I first hooked into SF fandom through comic books, but I didn't become a really active fan until my early 20s, when I met many of the folks who had organized the original Star Trek conventions in New York City in the mid-1970s. When I moved out of my childhood home in 1976, I first became room mates with one of those fans, Thom Anderson. I started working on the cons with Thom, Steve and Elyse Rosenstein, Devra Langsam, Linda Deneroff, Stu Hellinger and many others.
Traveling to out of town conventions with them, I met Rich Kolker...who quickly became a good friend and eventually the best man at my wedding. Rich chaired a Trek con in the Washington area, the well-remembered August Party, and I worked in an unofficial capacity on those as well. There I met a group that included TJ Burnside, her brother Malcolm, Pat Paul and, ultimately, my wife, Jill Wilkins.
This is all in the way of getting into a discussion of how fandom has changed in the last 40 years--and how this pandemic is likely to change it in the future. When I got into the fandom, the primary methods of communication were meetings at conventions and fanzines. After I had kids, attending conventions became infrequent...and then it seemed the cons themselves became less prevalent. They moved out of the center cities that once housed them and into the suburban and airport hotels, primarily because the central hotels were no longer affordable. Some of them have simply ceased to exist (Lunacon, the NYC area meeting, being one of those).
Fanzines died out as well...replaced by on-line communication (first on services like CompuServe and then moving to blogs, websites and Facebook). It might seem more immediate, but I feel something is lacking. What that is I can't quite articulate...perhaps a feeling that you are truly talking to more than just yourself.
Fans out there--what are your thoughts?
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Cons have risen and fallen for decades. Nothing new there. They have also changed and adapted to the needs of younger con goers or split into multiple cons to provide for different tastes. The early sf cons also paved the way for comic cons and furry cons and anime cons. I don't see anything tragic going on with sf cons.
The change in fanzines is different. I never got into them but I can understand a nostalgia for print copies. Print copies gave fans something to collect, a tangible connection to a community across the country that they did not hear from on or see on a regular basis, a feeling of a special connection since you had to make an choice to be included. I assume
digital versions are much easier to find and to access, removing that feeling of belonging to a small select group. But that being said, I have a feeling younger fans do not feel the same. They are used to finding everything online and to making their connections digitally. And the future of sf fandom is in the hands of the younger fans.
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