From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Jul 08 2002 - 00:54:03 MDT
In con recovery phase, I will attempt a brief
retrospective on what I observed and/or participated
in at Congaree that might be of interest to
extropians:
As background, SF (Science Fiction) Fandom is composed
of an eclectic melange of folks, ranging from people
who are into costuming and swords and sorcery fantasy
to those who are Ayn Rand fans and professional
scientists and engineers, including, among others at
this con, the cool people doing the really cool rocket
planes in the Mohave (from whom I have an invitation -
YES! Just call me Rocket Phil now.).
Hard core SF Fans (those who agree with the
intellectual Mason/Dixon line FIAWOL (Fandom Is A Way
Of Life)) tend to have certain personality
characteristics similar to those of Asperger's
syndrome (I suspect that many of them are in fact
examples of this).
On Sunday, I overheard one mother telling her ~10yr.
old son, ~"I don't need to hear every single detail of
... Just tell me the essentials" (at which point I
couldn't help but start laughing) - lending credence
to the idea that Asperger's is in fact hereditary.
Fans tend to have an incredible memory for useless
detail which they are delighted to share with whomever
they can corner. They also love to correct other
people at length on completely irrelevant deviations
from absolute precision, which can be very
disconcerting - snowballing the problem to infinity -
to the uninitiated. And, they are invariably
completely oblivious of the impact of these bahaviors
on the unsuspecting victim.
What would otherwise be a trivial encounter - e.g.,
asking directions to a room - often becomes an
excruciating process in dealing with a Fan. "Oh, you
mean a room by that name in this hotel, in Los
Angelese, on planet earth - more precisely Terra, from
the Greek. Yes, now I understand. You're certain
that you don't mean this or that other room?"
Assuming that one has been temporarilly transposed
into the universe that modeled itself on the Monty
Python argument room is one useful technique in
dealing with this variation on the fan genome.
This time, however, I ran into very little of that -
or maybe the Fans I encountered were sensitive to the
fact that I had learned how to deal with it. Or,
perhaps they were overwhelmed by being in a hotel
modeled after their internal reality.
The Radison LAX might be best summed up by the signs
over the elevators. At the bottom-most point of their
quadrifold traverse, above each of the four doors,
there is a sign that states in no uncertain terms,
~"This elevator Up," while at the Penthouse, which the
Con suite occupied, four similar signs state with
equal unambivalence ~"This elevator Down." Who could
argue with that? One could speculate, however, upon
the motives and intellect of those who determined to
place those invaluable signs.
The Penthouse is on the 13th floor of the LAX Radison.
The elevators frequently appeared to default to a
mode of LL or PH - no in-between stops, as at floor 2,
where most of the con activity took place.
Unfortunately the parties were almost all on floor 12,
and at various times the fire doors to all the
stairwells on floor 12 were locked from both sides,
leaving only the elevators...
The Radison Penhouse, however, is a worthwhile goal in
itself, as from it one is in the perfect position to
experience the full impact of any nuclear weapon's
detonation from a visible radius of several miles and
almost 360 degrees. Thursday's shooting at LAX proper
lent a certain mild frisson to the vertigo.
This, together with the Japanese Anime conference of
which Raven Oneil (sp?) (drop-dead great-looking
actress (she was in that latest Cameron Diaz girl film
that got the awful reviews) and costumer who I keep
running into at cons) informed me, perhaps explains in
part the low attendence at Westercon. The figure I
heard was 1500, or perhaps 2500 if you use the airline
seat method of counting, or 2400.5 given Raven's
unbelievably slender, yet perfectly physically
conditioned (not much capability of concealment in a
leather bikini) bod.
Moving on, I missed Thursday, due to other pressing
concerns, and spent Friday morning dealing with a
failed O-ring gasket as well as replacing the signal
lights - finally - in anticipation of being pulled
over by unsympathetic Chippees who would not agree
with my argument, regardless of the factual merits,
that the local Cholos from the barrio accross the
street would simply take them as a new challenge and
they would go the same route as the prior sets.
Friday 4:15, however, I was scheduled to be on a panel
with B.J. Trimble, among others, to discuss how to
save cancelled TV shows, a matter of personal concern
with the unexpected cancelling of DA ("Dark Angel").
B. J. was responsible for Star Trek being resurrected,
or so is my take on it, so her detailed discussion of
how she organized the effort that succeeded was well
worth hearing.
I pointed out that IMHO the problem is the stupid
system that lets everyone but the viewer determine
which shows will continue. A show that is just
marginally better than the mediocre competition and
attracts ten million viewers who are just barely
motivated to watch will invariably win out over a
dynamite show that only attracts 5 million
fanacticallly loyal viewers under the product
sponsership system. Obviously, with the new models of
distribution, soon we can expect that viewer demand
will rule, as it does with music CDs.
I also suggested selling a show directly to the
viewers, as Broadway Shows often are, (as in Mel
Brook's "The Producers"), and one other panelist with
much direct experience as a professional actor, agreed
that that was a plausible alternative.
Due to low attendance, there was apparently a
corresponding low $$ available, and so - horror of
horrors - neither the Program Participants hospitality
suite nor the penthouse con suite had food or even
coffee when I arrived Friday afternoon. Fortunately,
the article earlier referenced at extropy.org on
useful potential strategies for dealing with the
fat-challenged - esp. the "Eat your seat mate" one -
had filtered down to the Fans. The parties made up
for it, however, even though there were only perhaps a
dozen or so of them. Baen books, in particular, laid
out a very impressive spread of food (for future
reference).
On Saturday, God had finally noticed me, and he was
pissed. First, I was on a panel with a male Kzin who
did not like me, and then later, assuming there was
anything left of me, with a female of the same
species. I thought that He had changed his mind - but
then, what about omnipotence? - but no, David Brin did
(belatedly as usual, just to demonstrate that Kzins
sit where and whenever they want) finally show, after
a substitute had already taken his center chair -
which David took back, forcing him, naturally to hang
off the end of the panel table - another lesson to
mere humans.
The subject was allegedly ~"Beyond Ayn Rand and Robert
Heinlein... What are libertarian fans reading now?"
Other panelists (you can find this info at the
Westercon site - possibly more accurately than I can
deliver, altho don't rely on that) included three
people who I didn't know and whose names escape me
(but it doesn't matter as I do recall David's name).
Brad Linaweaver ("Moon of Ice" (?)), minarchist
libertarian who I've known since the late '70's and
reasonably successful author was also there.
David of course dominated the discussion, but was
considerably more mellow than his usual (and there is
no evidence yet to link this fact to the two missing
fans, or the bloody napkins). He began with a
discussion about how he had just come from some LP
(Libertarian Party) convention, to which he had been
invited specifically to tell the LP all the things
they were doing wrong. Which he did - or at least he
thought he did and reiterated for our benefit.
(Actually, I suspect that I could have added a couple
or a hundred or so additional items to his list.)
David went on to lecture us on the various failings of
libertarians: To begin with, "we" are a bunch of
smirking elitists who start with the assumption that
non-libertarians are a bunch of worthless fools. So,
here "we" are trying to market a product and when
people don't jump to buy it, we start yelling at them,
"You fools. Why aren't you buying our great product,
you blithering idiots." This sales technique has not
worked (ignoring the minority of shame junkies).
David went on to use Ayn Rand's attitudes as a
paradigm of the position. Then he launched into a new
track in which he explained how we reinforced this
attitude and why. This actually began to get
interesting.
(Backing up a bit, at one of my more memorable
encounters with David at some long past con, he became
annoyed with something I had said to a fellow
participant and told me, ~"And that's why you never
get invited to the good parties, Phil." When I
mentioned this to a group of other professional SF
authors earlier on Saturday, they cracked up, ~"Yes,
THAT's the David Brin we all know and love." I
personally think that he studies Harlan Ellison for
technique, altho he still has a LONG way to go to
match Harlan - with whom I also had a meaningful
encounter.)
Next: after I've had some sleep, I will get into the
actual meat of Brin's message and how it relates to
the extropian path.
Later ;)
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:15:14 MST