When I went to my first science fiction convention […] I noticed a couple of things.
The first was that nobody at these gatherings, at least as far as I could tell, actually read science fiction, or much of anything else.
There were plenty of board gamers. (This was long before computer gaming or even Dungeons and Dragons; the hottest item on CRT was Pong, or early versions of Star Trek eating up mainframe time across the country.) There were plenty of self-proclaimed artists of one kind or another, and hordes of kids — of all ages — who loved to dress up in costumes.
Another thing I noticed was that these conventions, or “cons” as they were called, seemed to be the only social life most of their attendees had, a sort of portable soap opera migrating from city to city throughout the year. The atmosphere was heavy with prehistoric rivalries and hatreds, grudges and vendettas, sometimes going back decades.
Actually, the first thing I noticed — although I was too polite to put it first here — was that the vast bulk (and I use the term advisedly) of female attendees could have used a carload of deodorant and long-term memberships in Weight Watchers. Which, of course, was why events like these were the only social life they had. Nobody else wanted them hanging around.
L. Neil Smith, “The Security Syndrome”, The Libertarian Enterprise, 2005-01-15
May 12, 2020
QotD: A jaundiced view of science fiction conventions
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Comment by Monty James — May 12, 2020 @ 14:35