My Saturday evening officially started when a woman in a SeaTac
hotel bar intentionally lit her friend’s Afro on fire. Everyone at the
table thought it was hilarious, laughing wildly as the man patted the
fire out and a scowling waitress came over and sprayed Febreze to cover
up the perm smell. It was an appropriate harbinger for the wild parties
to come later in the night, including a penthouse celebration attended
by an inflatable alien sex doll; a wet T-shirt contest; a slave auction
afterparty with densely alcoholic punch and people fucking in the
bathroom while, in the doorway, bare-assed men in S&M outfits
flirted with women in vinyl nurse costumes. It was my first
science-fiction convention, and thanks to a not-entirely-abstinent
designated driver, I barely made it home alive.
Nearly 4,000 people attended the four-day-long, 31st annual
Norwescon over Easter weekend. Their costumes and many of the
convention’s panels were devoted to television shows and movies, but
the level of literary discourse was high: there were seminars that
lovingly discussed the work of H.P. Lovecraft or the history of
Beowulf (the poem, not the movie).
Other panels were devoted to more esoteric literary pursuits, like
fanfic, wherein fans write the further (very often erotic) adventures
of characters from beloved sci-fi properties like Star Trek,
Kim Possible, and Back to the Future and post them
online for others to read. Many of the writers were teenage girls; one
of them announced at the beginning of the panel that if it weren’t for
her Harry Potter fanfic habit, “I probably would’ve already
hurt somebody in my school or killed myself.”
The centerpiece of the convention, as always, was the Philip K. Dick
Award ceremony. The prize, dedicated to recognizing outstanding
paperback originals within the genre, frequently recognizes truly great
books; in last week’s Stranger, I said that they were
“possibly the only book awards in the world that actually do exactly
what they’re supposed to do.” Sadly, this year’s ceremony was a
letdown: The book that should have won—Jon Armstrong’s debut
thriller, Grey, which had been shortlisted—didn’t. It
didn’t even make second place. Instead, the second-place winner was the
mundane and nearly
unreadable superhero satire From the
Notebooks of Dr. Brain, by someone who writes under the name
Minister Faust, and the top prize went to M. John Harrison’s Nova
Swing. This can only be justified as a late award for his much better previous novel, Light.
But whatever. You know that moment when you’re really getting into a
conversation about books and the other person’s face lights up? That
look that says, “This person has shared my solitary experience, and so
I am less alone”? Norwescon is lit with those sorts of faces, of people
normally dedicated to lonely pursuits suddenly not feeling alone. At a
panel called “LGBT in Fandom,” many attendees said that they were more
open about their sexuality at conventions than in their real lives,
because they felt like they could do anything—from the
cross-dressing man to the woman who wanted to hold hands with her
female lover and not fear repercussions—in an environment so
accepting and safe.
This accepting, ecstatic environment creates a lot of sexual
activity, of course. A panel about fandom hookups explained both the
basics (“You really must bathe and use deodorant,” one female panelist
announced, “because if you don’t take care of your body, nobody else is
going to let you take care of theirs”) and the more advanced (“Your
hotel room’s curtain rods and sprinkler heads are not strong enough to
withstand bondage,” she said later, adding, “Hotel beds can flip over
pretty easily”). Throughout the weekend, furries proudly declared their
proclivities, and it was not unusual to see a Stormtrooper heavily
making out with a pirate queen in the hotel lobby in the later
hours.
There’s more to it than sex, of course: On Easter Sunday, after most
of the hungover revelers had left for home, some older convention-goers
gathered in a small room lit by electric candles to hold a memorial
service. They told stories about fellow fans who had passed in the last
year, and they also remembered authors who had died: Arthur C. Clarke,
of course, but George MacDonald Fraser, too, and Robert Anton Wilson.
The mourners teared up and laughed, talking about the departed authors
and their friends with equal affection. Near the end, the moderator
cleared his throat and said, “I guess we’ll see them again one day at
the big sci-fi convention in the sky.” 