Even a modestly successful science fiction writer—say, a dozen short stories in the magazines and a paperback original—can get on the convention circuit, and some of them never get out. There is in this land at least one science fiction convention every weekend of the year (excepting perhaps Christmas and New Year's), and on many weekends the aspirant has his choice of two or three. The conventions take place in large cities and small, they range in attendance from one hundred or less21 to seven thousand,22 some are longstanding and traditional (the world convention is approaching the end of its fourth decade, the Cincinnati convention its third); others are fly-by-nights or just beginning to build. One some years ago took place on trains which racketed back and forth between Washington and New York while fans trooped lively through the corridors. It is difficult to speculate the effect on nonconventioneers. (The train was not a charter.)
The conventions are of all size and location but the programs are much the same. Fans attend, as do casual readers who live in the area (depending upon the degree of publicity), and editors and writers, and, of course, the press. There are panels on all aspects of the field, a guest of honor who delivers a guest-of-honor speech, discussion groups, movies, meet-the-pros parties. (At larger conventions many of these events occur simultaneously.) There is a costume party, a grand masquerade. Private parties are held through the premises celebrating various regions, interests, or friendships and sometimes celebrating nothing at all. The hotel bar is filled with professionals and their editors. (Fans themselves, because of age and disposition, tend to be a nondrinking crowd.) There is a good deal of fornication, not all of it indiscriminate. Old rivalries and hatreds are renewed, reworked, or broadened. Although the faces of the fans may change from region to region, those of the writers, editors, and the serious fans do not: Denver is very much like Minneapolis; Boston is Cincinnati redux.
Science fiction—as I have written elsewhere in a different voice a long time ago—for all of its claims to being a mind-expanding, venturesome field is much like the dog-show circuit, the same handlers and judges appearing in different combinations everywhere. The world of the convention like the world of Nabokov's Lolita is an endless series of rooms in different places, all of which look the same. Only through the souvenir shops could one tell the difference.
For a new writer—and many an older one—it is all very heady stuff indeed. There are panels, autographs to be signed, nametags to display, new fornicatrices or drinking partners to be gained; the winds of Seattle's heath may howl, the gales of Philadelphia may blow, but inside the hotel it is comfortable and familiar and it is unnecessary to go out at all. Most attendees do not; always one plans to sightsee but things keep on getting in the way. A science fiction writer who, like all American writers but five or six, lives in anonymity and discontent, can find at the conventions what no other writer outside the province can: recognition and an audience. The panels are attended, the guest-of-honor speeches are heard, the books are there to be autographed and every smile is a winner. It is possible for the duration of a convention—and beyond—to believe that science fiction is the world.
It is not, of course, and in his heart the professional probably knows this, but that requires thought, and conventions work against the activity. Of the 500,000 who can be said to read as many as three science fiction books a year (this already less than a quarter of a percent of the population), only a tenth of them could be identified as serious, devoted readers, and perhaps a fifth of that tenth, or 10,000, compose that pool from which all23 convention attendees can be said to be drawn. The total convention-going population would at the best fail to fill Madison Square Garden. Early season with the Warriors in town.
Still, at the large conventions they all seem to be there, including many beautiful women (there were almost no women at conventions until the nineteen-sixties). The drinks flow, the professionals hang out in a community of misery, the speeches draw applause, and there is always the possibility that the next request for an autograph may bring a "serious relationship." Editors are always impressed by writers receiving adulation, so there is no mystery to science fiction writers getting on the circuit—all have been powerfully tempted; the circuit is also the reason why so many promising careers have hung at promise for years, or collapsed; still the illusion of audience is better for a writer (and more pleasant by far) than the anonymous, grinding work which is the lot of the commercial fictioneer. It is possible to combine the two—grinding work, weekend conventions—but this can bring real burnout; only a few remarkable cases have been able to work them together, and one will never know the price extracted from celebrated livers and bowels.
The existence of the circuit is probably the central reason for a well-known phenomenon: science fiction is an art medium in which one can go from quite promising to washed up without having paused for even a day at a point between. But the last word should be that of an ex-science fictioneer (who fled both the field and the circuit a long time ago) who said, "You know, you can get a great deal of attention, real reverence at these conventions for sure. But you know when the trouble begins? It starts when you ask who in hell you're getting this attention from."
—1980: New Jersey