Post-Worldcon Exhaustion Syndrome

So I‘m back in reality, with my bills and my eternal quest for a comfortable chair. 

I did my four panels – moderating a couple of them. I think I did a mostly adequate job in all my capacities. There were a couple places where I stumbled, and I got to work with some panelists who are much more acclaimed than myself, which adds a fangirlish element of “OMG celebrities! Better not do anything stupid (like I frequently do) In front of them!” Actually pretty much all authors are in that category – I’m just a noob, although I’ve been a noob for a long time so I’m pretty experienced at it. I’m a more experienced moderator now, and I am aware of some pitfalls to avoid the next time I give it a try.

My favorite was the K-Pop Demon Hunters “geek out” – it took place in a nice informal little room with round tables. Some folks sat on the floor. We just talked about our love for the movie from various perspectives. There were all ages present, and people told their love stories with the film – one of my favorites was a singer became enamored with the soundtrack while learning Golden to sing with his vocal group. It was low key, it was loving, it gave me a chance to wear my derpy tiger leggings in public.

The Geek Out was such a nice experience that it reinforced my decision to play hooky during the Hugo Awards, when, as I predicted, Sinners beat KDH. I think Sinners is flawed but good, and I think KDH is a history-making fluke that outperformed Disney, BTS, and many other entertainment industry powerhouses and I am lucky to have experienced it when it was relatively new so I could watch it take over the world.

And the fact that Sinners won reinforced that this is not my crowd, not really. People in this crowd often talk sentimentally about finding fandom being like “coming home.” It’s not like that for me. It’s like visiting some fractious cousins who grew up far away. Most of them belong to a weird religion and have all kinds of unspoken rules, and if you should happen to break one they’ll make a big example of you to impress their friends with their super devout adherence to the in-crowd’s standards. You're kinda family, but you're the next layer between close kin and total strangers. 

Except for the KDH panel. That was like finding a little haven, similar to when I escaped to Disneyland to be surrounded by my most pleasant childhood memories (and quite a few nice Disney Adult memories too).

I made a couple passes through the dealers’ room, where there was nothing I wanted to buy. No witty t-shirts, hardly any toys. Just rows and rows of self-pubbed authors trying to make eye contact with passersby, with occasional displays of the kind of jewelry I don’t wear. I ended up spending my merch budget at Disney.

I had vague plans to get a literary hoodie since I already have several music hoodies. Maybe DC Carl. But there were no such items, and DC Carl’s presence was limited to some moody fantasy art by an artist who was willing to draw any and all game characters in their particular style. And that’s basically what I found – a lot of creatives trying to peddle their own particular idiosyncratic style, which isn’t too unsafe or potentially problematic or drastically different from the style you’ll find at the booth next door. Everyone mining for gold – that fanbase, that TV deal, that merch license.

It's kind of a weird reversal from the prior science fictional scene, which was closer to monoculture and predicated on a fanbase where everyone had seen the same TV shows, read the same stories, kept up with the latest developments, and welcomed a chance for discussion. Now it’s more like everyone trying very hard to sell their own flavor of unicorns-and-wizards or spacefaring-adventure or cyberpunk intrigue. And none of it’s exactly bottled lightning, although I'm sure lots of it is way more entertaining than I realize. 

Meaning no disrespect, and speaking as a strictly average science fiction writer whose aims were sort of like those of these other folks: to be a creative, part of the crowd, part of the scene, having fun doing our own worldbuilding. Crafting.

This was my goal ten years ago, when I went to my first Worldcon, in Spokane. Partially in response to the Sad Puppies thing, to help vote them down, and partially because I had just finished my own first stab at science fiction and wanted to make sure the coast was clear as far as reactive cancel culture before putting myself out there.

Lots of things got in the way. The pandemic. The country’s weird shift toward fascism. Other people. My own self. My conflicting desires to write sci fi … no, horror … no, thrillers … no, horrific sci fi …

 But here’s the interesting part … a few of the things I’ve been quietly championing from my obscure corner have bloomed. We now have (gasp) neurodiversity acceptance content, and an autistic writer (Jason Sanford) won the Hugo for Best Fan Writer. That’s been my hobbyhorse for a while, and I’m glad to see other riders are joining the stampede.

And now we have K-Pop Demon Hunters. Which isn’t quite where I was aiming, I was writing something more like K-Pop Jurassic Park, but I knew there would be K-Pop involved, and capable yet romantic girls, and handsome bad boys.

I spent a lot of time at Disneyland meditating on my connection to the future, and the best conceptualization that I can come up with is that the future looks especially bright and sparkly to me. Sometimes I’ll hear a song. Or see a movie. Or get a glimpse of an especially energetic racehorse. Or check out a new musical act – this is one of my favorites, when I stumble across some band or singer that’s about to be huge.

 And they don’t know it yet, and I don’t know it either, but the aura around it just crackles, and all I can think about is “more of this!!” I’ve felt that for music artists like Billy Strings, and Taemin, who are as different as can be yet are both GOATs in their respective dimensions – and both of them just dropped new albums, which are both fantastic. I felt it for KDH the first time I saw it, when the tiger knocked over the flower pot and all I could think was “holy shit!” I felt it when I saw Michael Jackson moonwalk, when I heard Eddie Van Halen play Eruption, when Britney tapped her pen on that desk, when Donut remarked to Carl that sure was a lot of babies, when Carrie flexed at that rotten little bike-riding kid – that moment when some art-type thing utterly transfixed me with powerful, pulsating “this way to the future” vibes.

I basically live for that. There’s a rich vein of it here in San Francisco where I can mainline trendiness from the safety of my own domain. I might never write anything that trendy, and actually I kind of hope not, I really dislike being a public person. Sneaking around in the shadows of obscurity is actually way more fun if you do it correctly.

So I try to put energy into wherever I smell that sweet whiff of tomorrow, and lately it’s been more about K-Pop and neurodiversity than me making up my very own hand-worldbuilt world (based on somebody else’s world with the serial numbers filed off). If I end up using my DNA-given loquacity powers to further someone else’s interests rather than toot my own horn, I’m okay with it.

So I am going to write about lawyers for now, and court battles. Maybe I’ll eventually do one set in space. I’m keeping this sci fi blog going just in case I ever have a burning desire to do that, or commit more reviews.

Here’s my most-complimented Labubu fit from the entire weekend: Tinkerbubu. The ride operator on Peter Pan’s Flight approved of her, which made me feel warm inside.