I totally agree. I distinctly remember running into a US fan at A3 in '99 and she looked at my jacket with all the patches and lamented to her partner with a snicker "obviously a media fan".
The image of the WC has changed over time which I think is due to the demise of fan run media conventions. Back in the 20th century there were lit cons all over the place, then in the mid 80's media cons popped up making a very big noise and ensuring their presence was felt by everyone, but then by the mid/late 90s they vanished thus ensuring only the lit cons remained - needless to say the lit/media division is wider than ever what with pro media "cons" being all the rage these days. For this reason I believe the WC's have remained primarily lit focused because this side of fandom has proven to have more endurance in the long term (probably because they tend to just cruise along at a slow, leisurely pace), although ironically one of the GoH's at the '99 event was JMS from B5 fame who pretty much outshone everyone else present.
As it is I don't think anything can match the size and scale of A2 back in '85. The dealers room alone took up three rooms and was just fantastic in size, scale and variety. Back then personal fan budgets that were designed to last five days were usually spent within the first hour and there was a nice cross polination of lit/media content.
As it is I'll go to A4 working on the view that not much has changed from A3 in '99, yet I'm hoping with a bit of luck I'll be pleasantly surprised.
One of the ironies of the situation is that some of the '85 media fans who complained about the W/C programming then are now the leading lights of lit fandom, but now think like the lit fans running things in '85 LOL.
My feeling with this sort of event is that you need to get EVERY type of SF fan aboard and make it a real big once a decade bash with every sort of thing on the programme that you can do, but will that happen?
Agreed. So in effect you'd need a strand of programming each for - Books - Comics/graphic novels - SF TV - SF Movies (maybe combined with TV) - Anime - Fantasy - Misc (music, costumes, games, astronomy, special features, artwork, fanzines, radio drama ... and so on)
Do that and you've catered to everyone's taste and given fans a reason to attend, especially as each strand would last 5 days, so that's a lot of programming to soak up.
You could probably double or triple those catagories lol but yeah, you can do a lot better than like the time where we sat in on seven panels and still couldn't find anything to make us stay.
getting JMS as a guest was my suggestion for A3. Australian B5 club was involved in A3. Doubt if I am going to A4--it is up to my wife and right now she leans towards going to Seaworld at surfers instead.
The image of the WC has changed over time which I think is due to the demise of fan run media conventions. Back in the 20th century there were lit cons all over the place, then in the mid 80's media cons popped up making a very big noise and ensuring their presence was felt by everyone, but then by the mid/late 90s they vanished thus ensuring only the lit cons remained - needless to say the lit/media division is wider than ever what with pro media "cons" being all the rage these days. For this reason I believe the WC's have remained primarily lit focused because this side of fandom has proven to have more endurance in the long term (probably because they tend to just cruise along at a slow, leisurely pace), although ironically one of the GoH's at the '99 event was JMS from B5 fame who pretty much outshone everyone else present.
As it is I don't think anything can match the size and scale of A2 back in '85. The dealers room alone took up three rooms and was just fantastic in size, scale and variety. Back then personal fan budgets that were designed to last five days were usually spent within the first hour and there was a nice cross polination of lit/media content.
As it is I'll go to A4 working on the view that not much has changed from A3 in '99, yet I'm hoping with a bit of luck I'll be pleasantly surprised.
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My feeling with this sort of event is that you need to get EVERY type of SF fan aboard and make it a real big once a decade bash with every sort of thing on the programme that you can do, but will that happen?
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- Books
- Comics/graphic novels
- SF TV
- SF Movies (maybe combined with TV)
- Anime
- Fantasy
- Misc (music, costumes, games, astronomy, special features, artwork, fanzines, radio drama ... and so on)
Do that and you've catered to everyone's taste and given fans a reason to attend, especially as each strand would last 5 days, so that's a lot of programming to soak up.
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