The mystery masked man was smart,
he got himself a Tonto,
‘cause Tonto did the dirty work for free.
But Tonto he was smarter,
and one day said, “Kemosabi,
kiss my ass, I’ve bought a boat, I’m going out to sea.”
                                                    - Lyle Lovette, “If I Had a Boat”

That’s probably a strange place to start an article about Fandom. Even stranger when I’ve made it clear that I’m going to be taking on one of the biggest assumptions in Fandom: that Fandom is getting older. But I promise you, it’ll all come clear by the end.

So I’ve also got to lay something else on the table. I don’t have the hard numbers. I can’t prove empirically that Fandom is safely and securely young enough to continue beyond my own lifetime. But I’ll offer all the anecdotal evidence I can muster, including a few attempts to trace attitudes about the graying of Fandom among the generations. Sometimes, I’ll cite folks anonymously. This could be for one of two reasons. The first is that I can’t recall exactly who said something, and don’t feel the need to go look it up. Sometimes, it just doesn’t matter that much. The second is that some things I’ve been told were somewhat private (How private, for instance, is a conversation in a consuite?), and I wish to err on the side of respecting that whenever possible. When folks have repeatedly and publicly said something (especially in print), I don’t mind using their names, but not all of the attitudes I want to discuss come into the open quite that much.

I will hopefully demonstrate to you that Fandom is not getting older, it’s just not happening in all of the same places that it did twenty years ago. We’re out there, forming clubs, running cons, and having a fannish good time. Take a look.

Somewhere along the way, I’ve heard maybe as early as the 60s, fans began worrying about a trend in Fandom towards an older average age. The worry seems to be that if this trend were to be too pronounced and prolonged, there soon wouldn’t be any young fans left, and then Fandom would shrivel up and die. I find this hard to believe about the 60s, as it was the dawn of an era of massive influx for Fandom – Tolkien, Star Trek, and Star Wars each brought great big helpings of new fans to the table.

So many new fans, in fact, that there were complaints about these being barbarian invasions. While this wasn’t the first such time in Fandom’s history, it was certainly among the more significant manifestations of the phenomenon. The “barbarian invasions” have continued, of course, and it’s not hard to consider a Fandom without the three aforementioned interests, let alone gaming, anime, furries, and the various creations of Joss Whedon. Along with art, comics, costuming, computer games, and a host of smaller interests, there’s a lot to be discussed aside from the traditional written fiction and mimeographed fanzines. Fandom is a much more diverse environment than it was fifty years ago.

This has, in some circles, created a backlash. When the suggestion is raised that a convention should include interests beyond books and zines, and oh, okay, maybe an art show, the cry will go up that those other interests attract folks who aren’t “real” fans, who aren’t the sort of folks the established fans want to hang out with, and that it will lead to things like the Boskone from Hell, Dripclave, and any of a thousand other misfortunes. Size, say the established fans, isn’t the only indicator of the health of a convention, and may not be any indicator at all.

And yes, I know there’s something ironic about looking first to the conventions for the future of Fandom while writing a fanzine article, but I think that, given their tendency to advertise outside of closed circles of Fandom, they stand the best chance of attracting new fans. Clubs may attract members by word of mouth or perhaps through localized advertising (bookstores, local weeklies, and the like), and zines by beingpassed from one person to another (with online linking significantly improving that situation), but conventions feel a need to self-promote, and tend to do so enthusiastically (or die off due to gafiation). It is the convention which is most self-consciously involved in finding new fans.

So if size isn’t an indicator of the health of a convention, what is? The common answer from those fans who want to stem the barbarian tide seems to be that it’s how much they can personally enjoy the convention. That’s fine, but if your personal enjoyment is largely tied to seeing the same people year after year, and nothing else is motivation for participating in the con, it will eventually fade away. Perhaps it’s a function of being young, but I still enjoy making new friends, even if we don’t talk exclusively about the specific things I enjoy most. Hell, I appreciate broad conversations. Hopefully there’s nothing wrong with that. While the attitude that size, and ultimately the convention, can be sacrificed in the name of a temporarily more enjoyable convention is viable for any given con, it is not compatible with the complaint that Fandom itself is graying, and that this must be dealt with. Some conventions must periodically grow large, and it is best if these are conventions with plenty of overlap with other conventions (as well as a strong presence for other fanac). A convention in isolation, no matter how large, does very little for Fandom as a whole.

And to what degree are the “barbarians” a bad thing? I’ve spokenwith plenty of other conrunning fans, and very rarely do I hear that they initially came to Fandom directly through an isolated interest in written SF. I’ve met some who started with Star Trek, filk, the SCA, anime, or, as I did, gaming. Others, I’m sure, had broad interests that seemed to converge in Fandom, and once they attended that first con, they had found home. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: the period between the first time I attended a convention and the first time I went to any sort of event other than gaming and parties was three years, and that change was entirely because of being hung-over enough that the panel room was a good place to sit with plenty of water and no sunlight. But it turned out to be a lot of fun, too.

So, assuming we accept that these young fans are out there, have interests other than written SF that are often more prominent than their nascent interests in written SF, are capable of being brought into the fold of Fandom as a whole, and ought to be, how should this be accomplished? Well, for one, a break with the attitudes of superiority would help.

I reckon fanzines would have a lot more appeal to young folks if they didn’t do so much to reinforce the idea of their readers and creators as a proud, lonely sort. I’m going to do something I really dislike here, and dig into linguistic associations – real or imaginary, intentional or accidental – in my criticism of the term “Core Fandom”. Arnie Katz has frequently stated that he doesn’t mean for the name “Core Fandom” to imply that its constituents are superior to other fans, and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt as to his intentions – but I’ll still argue that there are implications to the term which make it rather off-putting. “Core” implies a central position, which itself implies a greater importance, which can be a little bit off-putting to newcomers. When I first encountered the term, I assumed it meant the fans who are the most involved – fans who’re involved heavily with clubs, cons, and zines. It took a bit of confusion, and some

reading, to sort out that this was not in fact the case, and that only one of those activities was the purview of Core Fandom. Were I to discuss the core tenets of an ideology, I doubt anyone would hesitate to think I was discussing the ideas most important to it. So while I love the activities essential to Core Fandom, I detest the name. It’s been a long time since fanzines, letter writing, and their direct descendants were the most important game in town (harboring a only purported constituency in the hundreds, though I suspect there are probably a thousand fans or more who still at least read fanzines). Let’s move on to a term that doesn’t serve to make fanzine fans look like a bunch of arrogant jerks – a term that wouldn’t serve to alienate young fans from fanzines. If the fanzine crew is really eager for a term that reflects how the scope of their activities has extended beyond fanzines, how about “correspondence”?

But it’s certainly not just fanzines which suffer from an air of superiority. Conventions, particularly in the fringes of Fandom, can become theobjects of scorn for older, established fans. At this year’s SMOFcon, I heard a conrunning type say, “I don’t do anime cons – I don’t like fifteen year-olds.”That made me stop and think. I’ve read all sorts of stories about how a young neofan (a word which has probably outlived its usefulness) in some decade or anotherstumbled, young and uninitiated, into his or her first convention, was welcomed warmly by much older, established fans, and knew that he or she had found home. A fair number of them experienced this at a Worldcon, but many others found it at regionals. So what’s changed about Fandom that now, fifteen year-olds must be outcasts? I don’t have an answer for that, but I’d sure like to know.

And not all convention fans feel that way. Folks like Rich Dengrove and George Wells (and many others, but these two particularly so) are eager to meet young fans and interact withthem. George can talk to children better than just about anyone I’ve ever met, and Rich is open enough to new ideas that we got him to come play Wii at Capclave. But in spite of their openness, it’s not always easyfor a young fan to know they can be approached. And there are multiple factors working against that connection forming, even though they’re willing to make it. The most unfortunate one is that a lot of young fans just aren’t interested in hanging out with a group of their elders (more onthis later). No effort of the elders will change this, but building a truly blended group could circumvent it some. The other obvious one, which can be corrected, is that a young fan may not think his or her elders are approachable because of previous scorn from other elders. To that end, I beg all of you not to be that curmudgeon.

In another example from SMOFcon, an older fan lamented that NESFA was not a place that would be very interesting to younger fans – that it had become just a bunch of old folks sitting around their clubhouse and comparing medical problems. If I, as someone who had never been to an SF club meeting before, had walked in on such a gathering, I doubt I would have been particularly inclined to come back – though a sufficiently welcoming attitude could have made a difference there. The major factor in my enjoyment of my second Deep South Con,

which was similarly dominated by older fans (and it being at OutsideCon meant that the consuite and conversation were the only attractions), was that I had already read the 1997 Southern Fandom Confederation Handbook, and was up to speed on fanhistory, and wanted to become a part of it. I’m not sure if similar documents exist in other regions, nor if they have any means of reaching the youth. At this point,< I’d wonder if it might be wise to attempt such documents for other regions, and perhaps one for Worldcon. Could a World Science Fiction Society Handbook be produced? Could it be distributed in such a way that new fans could get their hands on it and get excited? Could the appropriate SMOFs be chained to their keyboards long enough to produce such a tome? I don’t know, but I may someday look into such questions with some depth.

So how much weight lies on the elders to bridge the gap? Well, a lot of it, for various reasons. The first is that it’s hard for those not already in Fandom to understand what it is and want to connect with it. To this end, I make a habit of trying to drag friends along to club events and conventions, and of putting zines in their hands. I try to see those younger than myself as full members of our society, though at times I’ve been guilty of spending less time with them in the interest of hearing their parents’ stories (self-deprecating aside: this may be why I don’t have a girlfriend).