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Hard Hat Fanzine #1
Hard Hat Fanzine #1
This Fanzine is under construction.
We Apologise for any inconvenience.
Architect:
Chuq Von Rospach
Construction Financing by:
Fictional Reality, uLtd.
Our Motto:
Getting in your way today to
bring someone else a better tomorrow
Hard Hat Fanzine #1 is an occasional supplement of OtherRealms, and is
Copyright 1987 by Chuq Von Rospach
Reproduction is permitted only for non-commercial purposes.
Hard Hat Fanzine #1 is available from Chuq Von Rospach,
35111-F Newark Blvd. Suite 255, Newark, CA 94560.
A trip report, of sorts. A commentary, with expository and just a hint
of righteous indignation. The subject is Britain, Brighton, and the
1987 Worldcon. The theme is the top of Nelson's head.
Now, if that makes absolutely no sense at all to you, well, you must
not have travelled to Britain for the 1987 World Science Fiction
Convention, held the end of August in Brighton, England. With any luck,
by the time I'm through, it will.
I'm fortunate that I have both legs and the use of my eyes. The layout
of the convention was, shall we say, suboptimal. As an attempt in
giving you an idea how the convention was put together, let's take a
quick tour of the facilities. We start, logically enough, at the
registration desk, placed in the Brighton Convention Centre. Now, we go
up a flight of stairs and we're at the main arena, used for the massive
events (opening & closing ceremonies, Hugo awards, costume contest and
the rock concert) and Hewison Hall, about 700 seats and the primary
programming room.
So much for the convention centre. All of the other programming is
elsewhere. Down the stairs, out the doors and we walk a block down to
the Metropole, the main hotel for the convention. In through the
revolving door, through the lobby to the back, and you're at Winter
Gardens, about 400 seats and the second track of programming.
Above the Winter Gardens are stairs. Up the stairs, past the builders
putting up the sheetrock, and turn right, and you find -- stairs, going
down. Down a flight of stairs, past the fan programming room where the
folks are wallpapering, and you're at the fan room. Beyond the fan room
is the real fan programming room -- they aren't wallpapering it,
fortunately, but it also held maybe 150 people.
The fan room, unlike most cons I've seen, was huge. Larger than many
dealer rooms I've seen in fact. Lots of tables, lots of chairs, lots of
couches. This looks encouraging, right?
One thing I forgot to mention was the lobby of the Metropole. It was a
nice, long, high traffic, narrow hallway. Practically speaking it was
impossible to hold a decent conversation in the lobby. Most of the
folks who normally hang out in the lobby hung out in the Fan Room. Then
there's the Con Suite. Or, rather, the lack of one. Mos of the folks
who normally hang out there moved to the Fan Room.
Finally, the bar. Yes, they moved a full bar into the Fan Room. A nice
thought, at one level. Sit with your friends and have a drink. But if
you wanted something in the Fan Room, even water, you paid for it. Most
of the folks who hang out in the bar moved into the Fan Room.
The loud music. The lack of sound absorbing material. The Fan Room,
which looked very large when empty, was loud, was crowded, was a mass
of humanity. Many abandoned it to the masses and took their
conversations elsewhere -- normal conversation at less than a roar
being an exercise in futility. The hot place to sit and talk with folks
wasn't in any of the normal places, but up in the Bid Gallery that
overlooked the Dealers Room.
Anyway, back to the tour. Back up the steps. Wave at the man that tried
to hit you with the sheetrock, smile and duck. Now, we go up a flight
of stairs, and you're at the Dealer's room.
The dealers room. Cavernous. Lots of books. The dealers room was a lot
different than American cons -- by far the biggest difference of a
foreign con. European's still read. In an American con, you have to
search under the T-shirts and movie posters and movie stills to find
the books. At Conspiracy, the book reigned supreme. There is some hope
in the world.
Up another flight of stairs. The art show to the right, the Third
Programme (about 200 seats) up front, and to the left the bid room,
where all the fun is. The film programme was in another hotel
completely, the Bedford, only a short two block walk away. I'd tell you
more about that, but I never got there. The SFWA suite was down there
as well, but I was told that I didn't miss much except a small, dimly
lit, overcrowded, smoky broom closets.
If it sounds like I'm being nasty to the facilities, well, I AM being
nasty to the facilities. The nicest thing about the Conspiracy
facilities was that it chose to not rain much during the con. If, for
instance, you wanted to go from the main programme to the third
programme for the next panel, you (and a thousand of your close
friends) got to walk down a flight of stairs, out through the revolving
doors (one person at a time, don't kill the person in front of you),
walk the block to the Metropole, in through the single revolving door,
through the lobby, up the stairs, avoid the nice workmen with the
sheetrock (yes, this is a running joke, but I'll kill it in a while.
promise), up another two flights of stairs, and collapse on the floor,
since all of the seats are taken. This in 10 minutes.
Thank Ghod I have both feet and can walk. While there were elevators in
various places, handicap access was haphazard and incomplete. The
sidewalks are a wheelchair torture chamber. There are only four steps
from the sidewalk to the Metropole door, unless you want to use the
luggage entrance and can convince the hotel to let you. The entire Fan
Room and Fan Program were not accessible, unless you know some
friendly, strong people.
The Brighton convention facilities are primitive compared to American
hotels, and were woefully inadequate for a convention of this size. I
can see that it might be reasonable for a smaller group of people, but
there is no way Brighton can handle more than 2,500 people. Maybe, if
we're friends, 3,000. Brighton is not, regardless of what the British
say, a Worldcon class facility, and it showed.
If this weren't bad enough, the hotel Metropole decided that a 5,000
person convention was a great time to do some redecoration. Major areas
of the hotel were being torn down, built up or painted over, including
a number of the rooms contracted out to the convention, necessitating
some last minute re-arrangements. The main hallway that connected the
hotel to the convention areas in the hotel were being refurbished, so
to get to any of the areas beyond the Winter Gardens, you got to walk
past the nice men on the scaffolding putting up the sheetrock. The
promised mirrored hallway (the only place the hotel and Concom were to
allow posters) will look nice someday. A the time of the convention,
none of the mirror had been installed. Most unfortunately, the Concom
never got around to installing alternate poster hanging facilities,
much to the dismay of some folks.
The hotel was a fascinating entity all to itself. Hotel management
seemed to forget that it (1) had a convention in the place, and (2) had
contracted for same. At various times, everyone without a Metropole
room key were refused entrance to the hotel (and, as a consequence, the
programming going on inside). The hotel closed places down, harassed
guests (in at least one case, a group of six people sitting and talking
in a hallway, and hotel security declared them to be a party. They were
told if they hadn't disbursed in 30 minutes, the Brighton police would
come and physically disburse them). Room parties weren't only
discouraged, they were actively searched out and destroyed. The only
hotel at all tolerant of con parties seemed to be the Grand.
Unfortunately, most of the attendees were either in the Metropole or
spread throughout the metropolis. Finding parties was complicated by a
Con Committee that never got around to putting up many notice boards
(there was one at the registration desk, where you never went, and one
in the Fan Room that you had trouble getting to and that was covered
with layers of material. In at least one case, a message left for me on
the Fan Room board disappeared -- probably, it's my guess, because
someone else felt they needed the thumbtack more).
I could go on about the facilities, but I think you get the point. A
con facility with room for (maybe) 3,000 people, spread out over a
space of four flights of stairs and three buildings (with three blocks
of walking between them). An actively hostile hotel management, who's
main purpose in life seemed to be to make life miserable for the con
goers (and the Concom as well). A seething mass of humanity poring from
the pores of the buildings at every step, moving lemming-like from
panel to panel in hopes of finding a seat. Settling, perhaps, for a
breath of fresh air.
The con was in trouble before it started. So how was it?
Conspiracy was my first Worldcon, and also my first trip beyond the
edges of North America. Maybe I went in with unrealistic expectations,
but I came away from Conspiracy disappointed. Even excluding the many
problems, glitches, and hassles I ran into, Conspiracy had a major
problem. It was Just Another Con. Bigger than the other conventions
I've been to, true, but that isn't necessarily an advantage.
The programming was uninspired. Three tracks, plus an irregular series
of fan panels. I was worried when the heavily hyped opening ceremonies
went off with a whimper, as the super wonderful laser effects consisted
of a single laser, aimed at the audience (who in their right mind would
aim coherent light INTO someone's eyes? I don't care if it is 'safe,' I
don't care what safeguards were taken, this is STUPID. S-T-U-P-I-D),
doing things I saw done in a high school lab years ago. If this was a
spectacular laser display, I missed something. The actual opening
ceremonies consisted of Brian Aldiss marching all of the GoH's on the
stage, having them wave at the audience, and marching them back off. No
speeches, except for the official welcome from the Brighton mayor. The
con is half an hour old, and already fizzling.
I won't go into a lot of details, since they're bound to be a lot more
boring than sitting through the panels was in person. There were some
highlights (the Magical Sex panel, with Quinn Yarbro, Guy Kay and Suzy
McKee Charnas for one) some definite lowlights (the SF Mastermind
contest, a continuing series of silly trivia games) and some very tired
programming schticks (this was, for instance, the third time I've seen
Quinn do the "Vampire in SF" panel this year, and we're both getting
rather tired of it -- Concom folks note, this one can happily be
retired for a few years, okay?). Anything with Gene Wolfe, Robert
Silverberg, or Peter Nicholls on it was worth catching, even if the
panel ended up having nothing to do with the topic.
With a few exceptions, there wasn't anything particularly wrong with
the programming, there just wasn't anything very special about it. The
annual regional con out here on the West Coast, Baycon, does a better
programming job than Conspiracy did, and they don't have nearly the
number of pros and other Interesting People To Listen To to work with.
They could have done a lot more, and I was disappointed. As I said once
before, Conspiracy was Just Another Con, and it didn't have to be.
As far as other features, I skipped the films, as usual. I was a little
disappointed in the art show -- it was better than most art shows I've
seen, but there was still only one piece I even considered bidding on.
It was very spacious and well lit, except for one dark corner. One
major gripe for me was the Fearful Symmetry exhibit, an collection of
invited artists. The art was good, but the only documentation on it was
in a printed guide, available for a nominal sum at the counter behind
you.
Nominal sums. I've mentioned the Fan Room, with the pay-your-way bar.
The concept giving away anything seemed to be foreign to Conspiracy. At
most American cons, you can at least get a soft drink in the Con
Suite. Munchies. Conversation food. Not here. You got used to dropping
a few coins here, a few coins there. You really had no choice. If you
wanted to know what was going on at Fearful Symmetries, you bought the
guide.
This bothered me, and a lot of other people, too.It seemed that the
Conspiracy group put a nominal sum on just about anything they could;
things that in most American con's would have been included in the
membership. Worse, a number of items were subsidized by New Era, Bridge
Publication's English sister. On the front cover of the pocket guide
was the Mission Earth logo. Inside: a number of full page
advertisements for various Bridge publications, the Writer's of the
Future had a large corner of the Bid Gallery, a program panel on how
important the Writers of the Future is, they supported the costume show
and were allowed to name an award after themselves, and they supported
the Hugo ceremony and were allowed to have A.J. Budrys open the
ceremony with a commercial. Somewhere along here we passed the line
between support for the convention and crass commercialism. I don't
blame Bridge/New Era for this, but the con for allowing and soliciting
it.
The huckster room, as I said, was wonderful. Books. endless rooms and
rooms of books. the only thing that kept me sane was the realization
that I was going to have to carry those things back through customs. As
it was, Laurie and I found some truly amazing (and cheap) books in the
used stacks, such as a first edition Brave New World, or a signed first
edition Dying Inside by Silverberg (one of my personal all-time
favorites, and a very important and powerful work).
One disturbing thing I saw was in the new book stands. I was hoping to
track down a few British authors I'd either seen limited material from
or hadn't heard of before. While there were a few, the vast majority of
the works shown at the con were British editions of American works and
American authors. It almost looked to me like the American press has
inundated Britain and shoved the local talent out -- if you can't
succeed across the ocean, there doesn't seem to be a lot of room for
you at home.
I hit two other main events, the Costume Show and the Hugos. The
Costume show was fairly small, and generally pretty good --
significantly fewer clunkers than I've seen elsewhere. The only real
problem was the distance from the stage: unless you paid (there's that
word again) for the Masquerade Ball, you were up in the bleachers that
lined the arena. It could have been worse, though -- if you DID pay for
the Ball, you got a table on the main floor and couldn't see anything,
because they didn't use a raised stage for the contest. The Concom
admitted at the gripe session that it was an experiment that didn't
work (they were trying to make life easier for contestants, at the
expense of everyone else), but I wish someone had thought of it ahead
of time.
The Hugos had the same problem -- if you weren't party of the ceremony
or a gopher, you were in the bleachers again, even though half of the
main floor was empty. The Concom justified this by saying that they
wanted to reward the folks who worked with them. It's perfectly
reasonable to give them preferred seating, but to the complete
exclusion of everyone else? Worse, I talked to four different Gophers
who were never told about the perq -- and what good is a perq that
people aren't told about? Other than this, the Hugo awards went off
pretty well. The author photos had some problems, primarily caused by
authors who didn't bother to send the committee the requested pictures
and ignoring their pleas for a last minute photo session -- the end
result being muddy shots pulled at the last moment from the pages of
Locus or SF Chronicle. It made the show look shoddy, unfortunately.
Next time, perhaps the committee will let the authors stew in their own
juices and get someone like Taral or Brad Foster do caricatures of the
offending people -- the audience would love it and the authors would
perhaps learn a lesson...
It was a good year for the Hugos. With the exception of the Hubbard
book (which ended up well below No Award in the final voting) I don't
think any of the fiction works on the ballot didn't deserve to be
there. The only real surprise in the winners was the Novella, with
Silverbob winning for "Gilgamesh in the Outback" after 21 straight
losses, beating out Lucius Shepard and "R&R" for the award.
I still think that the committee made a mistake with Dark Knight, and I
think the voting showed that. It placed a close second in the
non-fiction category to Trillion Year Spree, but many fans voted it
after No Award because it isn't non-fiction. The committee should have
recognized that it didn't fit anyplace in the awards and created a
one-time special award, and put it on the business agenda to find a
permanent solution. They didn't, and Dark Knight suffered as a result.
I hope that if the same support shows up for The Watchmen next year the
committee does something about it rather than avoiding the issue.
Graphic novels seem to be here to stay, and trying to shuck them off as
art books is an insult to them and to the integrity of the awards.
There are procedures that can be used to conform the Hugos to reality,
and they should be used.
Congratulations are in order for both the winners and the losers in the
Hugos this year -- I can't think of a stronger set of works in recent
history. Anyone could have one, and I don't think anyone really lost.
The Hugo award was the highlight of the convention. The hotel was the
lowlight. And the controversy (you know there had to be a controversy,
didn't you?) was centered firmly in the Bid Gallery, and its name was
American Imperialism meets European Snobbery.
By a combination of some very smart politicking, a European Worldcon
and the Conspiracy Concom's inability to get mail addressed to the
United States delivered, Holland won the 1990 bid by a vote of 800+ to
500+. Both sides were unsure of the voting, and tensions ran high. Add
to this a very strong undercurrent of anti-American sentiments by many
of the European fans over what they called the American 'hijacking' of
the Worldcon.
% Item: When I mentioned to the Holland people that if Sydney won in
'91 I was not likely going to both foreign cons, I was given a five
minute tirade about rich, selfish Americans who were unwilling to share
the Worldcon with anyone.
% Item: A woman was browbeaten by the Sydney in '91 people to the point
she broke down in tears.
% Item: Some American authors were taken to task in panel Q&A periods.
For being American. Nothing more, nothing less.
% Item: a published manifesto in the Bid Gallery that told all us
bloody Americans that since we're all so rich, and all the Europeans
are so poor, we should be HAPPY to fly to foreign Worldcons every year
because we can afford it and they can't. It is our destiny to support
their cons.
% Item: I overheard arguments on this topic between Americans and
foreign fans constantly -- from many different countries.
It all came to a head with a Fan Programme item titled "Why have the
Americans hijacked the Worldcon?" (nothing quite like being innocent
until proven guilty). As the 1990 bid got tighter and tensions ran
higher, things got nastier until the Americans decided to pull out of
the panel in disgust. The Concom spent the next couple issues of the
convention newsletter trying to both apologize, explain what they
REALLY meant (the title, it turns out, wasn't what they really meant,
it was just what they said) and simultaneously accuse the Americans of
overreacting.
It may well be true that too many Worldcons are in North America, but
if Brighton is the best convention facility in England (something the
British will acknowledge) there is a good reason for that. There aren't
many places outside of America that can handle 5,000 people, and as the
Conspiracy Concom showed, not many fan organizations that can
successfully entertain them.
I felt that I was made unwelcome by the British fans at Conspiracy
because of this attitude. I was also made very uncomfortable by the
Hollanders, to the point that I've already decided I'm not going to
Holland. Maybe America has hijacked the Worldcon (I don't believe
this, however). But the foreign fans have given me no reason to want
to come and visit, so they can run all the Worldcons they want, but
they'll do it without me. I don't need to spend thousands of dollars
and travel to foreign lands to be insulted, so until I see evidence of
a change in these attitudes, I'm going to Nasfic.
(Unless Sydney wins in 1991. I want to go to Australia, so even if the
convention is horrible I'd still enjoy the trip. Go Aussies! Also, even
though one of the Sydney folks browbeat someone to tears, in general
the Aussies were the friendliest and mellowest delegation there, and
the head of the Sydney in 1991 bid did apologize profusely for the
behaviour of their man).
If the foreigners want the Worldcon, they have to earn it. Conspiracy
didn't help their cause, and so far, neither has Holland. They can't
badger it away from us or try to guilt trip us into giving it to them
without having it backlash against them -- and I'll predict now that
Sydney will probably (unfortunately) lose 1991 to Chicago, in part
because most people won't want two foreign cons in a row, in part
because of the negative attitudes that were pervasive at Conspiracy.
To close this out, and tie it up (I still need to work the top of
Nelson's head into this somewhere. Probably down the street from the
Blue Saran Wrap), I should say in summary that for all my criticism,
Conspiracy was not a bad convention. It wasn't a great convention by a
long shot, but it could have been much worse. It's biggest problems
come back to two things: the hotel problems and the size. The root for
both of these has to rest with the Concom. I don't believe the Concom
for Conspiracy was skilled or motivated enough to really handle a 5,000
person convention. Conspiracy, if it had been half its size, would
have been a wonderful convention, but these things don't scale up well.
They got caught napping by the hotel, and didn't seem to recover from
that catastrophe. Their programming was simplistic, and they were
understaffed and overwhelmed. They did their best, but it wasn't good
enough, but I have sympathy for them as well, because it couldn't have
been much fun on their end, either -- there's a good reason why I go to
conventions and not run them....
If the only thing I'd done on the trip was the convention, I might be a
more unhappy than I am. As it was, the convention was a disappointment,
but I'm happy to say that England itself is a joy. We spent a little
over a week in Brighton, and a little under a week in London, and
enjoyed both cities thoroughly. Brighton is a great place to sit and
unwind, full of many small, family restaurants and great food. The two
days before people started piling in for Conspiracy the city almost
seemed empty. During the con, many of the restaurants were busy and
relatively noisy (unfortunately, in many cases the excess noise was
caused by American fans showing off their lack of awareness of folks
around them. When four Americans are making more noise than the rest of
the room combined, you get a little embarrassed for them).
London was the same. The English made us both feel very welcome, and
were amazingly friendly (as long as we weren't discussing Worldcon
politics, that is...). The little B&B we stayed at in Brighton (The Le
Flemings hotel on Regency Square, plug plug]) went out of their way to
make us family rather than boarders. American, with its insane
preoccupation with fast food chains and interchangeable four-wall hotel
rooms, has definitely lost something special.
The only problem with London is that everything is under
reconstruction. Every place we visited with the exception of the Tower
had some kind of work going on -- a wing of the National Gallery
closed, work being done at the British Museum, the Victoria & Albert,
the Natural History museum, large parts of the Underground and the coup
de grace, the Nelson column [see, I TOLD you'd I'd tie it all
together]. Britain seems to be very interested in preserving its
history, which is encouraging, if a little inconvenient. I will say the
British do a good job of working around the construction, although it
makes it hard to take decent photos when the outside of the buildings
are surrounded by scaffolding, as the Nelson column in Trafalgar Square
is. When you go to see this national hero, all you see is this tall
blue box, with the top foot or so of the statues head sticking out of
the top. What they do, by the way, is wrap the scaffolding with blue
plastic to keep the weather out, since it rains in England once in a
while. So all of these buildings look like they've been covered with
blue Saran Wrap -- a term I didn't come up with (Lois McMaster Bujold
did, so blame her) but which I'll happily steal.
All I can say is this: I loved England, I loved its people, its
history, and blue Saran Wrap notwithstanding, I can't wait to go back.
Thanks, England, for being a fun place to visit.
