Expo-sed: The Fans of the Future

A couple of weekends ago, I left the FP rocket behind and attended the MCM Expo at ExCel as a prospect of the UK Garrison and their alter-geeko, Reel-Icons.

And it nearly blew my mind.

Thirty thousand – thirty thousand! – CosPlayers, dressed in everything from luminous orange fur to full Devil May Cry regalia, armed with weapons of latex, cardboard and spray-paint, all high as kites on their own explosive energy.

The weekend directly following the affable, family-atmosphere of NewCon 4, Expo’s colossal attendance and critical mass has thrown my previous post into sharp relief.

These kids are the future.

From eight- and ten-year olds through all ranges of teen into early-twenty-somethings, they’ve embraced the expansion of Japanese culture into Western fantasy and made it their own. They have no need of Real Ale; they’re drunk on Free Hugs and an overdose of Yaoi. Lured by the prospect of the first-ever CosPlay Masquerade Ball, they aren’t passively reading books – they’re realising their part in a vast, interactive fantastical community.

There was a smattering of non-CosPlayers – there for signings and to meet the very sharp and funny Michael Hogan, aka Saul Tigh – but they seemed a tiny percentage, lost in the frenzied game-playing, Pikachu-cuddling mass. And perhaps it illustrates the point: these kids aren’t only moving away from the humble book, they’re leaving behind the comic and the television as well.

Why read it, why watch it – when you can live it? When thousands of friends uphold your knowledge that you are Cloud Strife?

And leads into a final comment: a question mark.

On the Saturday night, there was an incident in the ExCel car park. Nothing to do with the MCM Expo, it was related to a concurrent event. On the Sunday, Security had erected a bag-scanner in the front entrance – and were x-raying all luggage brought in by the attendees of the event in question. Massively ironic, when you consider the ludicrous mock-weaponry flaunted only meters away.

The juxtaposition of the two iconised the sharp contrast between fantasy and reality – and brought me up short at the fine wire between escapism and obsession. We all need release – read, write, watch, dress up, play games – it’s necessary and it’s human.

But as technology swells to encompass our imaginations and the fantasy becomes all-consuming, we need to remember something.

This world is the real one.

Adapt or Die? SF and New Media

So why, for the love of whatever God you choose, is the science fiction community so reluctant to embrace new forms of expression?

While the comics industry surges off the page and onto the iphone, the science fiction profession has progressed as far as the Real Ale bar. Steeped in the traditional – novels, short stories, radio, television – they reluctantly protest that they like books, they like to have paper under their hands, something they can read without getting glare-ache from the screen.

And yes, I guess there’s a bit of that in all of us.

But.

It’s a strong time for Geek Chic – literary uber-agent John Jarrold quoted that sf and fantasy count for up to 11% of total UK book sales… and that figure would be impressive had I not walked past Zavvi this morning. The rise in new ways to access non-format literature, music and film is driving major labels out of business. Adapt or die. That ‘11%’ is a lot less convincing when the overall total starts to plummet.

Dave Hutchinson rather wisely said that it isn’t ‘a future of literature, more a future of delivery’. Writers need to move into new mediums, adapt their skills to different platforms. They’re at last appearing on twitter; they’re venturing into audiocasting or writing plots for major game releases. Maybe it’s time to add a new award to the Hugo and Nebula – one for innovation, for successfully breaking new ground.

And why stop with the professionals. From the letters page of the fanzine to today’s LiveJournal, fans won’t just be told what they can read. They like to take control of the characters they love and put them in new situations. Fan-fiction, both on the web and off, has become huge and very successful, writers gaining sizeable credibility in their own right. In the greater world of social media, the potential for author/reader collaboration is blown wide-open – why tell a story when you can create a world?

Who writer Paul Cornell stood to champion sf and new media. Arguing my beliefs for me, he talked about web visibility, versatility, mass appeal and the importance of viral marketing. He gets a round of applause for the immortal line, “There will always be the novel, but that novel may not always be a book.”

For the moment, then, the new and the old complement each other – a presence on the web will boost visibility of a book – and vice versa. But in ten years? When the CosPlayers, the X-Box generation, are in their thirties, are they going to be sitting in a corner with a pint of Theakstons and a paperback?

I don’t think so.



My thanks to the NewCon panel for the inspiration. Entitled 'Does the Future of SF lie in Media other than Traditional Literature', it featured Uma McCormack, John Jarrold, Steve Longworth, Dave Hutchinson and Paul Cornell.

Short Sharp Shock: Blog Action Day

Early in the morning, I walk through St, James’ Park and each bench is occupied. The same faces, the same routines; they shelter under newspapers, huddled against the weather.

During the day, you’ll find them drinking White Lightning on the grass in front of the National Gallery – and why should they not? Alcohol fills the emptiness.

In the evening, I see them curled in doorways down the South Bank or under Blackfriars Bridge – and London’s wealthy commuters walk by them unseeing.

The harrowing images of third world poverty are somehow unreal, they’re too terrifying; we distance ourselves from in them in the same way that we walk past the old man on the bench.

Today is the day you stop. You face the horror and the denial.
And you ask how you can help.

There are lists of links on the Blog Action Day homepage.
I chose this one.

NewCon 4: Confessions of an Overgrown Fangirl

Ever have a moment where you wonder what your younger self would’ve thought?

A Northampton fishmarket is an unlikely Con venue – the distinct absence of fish, though, and the gathering of both talent and aptitude made it wonderfully successful. Art show, dealers’ room, bar and café all lazed in the same open space; an outside garden lured smokers with wire caging and fairy lights. Throw in M C Jester and the wonderful hospitality of organisers Watson and Whates and you have a very enjoyable, family-atmosphere event.

For once, I was free to attend panels, scribbling copious notes in a toxic green pen. Blog posts will follow on my two faves – ‘SF and Media’ and ‘Sex Sells’, the latter noticeably female-dominated.

Between events, I had time to chat and circulate and get myself known – and this is where the System Shock sets in…

…pause for breath.

If anyone had told my wide-eyed, twenty-something self where I’d wind up, I would’ve giggled in disbelief.

When I walked into NewCon, alone, I knew maybe three names on the guest list. I confess to being intimidated; I had no table to hide behind, no MonQee to flaunt. I took my MacBook as armour and FP badges as weapons… and ended up needing neither. Helped by the easy atmosphere, I found myself thinking, ‘you silly bitch, you know this'.

From a hilarious combat-Mum bonding moment with Juliet E McKenna to talking shop with Storm Constantine and Freda Warrington in the mesh garden; from trading affable insults with Andy Remic to having breakfast in an unmentionable burger joint with Tony Ballantyne, right up to a conversation with Paul Cornell about icomics (after Gary Russell and Russell T, making a hat-trick of ‘Who’ Gods in a week)… my younger self watched it all with an expression of perplexed amusement.

The moment itself though, was Sunday morning, sitting chatting with Marc Gascoigne. Once involved in the earliest days of Fighting Fantasy, Marc was approached by an eager fan wanting him to sign a copy of Titan – a book now rarer than a wargaming girl.

My late fiancé, Bones, loved those books – enough that I’ve never parted with them. It would’ve been surreal for him, and I caught it from his memory. Next time I see Mister Gascoigne, I must ask him to sign my copy too.

Anyway, by Saturday night, I’d run out of business cards; by Sunday night, my Inbox was noticeably overweight. Good things to come, I think – I don’t know how many times I need to explain to my office where the real work gets done.

Long time out of the picture or no, between Orbital and NewCon, it’s been like picking up an old re-enactment blade – eminently familiar. This is the place where everything I was in my twenties is tempered with everything I’ve learned in my thirties and that forging has allowed me to realise something:

This blade is mine - and I know how to use it.

Gorilla Marketing: Measuring the MonQee's Success

We know the Litany: spam bad, personality good, front your Brand with your face and you’ll win friends and influence people… far more than if you blindly blanket-bomb with endless crap.

Putting a simian in the rocket’s pilot-seat at EasterCon was both whim and gamble, lunacy born from Bart’s breakdown. Fearing a rerun of Curious George, I sat myself in the co-pilot’s chair… we had a blast at the Con – and then had to dodge the incoming missiles on the flight home.

The first salvo: ‘How much money will it make?’ Accounts don’t want long-term Brand visibility; they want pound coins. Sod idealism, how many woman-hours equal how much cold cash? If that’s your criteria for judging the project, then the MonQee didn’t raise as much as I’d hoped.

The second salvo: solid traditionalism. Flyers have design costs and print runs; you can measure the return of ‘money-off’ vouchers or count up new victims on your email list. Solid, easy-to-comprehend numbers calculating investment versus effectiveness; why take a chance on something wacky when we can do stuff with a reliable return?

The MonQee was wacky – but how good were his piloting skills?

At the Con, he was a magnet. His arrival on the Forbidden Planet Vinylsplatter website rippled out through the Art Toy world generating links and interest from here to New York to Singapore. Raymond Choi at Toy2R got behind the project personally – as did the Urban Vinyl guru himself, Toysrevil, and many of my Twitter friends - thank you to @linksmonkey, @Herne, @digitalmaverick, @loudmouthman, @deCabbit, @lproven, and @Loaf.

He crept out through LiveJournal, springing at me from fandom’s random blogs. He turned up in the Discworld newsletter and in the Orbital post-Con write-up. He was tracked, listed and reposted by over a dozen aggregator sites. And the authors and artists I’d shamelessly shanghaied were there for him as well –throwing their own blog support behind his success.

Watching the MonQee’s viral spread has been an exercise in astonishment. Some of science fiction’s leading lights now remember me because of him – (did I have to be MonQee girl?) – and he’s proclaimed both FP and the Alzheimer’s Research Trust wherever he’s seen been.

The MonQee, it seems, is a good enough pilot to land the rocket safely. I genuinely wish he’d raised a little more for the Trust – but I feel his ROI is off the scale. Should I ever be crazy enough to attempt this again, I’ll know what to change.

A final word – after his adventures, he was actually bought by someone who’d been at EasterCon and had watched him change from virgin whiteness to the character he became. My friend Zoe is his guardian now; she’ll be carrying him to more Cons and more fan-gatherings, continuing to get him signed – and continuing to tell his story.

Which benefits the Trust in its own simian way.

MonQee MagiQ: may his legend long continue.

The Spirit: Showcased by Frank Miller

“Hollywood breeds very many male actors and very few… men.” Frank Miller, commenting on his choice of Gabriel Macht for the lead role.

Contrasting dramatically with the polished wooden delivery of the film company’s marketeers, Frank Miller’s passion for his project is equalled only by his dry humour – and by his anecdotal respect for his own Spirit, that of writer Will Eisner, who penned the original comic in 1940.

Whether it’s faith, fear or homage, the 40s feel is woven through the film. In Miller’s hands, it’s been fused with his ‘Sin City’ style cinematography to make his lead character an icon of the past in a story of the future. You expect him to wear a raincoat and communicate by matchbook; you expect him to encounter a dazzling array of gorgeous damsels and femmes fatales – you don’t expect his bloodslash tie, his urban parkour, or his – erm – footwear.

The trailer is a jumble of black, white and red, of sex and violence, drama and desperation; it’s oddly formulaic. Only after Miller lifts the screen and allows us to glance underneath it does its dark magic manifest.

He tells us the story, illuminating crucial points with crucial footage. The ‘love scene’ is dark, outrageously sexual, with an unexpected narrative twist that has more impact than a naked Eva Mendes. The ‘showdown scene’ is deliciously violent, vicious, shocking – but very comic book, and very funny.

The past-and-future, blend-and-contrast though, is iconised by the ‘clone scene’. It’s fantastical, the clones evocative of the goons in early Adam West ‘Batman’. Scarlett Johanssen’s breasts provide a fascinating backdrop to the Octopus’ latest experiment; it manages to be conventional, controversial, futuristic, humorous, creepy and sexy… all without losing the theme and integrity of the film.

It’s lighter than either ‘Sin City’ or ‘300’; a bubbling brew of seduction, violence and genetic experimentation that Miller subtly stirs with his speech. He’d opened by commenting that he and Eisner creatively disagreed for 25 years; he closes with an impression of his inspiration and mentor – the man he’d always felt was looking over his shoulder. ‘It’s too modern’ he grumbles, his body hunched under his hat, ‘And where’s all the colour?’

It may be too modern for Will Eisner – and perhaps too ‘Dick Tracy’ for fans of ‘Robocop’ – but The Spirit has rather haunted me. Sold by Frank Miller by his love of his project, his inspiration and his city – seeing the film through the eyes of the Director is a way to see it in its finest form.

Roll on, January 2009!

Better Vader: Designed

This is a repost of a guest post for AskPalpatine.com; my response to the Design a Better Vader competition. The full results and opinions of the other judges can be found here.

There you are, a scarred and battered Anakin yours to mould. You can do anything with him – anything! – change his face, his body, his gender, her image, its impact. You can remake the Ultimate Villain into whatever you want… an armoured giant, a perfect beauty, a sex toy…

Being asked to judge a competition like this means you have to make a tough choice. You know that the ten semi-finalists will all be arse-kickingly good – and you know you have to pick the best ones. It’s a hard selection – but as the Emperor threatened my son with incarceration in the Spice Mines of Kessel, I had no option: -

Forbidden Planet is about being different. For my three, I chose to look for those who’d thought outside the armour – who’d actually broken or changed the classic Vader mould and done something new with the Anakin canvas.

My second runner up is No 6 because it’s androgynous – even inhuman. I like the strong use of simple colour and the stance… and (oh yes all right) I like the weapon. Forbidden Planet aside for a moment, the Viking in me is still a bit of an ordnance freak and giving the New Vader a New Weapon seemed an integral part of the creation. It’s strong, and striking and simple – and carries the right sense of presence and fear.

My first runner up is No 9. It references Vader in the caricature helm and armour, but I love the play on Master Yareal Poof (the position of the lightsaber didn’t go unnoticed – no, I’ve never worked out how he managed to fight either!) and the comical contrast of a belly that would better on Selbulba. It’s sharp, well-drawn and insightful – and the wristwatch on the chest gives it a comedy-steampunk look that ties it all in perfectly.

My winner is No 10 – am image that has taken the traditional Vader and made him darker, more evil, less human. I love the picture – it’s gothic, dramatic, sinister – and it’s the one that’s made me think. Not about his WarHammer –esque appearance – but about how changes in his construction would change his character, would change the story in Episodes IV though VI, and change the whole Universe of Star Wars as we know it.

Could you imagine this Vader being mushy about his Jedi son?

If you’re going to design a New Vader – why just stop with how he looks?

Reposted with thanks to Emperor Palpatine, and to Diz and the boys from the 501st for their help in choosing a new Boss, right in the middle of Forbidden Planet's birthday party: -