calling 1986

[davemerrill]

Due to some kind of perverse nostalgic impulse I've long had the desire to see the Atlanta Fantasy Fair and the other conventions I went to as a teenager archived on the network of tubes we call the Internet. And so I set up a blog so that when I get a spare moment I can write about these shows, post ephemera, and generally wallow in the past, because that's healthy. Anyway Devlin gave me a stack of promotional material from the era when we were in Athens a week or so ago, and I'm going to be posting it in bits and pieces to the AFF blog. So if you were there, or if you weren't, check out what fandom was like in the 80s and early 90s.

http://atlantafantasyfair.blogspot.com/2010/08/aff-1986.html

Nope, haven't seen Scott Pilgrim or the Expendables yet. Been kind of recovering from the trip, doing laundry, sorting through junk for the MERRIL COLLECTION BENEFIT SCI FI YARD SALE which everybody should show up at, and generally relaxing and enjoying the month off from Mister Kitty. I work the weird 3-12s shift next week, too, so that means a lot of free time in the beginning of the week (which I will probably squander) and then absolutely none for the remainder of the week.

One of the things I picked up on the trip was a book called NILA. The name struck me as familiar; there's a book I bought on a whim years ago called ARE YOU CARRYING ANY GOLD OR LIVING RELATIVES, about a divorcee and her emigre Russian friend going on a mishap-filled tour of the USSR in the very early 1970s. The book was by Irene Kampen, the author of another book that became the television series THE LUCY SHOW. Anyway, ARE YOU CARRYING ETC. is really funny and the author's Russian emigre friend is named Nila Magidoff. In fact my edition is personally autographed by Nila. So I'm like, a book named NILA, I wonder if it's the same Nila? And it is. It's Nila's autobiography about how she grew up in Tsarist Russia, survived the Revolution, was married to an anti-Stalin activist, and at the point I'm at now she's been moved from the Lubyanka to another prison and I suspect is about to be exiled.

SEVEN DEGREES OF IRENE KAMPEN DEPT. - Neil Nadelman's mom knew Irene Kampen, they're both from Connecticut.

Comments

[mr-sadhead.livejournal.com]

Scott Pilgrim Vs The Expendables? I saw a Scott Pilgrim film, but I didn't see that one. Is that the one where Scott has to fight Ramona's seven more evil exes, who are a group of grumpy old mercenaries helping to destabilize a South American country for the CIA?

[gyopi.livejournal.com]

I am pretty sure I went down to Atlanta for AFF in 1986. I kind of miss those days. Now instead of getting excited about going to cons I just get grumpy.

[(Anonymous)]

"...and space exploration!" One of those things is not like the others. Even as a teenager I realized something had gone wrong, that the most dedicated supporters of space exploration were people at SF cons. I don't mean that it was wrong to be such a supporter at such a con, but it showed just how marginalized NASA was in the scheme of things--it was as if the Defense Department needed to rely on the support of the paintballers.

--Carl

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

It may be a continuation of the time when SF was part and parcel of being a science buff, a TV-radio experimenter, a Popular Mechanics subscriber. Judging from the covers of the Gernsback magazines there was a powerful urge to be part of the future, to make it happen.

I don't see that any more.. what I see from fandom is a desire to repeat the same experience over and over. Like Star Wars or Blade Runner? Here, wallow in it for thirty years. It was depressing to go to these conventions and see actual astronauts or people who actually sent things into orbit ignored in favor of actors or super hero cartoonists. But this is fandom, by the time I got there, it was all about escaping reality in favor of fantasy, not about making reality fantastic. The math is too hard, I think.

[(Anonymous)]

There has been one positive counter-development, and that is from an admittedly small group of SF fans who became rich in software or e-commerce, and who have put their capital towards real-world space development. Paul Allen is as hardcore as they come; the science fiction museum in Seattle is largely his personal collection--Deckard's jacket, Kirk's chair. Yet Allen is also one of the principal investors behind Virgin Galactic, and has been funding the construction of a radio-telescope array in Northern California that will be dedicated to SETI. Elon Musk's SpaceX may leapfrog them with a private manned orbital capacity in the next few years; NASA already takes them seriously enough that they've won a contract to resupply the ISS as the Shuttle goes out of service. I don't think it would be a wild prediction to say that when humans return to the moon, it might be as a private rather than a government venture. Perhaps the true age of Delos D. Harriman is ahead...?

--Carl