Are we in the last days of lit-fandom? Yes. But I think the fact is probably beyond anything that Worldcon could fix by having an anti-harassment policy, a Hugo category, or any other minor fix I can think of.
1. I can only think of five living genre authors (Neil Gaiman, Steven King, JK Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, and Anne Rice are my list) who could outdraw even a "C list" celebrity from a minor TV Show like Warehouse 13 or Torchwood. By the very nature of being about literature lit-fandom is doomed. I might add George RR Martin to the list if the convention were to really emphasize "creator of Game of Thrones" endlessly in their promotional stuff. So conventions that have the natural promotion of a celebrity attendee are going to be bigger and younger no matter what.
2. Worldcon moves every single year so it cannot be like Anime North, Dragon*Con, Comic Con, or any other convention that stays put. If Worldcon were willing to give up on the idea of moving every year it might have more of a youthful future than if it keeps moving so only the well healed can keep up. But that, of course, would mean giving up on "the world" part of Worldcon.
3. Young people having terrible jobs is nothing new, though the exact circumstances are objectively worse than for previous generations by many measures. Though on the other hand (pseudopod?) the Third Worldcon (which was all of 91 attendees as I recall) was held by people who hopped a freight train from Denver to Chicago to get to the 1940 Worldcon. But today if young fans get excited enough to cram too many people into a car to go to a convention or start a convention they are going to do with locally rather than going to Worldcon or bidding for a Worldcon. All else being equal local means less expensive and less crazy.
My summery is this: If Worldcon, Eastercon, etc. were to take the plunge of not having the literary works at center stage, but as a adjunct to a larger media oriented convention that paid for actors to attend and possibly gave up on the idea of moving every year and instead picked one location they could get used to running the convention in, yes, they could have a younger demographic. But there are already conventions serving that demographic in many cases so it would be far from easy.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2013-09-05 05:39 pm (UTC)1. I can only think of five living genre authors (Neil Gaiman, Steven King, JK Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, and Anne Rice are my list) who could outdraw even a "C list" celebrity from a minor TV Show like Warehouse 13 or Torchwood. By the very nature of being about literature lit-fandom is doomed. I might add George RR Martin to the list if the convention were to really emphasize "creator of Game of Thrones" endlessly in their promotional stuff. So conventions that have the natural promotion of a celebrity attendee are going to be bigger and younger no matter what.
2. Worldcon moves every single year so it cannot be like Anime North, Dragon*Con, Comic Con, or any other convention that stays put. If Worldcon were willing to give up on the idea of moving every year it might have more of a youthful future than if it keeps moving so only the well healed can keep up. But that, of course, would mean giving up on "the world" part of Worldcon.
3. Young people having terrible jobs is nothing new, though the exact circumstances are objectively worse than for previous generations by many measures. Though on the other hand (pseudopod?) the Third Worldcon (which was all of 91 attendees as I recall) was held by people who hopped a freight train from Denver to Chicago to get to the 1940 Worldcon. But today if young fans get excited enough to cram too many people into a car to go to a convention or start a convention they are going to do with locally rather than going to Worldcon or bidding for a Worldcon. All else being equal local means less expensive and less crazy.
My summery is this: If Worldcon, Eastercon, etc. were to take the plunge of not having the literary works at center stage, but as a adjunct to a larger media oriented convention that paid for actors to attend and possibly gave up on the idea of moving every year and instead picked one location they could get used to running the convention in, yes, they could have a younger demographic. But there are already conventions serving that demographic in many cases so it would be far from easy.