It was an idyll, really. They lived happily ever after —or anyway, until they decided not to bother any more and died.
Of course, they never set eyes on each other again.
* * * *
Oh, I can see you now, you eaters of charcoal-broiled steak, scratching an incipient bunion with one hand and holding this story with the other, while the stereo plays d’Indy or Monk. You don’t believe a word of it, do you? Not for one minute. People wouldn’t live like that, you say with an irritated and not amused grunt as you get up to put fresh ice in a stale drink.
And yet there’s Dora, hurrying back through the flushing commuter pipes toward her underwater home (she prefers it there; has had herself somatically altered to breathe the stuff) If I tell you with what sweet fulfillment she fits the recorded analogue of Don into the symbol manipulator, hooks herself in and turns herself on…if I try to tell you any of that you will simply stare. Or glare; and grumble, what the hell kind of love-making is this? And yet I assure you, friend, I really do assure you that Dora’s ecstasies are as creamy and passionate as any of James Bond’s lady spies, and one hell of a lot more so than anything you are going to find in “real life.” Go ahead, glare and grumble. Dora doesn’t care. If she thinks of you at all, her thirty-times-great-great-grandfather, she thinks you’re a pretty primordial sort of brute. You are. Why, Dora is farther removed from you than you are from the australopithe-cines of five thousand centuries ago. You could not swim a second in the strong currents of her life. You don’t think progress goes in a straight line, do you? Do you recognize that it is an ascending, accelerating, maybe even exponential curve? It takes hell’s own time to get started, but when it goes it goes like a bomb. And you, you Scotch-drinking steak-eater in your Relaxaciz-er chair, you’ve just barely lighted the primacord of the fuse What is it now, the six or seven hundred thousandth day after Christ? Dora lives in Day Million. A thousand years from now. Her body fats are polyunsat-urated, like Crisco. Her wastes are hemodialyzed out of her bloodstream while she sleeps—that means she doesn’t have to go to the bathroom. On whim, to pass a slow half-hour, she can command more energy than the entire nation of Portugal can spend today, and use it to launch a weekend satellite or remold a crater on the Moon. She loves Don very much. She keeps his every gesture, mannerism, nuance, touch of hand, thrill of intercourse, passion of kiss stored in symbolic-mathematical form And when she wants him, all she has to do is turn the machine on and she has him.
And Don, of course, has Dora. Adrift on a sponson city a few hundred yards over her head or orbiting Arc-turus, fifty light-years away, Don has only to command his own symbol-manipulator to rescue Dora from the ferrite files and bring her to life for him, and there she is; and rapturously, tirelessly they ball all night. Not in the flesh, of course; but then his flesh has been extensively altered and it wouldn’t really be much fun. He doesn’t need the flesh for pleasure. Genital organs feel nothing. Neither do hands, nor breasts, nor lips; they are only receptors, accepting and transmitting impulses. It is the brain that feels, it is the interpretation of those impulses that makes agony or orgasm; and Don’s symbol-manipulator gives him the analogue of cuddling, the analogue of kissing, the analogue of wildest, most ardent hours with the eternal, exquisite and incorruptible analogue of Dora Or Diane Or sweet Rose, or laughing Alicia; for to be sure, they have each of them exchanged analogues before, and will again.
Balls, you say, it looks crazy to me. And you—with your after-shave lotion and your little red car, pushing papers across a desk all day and chasing tail all night— tell me, just how the hell do you think you would look to Tiglath-Pileser, say, or Attila the Hun?
* * * *
Copyright © 1966 by Rogue Magazine.
CONVENTIONS AND FANDOM, by Sheri Giglio
Birth of Cons
The first SF convention in 1936 was a small, unorganized gathering of fewer than twenty people who met in Philadelphia to discuss science fiction. Among them were Donald A. Wollheim (editor, publisher, and author) and Frederik Pohl (critic, agent, teacher, editor, author and lifelong fan). The first organized convention was in 1937 in Leeds, England. After that conventions (called cons by SF fans) met each year, their attendance growing steadily. Originally, fans came to discuss science fiction and fantasy literature. These gatherings often included professionals in the field such as authors, editors, and critics, but mostly they were gatherings of fans. Later, cons became considerably larger and came to include a variety of activities and media.
When science fiction first started to define itself as a genre in the 1930s, readers were sometimes isolated. While there were a few correspondence clubs, SF readers were often on their own with no one to share their interest with. Fandom as we know it today began with Hugo Gernsback (a SF magazine publisher among other things) and his Science Fiction League. Like a book club, the League had chapters and members which met across the US. Fans could join their local chapter and meet with others to talk and share collections. While The Science Fiction League did not last long, it helped to jump start fandom. That fandom led to the first SF conventions and from there to the lively con scene of today.
As these small meetings continued, the home of author Fletcher Pratt became an important meeting place for science fiction writers in the New York area. A group of them came together in 1938 and started calling themselves the Futurians. Among them were Frederik Pohl, Joseph Harold Dockweiler (aka Dirk Wylie), John B. Michel, Isaac Asimov, Donald A. Wollheim, Chester Cohen, Walter Kubilius, Richard Wilson, Cyril Kornbluth, Jack Gillespie, and Jack Robins.
Once US fans got organized, they held the first World Science Fiction Convention in 1939 in New York. Masquerades date back to this first convention, when Forrest J Ackerman dressed up in costume. Since then, WorldCon (originally the name came from the World Fair which was in New York that year) has met every year, except for a brief hiatus during World War II.
While early cons were in fans’ houses or local buildings, as conventions became more organized, and the field and genre grew, they become more than just a place for fans to gather, meet with pros, and talk science fiction—they needed more space. Con organizers began renting convention centers and hotel event rooms to accommodate all their members. Hotels were (and are) particularly popular because then fans from a wider area can gather and stay at the site of the con. Most cons are organized and run by fans on a nonprofit basis. By paying a small membership, any fan has access to everything going on at the convention. Membership fees cover the expenses of putting together the con, and hotels generally provide function space to the convention in return for a attendees filling a certain number of hotel rooms. At most cons the pros who participate on panels and other events are admitted for free, but usually only the guests of honor have all their expenses covered. (There are for-profit conventions as well, which tend to be more expensive for fans but have bigger budgets to put on events and attract more “name” stars.)
With this growth, cons became more than just a place for fans to gather, meet with pros, and talk science fiction. Soon they were handing out awards, branching out into art shows, and expanding panel offerings from print media into radio and television. In 1953, WorldCon offered the first Hugo Award, named in honor of Hugo Gernsback. Members of the con got to vote on which nominee received awards in each category. Originally a onetime event, the Hugo Awards became a permanent feature of WorldCon in 1955. WorldCon members also vote on where and when the Con will be held in following years.
Evolution of Cons
The 1950s and early 1960s saw the birth of most of the major cons in the US. Westercon began in 1948, Midwestcon in 1950, Deepsouthcon in 1963, Disclave (held in Washington, DC until an unfortunate 1997 incident involving a pair of sexually adventurous attendees and a sprinkler head flooded several floors of the hotel) in 1950, Lunacon (held in New York) in 1957, and Boskone (held in Boston) in 1964. The US was not the only place cons were starting up. The UK continued to have cons and they spread across
Europe, Asia, and Australia. At Midwestcon in 1959, several fans realized they had been active in SF for the previous twenty years. This inspired the creation of an organization of longstanding fans, First Fandom. In the beginning, only those who had been active in fandom since before the first WorldCon in 1939 could join.
In the 1960s event programming was single track—one event at a time with nothing else going on concurrently. Some events, like the Ceremony of Saint Fantasy, didn’t last very long. (The last Ceremony was at Tricon in 1966 where Robert Silverburg was inducted.) Others, like the Masquerades at some cons, remain. As movies and other expressions of science fiction have become popular, like games, toys, comics, manga, cartoons, and anime, these also have been incorporated into conventions. Star Trek had a huge impact on SF conventions in the late 1960s and early 1970s, bringing the genre to the awareness of people across the US who had never heard of SF before (and flooding conventions with people dressed as Vulcans for a while).
The 1970s saw an explosion of cons around the world. Windycon (held in Chicago) began in 1974, and the UK saw the birth of a number of smaller conventions. Cons were held all over Europe, in Japan, China, and Australia. (WorldCon has also been to all these locations and Canada.) In 1976, in Poland, the first SF convention took place in the Communist Bloc.
The 1970s also saw the formation of some of the rules concerning costumes and Masquerades. (Some people who dress up at conventions do so to compete against other costumers in the Masquerade, while others wear hall costumes just for fun. Only a small fraction of fans at a typical convention are costumers.) For example, the legendary costume of Scott Shaw as the Turd at various cons in 1972 is the reason that peanut butter is no longer allowed in costumes…he covered himself in it. A “no jelly too” clause was added after a zombie costume used jam as blood and guts. One girl had no costume so she stripped naked, giving rise to the “no costume is no costume” rule. Even pros dressed up in costume on occasion and won Masquerades. But creativity and artistry always won the day.
Successive generations of fans found they had been active in fandom for decades. While there was some talk of starting their own group, First Fandom changed their rules. A special Dinosaur distinction was made for those active since 1939, with a new associate membership for anyone active in fandom for over thirty years. (They’re on the web at firstfandom.org.) Starting with Jack Speer in the 1950s, historians of fandom began calling successive generations First Fandom, Second, Third, all the way up to Seventh Fandom and beyond.
Cons Today
No matter how big, where, or when they occur, many conventions have certain things in common: they last 3–4 days or longer if there is a holiday, they have event programming, an art room and a dealers’ room, they have Guests of Honor (professionals, authors, editors, and artists and fans usually big names in the genre that fans wouldn’t see otherwise) and they have volunteer opportunities, and a Con Suite. Most importantly, cons are made up of people. These people are part of the fandom of cons. They travel from con to con bring stories and memories of other people and places.
Cons are organic, and an amusing but trivial anecdote at a con on the East Coast can be a major story by the time it reaches the west. Cons have memory, and a history that is remembered in fan folklore (or filking, as SF folksinging is referred to). Usually held in a hotel, sometimes in convention centers, cons come in a variety of sizes. Some, like WorldCon, are attended by people from all across the world. Others are national, regional, or local. There are even college cons, which tend to come and go as the organizers graduate but sometimes grow into more permanent cons, like Connecticon, which started on the University of Hartford campus but now fills the convention center in Hartford every summer. To give some indication at the popularity of cons, in the US there are about 150 cons a year. You can find a con on nearly every weekend.
Today, most cons are formalized events with programming, panels, shows, contests, an art show, dealer’s rooms, gaming, filking, and more where professionals and fans come together to enjoy the genre. Parties may be sponsored by fan groups, publishers, or various interest groups interested in some aspects of SF. (Usually parties are divided into alcohol-free open parties which anyone may attend and closed parties which may serve alcohol but require an invitation and ID.) Some cons are about all types of SF, while others focus on a certain author, series, or media—for example a Star Trek or Star Wars Convention or ComicCon. Some are very formal and intensely literary, while others are much lighter in tone.
Fandom and fans are still a huge part of cons, being a fan is what a con experience is about. Cons have long memories and congoers like to tell stories. Conventions bring people together from all over the world, many times friends who only see each other at certain cons once or twice a year. Most conventions are still very much nonprofit affairs run by fan groups, who are always looking for new members and volunteers and people who may become future “conrunners.” Despite the sometimes-intimidating amount of things going on at a con, most SF cons are very welcoming of new fans, and part of the culture of fandom is in helping to make newcomers feel welcome at fannish events.
CLIFFORD D. SIMAK
(1904–1988)
As a boy I came across Clifford Simak’s City (1952) and Way Station (1963) and read them repeatedly. His writing and themes were utterly unlike anything else I’d come across; in a field full of hard science and adventure stories, there was something somehow gentle about Simak’s writing. Even though he was dealing with highly charged emotional issues—the nature of sanity and immortality, the ultimate fate of humanity, whether we should leave dogs in charge of the planet when we leave—characters in the stories didn’t get too worked up about them. They did what they had to do, they lived or they didn’t, and that was that. I love adventure stories, but amidst all the books full of life-and-death dramas, there was comfort to be drawn from Simak’s writing. Maybe the calmness was the rural Wisconsin upbringing and pastoral landscape that suffuses so much of his writing. But whatever it was, I still find his writing very soothing.
After a brief teaching career, Simak spent most of his life as a newspaperman, even after his fiction writing was successful. He started with the Minneapolis Star in 1939 and became news editor by 1949. While he sold a few stories in the early 1930s (beginning with “The World of the Red Sun” to Hugo Gernsback’s Wonder Stories in 1931) his style didn’t really fit what the lurid pulps were looking for and he stopped writing SF in 1933. (He did continue to write Westerns and war stories for other pulps.)
When John W. Campbell took over as editor of Astounding in 1937, he was looking for exactly the kind of new voices Simak represented, and Simak became one of Campbell’s earliest “discoveries.” His first novel, Cosmic Engineers, was serialized in Astounding in 1939, and all but one of the stories that would later form City appeared there. Simak moved to Galaxy in the 1950s, serializing the novels Empire (1951), Time and Again (1951), and Ring Around the Sun (1953) for them. He continued to write consistently good science fiction (his fantasy was more hit-or-miss) until shortly before his death, writing full-time well into his eighties. (Simak was in his seventies when he retired from newspapaer work.)
Many of his best known works were written before the major awards existed, but Simak won Hugos for “The Big Front Yard” (1958), for Way Station, and finally for “Grotto of the Dancing Deer,” a beautifully nuanced story which won a Nebula as well. Simak also received a number of awards for his overall body of work, including the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award, the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award, a Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Minnesota Academy of Science Award, for distinguished service to science.
Married since 1929, he and his wife Agnes had two children.
* * * *
GROTTO OF THE DANCING DEER, by Clifford D. Simak
First published in Analog Science Fiction, April 1980
Luis was playing his pipe when Boyd climbed the steep path that led up to the cave. Ther
e was no need to visit the cave again; all the work was done, mapping, measuring, photographing, extracting all possible information from the site. Not only the paintings, although the paintings were the important part of it. Also there had been the animal bones, charred, and the still remaining charcoal of the fire in which they had been charred; the small store of natural earths from which the pigments used by the painters had been compounded—a cache of valuable components, perhaps hidden by an artist who, for some reason that could not now be guessed, had been unable to use them; the atrophied human hand, severed at the wrist (why had it been severed and, once severed, left there to be found by men thirty millennia removed?); the lamp formed out of a chunk of sandstone, hollowed to accommodate a wad of moss, the hollow filled with fat, the moss serving as a wick to give light to those who painted. All these and many other things, Boyd thought with some satisfaction; Gavarnie had turned out to be, possibly because of the sophisticated scientific methods of investigation that had been brought to bear, the most significant cave painting site ever studied—perhaps not as spectacular, in some ways, as Lascaux, but far more productive in the data obtained.
Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction Page 154