ecl@hocsj.UUCP (10/17/84)
World Fantasycon
A con review by Evelyn C. Leeper
The Tenth World Fantasycon was held in Ottawa, Ontario, from October
12, 1984, to October 14, 1984 (more or less--details later). Since it was
so close, and since it is a *serious* convention (their phrase, not mine)
devoted to fantasy in the written and artistic media (translation--minimal
film programming), we decided to go.
The first thing we learned was that in spite of the fact that Ottawa is
the capital of Canada, it is almost impossible to get to. The only direct
flights from New York (JFK) are via Pilgrim Air. If you want to fly a real
airline, you have to fly to Montreal and then take Air Canada the rest of
the way. This costs more and takes longer (in theory). However, since our
flight, aboard an F-27 prop plane, was diverted to Montreal anyway because
of fog, it took us 6 hours to get to Ottawa the "fast" way. (The airline
bussed us from Montreal to Ottawa--a two hour trip.)
We spent Friday morning sight-seeing--the Parliament buildings and the
National Gallery. Then at noon we registered (very quick, but then the Con
was limited to only 750 people--one tenth the size of the World SF Con--so
how much of a line could there be?). The programming was a single track of
panels, a track of readings, and a few other events (mentioned later). The
panels were all serious panels; I will describe the ones I attended.
"John Buchan: Statesman, Adventurer & Fantasist"
John Bell, Donald M. Grant, Sterling E. Lanier, Galad Elflandsson
I only caught the tail end of this, at which point they were discussing
why there are no comparable United States "Renaissance men."
"David Cronenberg & the Canadian Grisley"
Dennis Etchison, Doug Winter, William F. Nolan, Geoff Pevere
This was a exception, in that it dealt with film rather than the
written word, but since Cronenberg is a leading Canadian director, it fit
very well in this Con. (There was also an OZ presentation by Craig Miller,
but that is also distinctly fantasy-related.) There were two threads of
discussion here: Cronenberg's continuing theme of mind against body, and the
question of graphic violence in the cinema. (Note: THE DEAD ZONE, while
directed by Cronenberg, is basically a Stephen King film, so many of the
continuing themes discussed do not appear in it.)
Regarding the former, it is clear that all of Cronenberg's films deal
with this dicotomy. Man *thinks* he is a rational being and denies the primal
instincts he really has. If one looks at SHIVERS (for example), one sees
the classic Jekyll and Hyde theme: what happens if man's inner nature is
released, if his inhibitions are removed? RABID, THE BROOD, SCANNERS, and
VIDEODROME all continue this theme. This Apollonian/Dionysian conflict is
ancient, but Cronenberg is one of the few directors who has pushed the
limits of film to graphically depict it.
The fact that he *has* pushed the limits of acceptability (some might
even say exceeded them) in his films was the other thread of discussion.
Nolan was picked for the panel not based on his knowledge of Cronenberg's
films, but on the fact that, other than the aforementioned DEAD ZONE, he has
seen none of them. His refusal to see them is based in part on what he has
heard about them and in part on the trailers and coming attraction he has
seen, particularly for SCANNERS. (At the start, when listing Cronenberg's
films, Nolan said he had seen none of them, not even RABID, though he said
he had seen all of Marilyn Chambers's other films.) His objection was mainly
that Cronenberg depicted what should only be suggested--that the bulging of
the door in THE HAUNTING was more menacing than showing you what was behind
the door would have been. The problem with horror films today, he said, was
that they could now explicitly what formerly was merely implied. However,
he had no answer to the question of why he was willing to watch a film like
BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR, which was also explicit, showing rather than
suggesting. The question still remains: if it is valid to be explicit in
some themes (in particular, sex), then why is explicit horror invalid as an
artistic method? Granted that THE HAUNTING has its own form of horror, and
that films such as NIGHT OF THE DEMON (a.k.a. CURSE OF THE DEMON) are better
without the five seconds or so of explicit monster footage, is it still not
true that Cronenberg's films have as much validity for what they are trying
to do as BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR? No one says that the director of BEHIND THE
GREEN DOOR should have made that film more like a 1930's film where sex was
merely suggested, but they feel free to say that Cronenberg should make his
films more like Robert Wise did in the 1950's. Nothing was resolved on this
issue, though a lot of good comment was generated.
It was unfortunate that this panel was scheduled before the showings of
the Cronenberg films (reviews elsewhere in this Notice).
"Archaeology in a Fantastic Vein"
Robert Hadji, Sterling E. Lanier, Alberto Manguel,
Lloyd W. Currey, Terri Windling, Mark Alan Arnold
No one was really sure what the committee meant by the title of this
panel. The result was that a variety of topics were discussed. These
included Latin American fantasy, on which topic Manguel spoke at great
length, listing many of the leading authors of this genre in Latin America.
Some are well-known in this country (such as Jorge Luis Borges, who was
awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the World Fantasycon in 1979);
others are not so well known. It was unfortunate that he did not provide a
written (mimeographed?) list, because even those of us who understand
Spanish had some difficulty in guessing at the spellings of the names he
mentioned. It does seem, though, that Latin America is where fantasy is
happening now. While there is a lot of fantasy being published in the U. S.
and England, it all seems to fall into two or three well-defined sub-
categories (high fantasy, horror, and so forth). In Latin America, the
fantasy tends more toward the surreal, with more variation in styles and
themes. (Yes, there is some of this in English also. Russell Hoban writes
fantasy, but not fantasy like anyone else. And John Collier's stories are
in a class by themselves also. But in general English language fantasy
shows more similarities than differences.) Currey then spoke on the finding
of "lost" fantasy stories, such as two M. R. James stories recently re-
discovered because of their mention in some obscure biography of James. The
other panel members elaborated on these topics, as well as mentioned a few
other ideas that they thought were related to the name of the panel.
Manguel's discussion was very valuable, but the panel as a whole lacked
coherence.
"Art of Collecting Books...From Them What Sells 'Em"
Roy A. Squires, Lloyd W. Currey, Grant Thiessen, Robert Weinberg
I left this panel very early when one member said, "If you want to know
whether you are a collector or an accumulator, ask your wife." Obviously,
they weren't talking to *me*. (Besides, this panel seems to be one of the
standard con panels, like "Women in SF" or "World-Building.")
"New Mythologies"
Jane Yolen, Patricia C. Wrede, Janny Wurts, Charles R. Saunders,
Greg Frost, Charles De Lint, Nancy Kress, Susan Dexter
Yolen had sent several questions to the panelists beforehand, but they
were so confused that no one could answer them. For example, "In your
mythology, are you a god or a worshipper?" What this apparently was supposed
to me was, did you assume your reader would pick up your mythology from
context, or did you explain the mythology to your reader (much as the early
SF novels explained the science to their readers)? Other questions
included, "Whom would you most want to be in your mythology (world)?" and
"Whom would you least want to be?" In answer to "What is the first thing you
would do if you found yourself in your created world?" Saunders (IMARO) said
the first thing he would do was look for a exit. Frost talked about the
necessity to research existing mythologies well if you intend to use them.
For example, he said, he sent the beginning of his latest novel to an expert
on ancient Celtic society who completely demolished both what he had written
and the entire premise of the story. (According to a friend of mine, he
should have done the same with his last novel.) Some interesting ideas were
brought out, but Yolen seemed unable to lead this panel as well as some one
like Saunders or even Frost.
"Horror: The Next Decade"
Stephen King, Peter Straub, David Morrell, Whitley Strieber,
Charles L. Grant, George R. R. Martin, Les Daniels
This was the heavyweight panel of the con. It's amazing, but with all
the talent and supposed acumen present on the stage, I can't remember much
of what they said. There was some discussion of cycles in publishing: the
science fiction boom in the early seventies, then the lull, then the revival
spurred by STAR WARS. Horror fiction may also slack off, particularly given
the current plethora of lookalike books. As Grant pointed out, everyone
seems to be publishing a horror novel with a black cover and a couple of red
drops of blood on it for contrast. Soon people stop buying them. (Though
the lookalike covers of romance novels don't seem to hurt their sales any.)
Mostly, the authors used this as an excuse to hype their next novel. The
implication that the next novels of these authors are what's happening in
horror in the next decade is egotistical, to say the least. They're not bad
authors. They are in fact very good authors. But they're not the only
authors.
"World Fantasycon Retrospective"
David Hartwell, Bob Booth, Norm Hood, Robert Weinberg, Charles L. Grant
Hartwell wasn't quite sure where to begin this panel, so he suggested
throwing it open to questions immediately. One question that was asked was
why there was a need for a fantasy convention at all. SF conventions have
horror panels, it was noted, but they are usually held at midnight and 80%
of the panelists are sloshed. Grant talked about this for quite a while.
SF conventions, he said, started the horror panel as an attempt to compete
(on some level) with the Fantasycon. But horror (or dark fantasy, as many
prefer to call it) has never achieved a legitimacy at SF conventions. So
serious readers of dark fantasy have organized their own convention, where
they don't feel they have to hide their preferences in fiction. Also, he
observed, it has become a badge of honor among SF con goers to not attend
any panels. The result is that when an author speaks on a panel at the
Fantasycon (with one-tenth the registration of a World SF Con), he is
speaking to a full room instead of an empty one. Authors attending their
first Fantasycon are amazed by this. They are further amazed when they
discover that members of the audience have actually read what they're
written. (As Robert Bloch said at L.A.con II, "There used to be fifty
authors and a thousand readers. Now there are a thousand authors and fifty
readers.")
There was some discussion of the mechanism used for choosing the
awards, as well as how sites are chosen. The award process consists of
polling the members of the previous two World Fantasycons for nominations in
the various categories. The judges may also add nominees to the list. Then
the judges make the final selection. This system has been attacked as
favoring the judges' choices. Hartwell claimed that 75% of the winners are
in fact nominated by the members rather than the judges, and spoke at some
length about the honesty and dedication of the various judges, but I'm still
not convinced that this system will always be fair.
"Canadian Fantasy"
John Bell, Robert Hadji, Robert Sawyer
This was a split panel--there was one member talking about French-
Canadian fantasy (his name wasn't listed on the program and I can't remember
it), and a couple of other people talking about English-language Canadian
fantasy. The speaker on French-Canadian fantasy talked about the style--
baroque and surreal--while those speaking on English-language fantasy
contented themselves mostly with a list of names.
What made this panel noteworthy was this was the only panel that talked
about French-Canadian literature. Throughout the convention, one got the
impression that Canadian fantasy was English-language and that was that.
Given that Quebec was less than a mile away from the hotel, this attitude
seems somewhat narrow. (For that matter, many people referred to "here" or
"this country" when they obviously meant the United States. Provincialism
runs deep, it seems.) Even Latin American fantasy got more mention. (And
there is a fair about of French-Canadian fantasy, so this cannot be
attributed to a dearth of material.)
The members of the panel seemed determined to mention lesser-known
authors--a salutory goal, but a panel on Canadian fantasy (and SF) that
doesn't even mention Spider Robinson (the Toastmaster of the convention no
less!), A. E. Van Vogt, or Gordon R. Dickson until prompted by the audience
only helps support the mistaken belief that there are no important Canadian
authors in the field.
"SF and Fantasy: Walking the Tightrope"
Judy Merril, Spider Robinson, Jack Chalker, Fritz Leiber
(Before this panel got started, someone got the bright idea of posing
all the famous authors in the room for a photograph. The result was about a
dozen well-known and lesser-known authors standing in the front of the room
while everyone with a camera helped boost the price of Kodak stock.)
Merril started this out by saying that, while it wasn't exactly on the
topic, she really disliked the type of fantasy that she called "false
medievalism," which someone else described as a medieval world in which
there are no bathtubs but everyone is clean. There was general agreement
with this opinion and this led to a discussion of rustic fantasy versus
technological science fiction. The panelists agreed that such a division
was simplistic, and that the dividing line was much harder to pin down.
Kingsbury presented the idea that fantasy is to science fiction as
mathematics is to physics--mathematicians start with axioms which are not
necessarily connected to the real world and draw logical conclusions from
them, while physicists attempt to take real-world phenomenon and explain
them. Fantasy (at least good fantasy) takes axioms which may have no
relation to the real world (e.g. there are leprechauns) and extends these
axioms out to their logical results. Science fiction ties itself very much
to the real world, to the possible. No one dealt with the scientific
"impossibilities" that are commonly accepted in science fiction: faster-
than-light travel, time travel, matter transmission. But if you give some
thought to these, you can see that while they are impossible according to
current science, science fiction stories utilizing them attempt to give some
rational reason for extending our current view of the real world to include
them. There was also a suggestion that fantasy deals with an unchanging
world, while science fiction deals with a changing world and in particular
how its characters react to such change. Merril saw fantasy as dealing with
internalization of feelings, while science fiction dealt with how characters
interact with their environment.
This panel was the last of the con, and ran for an hour and a half
rather than an hour (since no one was following it in the room). In the
end, nothing was really decided, but a lot of ideas were thrown around and a
lot of good discussion about those ideas was generated.
Other Functions
The film program consisted of four Cronenberg films: STEREO, CRIMES OF
THE FUTURE, SHIVERS, and RABID. These are reviewed elsewhere in this
Notice, so I will content myself with observing that Cronenberg delights in
creating interesting scientific fields of study and the institutes to study
them. One that sticks out in my mind is "oceanic podiatry" (from CRIMES OF
THE FUTURE). Another is "psychocybernetics" (and its related field
"psychoeroticism"). It's amazing how he is able to make total gobbledygook
sound almost plausible.
The Dealers' Room was unusual (as SF cons go)--it had mostly books.
There were only three dealers selling something other than books, two art
dealers and a T-shirt dealer (and even the T-shirt were art). But the books
were mostly antiquarian books (as opposed to used books), with a couple of
new book dealers as well. Books by attending authors were in demand. King
and Straub's new book (THE TALISMAN) sold well, as did Spider Robinson's new
collection (MELANCHOLY ELEPHANTS), the latter partially because it will not
be available in the U. S. until the middle of next year. The new Ace
Science Fiction Special also sold out quickly, though it is straight SF, not
fantasy. There was a large used book store near the hotel which was not
mentioned in any of the convention materials, but which did have a big SF
section, and an equally big horror section, at about two-thirds cover price.
The art show was small, and there was a fair amount of SF art (despite
the convention's emphasis on fantasy). And even here, it seems, one cannot
avoid the Indiana Jones pencil sketches. Some good artists, but most of the
work was "NFS" (not for sale). This may have been due to the difficulties
everyone was having getting their books and/or artwork through customs. (A
couple of books which were to have been distributed to convention-goers
ended up tied up in customs, and several other authors had to sign
statements that they would not sell the books they were taking in.) Only
about half the art was hung by Friday afternoon, and since there were no
Sunday art show hours, I suspect many people missed the items that were hung
on Saturday.
The Saturday night autograph session was very well attended. It's true
there was nothing else to do then (convention-wise anyway), but there was an
unusually high percentage of authors there. Where at a World SF Con Meet-
the-Authors party there will be 3000 fans and 100 authors, here there seemed
to be 500 fans and 100 authors. Needless to say, it was much easier to get
autographs or discussions with your favorite author--unless he was Stephen
King. The line for King's autograph was about an hour long. No one else
was more than 10 minutes. Even very popular authors like Guest of Honor
Tanith Lee and Toastmaster Spider Robinson had time to stop and chat with
people who wanted to talk to them.
World Fantasy Awards
Novel--John Ford, THE DRAGON WAITING
Novella--Kim Stanley Robinson, "Black Air" (March 1984 F&SF)
Short Story--Tanith Lee, "Elle est trois (La mort)" (WHISPERS IV)
Anthology/Collection--Roberson Davies, HIGH SPIRITS
Artist--Steve Gervais
Special professional award--Ian Ballantine (Joy Chant, THE HIGH KINGS)
Special non-professional award--Stephen Jones & David Sutton
Lifetime Achievement Awards:
L. Sprague DeCamp
Richard Matheson
E. Hoffman Price
Jack Vance
Donald Wandrei
British Fantasy Awards
Novel--Peter Straub, FLOATING DRAGON
Short Story--Karl Edward Wagner, "Man for [?]"
(Didn't catch the title)
Film--VIDEODROME
Artist--Rowena Morrill
Small Press--WHISPERS
When we got to the airport for our return flight, we discovered we
would be sharing a plane with Donald and Elsie Wollheim, Peter Straub,
Whitley Strieber, F. Paul Wilson, Joan Vinge, Jim Frenkel, Chris Claremont,
Chris Steinbrunner, and other well-known people in the publishing world.
Not bad for a plane that only holds about 40. Just as I was saying that if
this plane went down, there would be a major dent in the SF/horror
publishing world, Pilgrim Airlines announced that due to mechanical
difficulties the flight had been cancelled! After a lot of confusion ("What
do we do now?" "I don't know." "What is the loudspeaker saying?" "I can't
hear it!"), we got ourselves straightened out. Most of us opted for re-
booking on the next day's noon flight (the clerk said that the 7AM would be
cancelled due to fog). Some went through the problem of booking flights
through Montreal, either because they were sick of Pilgrim Airlines, or
because they needed to get back to New York earlier. The rest of us cruised
back to Ottawa and hung out at the hotel (we stayed with friends who were
staying through until Monday anyway), then returned to the Ottawa Airport
Monday for a remarkably uneventful flight back.
As we were finally driving home on the Belt Parkway, we were listening
to the end of THE RIGHT STUFF (the final launch and the end credits) on the
cassette player and watching a Concorde take off from JFK. Fantasy is good,
but nothing beats real technology for a thrill.
I enjoyed the Con. It's on a par with a small regional convention (not
Boskone, but perhaps Ann Arbor's Confusion). I wouldn't travel a great
distance for it, but when it comes to Providence, RI, in 1986, I think I'll
go.
Evelyn C. Leeper
...ihnp4!hocsj!eclwombat@ccvaxa.UUCP (10/19/84)
*sigh* At last year's World Fantasy Con in Chicago, Harlan Ellison read most of a good vampire story. He'd almost finished it, and promised it would be out in the next "Whispers," which was to be a special Ellison issue, an issue which has as yet to materialize (through not fault of Stuart David Schiff, I'm certain). Maybe someday, after *The Last Dangerous Visions*, perhaps, I'll find out how it ends... Wombat "I am not, nor have I ever been, Jan Howard Finder" ihnp4!uiucdcs!ccvaxa!wombat
chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Zonker T. Chuqui) (10/28/84)
> Maybe someday, after *The Last > Dangerous Visions*, There was an article in Locus a few months back which said that Harlan was going to ship TLDV to the publisher the first week of August. He seems to have finally broken a 10 year writers block that seems to have actually been caused by some physical problems he has had. Considering that TLDV was due out in 1976 or so, I'm glad I didn't hold my breath for it, but I AM looking forward to seeing it when it does arrive. chuq -- From the Department of Bistromatics: Chuq Von Rospach {cbosgd,decwrl,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA I'd know those eyes from a million years away....