MemeMachineGo!

Events outside of the Internet world have kept me from posting for a few weeks. No apologies, it was important.

But now things are cleared up and I’m off to one of my favorite annual events: Philcon.

Of all the science fiction conventions I’ve attended, Philcon is the one I most eagerly look forward to, and the one that I still attend every year, barring some personal crisis. It’s got a lot of competition in the area. Lunacon is closer to where I live. Boskone and Arisia were often larger, and given the migrations of ex-RPI people, are more likely to be attended by people I know. Readercon has more serious literary discussions. Disclave had a better party scene (at least until some fools took things too far and killed the con). I-Con is, umm… on Long Island. (At one point in my life that was enough of a positive quality.)

But don’t be fooled by any of that. Despite all I’ve said, Philcon still stands out, in my opinion, as the best con on the east coast. Okay, so the next logical question is “why?” That’s not so easy to answer, because it depends on a lot of subjective and intangible factors. But I’ll give it a shot.

For starters, it was my first major science fiction convention. In 1987, at the urging of Scanner, I made the trip down to Philly in a convoy of cars with about a dozen other members of the Rensselaer Science Fiction Association. It was an all-senses plunge into the con experience: crashing on floors, elevator stuffing, room parties, filking all night, dinner runs with some of the most interesting people I’ve ever known.

And the program, of course. Philcon has some very serious and experienced con-runners on its staff, and they do an excellent job of putting together a consistently fascinating slate of programming. One of the most memorable panels at my first Philcon was a discussion of the engineering challenges of building a space elevator, led by Charles Sheffield and Yoji Kondo. It was blue-sky thinking in 1987, but less than twenty years later, it looks like there are people who have the know-how and will to make it happen. I’ve also attended discussions on science fiction poetry, the influences of Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the fascination of “bad” SF writing, and how science fiction seems to be shying away from actually depictiong the advance of technology.

Philcon also has a lot for fans of other media. I was a lot more into anime ten or fifteen years ago, and Philcon was the first place that I saw features like Dirty Pair: Project Eden or Wings of Honneamise on a big screen. And back in those days we didn’t have dubs or subtitles. We watched it in the original Japanese, with someone reading a translation of the script if we were lucky. And Scanner had to swim to Japan to bring back the laser discs. Uphill, both ways.

Then there’s the masquerade, which is really the main event for Saturday at Philcon. Some of the best costumers on the East Coast attend Philcon, and many of them use it as a warmup for the Worldcon masquerade. To keep the audience entertained while waiting for the judging results, there are often halftime shows such as a performance by the Philadelphia Mummers, or a musical act like Clam Chowder. And back in the 80’s, when personal video cameras were still something of a rarity, I’d tag along with Scanner as part of his “camera crew” and get one of the best viewing spots in the room.

And of course there are the purely personal reminiscences. I made a lot of friends at Philcon, and there are still some people who I consider friends that I only see at Philcons. I brought several of my significant others to the con, and at one point my convention friends would joke about “who is Jim’s fiancee this year?” Not that it was all good times — one of my SO’s broke up with me while I was at Philcon. And for that matter, there were a few Philcons from hell, such as the time that I decided to save on hotel costs and crash with a friend in West Philly. We discovered that Philadelphia’s public transit is pretty awful, especially on weekends, and I think we wound up spending as much on cab fare as we would have saved on lodging. And the time that Dominus and I went to the Denny’s next to the convention hotel, and sat at a table for forty-five minutes while all the staff ignored us.

But it’s all part of the memories, and after a few years it all blends into a rich experience that forms a very significant part of my life, and which I wouldn’t give up for anything.

I’m going to try to post some notes from this year’s Philcon on the blog. Not sure yet whether I’ll be able to blog from the con or if I’ll have to take notes and wait until I get back. But it should be an adventure this year — for starters, I’ve got to navigate through the first big snowstorm of the year just to get out my door. Stay tuned, friends.