Not just a review of a European Worldcon
Inside the spatial confines of the Congress Centre of the Scottish city of Glasgow and the temporal confines that limit the period from the 24th to the 28th of August 1995, the existence of Intersection, the 53rd World Science Fiction Convention is prominent. For the space-trippers who want to drop in we have furnished the approximate coordinates of the space-time locus they can make for. For others, who know no better than to tread time in the tracks of the others, unable to change direction as they wish, we furnish here a, so-called, summary.
Guests of honour of the convention were Samuel Delany, Gerry Anderson and Les Edwards.
One guest of the convention was tragically missing: John Brunner died in Glasgow Hospital at 4 p.m. on the 25th from an apoplectic stroke he suffered at 9 a.m. that same morning in the hotel, after breakfasting with Hal Clement. I spoke with John the previous evening and he struck me as being gloomy and depressed, very bitter and unhappy in fact. His life had been very difficult in recent years. His sudden and tragic death weighed heavily on the participants of convention. Delany and Silverberg, among others, commemorated him with public eulogies, and instead of the usual minute of silence, Silverberg asked the audience to applaude his memory. I've never heard or been present at an applause so powerful.
Many thousand of participants, for the major part Americans or English, were there at the convention. Estimates vary from 5000 upwards. I don't know the official figures. My attending membership number was 10,047 but I don't think there were that many. As well as the English there was the noteworthy presence of some hundreds of Germans, over a hundred Rumanians, 50 or so Croatians, Czechs and Slovakians, and then Norwegians, Finns, Swedes, Poles, Japanese, Ukrainians, Russians, Dutch, Belgians, Spanish and French. Few Swiss, Austrians, Lithuanians or Turks. And few Italians. The only Italian faces I saw were Piergiorgio Nicolazzini, Anna Dal Dan and yours truly ( in the mirror!)
Without doubt the programme of the convention was a rich one: over 500 proposals taking about half an hour each. There was enough material for a congress lasting 3 months. Compressed into 5 days, 500 points were really too much. Even with the greatest will in the world it would be difficult for anyone to follow more than about 10%. So whoever took part in the congress must have lost some 90% of the whole.
But the best part of these great congresses isn't so much in the quality of the formal programme but rather in the human contact made possible. Being present at these conferences is a way of interacting, even in a passive way, with your own interests. Looking at and listening to others speaking from a podium can be instructive, certainly, and interesting too, but I think no more than a good book or a good audiovisual production. Information flows in one direction from the speaker to the listener, similar to when one reads a book or watches T.V. This isn't, in my opinion, the most important thing about a good science fiction congress. The interactivity between the transmitter of information (the speaker) and the receiver (all the members of the congress) needn't be worse than that given out these days by any multimedial encyclopedia or even more than Internet for whoever is able to use a computer. As the best science fiction embodies the latest researches in knowledge and imagination, a good science fiction congress should know how to favour the exchange of information between the participants with respect to the passive nibbling speeches boiled up previously by the guru who steps forward to take his turn.
In fact, in spite of a programme bristling with proposals which would have a passive usefulness, for the well-intentioned it was possible to use the Convention for its best function i.e. the exchange of information and points of view between intelligent persons of different cultures.
In a small part the programme itself provided for this with the Kaffeeklatsch. The Kaffeeklatsch gave the possibility for a dozen or so persons to form a round table together with a famous writer and chat with him/her for an hour or so. As well as allowing the possibility to interact with your favourite author, the Kaffeeklatsch also gave an excellent opportunity to find new persons to converse with.
But the best places to live to the full the Convention were the places associated with the convention, i.e. the corridors, the meals in the restaurants, and the halls of the hotels. The main appointments given by the programme, the opening, the closing and the prize-giving ceremonies and certain lectures were more than anything rituals for the celebration of the idols, nearer to the spirit of T.V. than science fiction. It was outside these rituals and programmes that the Convention throbbed with a life more worthy of being lived. In the bars, pubs, with a pint of Guinness, in the restaurants in front of Chinese or Indian dishes, those who were interested in diverse cultures vivaciously exchanged opinions in a buoyant spirit of communion which enriched everyone. Every evening the great hotels in the centre became theatres for gigantic parties, frequented by hundreds of people discussing and drinking until late into the night. If the body of the Convention was made up of the formal programme, its spirit shone at its brightest during those evening parties.
As the liveliest, more interesting aspect of the Convention was offered by the great opportunity of communication between the participants, it's worth making a few observations here. The overwhelming majority of those present were English-speakers, Americans or British. But the impression one got was that the Americans and Britons, in general, didn't really take note that there were many continental Europeans there also and when they did they didn't seem at all interested. It was an opinion shared above all by the hundreds of fans from East Europe, from Rumania and Croatia who came for the first time en masse to a Worldcon, having made great economic sacrifices to be able to attend. They were full of enthusiasm and hopes and were somewhat disappointed by the indifference they met with from most of the Anglo-American participants. Given that science fiction at its best is the mirror of an attitude towards the exploration of the unknown, it's puzzling that at a World Convention on science fiction there was clearly so little curiosity shown towards the mass participation of a slice of the world that is little known and that previously had remained excluded.
And now we come to the fatties. The cultural level of the spectacle can be discussed but not the elevated level of fat. Don't ask me why but the percentage of fatties in the American fandom is very high, or better very heavy. A fair number were over (and a good bit over) the 200 kilos mark and some used strange electric tricycles because of the evident difficulty they had getting around under their own steam. The reader might say that this isn't pertinent information for an article about a congress, but I don't agree. The Convention was made up of human beings and the greater part of these were obese, some even monstrosities of obesity. I can't say why but it's a fact and must have some sort of explanation. I report it here without adding my own speculations. In a way, though, these gargantuan human forms had a certain fascination.
And now we come to the beautiful. If the fatties were all American, the beautiful girls were almost all European (for my part, I could drop the 'almost' but I wouldn't want to err on the side of exaggeration). The most beautiful, on the whole, were the Rumanians and the Croats. Here too I report facts only, without presuming to explain anything.
And now for the personalities present at the Convention. There were many. If I were editing the article in a formal manner I'd have to give the reader a long list of those celebrities who have, in an official manner, made Intersection an important event. But as, after all, it's a question of the usual names, and above all because, as I've already said, the more interesting element of a convention on science fiction is in the real communication you have with the people you meet rather than the passive and distant, adoring contemplation of the gathered stars, I think I'd do a better service to the reader if I list the names, in alphabetical order, of the interesting persons I've had the pleasure to talk to and who have made my participation in the Intersection convention a memorable experience. Some will already be known; many others will be new names for the reader:
Frank Beckers, Monica Boiangiu, John Brunner, Aurel Carasel, Jack Cohen, Jonathan Cowie, Anna Dal Dan, Pascal Ducommun, Ahrvid Engholm, Klaus Frick, Wolfgang Frisch, Alin Galatescu, Silviu Genescu, Cenk Gke, Roelof Goudriaan, Mihai Gramescu, Catalin Grosu, Harry Harrison, Franziska Honeit, Toni Jerrman, Vincent J-Ns, Leonid Kouritz, Alan Le Bussy, N. Lee Wood, Sakari Lindhen, Sam Lundwall, Heidi Lyshol, Odelius Magnus, Eva Malinowska, Adaleta Maslo-Krkovic, Krsto Mazuranic, Alexandru Mironov, Alina Mitu, Florin Munteanu, yvind Myhre, Piergiorgio Nicolazzini, Yaroslav Olsa, Joan Manel Ortiz, Sorin Repanovici, Hermann Ritter, Pedro Jorge Romero, Yuri Savchenko, Cem Say, Martin Schuster, Norman Spinrad, Maja Strgar, Herbert Thiery, Annemarie Van Ewyck, Bridget Wilkinson.
The greatest value Ive personally found in attending the Convention is in meeting and talking with these people. Even so I know I have forgotten some names, because it is not easy to remember all of them.
And now the less interesting part of the convention as regards the cultural aspect but quite enjoyable from a theatrical aspect: the Hugo award ceremony.
The deadly squalor of a stiff ceremony with a foregone conclusion, as all the ceremonies of this type are, tortured the more sensitive among those present and cathartically entertained the rest. This was the least alive part of the Convention, where science fiction, an instrument for the exploration of the possible, humiliates itself by putting its own participants in a list as in a track race, just as if someone wrote a great book only to get recognition rather than for the irresistible need to write it.
Anyway... here is the list of the main winners:
Novel: Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold
Novella: Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge by Mike Resnik
Short Story: Joe Haldeman
Non-fiction Book: I. Asimov: A Memoir by Isaac Asimov
Artist: Jim Burns
Editor: Gardner Dozois
Semiprozine: Interzone
Fanzine & Fan Writer: Dave Langford
The other ceremony that was much looked forward to was the Masquerade, a contest of dressing up and display in strange garments. The level of the tailoring was extremely high. Each contestant must have dedicated many months and with a substantial financial outlay to prepare the dresses. The materials were clearly of the highest quality and were finished with the maximum care. But, unfortunately, at the imaginative level, except for one or two exceptions, they were nothing special. For the most part they were variations of the Prince Charming theme or rather a crowd of people dressed as noblemen of the past. Nice, but little to do with the spirit of a convention on science fiction. The Masquerade, it has to be said, was pretty tedious for a thinking person.
In parallel with Worldcon there was also Eurocon in Glasgow, the European Science Fiction Convention. The need to spur the ESFS (European Association of Science Fiction) into promoting relations between enthusiasts in the whole of Europe, also by using Internet, was debated at length. The next Eurocon should take place in Lithuania in April 1996 (it was to be in Bulgaria but the Bulgarians apparently said no).
The ESFS has awarded its own European prizes. Strangely, the organizers of Worldcon were opposed to those prizes being presented in the context of the Hugo prize-giving ceremony. Even stranger, the Worldcon organizers, in parallel, allowed the Japanese contingent to give their national prizes at the Hugo ceremony. And even more strange is the fact that the Japanese prizes were two bottles of wine which were not even presented as all the winners were absent. These curiosities of life enlivened the otherwise predictable Hugo ceremony.
The Convention's Souvenir Book, given to all the full-membership participants was elegant and well-produced (almost all the members from East Europe took advantage of discounts and so were not eligible for a copy). It contained an article on Samuel Delany and another on Gerry Anderson, a piece by Anne McCaffrey, a presentation on Les Edwards with a series of his colour illustrations, an article on the networks of Daniel Dern, a panoramic view of the fandom of the world, two pieces by Bridget Wilkinson and an article on the future of science fiction by yours truly.
To conclude, Intersection 95, the 53rd World Science Fiction Convention was a memorable event and I can't complain about having taken part in it. At the same time it was the occasion for some critical reflections about the world of science fiction as it is today. Many, Norman Spinrad included, think the cyclopic quality of Worldcon is its limitation, making it dispersive in the end. In my opinion there's a lot of growth-space for the importance of European science fiction in a world panorama.
Perhaps the thrust of this growth will be in the countries of the East where enthusiasm for science fiction is reaching the stars. Anglo-American science fiction, at present, gives me the impression of decadence. By now these writers are writing long-winded block-busters for commercial consumption and are more inspired by the muse of marketing than that of genius. I know that many will think it heresy to believe in a jump in quality in the science fiction of continental Europe. But here I'm moderately optimistic, above all when it happens, by chance, that I'm not strongly pessimistic.
Photos by Roberto Quaglia
Enjoy other 18 photos taken by Roberto at the Intersection, featuring Samuel Delany, George R.R. Martin, Mike Resnick and others!
