liked it to devolve into yet another “you are offending me” rant. (See my report on the SWF for my opinions on that.) Only later did I learn that the reason she didn’t attend this panel was because there was a concurrent panel elsewhere named “Aspects of a Pith Helmet” on which she was a panelist.
Yea. Even if I had noticed that one in the program, I would have chosen to be somewhere else.
There is not a lot of cosplay at WorldCon. There was myself and a few others but, for the most part, participants were in t-shirts and jeans. WorldCon is also an older crowd consisting of people who have been in science fiction fandom for a long time and probably consider themselves too old and too literary to be running around in costumes.
The panelists on the "100 Years of Edgar Rice Burroughs" panel were all pretty much agreed that ERB was not a particularly good writer. Some went so far as to say he was a lousy writer (Read a few Tarzan stories and note that they are really the same story with names changed.) But what ERB did was describe interesting worlds in a way that’s perfect for a young reader. A gateway drug, as it were.
I’ve noticed this myself. I fondly remember the Martian series in spite of my recognition, even at the time, that it was highly formulaic. Reading some recently I realized that the writing really was kind of crappy and John Carter is an arrogant jerk and not terribly interesting as a character.
The "1632: Weird Tech" panel consisted of a bunch of authors from the “1632: Ring of Fire” series hating on steampunk. While their interest in technical accuracy in their stories is welcome and I got a lot of useful information about things like hydrogen embrittlement, they were uniformly of the opinion that steampunk was fantasy and was completely unlike what they did.
One of the things they specifically hated was that sails do not work on an airship. And the recoil of canons would be problematic. And boarding actions are right out. Now, I haven’t read the entirety of the steampunk corpus but I have never read a steampunk story where the airship had sails. In fact, it sounds to me that the things they hate the most about steampunk is off of an Abney Park album cover.
Give it up, guys. Your airships are powered by steam so you are writing steampunk. Your stories may be more “hard science” than many others but you’re still part of the genre whether you build a straw man off of a piece of art or not.
To get back to some of the useful things I got from the panel, I learned that you cannot store hydrogen in steel containers. The hydrogen molecules will work their way into the crystal structure of the steel and quite literally poke holes in it. After weeks or months, the metal will become brittle and catastrophically fail. You need to store hydrogen in pure copper or copper-lined pressure vessels.
And though the 1632 guys would dismiss the idea as pure fantasy, that has me thinking about storage problems for aetheric or sub-hydrogen elements. I recall that John Worrell Keely used a spinning sphere for his multiplicator compound disintegrator. The descriptions I’ve read mention using a steel sphere but the models I have seen have all used copper. Would the molecular structure of copper be sufficient to properly contain atoms smaller than even hydrogen? How might that relate to the green crystals used to create NB Gas for the airships of the Sonora Aero Club?
Fantasy, yes. But there is no reason to be dismissive. The 1632 series begins with its premise that a 21st Century West Virginia town is transported to the middle of 17th Century Germany through the crystalline byproduct of alien art installations. They have no place to be dismissive of the “fantasy” of steampunk.
They also talked about wicker nose cones on semi-rigid airships. They talked about how important is to keep the nose from deforming when moving against the wind and wicker provides that rigidity without being too heavy. The thing is, I haven’t seen that being an issue in any of the historical airships I am aware of. Most of the pressure envelope (non-rigid) airships of the time tended to have pointy ends that wouldn’t have issues with deformation. Perhaps if the airship were much larger with a rounded front end, like the rigid-frame zeppelins, then deformation would be a problem but, the way they described it, their 17th Century airships were still the smaller 100-200 foot ships.
It was also mentioned that today, filling an airship with helium can cost $17,000 whereas using hydrogen will only cost $300. How amazingly economical if we could only address that “ball of flame” problem.
On Saturday I went to another "1632 Alternate History" panel. Mostly the same people. Definitely the same attitude concerning steampunk.
I went to a discussion on Karel Čapek’s play “R.U.R.” (1920) It was very interesting and John Hertz really knew his stuff but I’ve never read it so I’m sure there was quite a bit lost on me. Since it’s a play, though, I should be able to download it and read through it fairly quickly.
That is, after I get through the stack of other things I have to read. Going back to the dealer’s room I, of course, bought books. I picked up a reprint of “Edison’s Conquest of Mars” by Garrett Serviss (1898) from Apogee Books. I have a 1st edition hardcover (1947) but having a paperback allows me to reference things without resorting to either an ebook or risking the very fragile slipcover on the original. I also picked up “A Honeymoon in Space” by George Griffith (1900) which has some fantastic Stanley L. Wood illustrations. And also from Apogee I got “Around the World in 65 Days” which chronicles Griffith’s 1894 expedition to follow in Phileas Fogg’s footsteps.
I picked up a small press novel called “The Thunderbolt Affair” by the apparently pseudonymous Geoffrey Mandragora. Based on the cover art and back cover description I suspected that this would be a steampunk novel fairly well grounded in history and period technology.
I also picked up David Malki's "Dispatches from Wondermark Manor”
David Malki was on a number of panels. On the “Airships: The Reality” panel he had little opportunity to participate because the moderator took the bulk of the time lecturing on airships rather than giving the panelists an opportunity to comment. Malki acted as moderator for the “Victorian and Edwardian Science Fiction” and "Turn Up the Steam" panels and did a great job. He kept the conversation going. Selected other panelists and asked them direct questions. Kept things going. Did what a good moderator should do.
Rudyard Kipling’s “With the Night Mail” (1905) was mentioned.
“Beyond the Gaslight” by Hilary and Dik Evans (1985) was mentioned. I have a copy and am in the process of reading it now.
“Angel of the Revolution” by George Griffith (1893) was mentioned.
“Land of the Changing Sun” by Will Harben (1894) was mentioned.
In the “Turn Up The Steam” panel, Ken Hite (author of a number of GURPS RPG supplements) put forward the idea of steampunk as a modern fairy tale. Much in the same way that the 19th Century retooled Grimm’s dark fairy tales filled with rape and cannibalism (Malki invented the term “rapeibalism”) into the more child-appropriate Disneyfied versions we are familiar with today, so too does steampunk take the 19th Century itself and repackage it into something more palatable to modern sensibilities.
It also takes the modern, alienating, bewilderingly complicated “black box” technology of today and domesticates it, reshaping it into a simpler form from a time when an average person with common tools could actually fix the machines he used on a daily basis.
One of the dealers had videos including a significant selection of Godzilla DVDs. I have been trying to complete my Godzilla collection and, where there is no general market release of a movie I have been downloading them via bittorrent and ripping them to DVD which has some failings, especially in terms of subtitles. The thing was that I didn’t have a list of what I did and didn’t have on my shelf. So, since I had just been upgraded to an actual “smart” phone, I used the power of technology to call home and have my daughter check the shelf when she stopped by to feed her lizard and then send me an email of what I had. With that email I ended up buying “Godzilla vs. Megalon”, “All Monsters Attack”, Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla” and “Godzilla vs. Destroyah.”
Sarah Hans ran into me in the hallway and was surprised that I wasn’t on panels. I have been doing presentations at steampunk cons but I haven’t done anything at a more generic sci-fi convention (such as Marcon) or at WorldCon, likely because I don’t know anyone on the concom. I was on panels at the WorldCon in 2001 because I knew people on the concom and, knowing well in advance that I was going, they put me on some panels. In the Start Trek panels (with Lawrence Schoen) and the costuming presentation I did on my own I was competent and prepared, but on the Godzilla panel with Bob Eggleton I was completely out of my league. Sure, I know a bunch about Godzilla and have been on a few con panels but Eggleton can listen to a Godzilla roar and identify which movie it’s from.
Bob Eggleton is a kaiju god.
Anyway, I’ve been wanting to get on more panels at conventions but haven’t had much success. My decision to go to WorldCon was late in the process but I am contacting all the steampunk cons I’m going to, offering my presentations and also asking about being added to panels. I’ve noticed that those cons work a little differently from more general sci-fi cons. At those, the concom comes up with a list of panel topics based on trends and (sometimes) on those who might be invited as guests. As the guests return their acceptances, the concom will put the guests on panels they think would be appropriate. That means sometimes a person is on a panel for tenuous reasons.
For steampunk cons, I haven’t seen how they run in the background but it seems that most of the panels are set up by the panelists and presented as a package deal. I know enough that I could probably sit on any airship panel but, at steampunk cons, the tendency would be that a club would have an airship presentation/panel already worked out rather than the con saying “let’s have an airship panel, who do we have coming that knows about airships?”
Chicago really is a windy city. I’ve been to Chicago a few times before but usually only for a day. Yea, it was windy but it didn’t really sink in until I spent an entire week there and it was windy every time I stepped outside.
There was a panel on the resurgence of pseudo-science in the 21st Century that I would like to have attended if I were not attending another panel at the same time. I am in the process of developing a presentation on pseudo-science of the 19th Century and have found that many of the things that were debunked in their day are being revived today. For example, homeopathy was junk when Sam Hahnemann came up with the idea in 1807. Even given the state of medicine at the time, what with bloodletting and the miasma theory of disease, they understood that if you dilute something it becomes weaker and not stronger. Amadeo Avagadro put an actual number to it by 1811. Queen Victoria’s physician Sir John Forbes called homeopathy “an outrage to human reason.” By mid century, even committed homeopaths were abandoning the actual homeopathic formula.
Yet, in the 1970s, homeopathy exploded back onto the scene to become a multi-billion dollar industry after lurking on the fringes for over a century. Why? I have some theories but I would have liked to see what the panelists had to say on the topic.
In the video room I watched “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind”, “Spice and Wolf” and the spectacular “The Special Duty Combat Unit Shinesman”.
“Steampunk and Cosplaying: Boon, Threat or Menace?” was one of the last programs I went to on Monday and I probably should have guessed where it was going. It started off with the characterization that, to have steampunk, you only need to slap some gears on it but, in short order, ended up talking about . . . pith helmets.
While the dead horse got beaten again, I thought it was an interesting addition to the conversation when an Englishman spoke up and indicated that this conversation doesn’t happen in British fandom. They realize that it is just a costume and think that Americans are simply overthinking things. Panelist Leigh Ann Hildebrand countered that, being English, he was at the core of the imperialistic attitudes and, being so privileged,of course would not recognize his privileged position. When the English fan was asked about how these things play out amongst recreationists of the English Civil War (attempting to set the parallel the American Civil War, which is apparently fraught with these issues) he responded that they don’t care either.
Sarah Hans said that, while she had no problem with someone wearing a Confederate uniform, she told a friend of hers that she would not associate with her at a con if she were wearing such a uniform. That tells me that you do have a problem with that person. Hildebrand said that she would never tell someone what not to wear but, really, that is what she had just spent her stage time doing; Telling people not to wear things that offend her. She wouldn’t say it to someone’s face but she felt perfectly comfortable standing on a stage and attacking the straw man.
Since pith helmets and Confederate uniforms were to subtle to make her point, Hildebrand brought up people wearing Nazi uniforms. She said she had never seen someone at a con wearing one but implied that it would be a major issue. I have seen such uniforms at several cons and they were not the issue she made them out to be. An older gentleman spoke to me privately and said he didn’t understand the fury over costumes. He understood that they were just costumes, and this coming from a man who had family members killed by Nazis in Poland.
So, let me take another swing at this dead horse.
A symbol has no inherent meaning. It is ink on a page. A piece of cloth. A hat. Tear it apart and you will not find fibers of imperialism mixed in with the pith. It has only the meaning that we ourselves ascribe to it. And, as an outside observer, I might not necessarily know the meaning you have intended in deciding to display that symbol. For me to be offended by the symbol itself without understanding the context in which it is presented is both unreasonable and unreasoned.
For example, as an atheist, it would be very easy for me to be offended by the Christian cross. The crucifix itself is an ancient device of torture and execution. We can throw in crusades, inquisitions and witch hunts and there is a lot to be offended by. But the cross on a simple gold chain around the neck of a believer has a different meaning than the overly large, fake-gem encrusted cross worn with a dozen other gold chains around the neck of a gangsta’. The cross on a grave stone in a cemetery has a meaning different from the roadside memorial cross. The cross on a church steeple carries a different meaning from the cross burning in a black man’s front yard late at night. The context is vitally important and before I am offended it is incumbent upon me to understand if I am right to be offended and temper my response accordingly.
This fixation on pith helmets and other perceived symbols of Victorian imperialism tells me that these easily offended people aren’t really concerned with understanding.
Let me say this one last time: Symbols have no inherent meaning.
*sigh* I’m sure this will be coming up again.
A zombie horse.
For dinner on Monday night we went to The House of Blues. Usually when I pay $20 for an entrée I feel hat I’ve been ripped off. With the lobster mac and cheese I didn’t feel quite as ripped off as I usually do.
WorldCon was an expensive weekend. $200 for membership. $1000 for the hotel room. $200 just for parking. There’s a reason I don’t do this annually although Euphorbia has already volunteered to help the next WorldCon with electronicising their newsletter. She’ll be going to San Antonio. I will not.
I wonder what it would cost to go to Dragon*con?
