Fandom

How Others See Us

~ Cheryl ~ 37 Comments

RaceFail09 continues to rumble on in the blogosphere, and if you are one of the people who haven’t been following it then Peggy at Biology in Science Fiction has a lengthy round-up of links. However, that’s not why I’m pointing you at her post. Peggy produces some of the best fan writing about science fiction around at the moment (and was on my Hugo ballot), and I’d love to get to meet her one day. But despite being white and a book reader she says she doesn’t feel comfortable about going to cons. She has the impression that con-attending fans are not only racist, but misogynist and elitist as well. And the killer point for me was:

Of course it’s only convention-goers (or people willing to pay the convention fee) who are allowed to vote on the Hugo Awards, so in that sense it’s people who attend cons who help define which novels are the “important” ones in the genre.

As with the whole of this debate, it really doesn’t matter whether people’s perceptions are correct or not, what matters is that they have those perceptions.

I have another post about the future of Worldcon coming – hopefully later this week. I’ll keep trying, but sometimes it seems very much like a losing battle.

Congratulations, Dr. Irma

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

There was a big party in Finland yesterday, because my good friend Irma “Ipa” Hirsjärvi has finally received her doctorate. She is now a doctor of philosophy in the area of Fannish Studies. Finnish fandom was on hand to mark the day in their own special way, including something called Dr. Ipa’s Sing-along Blog. Liisa Rantalaiho, who is one of the mainstays of the Finnish filk community, tells me that they used my Abba filk, suitably re-purposed for the occasion:

There’s one solution I have found, and it is indeed very sound, Best for all:
I’ll make this fandom work for me, my research topic it will be.
What a ball!
I’ll write papers and I’ll go
To Liverpool or Orlando,
A dissertation’s my desire, but when it’s done I won’t retire:
Study study study, always study
That is always on
Study study study, love to study
Our great fandom!
Aha-ahaaa all the things I shall do
But next year I must be working
On another con…

Wish I had been there to see it.

When her hangover has recovered Irma will be on her way to ICFA. I can’t be there either, but I know that a bunch of people who read this will be. I am relying on you to provide suitable celebrations.

Tales of Flame Wars Past

~ Cheryl ~ 9 Comments

I’m currently reading Farah Mendlesohn’s new book, a collection of essays about the life and work of Joanna Russ. The essay I most recently read was by Helen Merrick. It is about Russ’s relationship with the science fiction community, and the fights she got into in fanzines over her feminist politics. There are some interesting parallels with the current spate of argument in the blogosphere, which I thought it might be worth sharing. My apologies to Helen and Farah for using some big quotes, but I think they are needed to make the point. And with any luck it will inspire you to buy the book.
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The Scalzi Rule at #potlatch

~ Cheryl ~ 30 Comments

If you do follow the tweeting from Potlatch you’ll see that they had a panel about something called “The Scalzi Rule”. This was news to John, who isn’t there, but is seeing some of the tweets. Apparently this rule is:

A panel audience should ask questions, not make statements

That’s a debatable point alright, and it probably depends a lot on the size of the audience. But let’s leave the Potlatch folks to discuss that. I have a rather different question. You see, this rule seems really quite tame for John. If there is going to be something called “The Scalzi Rule”, surely it should be a bit more, well, ferocious? So here’s your question for today: assuming that you didn’t know what “The Scalzi Rule” was, what would you have guessed it to be?

Update: A warm welcome to anyone directed here from Whatever, and many thanks to John for sending you here. If you fancy a look around while you are here, you may want to check out my video diary featuring Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer.

There Goes the Neighborhood

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Given the discussions we have been having about old-timers not wanting new people to attend Worldcon, I found this BBC post rather amusing. Apparently the early adopters of Twitter are up in arms because the service is being flooded by a whole bunch of people who are not techies. Oh, the horror!

Talking of Seattle…

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

… which I just was, Deb Geisler has a fabulous post up about the 2/3 year bidding thing. There is an unfortunate tendency amongst parts of fandom to assume that running a Worldcon is easy and that anyone without the slightest experience ought to be able to tell others how to do it. This is nonsense. If you want to know how Worldcon works, listen to people like Deb, or Kevin, who have actually chaired one.

Wave Incoming

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Novacon took place in the UK over the weekend, and one of the things that happened there is that Steve Green and Martyn Tudor re-launched their famous fanzine, Critical Wave. This being v2.0, it is available online at efanzines.com. At a panel on “electronic fan writing, threat or menace?” (or whatever it was called – helpfully live-blogged here by Feòrag) Steve explained that those icky bloggy things don’t do proper con reports, so he wanted to create a fanzine to carry them. So far so good, in that issue #1 contains reports on FantasyCon 2008, James Bacon’s ZombieCon and NewCon 4. Here’s looking forward to more.

By the way, I see from the Novacon web site that, after years of being paper only, the Novas are now open to electronic fanzines. I wonder why that could be?

In Which I Commit Filk

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

As many of you know, I can’t sing to save my life, or play any sort of instrument. Lyrics, on the other hand, are just a matter of writing…

On Saturday as we hastened to turn around from attending the SFSFC Board Meeting to heading into San Francisco for SF in SF Kevin, who had been watching Mama Mia on the flight back from Chicago, commented that there ought to be a SMOFish filk song called “Busy, busy, busy” to the tune of “Money, money, money.” This was too good a challenge to pass up, so on the train into San Francisco I wrote the following:
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