Emma England: Media fans like different sort of conventions, just like book fans; some like to go to a range of different events, and some actively avoid the conventions where actors are present. I don’t think many people seriously expect actors to come to Worldcon, nor do most even want it. Fans want a space to get together and be geeky in an articulate way without the razzmatazz or bustle of SDCC or Dragon Con, and I’m convinced Worldcon can be that. In a genre/mode where output is in an increasingly transmedia format, we need to be tapping into this to remain current.
Uncanny: If you had the power to implement one specific improvement to Worldcon, what would it be?
Emma England: Given the discussion we’ve had so far, I don’t really feel comfortable suggesting one. The thing I might like to change for one year might not be the same for another. If forced, however, I would like to see a new voting system developed (cheaper voting for example, or free voting for Young Adults). I’m not sure the current system welcomes new blood. It might even discourage it.
Michael Lee: I think Emma hits on a key challenge, and the one thing that I’d like to change and encourage ties directly to that. Meeting Emma was one of my highlights of Loncon, and one of the reasons why I think Loncon 3 was successful was that it was able to bring on people like her as well as have people involved with pre–existing Worldcon experience work on the convention.
It is difficult, because a high level of participation in Worldcon is expensive in time, money, and travel. It certainly isn’t an easily fixable problem, given the assumption that Worldcon is a very complex all–volunteer event with a rich set of history and traditions that travels to geographically diverse locations. I’d love to see more ways to financially encourage promising and diverse young con–runners in a way consistent with the all–volunteer ethic.
Steven H Silver: Actually, I have had it in my power to implement specific improvements for Worldcon in the past, as has Helen, as has anyone who has taken a major role in running a Worldcon. In 2000, I ran 75 minute long panels. In 2012, I made sure that Worldcon published their own version of the Sunday Funnies. And, in fact, that’s one of the great things about Worldcon. Anyone who participates and is willing to work can introduce, or try to introduce, changes they think would make it stronger. If the rest of the community agrees, they’ll be continued in subsequent years. I’m sure I’ll be trying new things when I co–chair programming in Kansas City in 2016.
Helen Montgomery: So the obvious answer is that a benevolent benefactor pops up and finances all Worldcons going forward. Since that’s unlikely…
I think that my one change would actually happen prior to the Worldcon itself—I think that bidding is broken. It’s ridiculously expensive for people to do, which as noted by Emma and Michael, makes it really hard for younger, newer people to get involved. It also is a long process that contributes to something someone mentioned up thread—burnout. You’re exhausted by the time you win the bid and now you’ve got two years to actually prepare for the convention.
(That said, I don’t want to change the all–volunteer aspect. I think it makes Worldcon a special and unique creation and I think it can also make it easier in some ways for new people to get involved.)
I don’t, however, have a good answer for the bidding problem. So I guess my answer is that a benevolent wiser–than–I being appears and gives me a solution.
Uncanny: Thank you Emma, Michael, Helen, Steven, and Pablo, for participating! If you have any final thoughts, please feel free to share them.
Steven H Silver: Worldcon will continue; it may continue to age, but the fact that it has been going strong for 75 years does seem to indicate that it will continue to attract a younger generation, even if it doesn’t appeal to the widest range of that younger generation. (Honestly, the same can be said for the older generation; Worldcon is a niche convention and always has been). It will also continue to change as people who participate in Worldcon come up with new ideas, or borrow ideas from other conventions. If the only measure of a convention’s success is its size, then Worldcon will never be a success when compared to SDCC, NYCC, Anime conventions, or Dragon Con, but if you come to Worldcon with an open mind, you may just find that it offers the right blend of science fiction, fandom, and community. And if it is right for you, then step right up and volunteer to keep it going and growing for the next generation.
Michael Lee: Worldcon is the kind of institution that always has its ups and downs, and it is a large distributed organization that is by its nature very slow to change.
I’m sure that other events will continue to overshadow Worldcon from a commercial perspective—there are places to reach more readers, more viewers, and more fans. But Worldcon has people lining up to host and run it for at least the next decade, and it interacts with fans around the world in a way unlike any other convention in my experience. Safe to say that we’ll see another round of articles bemoaning the greying of fandom after next year’s Worldcon, and probably every year for the foreseeable future. That’s much better than the alternative when no one cares.
Helen Montgomery: Worldcon is a unique creation that will never be all things to all people. It can’t —it’s run by volunteers (who will make it what they want it to be). There isn’t an overarching organization, money is always an issue, and it moves about. I think there are things that Worldcon can do to be “better,” which is of course a subjective thing, but I’m thinking particularly about inclusivity and welcoming newcomers. I do think there is a lot that Worldcon does “right.” In order to do these things that will make it “better” though, we need people to volunteer to help—if it’s your passion, then you are the right person for the job.
Also, if what you want to do doesn’t fit in with Worldcon (or at least with that year’s group running it), then please go and start your own con or meetup group or blog—find your people! If you like it, odds are pretty good that others will, too.
Thanks to the editors for the opportunity to participate!
(Editors’ Note: By mutual agreement, the participants donated their fee for taking part in this roundtable discussion equally to both the Carl Brandon Society’s “Con or Bust” fund and the Science Fiction Outreach Project.)
© 2014 Uncanny Magazine
Does Sex Make Science Fiction “Soft?”
by Tansy Rayner Roberts
How much kissing and flirting can a story take before it doesn’t deserve to be called science fiction any more?
Yes, that was a trick question.
Science fiction has often had an uncomfortable relationship with romance. Many readers (and let’s face it, creators) resist the idea of letting love and relationships take up too much narrative in stories that are “supposed” to be about spaceships and robots.
I’ve seen similar observations made, over and over, about SF novels (mostly those with female bylines) that use romance tropes or even dare to include a substantial love story—as if there’s a universal standard of smooch measurement: if you have more than three kissing scenes, the book has to be exiled to the romance section. As if the romance genre doesn’t have its own very firm narrative conventions to which most SF books could never hope to aspire!
It would be easy and completely inaccurate to characterize the Spaceship Love Cooties Thing as a gender issue—it’s certainly more complicated than “Boys don’t want kissing in the clubhouse,” though there are times when it is not more complicated than that at all. In fact, many of the readers who are dismissive about any hint of “romance” in science fiction can be women, especially those of my generation or older who have bought into the idea that “hard” science fiction is the only kind we’re supposed to take seriously.
I like to think that this attitude is changing. For example, the massive popularity among SF readers of the ongoing comic series Saga by Brian K. Vaughan with art by Fiona Staples feels like a cultural shift. The story is a massive, sprawling space opera featuring some of the creepiest and most disturbing science fictiona
l ideas of all time. It’s also a love story about a couple building a family together in the face of war, assassins, and dirty politics. It’s about sex, extended family, childcare, and keeping the romance alive when everyone else wants it shot dead. As a side benefit, Saga also has a lot to say about the Romance genre itself, and how an art form that is seen by many as disposable or frivolous can in fact be the home of subversive thought and an effective call to revolution.
One of the most important things that science fiction can do as a genre is to show how scientific breakthroughs and changes might actually change the way we live as humans, and that includes issues to do with sex, family, and love. Famously, social change is also the thing that science fiction has been least successful about predicting. But that just means it’s an exciting challenge for the future, right?
Maybe science fiction readers and romance readers have more in common than they might think.
It’s not as if explorations of gender, sexuality, or romance in science fiction books are in any way new or unusual. Readers who are interested in that side of science fiction have been finding it for a long time. When I did a shout out on Twitter for favorite science fiction romances, I received a heap of recommendations.
The most common response by far was not connected to movies, TV, or comics, but an outpouring of love for various character pairings in Lois McMaster Bujold’s long running Vorkosigan series. She is the go–to author for romance and science fiction melded together—it’s impossible to have this conversation without someone mentioning Aral and Cordelia, Miles and Ekaterin, or many of her less central couples.
Bujold is also an author I have seen dismissed for writing romances that overpower the science in her stories (surely all that kissing must be pretty intense to overbalance all those spaceships shooting at each other) or for writing “soft” science fiction. I’ve been around science fiction a long time now, and I’ve yet to hear a really good definition of “hard” science fiction that doesn’t come down to “Science is more interesting than people, yes really, look at that giant piece of machinery!”
There are several kinds of technology at the heart of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series, but the ones I find most interesting are those with the more significant social repercussions. The uterine replicator, which allows fetuses to survive and develop outside the biological womb, is hugely significant to the intergalactic family of Aral and Cordelia Vorkosigan. The replicators come from Cordelia’s home planet and are used to save her baby after she is exposed to toxins while pregnant, but the consequences of raising a disabled child on a planet that has become socially conditioned to hate any sign of mutation or weakness are significant and painful, affecting their family life and that of their son Miles as he becomes an adult.
Like many geek women, I grew up thinking of romance fiction as being a thing over there, while science fiction was this completely different thing over here. I gravitated towards science fiction and fantasy precisely because the works teenage girls were “supposed” to read had lost my interest.
I started reading romance fiction this year, for the first time, at the age of thirty–five. It’s not that I hadn’t read the occasional romance before, but this is the year that I actually Got It.
Between the ages of twelve and thirteen I put aside the several tons of Sweet Valley High and Sweet Dreams novels I had been inhaling and started on David Eddings, Jennifer Roberson, Terry Pratchett, Raymond E Feist, and Janny Wurts instead. I didn’t look back.
If I read more fantasy than science fiction, I don’t think I noticed that I found the stories more compelling because I was more likely to find a focus on friendships, sex, and relationships in between the magical adventure. I also don’t think I noticed that the science fiction I loved best did the same thing.
When I started on my great Regency Romance read of 2014, which lasted approximately four months before I came up for air, (I had a lot of time to make up for!) I found to my surprise that many of these books were a lot sharper, funnier, sexier, and more feminist than I had expected. I had previously fallen into the trap of assuming that I knew what the books were like, based on their cover art.
(Again, something that science fiction and romance readers have in common—people who have never read the genre have so many opinions about its value!)
One of the more interesting books I came across was The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan, in which the heroine is a scientist whose controversial work is inspired by Darwin, and the hero is her best friend, who allows her to publish under his name even though it has given him an infamous, scandalous reputation. The book looks at the problematic lack of recognition of many female scientists for the work credited only to their husbands, and the difficulty of publishing science papers that are seen as irreligious in a conservative era, as well as exploring issues to do with sexual incompatibility, recovery from trauma, and other crunchy social matters.
Reading it, I couldn’t help thinking: Why isn’t more science fiction like this? Why don’t we have more fiction about the actual day–to–day process of science and the fallout that it might have on the relationships of those involved?
It later occurred to me that this science fiction may well exist, and I simply haven’t come across it.
So I went looking for some. Science fiction is pretty interesting right now. The standout, most critically–acclaimed SF book of 2014 was Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, which wasn’t about romance or sex, but made a lot of people rethink their preconceptions about gender. Our community has recently come alive with anthologies past, present, and Kickstarted into our future which address issues to do with diversity, alternative sexualities, and all kinds of social themes that are important now, and deserve to be represented in our imagined futures.
I recently had dinner with a bookseller and mentioned that Neuromancer by William Gibson had one of my favorite first lines of a novel ever. He replied by quoting the entire first paragraph of God’s War by Kameron Hurley. (“Nyx sold her womb somewhere between Punjai and Faleen, on the edge of the desert…”) God’s War is a hard–boiled bugpunk novel with a heroine whose open, relaxed–attitude sexuality is essential to the story as she navigates religious conservatism and cultural limitations while forming an intense, non–romantic friendship with her polar opposite.
Some of my favorite takes on romance and sex in science fiction in the last decade have come to us through YA fiction, where there is far less critical pushback about the combination of science and snogging. Megan McCafferty’s Bumped takes on reproductive issues and bodily autonomy in a world where only teenagers can give birth, and looks at how messy that would make personal relationships at that age as well as a new dynamic for parental relationships. Suzanne Collins’ hugely successful Hunger Games trilogy contains a metaplot about how it’s the heroine, and not the men in her life, who is more committed to warfare and survival over love and romantic decisions. Karen Healey’s When We Wake (and its sequel, When We Run), is centered on a cross–cultural romance while also taking on themes of environmentalism, terrorism, and race.
Race is an aspect of representative diversity that needs to be addressed more thoroughly when it comes to science fiction criticism referring to sex, relationships, and romance, because the sexuality of women (and indeed men) of color comes with its own long history of baggage, problematic tropes, and standards, and intersectionality doesn’t work if we assume a shared history that isn’t there. What feels empowering or original to a white, US–based creator or fan is not necessarily going to generate the same reaction in someone of a different racial background, culture, or country of origin.
Nnedi Okorafor’s extraordinary novel Who Fears Death combines magical realism and future dystopia with Igbo (Nigerian) traditional beliefs. The story addresses many different cultural issues around femininity, including the hugely controversial practice of genital mutilation and weaponised rape. But the story is also one about love, desire, and sex as hugely positive forces even w
hen connected to negative associations. The novel is a confronting and challenging read, but also rich with hope, wonder, and a powerful female–centered narrative.
John Chu won the Hugo this year for “The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere,” a touching story about love and culture and language and relationship and family. The science fictional/magical element is a phenomenon that prevents anyone in society from being able to conceal a lie, which is especially problematic for the main character, who is trying to introduce his (same–sex) partner to his family without actually coming out to them.
Many critics and readers suggested that the story wasn’t science fiction, because of the focus on relationships. I’m very pleased that there’s now a Hugo award that says otherwise. But Chu’s acceptance speech was heart–breaking, as he explained how many people had told him that what he wrote was not going to be of interest to readers because of who he was:
“I can’t begin to describe how much this award means to me. When I started writing, so many people told me, the words were literally ‘ I’m not racist but… ’ or ‘ I’m not homophobic but… ’ There were so many ‘ buts ’ and they all told me in polite, civil, and sometimes these exact words that no one was interested in or would ever publish anything that I would ever write. So, to win a Hugo, and for this story, I literally cannot put into words how much that means to me.”
Character–rich science fiction exploring sex, gender, and love, as well as big dumb objects, has always been with us. But my new appreciation of the separate romance genre means that I’m looking a lot harder for those stories that combine romantic hijinks with high–tech futures, space opera, and all the other fun things that the genre has to offer us.
Uncanny Magazine Issue One Page 13
