Corflu at the table

[calimac]

The main body of Corflu programming consisted of three hour-long panels, an hour of dialogue readings, and the auction. The readings, which I guess were taken from an e-mail list - this wasn't made entirely clear to me - were well-enough written, but the ability to read aloud wittily and entertainingly is a skill which not all of the participants in this event had.

The panels, however, were consistently interesting. The program did not list all the panelists, and I didn't write anything down, but a few points seemed worthy of taking away to think about later.

One panel asked the question, "How would your life have been different, if you'd never become a fan?" Most of the panelists - Peter Weston expressed this point most explicitly - could hardly imagine what their lives would have been like without it. Me neither. Most of my intellectual interests predate my arrival in fandom, but my expressions of them - not just my academic work as a fantasy scholar, but my few publications as a librarian and my third career as a classical music reviewer - came either through contacts made in fandom or a confidence in self-expression gained through fannish writing. And my entire social life, excepting only with blood relatives, is either in fandom or a result of fandom. If I'm a bit of a social hermit today, it's because I finally had a surfeit in my twenties and thirties of the social life I was starved for in my pre-fannish teens.

Peter did wonder, though - if he'd come across fandom too early, and found a social group of people talking to each other and ignoring him, would he have drifted away in disappointment and never tried again? It's a good question, and it ties in to something Ted White mentioned quite incidentally in the introduction to another panel, "The Fine Art of Letterhacking." This panel turned out to be more an essay in the fine art of editing fanzine lettercolumns and the effect that styles of editing will have on letter writers. (For instance, if the editor chops up letters and groups the comments by topic, will letter writers stop trying to tie their letters into coherent wholes?)

But at the beginning, Ted defined letterhacking. He said that while now it means writing letters of comment to fanzines, in his neohood in the early 1950s it meant writing letters to prozines. Large active conversational prozine lettercolumns have since pretty much disappeared, but in the day they were a major source of recuitment for fandom. And this is where Ted made the comment that most intrigued me. He said that these letters were full of fannish references and in-group jargon that he was eager to learn the meaning of. I, too, many years later and in a quite different context - for I found fandom in a high-school SF club, not through prozines - found the hermetic esoterica of fanzine fandom to be quite appealing.

And I wondered, what has changed? For this very quality is what gives fanzine fandom its reputation in a world of media fans as being elitist and unwelcoming. My own feeling is that any social group which welcomed me could not possibly be described as unwelcoming, but it is true that at a Worldcon a few years ago, someone distributed a Neofans' Bill of Rights, which essentially called on us established fans to stop using terms and making references that neofans didn't understand, or at least explain them whenever we did, and to order our entire cultural group around the perceived preferences of neofans, rather than to suit ourselves and let others decide for themselves if they liked it too.

To me the Neofans' Bill of Rights, though reasonable enough as a request for politeness, had behind it an attitude that I as a neofan would have found unbelievably arrogant and condescending. I never expected fandom to model itself to my preferences. My job was to decide if I could fit into its preferences. Some areas of fandom I didn't fit into and dropped out of; others I did and stayed. Fanzine fandom was one where I did. But something has changed, because after half a century of continuous influx of eager youngsters, about 1980 fanzine fandom stopped getting so many recruits, and most of those it does get are somewhat older. Has human nature changed? Are potential fans finding other outlets on the Internet? Is media fandom really sucking away those who in past times would have thrived on our brand of rigourous discourse?

The third panel was a revisit of the old question, Whither TAFF? No bland, vague, theoretical discourse on the state of the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund, this was a vigorous and even fierce discussion and dispute over iron specifics. Peter Weston again brought up the most interesting point, about the ethics and aesthetics of campaigning for TAFF delegate. In the Old Days, candidates made sure they kept their activity prominent during the campaign, but they never asked for votes, assuming that voters would be familiar with their work. But more recently with the fragmentation of fandom, candidates have been running friends-and-neighbors campaigns, going around sometimes literally sticking out their hands and saying "Vote for me." Once upon a time this would have been considered unbearably crass, and Peter asked, is it now expected? He himself lost TAFF to the first such campaign 35 years ago, and though he subsequently won, it's clear that 35 years later, he's still pissed off about it.

Lilian Edwards told Peter he was all wet; that a candidate shouldn't expect to win by just sitting back and expecting all his mates in the in-group to vote for him: fandom is larger than your in-group. But that's not what Peter was saying at all, though his reply to Lilian was not as incisive as it could have been. There's a community of people who know TAFF and know the eligible candidates and their work. It's the recruitment of votes from people who know nothing of TAFF, nothing of the candidates other than the one who recruits them, and who are only questionably qualified to vote at all (TAFF requires voters to be already active in fandom, though it's doubtful whether this is enforced) that bothers him.

I tend to agree that there's a difference between an in-group, a community, and an amorphous fringe body, and find the most encouraging fan-fund development of recent years to be the tendency of candidates, or their sponsors, to publish collections of their past writings. This strikes me as fair campaigning, the equivalent of politicians running on their records rather than on how many babies they can kiss. If the community is getting diffuse, publications like these can bring them together.

As I said: a thought-provoking three hours.

Comments

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

I too find the whole you must change your social circle so it's more welcoming to me as I define welcoming thing to be very odd. Like you, I was intrigued by the references and jargon and such and worked hard to find out about what it all meant. I really would like to know why this has changed.

Also, the rest of fandom kinda wonders why TAFF is only for fanzine fans. It's Trans Atlantic Fand Fund, not Trans Atlantic Fanzine Fund. That should mean any and all fans shouldn't it? Yet almost everything you've said about it in the above post assumes they will be active in fanzines. Once upon a time, when things like TAFF were started, if you were a fan you were in fanzines, one way or another. Today, not so much.

MKK

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I don't place too much emphasis on the Scalian literalist interpretation of fannish terminology. I've been amazed at some of the conclusions people have drawn from the "World" in "Worldcon", when all that Sam Moskowitz originally meant by the name was that it was being held in conjunction with the World's Fair.

But it is true that fans primarily involved with conventions and clubs rather than fanzines have been running for, and winning, TAFF since the very beginning. (Remember Robert Madle? Don Ford?) They're certainly eligible. The question is how, in an era of fragmented fandom, they can get the word out about who they are and what they've done without simply campaigning among their friends. There have been a few US TAFF candidates I'd never heard of before they ran, and I felt a little deflated to learn afterwards that they were BNFs in their circles. I'd have preferred to learn it earlier.

So it may be a good sign that I heard someone at Corflu ask who you were, and get a good answer.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

So it may be a good sign that I heard someone at Corflu ask who you were, and get a good answer.

Oh, now *there's* an intriguing sentence. There are so many varied "good answers" depending on your point of view. Because I'm a relentless egoist I ask: who was asking, who replied, and, roughly, what was that good answer?

MKK

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Would I live to be 1,000 I would not ask that question.

K.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I've come to the conclusion that Fandom is mostly dead. The people comprising the great numbers of fans today couldn't care less about the roots and origins of Science Fiction Fandom as the continuously existing entity from the late 1920s until now.

K.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

But why? My generation of youngsters was culturally famous for its eagerness to trash the old and reinvent civilization, yet somewhere out there were a couple hundred of us who joined traditional fandom and sopped up its history and learneed to respect our elders. Why can't there be a couple hundred such youngsters now?

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

There can be, but there's also no useful continuity between your generation and the teenagers of today. Have you seen the various icons around LJ talking about "My Fandom [this]" and "My Fandom [that]"? There's entire communities devoted to what people call "their fandom." There's even a social construct called "The Fandom," though I confess I do not know what The Fandom is, I think that one might be about Harry Potter.

In part, the old original SF fandom you and I are part of did it to themselves, taking their conventions and con-running much too seriously, and closing off that entrance point for younger fans.

Another piece of this is the fragmentation of various sub-interests within the old guard of fandom: filk, costuming, and gaming don't need SF fandom to survive.

But in larger part, movies and television fragmented the audence into small pockets of devotees, whose focus of interest is Xena Warrior Princess or the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki.

K.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

This doesn't really explain the problem. Fragmentation and creation of new fandoms had been going on in significant quantity for at least a decade before the supply of new trufen started drying up. I'm half a fringe fan myself, being heavily involved in Tolkien fandom for just as long, and it is that, not fanzine fandom in particular, or even pure SF fandom in general, which has first call for my time and resources. (That's why I hardly ever get to Wiscon.)

The professionalization of convention-running has certainly not been responsible for the impact on fanzine fandom, as they're quite distinct parts of the subculture with relatively small overlap. In fact, convention running seems to be one of the more healthily growing parts of the older field.

The real question is, whence this unwillingness by neos to learn the folkways, lingo and customs of the group they seek to join? That's what's new.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I think that it's a complex social situation that can't be summed up or really understood any more easily than something like economics or any field that concerns itself with studying the aggragation of large numbers of individual decisions. So, I'm giving you my ideas on how this change came about.

The SF Fandom subculture is a changing thing. We no longer say, "The Minicon" or "The Denvention" though those locutions used to prevail. Even people who consider themselves trufen use the new phrasing of dropping the definite article as in "Con" or "Consuite."

But the subculture was deluged by new people, could not assimilate them, and honestly hunkered down against the flood (examples abound, from the Permanent Floating Worldcon Committee to the special-committed suites for the fannish at large conventions; I think it was Moshe Feder who named this "Fortress Roscoe"). The result was first that those new people used parts of the original SF fandom to suit themselves and ignored the rest.

I didn't mention the obvious events that changed SF Fandom irrevokably: the increasing easy of communication, starting with more people being able to travel to more conventions in the post-war years, to the Internet, which influence is immeasurable, but has certainly destroyed the relevancy of all paper-based forms of fanac.

At some point, SF Fandom as we know it sank below the radar of new people coming in. And it's too late now. The new people can't find SF Fandom, and the group is too old and grey to bother with, even if they could.

The well-rounded fan who makes and wears hall costumes, pubs his ish, runs a convention department, writes filk songs, and all that seems to have died with Bruce Pelz and Joni Stopa. Fandom is fragmented. We are out-numbered, and this conflict has been lost.

K.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The well-rounded fan who makes and wears hall costumes, pubs his ish, runs a convention department, writes filk songs, and all that seems to have died with Bruce Pelz and Joni Stopa.

I'm not quite dead yet, and I've done all of the things you state. Not necessarily all of them in depth, but I've done some of all of them. I admit to being inspired by Bruce Pelz.

Or is the fact that I'm over 40 (born 1965; found fandom 1984 at L.A.con II) mean that my experience is irrelevant here?

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

I'm not into costumes and it was someone else who turned one of my poems into a filk song, but I reckon I'm as much a fan as the next.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

There's a community of people who know TAFF and know the eligible candidates and their work. It's the recruitment of votes from people who know nothing of TAFF, nothing of the candidates other than the one who recruits them, and who are only questionably qualified to vote at all (TAFF requires voters to be already active in fandom, though it's doubtful whether this is enforced) that bothers him.

This seems to say that only people who are already aware of TAFF should be eligible to vote. While I agree with the latter point that they should be active in fandom, I disagree with the notion that only people who have heard of TAFF previously and know all the candidates should vote. TAFF is a fannish fund and anyone who is active in fandom should be eligible, nay, encouraged to learn more about it and vote, even if they are voting because someone who is standing for the fund told them about it. After all, one of the jobs of administrators/candidates is to promote the fund. How better to do that than to get fannish friends who aren't aware of it previously to know about it!

I too am put off by people who potentially might accost strangers at a convention to do nothing more than hand over a few dollars and fill out a ballot. At the same time, when I stood for DUFF, many of my fannish friends voted in a fan fund election for the first time because I was running. They'd heard of the funds before but hadn't been motivated enough to take part previously. I think that's a different story, but perhaps that's because I was the candidate in question :->

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

There's an old line that a neofan is a person in fandom who doesn't know what a neofan is, and since TAFF voter eligibility does require previous activity in fandom, I think knowing what TAFF is is a good shibboleth.

And I'd certainly advise voters to be aware of all the candidates before voting. I say the same thing about the Hugos: I strongly advise against voting in categories where you haven't read (or equivalented) all the finalists.

But I agree that it's an entirely different matter when a person clearly previously qualified to vote by the above criteria finally gets off their, uh, duff and casts a vote because a friend is running. All candidates have lazy friends.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

At the same time, when I stood for DUFF, many of my fannish friends voted in a fan fund election for the first time because I was running. They'd heard of the funds before but hadn't been motivated enough to take part previously.

That's what I thought about johnnyeponymous's "campaign." I've voted in past fan fund elections myself (and served as they "reference" for others, as most of the administrators seem to know who I am -- I even had one check a reference through me once), so it's not as though it would have been my first time to vote. Also, digressing a bit, BASFA is always happy to have a Visiting Fan Fund delegate stop by a meeting. (We raised a few bucks for TAFF when taffbug visited, for instance; enough to pay for her dinner and a bit more besides.) Something I like about people actively campaigning at conventions is that it raises the profile of the funds and possibly leads to more people at the conventions understanding why the con is making a big deal over these people about whom they have probably never heard.

I also thought that the fairly tongue-in-cheek way Chris was campaigning was entertaining in its own right.

[johnnyeponymous.livejournal.com]

Yes...tongue-in-cheek...that's what I was doing!

But seriously, it really comes down to a couple of things (and I'll go into this more in a future issue of Banana Wings) one of which being tailoring the campaign to your personality type. I'm something of an extroverted mad man, so an extroverted mad campaign worked for me. A goodly part of my race was getting people to understand what TAFF was (and of course to vote for me as a side-effect, but let's not muddy the waters) and that they can and should be involved. One of Lillian's points was that the Mario fellow who bat Peter was getting new folks involved, which is wonderful to a point and can become ballot stuffing at its extreme. There's a line there that needs to be understood better.

Ultimately, every TAFF race should be about three things: what is TAFF, who's running and why should you support them, in that order. TAFF itself is always at the heart of every race, more so than anything else. Every race's goal should be to bring TAFF to new eyes or eyes that have been long closed and why they should support it. Getting the word out about the positives of TAFF should be the main thrust. I mixed the message in with my Chris for TAFF campaign, but I always made sure to explain what TAFF was, how they could help, and pushed the auctions and so on.

In the end, I shook a lot of hands and I don't think I kissed any babies, but I've had a lot of folks say that teh reason they started looking into what TAFF was was because I put myself out there.
CHris

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine my life without fandom. Other social groups I've tried just haven't felt as comfortable for me and I've always come back.

As far as neofans entering sf faanish fanzine fandom, I think what happened is that beginning in the late 70s and early 80s, there were other, less defined, social/correspondence networks that it was easier to enter.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

There's an old line that a neofan is a person in fandom who doesn't know what a neofan is, and since TAFF voter eligibility does require previous activity in fandom, I think knowing what TAFF is is a good shibboleth.

I don't agree - you could be an active costuming, or filking, or even convention fan without necessarily knowing what TAFF is. But if you had a friend running for TAFF, I think you would be a perfectly eligible active fan to vote in an election of fandom to send a fannish representative to another country.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

What She Said.

(And in case anyone questions my fanzine fan credentials, I'll note that I have "pubbed my ish" although it's been many years since I did one. And that doesn't even count the various convention newsletters I've done, or attending three Corflus.)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Nobody's questioning your fanzine fan credentials: if you read my comment to MKK you will see that fanzine fan credentials are beside the point.

You do, however, know what TAFF is, and that is the point.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Define "friend."

Candidates signing up their acquaintances who know nothing of TAFF in an effort to beef their votes through sheer numbers this way, and not by being judged superior to the other candidates, is exactly what Peter Weston was objecting to.

He did tell me that he saw nothing wrong in candidates explaining TAFF in their fannish circles, handing out ballots, and encouraging them to become familiar with all the candidates.