I may look back one day and realise I lived through the final years of LitFandom

[major_clanger]

"You are offering a room full of vintage first-edition hardbacks to a group of people who read books on their phones."

Madeline Ashby: 'Memento mori. (Or, how Worldcon’s youth problem will resolve.)'

If I had more time this would be a long post ranging over:

• how the people I see at conventions in my mid-40s are in large part those I went to cons with in my mid-20s
• the demographics and atmosphere at Nine Worlds as compared with Eastercon/Worldcon
• the lack of progress towards panel parity or meaningful anti-harassment policies at Worldcon

...and sundry related topics. But most of these are issues that are already being discussed, and I'll content myself for now with pointing to Ashby's very insightful post on how, unless these points are addressed, LitFandom's problems are going to end up being of purely historical interest.

Comments

[mishalak]

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.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

I think there may be an interesting national split here.

In the UK at least, and I think Europe more generally (vis the Finland bid), the lit fans are generally more welcoming to new influences. This isn't universal - see the reaction of some to 9Worlds - but the general mood is much more welcoming than in the US - see the reaction to the Orlando bid.

One reason for this, I think, is that there are fewer large commercial cons in Europe like DragonCon & ComiCon, which suck in a lot of the new people because they advertise more strongly, have a larger media presence, and because their livelihood depends on bums on seats. Lit fans can afford to be a bit more complacent.

However, having said that, I've not been to many of the smaller US litcons, like Readercon or Wiscon, and have not been to a regional like Boscone/Arisia or LosCon in the US for a very long time. The demographics there may be different.

What we may be seeing is the death/transformation of Worldcon in the US, and that might be triggered by the potentially large number of non-US Worldcons in the coming decade, if Dublin, Japan, Australia and others can win.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

I put this post over there:

I went to DragonCon this year instead of Worldcon (I was recruiting artists for London next year). I enjoyed it very much.

However:

I kept wondering why I wasn’t seeing many people my age, and very much not women (I’m in my early 40s). Then I also noticed I was seeing no toddlers: lots of babies, lots of older children but no infants. So I took a look at the child care policy. DragonCon offers no childcare for children aged under 7. In a convention of 55,000.

So DragonCon may indeed be young, but has it ever occurred to you to wonder why it has *stayed* young over thirty years?

[nojay.livejournal.com]

It's a while since I was at a Dragon*Con but the impression I got it was much like a big music festival in terms of the age spread of attendees it attracted i.e. tuned for folks in their late teens and twenties. I can't remember anything particular about childcare provisions back then and I don't recall many children being present but given the frenetic atmosphere I don't think kids would have had a particularly good time at a D*C.

The monster Comikets in Japan (attendance about 500,000 over three days) don't do childcare and I don't think I ever saw anyone under the age of 14 there at all. Again most attendees are in their late teens and early twenties with a few old fogies (like myself) and professional exhibitors.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this article too and while I can't fault the central thesis - yeap, this is a self correcting problem - some of the other conclusions weren't ones I immediately thought would work.

1. I'm still unconvinced by the YA Hugo and as one of the commentators said, it feels very: 1. YA Hugo: 2. ???? 3. Profits!!!!

2. Having a stationary Worldcon feels like a step in the wrong direction. I'm not sure the world needs another 100K person convention. Plus I feel there's little enough 'world' in the Worldcon.

3. Maybe the pure LitFandom convention is going to slowly fade away... I suspect that it will slowly adapt. I'd like to see more media focus myself.

9-Worlds seems to have been a good demonstration of what you can do, although their timing for next year sounds terrible.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

the lack of progress towards panel parity

Actually, I'd thought that selecting London as a Worldcon site was an indication of progress. UK conrunners I know (present company very much included) are attentive to such issues and determined to improve things.

Mathematically perfect gender-parity does not interest me so much as becoming wide awake to the possibility of new voices and putting effort into recruiting good program participants we might previously have overlooked.

One might hope that Loncon will set an example from which subsequent Worldcons will learn, but a bit of missionary work won't hurt either.

[emmzzi.livejournal.com]

I just wrote a long reply of ohhh so many other things wrong also but it made me cross.

But broadly; my days of attending are winding down as I'd rather spend my time with more open people. Actual author interviews and thoughts and discussion, I can get online, and that has an ignore function and a backbutton.

[robert-jones.livejournal.com]

There is a fairly rich seam of "Why are the people I see at $X event in my mid-40s/50s/60s/70s the same people I saw in my mid 20s."