The Curious Incident of the Fan in the Night-Time

Last weekend, I was flying company colours at Orbital, the UK’s annual science fiction and fantasy convention – the first time in 14 years I’ve re-entered fandom.
Attending an sf con was like putting on old shoes. I know this world as intimately as FP’s demographic – I understand it, have lived in it and it holds no shocks for me. (Oh all right, it was great!)
Nothing had changed since 1994.
Four days’ heavy trading and four nights’ heavy drinking, though, showed me something curious: -
There were almost no younger fans. When I say nothing had changed, I mean it – the same people, now in their thirties and forties; dressed in the same costumes, only with a little more curve to fill them.
The biggest EasterCon in 20+ years – and I could see no Next Generation.
My Boss, Jon, noticed it; loudmouthman, decabbit, rnalxander and I drew many conclusions and my friend Liam Proven, long-time sf fan, has watched it happen round him.
The initial explanation is obvious – oh, they’re ‘on the web’. Fans don’t need to meet Bill Gibson, they can read his blog; they don’t need books for escapism, they can play Second Life. If they want conversation, it’s on a forum; signatures, they’re on eBay.
If traditional journalism is threatened by the common blog, then the fanzine is in serious trouble. Perhaps the novel itself is nearing its closing chapters.
Following that thought, since joining FP I’ve watched sf and fantasy explode through the covers of the paperback and become multi-format, street-smart and cool. Buffy, Battlestar, comic-book blockbusters, Doctor Who - Heroes! – these aren’t just for geeks any more. In television and cinema, nostalgia is the new cutting edge. FP rides this wave – the Megastores shine bright on the high street. But what does it mean for fandom?
My friend John Rivers has been a Who fan many years; he knows the young fans are still out there. New mass credibility means they don’t need to attend the generic sf con; creations like Who and Star Wars are so TARDIS-vast that they offer a whole agenda of their own events.
Like all communities, it’s become big enough to fragment – and it takes a powerful traction beam to pull the pieces together.
Orbital, as well as a central location, offered a guest list that should’ve been that traction. Neil Gaiman alone has enough presence – and the Dream Master was accompanied by the vision and humour of Charlie Stross, the radical brilliance of China Miéville and the sweeping imagination of Tanith Lee. Between them, they cover every angle and appeal to every corner of the Multiverse.
But they were not – quite – enough.
Why? Certainly they’re not accountable – their talks and panels were thought-provoking – even controversial – and their social presence always an amusing fan-magnet – if you didn’t find China in the disco, you’d find Charlie in the bar. To me, Orbital’s guest list shows that genre writing is changing, that fantasy and sf boundaries are being blown back. Evolution prevents stagnation and the genre adapts.
And, as writing adapts, so does format – the genre moves from paper to small screen and big, and more work is issued on the web. Ant Miller, my brother-in-law, commented that Cory Doctrow now publishes nothing on the printed page.
And, as format adapts, so fandom must move with it. If the classic EasterCon is to embrace a younger generation, it needs to stop reading books in a quiet corner. Its eyes and arms need to open wide and embrace more formats and different kinds of creativity. From anime and manga to film and television, from virtual publication and freedom of information to the wonders of live video-streaming (thanks, Nik!), it needs to become forward-thinking.
After all, hasn’t that always been the point of ‘science fiction’?

MonQee MagiQ

And then, there are the times when it works.

Even at an EasterCon, a six-foot woman with a wacky plastic MonQee draws attention.

Spending his days at the front of the Forbidden Planet stand and his evenings escorting me to bars and parties, MonQee rapidly became a vortex of attention. Creepy-cute and sinister with his white body and featureless face, everyone wanted to know what he was, and why I was carrying him. I found myself being smiled at, stopped and spoken to all over the hotel.

After I’d shamelessly accosted the first few authors, the snowslide rapidly became an avalanche. Saturday morning, Loudmouthman took some MonQee footage in the Dealers’ Room – and we gathered quite an audience. Saturday night, the rumour went round the Scandinavian Party that ‘you were no-one at EasterCon unless you’d signed the MonQee’… and then the authors and artists started looking for me.

MonQee was in the Con newsletter; they gave him his own membership. MonQee was in control tower central to meet the Guests of Honour before the Opening Ceremony. As MonQee continued his tour, he gained more fans, more signatures and more credibility.

And more humour.

Charlie Stross – quite unashamedly – signed MonQee’s arse. China Mieville sewed his lips together; Neil Gaiman gave him an eye – which freaked fans out for the rest of the Con. Bryan Talbot drew him a full back patch and Dave Devereux went where no pen had dared go before and signed his groin.

A full set of MonQee pictures can be seen on my Flickr page.

Exhausted from partying, MonQee is home, safely tucked up in his box awaiting forthcoming FP signings and his invite to the Arthur C Clarke Awards. More of his adventures will come.

For now, I would like to thank: -

Chris 'Fangorn' Baker

Tony Ballantyne

Chaz Brenchley

Holly Black

Ed Buckley

Paul Cornell

David Devereux

Brianna Flynt

Neil Gaiman

Amanda Hemingway

Tanith Lee

Tom Lloyd

Kari Maund

China Mieville

Andy Remic

Justina Robson

Mark Robson

Geoff Ryman

Sarah Singleton

Charles Stross

James Swallow

Bryan Talbot

Freda Warrington

Liz Williams

and

Frank Wu

MonQee’s travels continue: there will be more!

Whither Bartemkin: What Happens When It Goes Wrong?

The saying goes: you learn nothing from success.
In the UK, the wooden ship of my reckless marketeering has a rocket-powered propulsion system. Take away the Forbidden Planet brand; row the same ship into a much larger, faster marina… and Bart, apparently, loses his head.
It seems the dynamic fusion of art toys with social media will wait for another day.
The idea’s sound – see Phil Campbell's wonderful shots of his signed Thor helm – but its execution? Needs the right arena.
This weekend, this rocket-propelled ship powers into waters where it’s very well known – along with a rabble of my colleagues, I’ll be at Orbital, the 2008 EasterCon, selling three years’ worth of signed books and goodies to the voracious fanboy public.
Guests of honour include Neil Gaiman, Charles Stross and China Mieville; there will be many other authors and artists there who’ve wielded sharpies for FP in the past – and know a thing or two about wacky art.
I’ve secured a new urban vinyl toy, larger than his Bart predecessor as I have a lot more time, and a far better unity of concept with market. Everything else remains the same – the idea of auctioning a one-off, totally unique art toy, a piece of urban vinyl history, will go ahead as planned – it’ll just take a little longer.
And that’s a good thing – time to learn, think and strategise and time to build a proper story.
As to Bart? Sadly returning home in an in a(u)ctionable condition, he’s enjoying a happy retirement. He’s sitting on my desk in my bedroom as my personal folly; I’ll make a donation to the Frozen Pea Fund myself for my mad-eyed souvenir.
Thank you to adelemcalear and colleencoplick, and to philcampbell and documentally for their performance as Norse Gods - and to all the people who put pen to plastic.
And keep an eye open – more art toy wackiness will ensue!

Tagged! Eight Random Things

Yes, I’ve been tagged by the Loud Mouth Man to do the Boast Post – the fascinating fragments of my past that intrigue and perplex my readers. Well, here they are: -

This is not my first time.
I’ve shot my bolt with this already; tagged by Blue Knitter last summer, my previous ‘eight things’ are weird, wacky, wonderful – and true in every word. Promise me it won’t colour how you think of me, and you can read them here.

My first ever schoolgirl crush was on Peter Davison.
I was about 12 years old when he took on the role of Doctor Who. He was cool, he was smooth and he had a stick of celery in his coat. What more could a girl need? Wonderfully, when he signed at the London Megastore last month, he was still gorgeous!

I’ve performed in the Royal Albert Hall.
It was singing Verdi’s ‘Requiem’ and I was only in the chorus, but I still feel the intensity of belonging to something that uplifting and powerful. Alas, my voice now suffers from years of rugby songs round bonfires – but I still sing to the CD when there’s no-one home.

I was the first girl in my school Cadet Force to reach the rank of Sergeant.
Even when I reached the VIth form, Ardingly was still 75 – 80% male – and my high-pitched drill and field commands were the subject of much hilarity among my deeper-voiced counterparts!

I can’t drive.
No, I’ve never learned to drive. It’s not even, ‘I can drive but I’ve never passed my test’; I genuinely can’t drive. I’m not entirely sure why. I guess I’ve just never got around to it.

I’ve shared a house with a drug dealer.
He was only dealing pot, but the colourful characters turning up at all hours of the night still make me smile. At one point, there was a hookah in the living room with a bowl the size of my cupped hands and a pipe that reached out of the door and halfway up the stairs…

I was once offered a job as a professional cage dancer. Apparently.
About ten years ago, a guy gave me his card in a fetish club and told me to call him, there were employment opportunities awaiting a girl of my… ah… skills. While the card did say ‘talent agency’, I have a feeling the promise wasn’t quite what it appeared to be!

I owe my current job to complete coincidence.
One vaguely normal one to finish: in September 2003, I happened to be staying in Bristol with a couple of mates. Nick happened to pick up the Saturday Guardian, lying by us in the pub. John, joking, passed me the employment section and said ‘you could get this job’.
So I did.
The rest, of course, is fantasy.

Tag!
Ian Cook at http://twofishandabox.blogspot.com/
John Hood at http://www.generationstarwars.com/
John Rivers at http://thepolicebox.blogspot.com/
Rowan Stanfield at http://rowstar.blogspot.com/
Dave Wares at http://davesphotogallery.blogspot.com/

Eat My Shorts: Art, Bart and Frozen Peas

This weekend, Bart Simpson is gatecrashing SxSW.
Sneaking out of Forbidden Planet, he's hitched a lift with philcampbell to take ambassadorial advantage of adelemcalear and collencoplick. Yes, my Twitter budz are guerrilla marketeering for FP – and cash-raising for the Frozen Pea Fund.
Any Brit will tell you: FP are the cutting edge of new toys and trends. Bart stands 10” tall, is made from pure white vinyl and represents the perfect fusion of the urban Art Toy sensation with the massive pop culture credibility of The Simpsons.
He’s as hot as toys can get and he’s coming to a SxSW bar near YOU.

When you see him, please take a moment and marker pen and sign him.
The more signatures Bart collects, the happier he gets – and the more funds he’ll raise for the Frozen Pea Fund when loudmouthman and danacea put him up for auction!
Please remember that, being Bart, he likes attention – as he tours the event, collecting signatures, doodles and reputation, his progress will be photographed, blogged and recorded. Each person who signs him will be remembered and thanked… and the more names, of course, the better his sale will be.
Watch this space for Bart’s continuing adventures!

Flying at 10,000 Tweets

It’s ubiquitous, isn’t it – I’ve been on Twitter, now, just short of a year and have passed the miracle milestone… the blog flows from the number just as my network of contacts flows from one site to the next.
So: this is the post where I reminisce, list what I’ve learned, whom I’ve met, the experiences, the expected and the unexpected that I’ve braved since the bird’s beak first bit.
Well, the first thing is the learning process is continuous, of course; the amphitheatre of information that surrounds the Twitter hub is ever-changing; there will always be something else to understand.
My personal victories have been small things – technical fixits, firing tweets and utterz from FP events into nothingness, dusting off knowledge from my long-mothballed degree and a recent magical moment when joec0914 sold Twitter, lock, ‘bot and global potential, to my sceptical partner with this.
There have been wonderful flashes when I’ve inspired a friend – or they me – and times I’ve been overwhelmed by the responses of my friends to the words ‘Forbidden Planet’. That first ‘what am I doing here?’ blog post is now quite charmingly naïve.
Dig a little deeper, though, and I catch a realisation like the early Twitter bird catches the worm: what I’ve learned isn’t a long list of little things – it’s one very simple one.
Focus.
Why is it easier to motivate myself to do something for someone else? For five hundred someone elses?
To phrase it another way: how many of us cook a full dinner when there’s only us in the house..?
Every person who responds to my blind tweets from a Forbidden Planet signing is making my individual challenge easier to overcome – and if I expand that realisation fractally through the twitterverse, our amphitheatre is filled with a thousand thousand tiny motes of personal empowerment.
And each one carries someone forward to meet their own challenge.
Okay, okay, it’s pretty and it’s visual; it dazzles with my own Danacea-branded idealism… Putting my shades on for a second: this is still a ‘What I’ve learned so far’ blog post – and the bottom of those rising seats is a place we’ve all sat to navel-gaze...
Yep – fluff.
As Twitter grows, so the fractal pattern multiplies. And here’s one of the things I haven’t learned – why our community doesn’t fragment.
My ‘Viking’ past is known to some; the bonds that tied the friendships of my twenties together were enormously powerful and remain strong to this day. But ten years in re-enactment taught me that no group grows beyond two dozen people – it divides, cliques form, social stresses and power struggles begin.
Why is Twitter (largely) immune?
I don’t have an answer to this; I’m intrigued. Is it because there’s no single leader – people earn their own respect? Is it because our Twitter friends are three-quarters real; soft-focus, seen through the light of the screen? Is it because it’s self-policing, the follower/following bonds are organic and the flow of communication voluntary?
Or it is simply because we can turn it off when it gets too much?

Twitter Quitter

Every January, my local gym runs a simple incentive to heave its post-Christmas customers into motion for the New Year.

This is a rowing competition – 5,000 metres for the girls and 10,000 for the guys – completed in a series of heats; the best times win free membership and other goodies.

I was doubtful about this year’s – but inspired by mosqueda, wickedstepmom and the Twitter PT Challenge, I signed on the dotted line and flexed my shoulders at the lurking menace of the Concept II.

The contest is a friendly one – but there’s a powerful compulsion to succeed, be that to win your heat or beat your time. Girls and guys both are teeth gritted and sweat beading; the rhythm of the machines is repetitive, hypnotic – it drives you mesmerically onward.

It’s a fast, forceful race. Quitting is not an option.

So: this is the point where I give you the achievement speech?

No: this is the point where I tell you I quit.

I gave up, less than 500 metres from the end of course, because the elastic strap of my top was running directly across a friction burn on my back, tearing repetitively at the healing skin. Sweat was tickling down either side of my spine and the salt was bringing tears to my eyes – literally.

As the crescendo rose, I relinquished my part in it.

I was gutted; in the sudden stillness, I was also acutely self-conscious.

And I wondered how on earth I was going to explain.

We know our friends don’t judge us – they’re our friends – but somewhere, you hear that faint, metallic echo of regret that lingers through the sound of ‘you did your best’. And when the word ‘friend’ has spiralled from the local pub to the global one, ‘I quit’ is the tweet your fingers twitch from typing.

That’s human, isn’t it?

It’s a rare moment when Twitter actually makes something harder.

It took the cool walk to the changing rooms and a wincing look at my back to reach the (obvious) realisation: -

The rhythmic roar of the machines and the rush of adrenaline, endorphins, had fused into a desire to ‘live up to’ something. And that wasn’t the responsibility of my competitors, my mates or my friends on Twitter – that was something I’d caused for myself.

Twitter can help us learn, strive, expand, encompass and comprehend… but ultimately how we choose to use it is up to us. Using it as a motivator is good – using it as sophistry to push yourself too far is not.

I’ll keep the scar on my back as a memento: sometimes the lesson you learn is how to quit.