From: "Ted White" <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Shocking News! Sci-fi conventions are luring fewerfans
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 18:53:43 -0500
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at press.jhu.edu>
To: <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 4:42 PM
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Shocking News! Sci-fi conventions are luring fewerfans

> > mike at nthzine.com 11/4/04 4:17:31 PM >>>
> >Very true. And this article doesn't mention that anime cons are
> >getting
> >larger and larger every year. Plus DragonCon and San Diego
> >Comic Con
> >have both topped out at over 30,000 people the past few
> >years. SF
> >fandom is larger than ever. It's just become very very very
> >different
> >than the fandom that we all grew up with.
> >
> >Michael D. Pederson
> >Publisher/Editor
> >Nth Degree
>
> What some call "fandom" is not the "fandom" that I first encountered in
> the late 60s, not the"fandom" that Ted White encountered in the 50s.
>
> Are folks who go to the San Diego ComicCon and/or Dragoncon "fans" ?
> Is there a commonality between those folks and what I think of fans,
> what Ted thinks of fans?  I think there is a growing chasm.

I agree.  But it's mostly semantic.   The San Diego ComicCon, as its name
implies, has nothing to do with "our" fandom.  It's for *comics fandom*.
Two separate fandoms with some overlap in members -- and I am in both, and
have been since the '50s, when my friend Bhob Stewart started EC (comics)
fandom.   I've been involved in comics fandom ever since (and wrote its
early history a few years back for THE COMICS JOURNAL).

Dragoncon is simply a way some people found to fleece the suckers and make
lots of money.

--Ted White