Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (181 page)

Birth of Cons

The first SF convention in 1936 was a small, unorganized gathering of fewer than twenty people who met in Philadelphia to discuss science fiction. Among them were Donald A. Wollheim (editor, publisher, and author) and Frederik Pohl (critic, agent, teacher, editor, author and lifelong fan). The first organized convention was in 1937 in Leeds, England. After that conventions (called
cons
by SF fans) met each year, their attendance growing steadily. Originally, fans came to discuss science fiction and fantasy literature. These gatherings often included professionals in the field such as authors, editors, and critics, but mostly they were gatherings of fans. Later, cons became considerably larger and came to include a variety of activities and media.

When science fiction first started to define itself as a genre in the 1930s, readers were sometimes isolated. While there were a few correspondence clubs, SF readers were often on their own with no one to share their interest with. Fandom as we know it today began with Hugo Gernsback (a SF magazine publisher among other things) and his Science Fiction League. Like a book club, the League had chapters and members which met across the US. Fans could join their local chapter and meet with others to talk and share collections. While The Science Fiction League did not last long, it helped to jump start fandom. That fandom led to the first SF conventions and from there to the lively con scene of today.

As these small meetings continued, the home of author Fletcher Pratt became an important meeting place for science fiction writers in the New York area. A group of them came together in 1938 and started calling themselves the Futurians. Among them were Frederik Pohl, Joseph Harold Dockweiler (aka Dirk Wylie), John B. Michel, Isaac Asimov, Donald A. Wollheim, Chester Cohen, Walter Kubilius, Richard Wilson, Cyril Kornbluth, Jack Gillespie, and Jack Robins.

Once US fans got organized, they held the first World Science Fiction Convention in 1939 in New York. Masquerades date back to this first convention, when Forrest J Ackerman dressed up in costume. Since then, WorldCon (originally the name came from the World Fair which was in New York that year) has met every year, except for a brief hiatus during World War II.

While early cons were in fans’ houses or local buildings, as conventions became more organized, and the field and genre grew, they become more than just a place for fans to gather, meet with pros, and talk science fiction—they needed more space. Con organizers began renting convention centers and hotel event rooms to accommodate all their members. Hotels were (and are) particularly popular because then fans from a wider area can gather and stay at the site of the con. Most cons are organized and run by fans on a nonprofit basis. By paying a small membership, any fan has access to everything going on at the convention. Membership fees cover the expenses of putting together the con, and hotels generally provide function space to the convention in return for a attendees filling a certain number of hotel rooms. At most cons the pros who participate on panels and other events are admitted for free, but usually only the guests of honor have all their expenses covered. (There are for-profit conventions as well, which tend to be more expensive for fans but have bigger budgets to put on events and attract more “name” stars.)

With this growth, cons became more than just a place for fans to gather, meet with pros, and talk science fiction. Soon they were handing out awards, branching out into art shows, and expanding panel offerings from print media into radio and television. In 1953, WorldCon offered the first Hugo Award, named in honor of Hugo Gernsback. Members of the con got to vote on which nominee received awards in each category. Originally a onetime event, the Hugo Awards became a permanent feature of WorldCon in 1955. WorldCon members also vote on where and when the Con will be held in following years.

Evolution of Cons

The 1950s and early 1960s saw the birth of most of the major cons in the US. Westercon began in 1948, Midwestcon in 1950, Deepsouthcon in 1963, Disclave (held in Washington, DC until an unfortunate 1997 incident involving a pair of sexually adventurous attendees and a sprinkler head flooded several floors of the hotel) in 1950, Lunacon (held in New York) in 1957, and Boskone (held in Boston) in 1964. The US was not the only place cons were starting up. The UK continued to have cons and they spread across Europe, Asia, and Australia. At Midwestcon in 1959, several fans realized they had been active in SF for the previous twenty years. This inspired the creation of an organization of longstanding fans, First Fandom. In the beginning, only those who had been active in fandom since before the first WorldCon in 1939 could join.

In the 1960s event programming was single track—one event at a time with nothing else going on concurrently. Some events, like the Ceremony of Saint Fantasy, didn’t last very long. (The last Ceremony was at Tricon in 1966 where Robert Silverburg was inducted.) Others, like the Masquerades at some cons, remain. As movies and other expressions of science fiction have become popular, like games, toys, comics, manga, cartoons, and anime, these also have been incorporated into conventions.
Star Trek
had a huge impact on SF conventions in the late 1960s and early 1970s, bringing the genre to the awareness of people across the US who had never heard of SF before (and flooding conventions with people dressed as Vulcans for a while).

The 1970s saw an explosion of cons around the world. Windycon (held in Chicago) began in 1974, and the UK saw the birth of a number of smaller conventions. Cons were held all over Europe, in Japan, China, and Australia. (WorldCon has also been to all these locations and Canada.) In 1976, in Poland, the first SF convention took place in the Communist Bloc.

The 1970s also saw the formation of some of the rules concerning costumes and Masquerades. (Some people who dress up at conventions do so to compete against other costumers in the Masquerade, while others wear
hall costumes
just for fun. Only a small fraction of fans at a typical convention are costumers.) For example, the legendary costume of Scott Shaw as the Turd at various cons in 1972 is the reason that peanut butter is no longer allowed in costumes…he covered himself in it. A “no jelly too” clause was added after a zombie costume used jam as blood and guts. One girl had no costume so she stripped naked, giving rise to the “no costume is no costume” rule. Even pros dressed up in costume on occasion and won Masquerades. But creativity and artistry always won the day.

Successive generations of fans found they had been active in fandom for decades. While there was some talk of starting their own group, First Fandom changed their rules. A special Dinosaur distinction was made for those active since 1939, with a new associate membership for anyone active in fandom for over thirty years. (They’re on the web at firstfandom.org.) Starting with Jack Speer in the 1950s, historians of fandom began calling successive generations First Fandom, Second, Third, all the way up to Seventh Fandom and beyond.

Cons Today

No matter how big, where, or when they occur, many conventions have certain things in common: they last 3–4 days or longer if there is a holiday, they have event programming, an art room and a dealers’ room, they have Guests of Honor (professionals, authors, editors, and artists and fans usually big names in the genre that fans wouldn’t see otherwise) and they have volunteer opportunities, and a Con Suite. Most importantly, cons are made up of people. These people are part of the fandom of cons. They travel from con to con bring stories and memories of other people and places.

Cons are organic, and an amusing but trivial anecdote at a con on the East Coast can be a major story by the time it reaches the west. Cons have memory, and a history that is remembered in fan folklore (or
filking
, as SF folksinging is referred to). Usually held in a hotel, sometimes in convention centers, cons come in a variety of sizes. Some, like WorldCon, are attended by people from all across the world. Others are national, regional, or local. There are even college cons, which tend to come and go as the organizers graduate but sometimes grow into more permanent cons, like Connecticon, which started on the University of Hartford campus but now fills the convention center in Hartford every summer. To give some indication at the popularity of cons, in the US there are about 150 cons a year. You can find a con on nearly every weekend.

Today, most cons are formalized events with programming, panels, shows, contests, an art show, dealer’s rooms, gaming, filking, and more where professionals and fans come together to enjoy the genre. Parties may be sponsored by fan groups, publishers, or various interest groups interested in some aspects of SF. (Usually parties are divided into alcohol-free
open
parties which anyone may attend and
closed
parties which may serve alcohol but require an invitation and ID.) Some cons are about all types of SF, while others focus on a certain author, series, or media—for example a Star Trek or Star Wars Convention or ComicCon. Some are very formal and intensely literary, while others are much lighter in tone.

Fandom and fans are still a huge part of cons, being a fan is what a con experience is about. Cons have long memories and congoers like to tell stories. Conventions bring people together from all over the world, many times friends who only see each other at certain cons once or twice a year. Most conventions are still very much nonprofit affairs run by fan groups, who are always looking for new members and volunteers and people who may become future “conrunners.” Despite the sometimes-intimidating amount of things going on at a con, most SF cons are very welcoming of new fans, and part of the culture of fandom is in helping to make newcomers feel welcome at fannish events.

(1904–1988)

As a boy I came across Clifford Simak’s
City
(1952) and
Way Station
(1963) and read them repeatedly. His writing and themes were utterly unlike anything else I’d come across; in a field full of hard science and adventure stories, there was something somehow
gentle
about Simak’s writing. Even though he was dealing with highly charged emotional issues—the nature of sanity and immortality, the ultimate fate of humanity, whether we should leave dogs in charge of the planet when we leave—characters in the stories didn’t get too worked up about them. They did what they had to do, they lived or they didn’t, and that was that. I love adventure stories, but amidst all the books full of life-and-death dramas, there was comfort to be drawn from Simak’s writing. Maybe the calmness was the rural Wisconsin upbringing and pastoral landscape that suffuses so much of his writing. But whatever it was, I still find his writing very soothing.

After a brief teaching career, Simak spent most of his life as a newspaperman, even after his fiction writing was successful. He started with the
Minneapolis Star
in 1939 and became news editor by 1949. While he sold a few stories in the early 1930s (beginning with “The World of the Red Sun” to Hugo Gernsback’s
Wonder Stories
in 1931) his style didn’t really fit what the lurid pulps were looking for and he stopped writing SF in 1933. (He did continue to write Westerns and war stories for other pulps.)

When John W. Campbell took over as editor of
Astounding
in 1937, he was looking for exactly the kind of new voices Simak represented, and Simak became one of Campbell’s earliest “discoveries.” His first novel,
Cosmic Engineers
, was serialized in
Astounding
in 1939, and all but one of the stories that would later form
City
appeared there. Simak moved to
Galaxy
in the 1950s, serializing the novels
Empire
(1951),
Time and Again
(1951), and
Ring Around the Sun
(1953) for them. He continued to write consistently good science fiction (his fantasy was more hit-or-miss) until shortly before his death, writing full-time well into his eighties. (Simak was in his seventies when he retired from newspapaer work.)

Many of his best known works were written before the major awards existed, but Simak won Hugos for “The Big Front Yard” (1958), for
Way Station
, and finally for “Grotto of the Dancing Deer,” a beautifully nuanced story which won a Nebula as well. Simak also received a number of awards for his overall body of work, including the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award, the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award, a Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Minnesota Academy of Science Award, for distinguished service to science.

Married since 1929, he and his wife Agnes had two children.

* * * *

First published in
Analog Science Fiction
, April 1980

Luis was playing his pipe when Boyd climbed the steep path that led up to the cave. There was no need to visit the cave again; all the work was done, mapping, measuring, photographing, extracting all possible information from the site. Not only the paintings, although the paintings were the important part of it. Also there had been the animal bones, charred, and the still remaining charcoal of the fire in which they had been charred; the small store of natural earths from which the pigments used by the painters had been compounded—a cache of valuable components, perhaps hidden by an artist who, for some reason that could not now be guessed, had been unable to use them; the atrophied human hand, severed at the wrist (why had it been severed and, once severed, left there to be found by men thirty millennia removed?); the lamp formed out of a chunk of sandstone, hollowed to accommodate a wad of moss, the hollow filled with fat, the moss serving as a wick to give light to those who painted. All these and many other things, Boyd thought with some satisfaction; Gavarnie had turned out to be, possibly because of the sophisticated scientific methods of investigation that had been brought to bear, the most significant cave painting site ever studied—perhaps not as spectacular, in some ways, as Lascaux, but far more productive in the data obtained.

No need to visit the cave again, and yet there was a reason—the nagging feeling that he had passed something up, that in the rush and his concentration on the other work, he had forgotten something. It had made a small impression on him at the time, but now, thinking back on it, he was becoming more and more inclined to believe it might have importance. The whole thing probably was a product of his imagination, he told himself. Once he saw it again (if, indeed, he could find it again, if it were not a product of retrospective worry), it might prove to be nothing at all, simply an impression that had popped up to nag him.

So here he was again, climbing the steep path, geologist’s hammer swinging at his belt, large flashlight clutched in hand, listening to the piping of Luis who perched on a small terrace, just below the mouth of the cave, a post he had occupied through all the time the work was going on. Luis had camped there in his tent through all kinds of weather, cooking on a camper’s stove, serving as self-appointed watchdog, on alert against intruders, although there had been few intruders other than the occasional curious tourist who had heard of the project and tramped miles out of the way to see it. The villagers in the valley below had been no trouble; they couldn’t have cared less about what was happening on the slope above them.

Luis was no stranger to Boyd; ten years before, he had shown up at the rock shelter project some fifty miles distant and there had stayed through two seasons of digging. The rock shelter had not proved as productive as Boyd initially had hoped, although it had shed some new light on the Azilian culture, the tag-end of the great Western European prehistoric groups. Taken on as a common laborer, Luis had proved an apt pupil and as the work went on had been given greater responsibility. A week after the work had started at Gavarnie, he had shown up again.

“I heard you were here,” he’d said. “What do you have for me?”

As he came around a sharp bend in the trail, Boyd saw him, sitting crosslegged in front of the weatherbeaten tent, holding the primitive pipe to his lips, piping away.

That was exactly what it was—piping. Whatever music came out of the pipe was primitive and elemental. Scarcely music, although Boyd would admit that he knew nothing of music. Four notes—would it be four notes? he wondered. A hollow bone with an elongated slot as a mouthpiece, two drilled holes for stops.

Once he had asked Luis about it. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he had said. Luis had told him, “You don’t see many of them. In remote villages here and there, hidden away in the mountains.”

Boyd left the path and walked across the grassy terrace, sat down beside Luis, who took down the pipe and laid it in his lap.

“I thought you were gone,” Luis said. “The others left a couple of days ago.”

“Back for one last look,” said Boyd.

“You are reluctant to leave it?”

“Yes, I suppose I am.”

Below them the valley spread out in autumn browns and tans, the small river a silver ribbon in the sunlight, the red roofs of the village a splash of color beside the river.

“It’s nice up here,” said Boyd. “Time and time again, I catch myself trying to imagine what it might have been like at the time the paintings were done. Not much different than it is now, perhaps. The mountains would be unchanged. There’d have been no fields in the valley, but it probably would have been natural pasture. A few trees here and there, but not too many of them. Good hunting. There’d have been grass for the grazing animals. I have even tried to figure out where the people would’ve camped. My guess would be where the village is now.”

He looked around at Luis. The man still sat upon the grass, the pipe resting in his lap. He was smiling quietly, as if he might be smiling to himself. The small black beret sat squarely on his head, his tanned face was round and smooth, the black hair close-clipped, the blue shirt open at the throat. A young man, strong, not a wrinkle on his face.

“You love your work,” said Luis.

“I’m devoted to it. So are you, Luis,” Boyd said.

“It’s not my work.”

“Your work or not,” said Boyd, “you do it well. Would you like to go with me? One last look around.”

“I need to run an errand in the village.”

“I thought I’d find you gone,” said Boyd. “I was surprised to hear your pipe.”

“I’ll go soon,” said Luis. “Another day or two. No reason to stay but, like you, I like this place. I have no place to go, no one needing me. Nothing’s lost by staying a few more days.”

“As long as you like,” said Boyd. “The place is yours. Before too long, the government will be setting up a caretaker arrangement, but the government moves with due deliberation.”

“Then I may not see you again,” said Luis.

“I took a couple of days to drive down to Roncesvalles,” said Boyd. “That’s the place where the Gascons slaughtered Charlemagne’s rear guard in 778.”

“I’ve heard of the place,” said Luis.

“I’d always wanted to see it. Never had the time. The Charlemagne chapel is in ruins, but I am told masses are still said in the village chapel for the dead paladins. When I returned from the trip, I couldn’t resist the urge to see the cave again.”

“I am glad of that,” said Luis. “May I be impertinent?”

“You’re never impertinent,” said Boyd.

“Before you go, could we break bread once more together? Tonight, perhaps. I’ll prepare an omelet.”

Boyd hesitated, gagging down a suggestion that Luis dine with him. Then he said, “I’d be delighted, Luis. I’ll bring a bottle of good wine.”

* * * *

Holding the flashlight centered on the rock wall, Boyd bent to examine the rock more closely. He had not imagined it; he had been right. Here, in this particular spot, the rock was not solid. It was broken into several pieces, but with the several pieces flush with the rest of the wall. Only by chance could the break have been spotted. Had he not been looking directly at it, watching for it as he swept the light across the wall, he would have missed it. It was strange, he thought, that someone else, during the time they had been working in the cave, had not found it. There’d not been much that they’d missed.

He held his breath, feeling a little foolish at the holding of it, for, after all, it might mean nothing. Frost cracks, perhaps, although he knew that he was wrong. It would be unusual to find frost cracks here.

He took the hammer out of his belt, and holding the flashlight in one hand, trained on the spot, he forced the chisel end of the hammer into one of the cracks. The edge went in easily. He pried gently and the crack widened. Under more pressure, the piece of rock moved out. He laid down the hammer and flash, seized the slab of rock, and pulled it free. Beneath it were two other slabs and they both came free as easily as the first. There were others as well and he also took them out. Kneeling on the floor of the cave, he directed the light into the fissure that he had uncovered.

Big enough for a man to crawl into, but at the prospect he remained for the moment undecided. Alone, he’d be taking a chance to do it. If something happened, if he should get stuck, if a fragment of rock should shift and pin him or fall upon him, there’d be no rescue. Or probably no rescue in time to save him. Luis would come back to the camp and wait for him, but should he fail to make an appearance, Luis more than likely would take it as a rebuke for impertinence, or an American’s callous disregard of him. It would never occur to him that Boyd might be trapped in the cave.

Still, it was his last chance. Tomorrow he’d have to drive to Paris to catch his plane. And this whole thing was intriguing; it was not something to be ignored. The fissure must have some significance; otherwise, why should it have been walled up so carefully? Who, he wondered, would have walled it up? No one, certainly, in recent times. Anyone, finding the hidden entrance to the cave, almost immediately would have seen the paintings and would have spread the word. So the entrance to the fissure must have been blocked by one who would have been unfamiliar with the significance of the paintings or by one to whom they would have been commonplace.

It was something, he decided, that could not be passed up; he would have to go in. He secured the hammer to his belt, picked up the flashlight, and began the crawl.

The fissure ran straight and easy for a hundred feet or more. It offered barely room enough for crawling but, other than that, no great difficulties. Then, without warning, it came to an end. Boyd lay in it, directing the flash beam ahead of him, staring in consternation at the smooth wall of rock that came down to cut the fissure off.

It made no sense. Why should someone go to the trouble of walling off an empty fissure? He could have missed something on the way, but thinking of it, he was fairly sure he hadn’t. His progress had been slow and he had kept the flash directed ahead of him every inch of the way. Certainly if there had been anything out of the ordinary, he would have seen it.

Then a thought came to him and slowly, with some effort, he began to turn himself around, so that his back, rather than his front, lay on the fissure floor. Directing the beam upward, he had his answer. In the roof of the fissure gaped a hole.

Cautiously he raised himself into a sitting position. Reaching up, he found handholds on the projecting rock and pulled himself erect. Swinging the flash around, he saw that the hole opened not into another fissure, but into a bubblelike cavity—small, no more than six feet in any dimension. The walls and ceiling of the cavity were smooth, as if a bubble of plastic rock had existed here for a moment at some time in the distant geologic past when the mountains had been heaving upward, leaving behind it as it drained away a bubble forever frozen into smooth and solid stone.

As he swung the flash across the bubble, he gasped in astonishment. Colorful animals capered around the entire expanse of stone. Bison played leapfrog. Horses cantered in a chorus line. Mammoths turned somersaults. All around the bottom perimeter, just above the floor, dancing deer, standing on their hind legs, joined hands and jigged, antlers swaying gracefully.

“For the love of Christ!” said Boyd.

Here was Stone Age Disney.

If it was the Stone Age. Could some jokester have crawled into the area in fairly recent times to paint the animals in this grotto? Thinking it over, he rejected the idea. So far as he had been able to ascertain, no one in the valley, nor in the entire region, for that matter, had known of the cave until a shepherd had found it several years before when a lamb had blundered into it. The entrance was small and apparently for centuries had been masked by a heavy growth of brush and bracken.

Too, the execution of the paintings had a prehistoric touch to them. Perspective played but a small part. The paintings had that curious flat look that distinguished most prehistoric art. There was no background—no horizon line, no trees, no grass or flowers, no clouds, no sense of sky. Although, he reminded himself, anyone who had any knowledge of cave painting probably would have been aware of all these factors and worked to duplicate them.

Yet, despite the noncharacteristic antics of the painted animals, the pictures did have the feeling of cave art. What ancient man, Boyd asked himself, what kind of ancient man, would have painted gamboling bison and tumbling mammoths? While the situation did not hold in all cave art, all the paintings in this particular cave were deadly serious—conservative as to form and with a forthright honest attempt to portray the animals as the artists had seen them. There was no frivolity, not even the imprint of paint-smeared human hands, as so often happened in other caves. The men who had worked in this cave had not as yet been corrupted by the symbolism that had crept in, apparently rather late in the prehistoric painting cycle.

So who bad been this clown who had crept off by himself in this hidden cavern to paint his comic animals? That he had been an accomplished painter, there could be no doubt. This artist’s techniques and executions were without flaw.

Boyd hauled himself up through the hole, slid out onto the two-foot ledge that ran all around the hole, crouching, for there was no room to stand. Much of the painting, he realized, must have been done with the artist lying flat upon his back, reaching up to work on the curving ceiling.

He swept the beam of the flashlight along the ledge. Halfway around, he halted the light and jiggled it back and forth to focus upon something that was placed upon the ledge, something that undoubtedly had been left by the artist when he had finished his work and gone away.

Leaning forward, Boyd squinted to make out what it was. It looked like the shoulder blade of a deer; beside the shoulder blade lay a lump of stone.

Cautiously he edged his way around the ledge. He had been right. It was the shoulder blade of a deer. Upon the flat surface of it lay a lumpy substance. Paint? he wondered, the mixture of animal fats and mineral earths the prehistoric artists used as paints? He focused the flash closer and there was no doubt. It was paint spread over the surface of the bone, which had served as a palette with some of the paint lying in thicker lumps ready for use, but never used, paint dried and mummified and bearing imprints of some sort. He leaned close, bringing his face down to within a few inches of the paint, shining the light upon the surface. The imprints, he saw, were fingerprints, some of them sunk deep—the signature of that ancient, long-dead man who had worked here, crouching even as Boyd now crouched, shoulders hunched against the curving stone. He put out his hand to touch the palette, then pulled it back. Symbolic, yes, this move to touch, this reaching out to touch the man who painted—but symbolic only, a gesture with too many centuries between.