dalekboy | A Tale of Two Natcons

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A Tale of Two Natcons

In the early 90's the media Natcon was going gangbusters (300-400+ attendees), the lit Natcon was dying with a slowly decreasing (around 200) and aging membership. With the success of a couple of joint media/lit Natcons, it was suggested that Australia's population was so small the two cons should be joined.

It would mean a bigger overall Natcon with a larger budget. Everyone would win. The media fans had no reason to do this. Their Natcon was doing fine. The only reason they did it was out of a sense of community. It would be good for fandom as a whole to have a single, bigger Natcon.

Both Natcons had their own awards. The ASFMAs (Australian Science Fiction Media Awards) and the Ditmars. Having both sets of awards would be huge and unwieldy. The only reason we still have the Ditmars is because the media fans not only agreed to the joining of both Natcons, but agreed to continue the Ditmars and discontinue their own award since a lot of older fans were concerned about the loss of the Ditmars, and their history, if a new award were started.

The only real requirement media fandom had was that the Ditmars have categories changed or added so that the media side was adequately covered, and the new Natcon have a program that fairly represented both media and lit fandom interests.

In a short time, with no separate Media Natcon to compete against, the Natcon program became heavily lit based.

With no guest or programs that addressed their passions, the fan clubs and groups more or less stopped attending the Natcon, and with their own yearly Natcon and awards gone, there was nothing to hold media fandom together through other issues.

We stopped having regular cons and Natcons in Victoria as we approached the worldcon, and while Perth picked up the slack with regards to the Natcon, it didn't advertise in the east terribly well. With no experience of a Swancon, which does tend towards a more balanced program, the east coast media fans expected more of the same they had already been given - Natcons with nothing for them. Why spend all the money getting to Perth just to be disappointed again?

Having already been hurt by the Natcon, to then have someone loosely associated with the then upcoming WorldCon loudly state at a major pre-Aussiecon 3 event, "We don't need the media fans!" didn't help things. For a group than had already been well screwed, a group that had been far more active in con-running over the previous decade than the majority of the fans working on A3, this was telling them that they, and their expertise, really weren't welcome.

The lack of action on the part of the WorldCon committee to rectify the damage didn't help. Having the creator of Babylon 5 as a guest was all well and good, but other than that, the only answer received to the question, "Why should we attend?" was "Because it's the WorldCon." The attitude was that if you didn't want to come to the WorldCon, there was something wrong with you.

On top of all this, fan politics within and between several clubs further damaged things within the media scene.

The big media expo-style cons had tried to get a foothold in Australia a few times, but previously couldn't compete with the fan-run media cons. Why go to a con where you couldn't really talk to or interact with the guest?

The best of the fan-run media cons was Multiverse, which not only ran good cons (and tried with variable success to also cater to lit fandom) but raised thousands and thousands of dollars for charity into the bargain. That was one of the interesting things about Media fandom - the profits of most Media cons were donated to charity. Again, there's that attitude of trying to help and be a part of the wider community - the same attitude that lost them their own Natcon.

But eventually the folks behind Multiverse decided it was time to finish up. Once they did, in came the expos to fill the vacuum.

Media fandom in Victoria had lost their last interesting media cons, while media fandom in general had lost its awards, its Natcon, and its history. Even the Doomsday Book, a book filled with humourous advice, info, and illustrations from previous Media Natcon committees to future ones, was lost. I think it was later recovered, but couldn't swear to it.

Certainly for a time before the Natcons joined, the two media fandom centres of Australia were Melbourne and Brisbane. But it would be up to someone from Brisbane to tell what effects, if any, losing the Media Natcon had on Queensland fandom.

With this history in mind, take the time to find and go through the last decade of Natcon program books, and decide for yourself if you think Australian media fandom has been well-served by their selflessness.

One of the architects of the change, in light of all that has happened, has commented to me on several occasions over the last ten-plus years, that he thinks they killed the wrong Natcon.

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I had no idea about any of this - only got involved in conpolitics around 1999. All I knew is that people keep saying - Don't have a Worldcon, it destroyed Victorian fandom. Perhaps there was a problem before the 1999 Worldcon?

Also, with this in mind, what can I do to make the art stream more media-friendly? Given that the guests are already chosen, what would you like to see? Who should I approach to be on art-themed panels?

I think the "don't have a worldcon, it destroyed Victorian fandom" concept came from the misconceptions of Perth fans who mostly had close to nothing to do with Melbourne fandom before A3. Those misconceptions were further fueled by reports of how A3 was run, which were largely the fault of A3 in particular, not Worldcons in general. Unfortunately, those who have only seen one example of something will tend to assume that it is typical.

Oh, it was a saying over here before 1999, believe me!

Why? The 1985 Worldcon was pretty good for Victorian fandom.

Hell yeah! The media clubs were heavily involved, the advertising was fabulous and everywhere, and every club had a massive influx of new members post con, partially because A2 brought in a lot of first timers.

Ah, but the 'message' we picked up on was 'don't do it - it destroys fandom', which was probably a Chinese whispers version of 'the people who organised it were exhausted, and some who had been friends fell out with each other.' Just because it was a fannish maxim doesn't mean it was true!

I know there was a lot of resistance to bidding for Worldcon in Perth because the con-running fannish base was so small that we were concerned that it's kill Perth fandom for years.

I consider this argument to be nonsense. Because of the rotating swancon committee thing, Perth has more people with experience in running a reasonably sized con than practically anywhere.

What Perth doesn't have is people with experience in running a worldcon sized con, but that experience is difficult to acquire without running a worldcon.

Which is surely the case now, but was it in 1985???

Of course we had a lot less experience in 1985, though the memory of the (apparently mighty) swancon 5 was still fresh in peoples memory.

But I've heard people repeating the same argument in the last decade.

Have they? Ah well, fear is the mind killer!

My main problem with running a Perth Worldcon is that I really don't want to personally commit to organising something for close to a decade from the first meeting to the actual event.

It's not the experience, though that's pure gold, it's having enough people who can pick things up and keep them running post-WorldCon, that's the hard ask.

I reckon Perth could manage it now, though.

Actually, it might be something you hear Perth fans say, but they say it because some prominent Melbourne fans well known to Perth fans seem to strongly believe it. I think it certainly originates with Melbourne fandom, not Perth.

Personally, I had more the impression that A3 was good for Melbourne fandom - it took a couple of years, but from Convergence 1 onwards there was a big resurgence in Melbourne con-running - but I had had Melbourne fans try strenuously disabuse me of this notion.

Oh yes, Perth fans didn't make it up out of nowhere!

And I just wanted to say that this post about the history of the Media natcon goes a long way to lettting me know why my perspective is very different to some Melbourne fans, and probably not as well informed as I thought.

Glad to be of help :)

And if I'd seen this reply before I saw your other one, I may have ranted at you less. Sorry about that.

...I had had Melbourne fans try strenuously disabuse me of this notion.

And I'm one of them, because I lived there. One con a year in a city that used to hold as many as three to five a year does not count as a resurgence. Especially when ConVergence 1 had to be saved by the same group of us (

mortonhall,

mireille21, Greg Clarke) that then went on to run the first Continuum. Though that rarely gets a mention, while we have never been shy of mentioning that the seed money for Continuum 1 came from ConV1.

I had the idea for Continuum in 1995, then my father died in '96, which gutted me and derailed my fan life. And then Gunny died!
I still have the scraps of paper with the original ideas on them for logos, awards, and stuff. It's what made getting C1 off the ground so easy - the plans already existed.

And Continuum owes it's 1995 inception to the fact that I could see we needed to get people trained up pre-A3, and a yearly con was a good way to do that. Even before it won the bid, A3 was then presenting itself as if it was going to be completely run by the old guard, many of whom had not been on a con committee in years. That's the problem with event fandom, it rarely seems to plan well for the future.

I can tell you without trying that a lot more cons ran in Melbourne between 1990 and 1996 than have run between 1997 and 2009. If I could be bothered going out to the garage, I'd go through all my old con books and give you the list. I am not exaggerating when I say you used to have to really seriously look for an empty long weekend if you wanted to run a con in Melbourne.

The first time I heard the concerns that a worldcon would wipe out Perth fandom, it came from well-known Perth fans. And their arguments were pretty sound. Aussiecon 2 did wipe people out. A lot of folks dropped out of active fandom for a long while or permanently after A2. And Perth fandom had a much smaller base group to work from.

But A2 was so very, very successful at bringing in tonnes of new folks, that the gain was far greater than the loss, and we suddenly had a lot of new fresh people wanting to do stuff.

And I do think that Perth is more or less at the point now where it could do it.

/ranty history lesson

I think one issue here is that, from a Natcon/lit perspective, it seemed that while Melbourne had plenty of fannish activity, including media activity and the MSFC, the lit natcon seemed to be something that was dying in Melbourne post-Constantinople (Basicon 2 seemed like evidence that it wasn't dead yet, but wasn't very healthy). And general Perth fandom, for whatever reason, saw the lit Natcon as a much bigger deal than the media Natcon -- and certainly saw the institution of the Natcon as something that seemed perfectly healthy every time it visited Perth. So Melbourne was lacking in the sort of cons that a lot of Swancon people were looking for, even if there was lots going on we tended not to see (and instead see only an ailing natcon). Since then, there have been both natcons and Continuum (which Perth folk are much more aware of due to both your involvement (and Sue Anns, etc) and its deliberately Swancon-like attitude). So there has certainly been a resurgence in the sort of cons that get noticed in Perth.

(FWIW, the 90s was also an absolute golden age for eastern states gaming conventions, which also generally didn't get much noticed from Perth, because there simply wasn't a scene here to introduce people to gaming cons)

I certainly heard the argument that Perth would be wiped out by a Worldcon a lot post-A3, at which time Perth clearly did have a lot of con-running talent. There were a lot of people around who had given up running Swancons, but could be dragged back into con-running for for a worldcon, plus a very large and enthusiastic next generation of con-runners. At that time, it was always justified by referring back to Melbourne. Perhaps the argument was justified the first time it came around, but not the second - but I've certainly always seen it justified, rightly or wrongly, by reference to A2 and A3, rather than being an invention of Perth fandom as

kremmen suggests.

It is also worth noting that A3 seemed to drag new people into fandom, but most of the resulting burst of activity was in small press/writing/publishing. A3 might have had a bit of a revitalising effect on fandom generally, it just might not have manifested particularly in con-running. I don't have any particular numbers etc to argue, but it certainly seems that there was a lot of small press activity both just before and after A3, and several new people dragged into that scene by it. I just think its worth mentioning, there is probably a good discussion to be had about what this says about the A3 committees success or failure -- perhaps these people might have been organising cons sooner had the A3 committee been more welcoming to involvement from broader fandom?

I don't really think it matters who invented the idea that Perth fandom would be devastated by running a worldcon. It does appear that Perth fans have believed and regurgitated it as though it is their own, mostly using A3 as a justification IME.

I'd certainly take issue with your timeline regarding games conventions though. The golden age was definitely the 80's, with Phantastacon peaking around 800 participants, Arcanacon heading in that direction (600 maybe?), MAGInc running regular roleplaying tournaments, and that's just Melbourne. I would call the abysmal Games '87 the best marker of the downward slide. That was the last RPG con I went to, because it was truly crappily run and because of the number of good sf cons that were available as a more enjoyable alternative.

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A Tale of Two Natcons

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