I’m home from having been one of the Guests of Honor at this year’s World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore, and the first thing I want to do as I re-enter my non-con life is share with you the speech I gave 4:00 p.m. Saturday. As much fun as every moment was — the five panels in which I participated, the three food hikes I led, the ukulele singalong I arranged, the docent tour I gave of original comics artwork from my past, the hanging with old friends and meeting new ones — explaining what I’d learned from 48 years of con-going was the most important moment for me at the con.

The video is below for you to watch, but so is the full text for you to read … keeping in mind I surely made minor deviations as I talked.

Welcome, everyone! I’m Scott Edelman, and I’m touched that out of all the things you could possibly be doing here in Baltimore at the 44th World Fantasy Convention, you chose to spend these moments here, with me. Believe me, I understand what a tough decision it was. I know all about having to study the program to figure out where best to be when, while still leaving time to hang out in the place where we all know the most interesting conversations really happen — at the hotel bar.

The reason I’m aware of your struggle is because I’ve been having to pore over programming exactly like that myself at World Fantasy Conventions ever since my first, which was the fifth World Fantasy Convention, held in 1979 at the Biltmore Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island. To illustrate how long ago 1979 was, back then, Stephen King, one of the Guests of Honor — and how we got from inviting Stephen King as a Guest of Honor to ending up with me, I have no idea — could still wander among us without being trailed into a public restroom by writers who would shove their manuscripts at him under his stall.

Yes, that was really done! Not by me, of course. I wasn’t one of them, really. I promise!

That was the same World Fantasy Convention, however, at which — and I’m not joking about that — the Dalai Lama and I had a brief encounter one afternoon in front of the hotel …

So I got that going for me, which is nice. (more…)

If you want proof science fiction fandom has always been at war, look no further than the infamous “yellow pamphlet,” written by David Kyle, the distribution of which resulted in Donald A. Wollheim, Frederik Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth, and others being banned from the 1939 World Science Fiction Convention.

It included such language as—

The World’s Science Fiction Convention of 1939 in the hands of such heretofore ruthless scoundrels is a loaded weapon in the hands of such men. This weapon can be aimed at their critics or can be used to blast all fandom. But YOU, the reader of this short article, are the ammunition. It is for YOU to decide whether you shall bow before the unfair tactics and endorse the carefully arranged plans of the Convention Committee. Beware of any crafty speeches or sly appeals. BE ON YOUR GUARD!

The full text of this document has long been online, so I’ve read it before, but I never saw an actual copy until a scan of one appeared as part of a recent eBay listing. That sale is now closed, though I can’t tell whether it’s because the seller got the $1,000 asking price for one of the few surviving copies or the listing period simply ended.

Whenever fannish controversies get me down, I think back to this pamphlet from 78 years ago, and am strangely comforted by the fact that … it has been ever thus.

You can read Kyle’s reminiscence of those times and the Great Exclusion Act here.

I bought a copy of Harry Warner, Jr.’s 1969 history of science fiction fandom, All Our Yesterdays, during the early ’70s when I was first entering that fandom. I read it and loved it, but I haven’t reread it since.

So why am I rereading it now?

Amazingly, Warner himself—who won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer as a result of this book—answered that question in the second half of the last sentence to his Foreword:

Finally, I cling to a hope that today’s active and gafiated fans will find pleasure in reviewing the events in which they took part, and that the fans who came into the hobby recently will find in the book reason to take more philosophically their fannish troubles, through the discovery that we went through the same mishaps so many years ago.

Emphasis mine.

And that’s exactly why I’ve started rereading All Our Yesterdays. Because considering our own current “fannish troubles,” I thought I might find some solace there, and do what Warner suggests—take it more philosophically.

Either way … I’ll let you know.

Allen Pierleoni, who runs the Sacramento Bee Book Club, has a column in the February 21 issue of Publishers Weekly about his experiences dealing with authors … and audiences.

Fans don’t come off as being happy. Well, the male fans anyway.

Here’s what Pierleoni had to say:

Fans run the gamut, too. Most are upbeat and seem glad to be members of the club. But the mostly male science fiction/fantasy readers who’ve attended events for Kim Stanley Robinson, Terry Brooks, and Greg Bear seem almost dour. In contrast are the female fans who flock to meetings that feature such authors as Diana Gabaldon, Rita Mae Brown, Perri O’Shaughnessy (the pseudonym for sisters Mary and Pamela O’Shaughnessy), Suzanne Brockman, and Karen Joy Fowler.

Are fans of Kim Stanley Robinson dour? And are fans of Karen Joy Fowler … not?

I wonder whether this is a difference only evident in fans who aren’t a part of organized fandom, that is, enthusiastic but non-convention-going readers. Fans, not faans.

What do you think? Because Pierleoni’s male/female observation isn’t a distinction I’ve ever noticed before.

Have you?