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Navigating AussieCon 4

Guest Post by Jack Nicholls September 22

A few weeks ago, while the city’s literati gathered together for the Melbourne Writers Festival, another, less reputable, literary event was going on simultaneously. This was the 68th World Science Fiction convention – the Worldcon. AussieCon 4, as this iteration was known, drew science-fiction, fantasy and horror writers from across the globe; and boasted as the professional Guests of Honour Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Mars trilogy, and Australian children’s author/illustrator Shaun Tan.

Of course, Melbourne is a long way from the rest of the world, but science fiction writers are never averse to a free lunch. By cunningly spreading their speaking engagements between WorldCon, the Melbourne Writers Festival, Monash University’s ‘Utopias’ conference and the Australian ‘Singularity Summit’ [http://www.singinst.org.au/singularitysummit2010au/], several of the writers had managed to get their airfares paid by one institution or another. The result was probably the greatest gathering of genre professionals and fans in Australia since, well, AussieCon 3.

For an aspiring science fiction writer like myself, AussieCon thus carried the heady scent of glamour and success. I was determined to get as much out of it as I could, by listening to the wisdom of the ancients and learning their secrets. So, armed with notebook and pen, I made my way to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Within hours, I realised that I was just one among scores of twenty-somethings with the same dream. We moved in packs between panels with names like ‘marketing your sf short stories’ or ‘structuring your plots’, half ashamed to catch each others’ eye. One young American told me seriously that he had moved to Melbourne last year ‘because it is the best city in the world to be a writer’. This hitherto unknown quality of our city only made me feel more pressure, as if I was letting down the side by not attaining immediate success.

I soon abandoned the lecture model, because it was clear that real action was to be found at the plush Hilton bar next-door. For the old hands, conventions are partly about showing the flag, but primarily an opportunity to catch up with friends. Between panels, they would therefore retreat to the bar; where conversations broken off years, or decades, ago could be picked up mid-stream. For these hardened veterans, the fact that their anonymous surroundings were in Melbourne was irrelevant. For them, the bar was just another manifestation of ConsVille, that elusive realm that connects with our own only when the alignment of the stars is right.

The anonymity was not helped by the venue. The Exhibition Centre’s website boasts that it offers a ‘truly Melbourne experience’. On the contrary, any hint of Melbourninity had been sucked away in those cyclopean halls. Even the city-views from the vast plate windows seemed unfamiliar – nondescript grey buildings beneath a grey sky. On one afternoon, the foyer was being patrolled by a trio of Imperial Stormtroopers on holiday from the Death Star, and their chilling armour seemed to fit naturally with the surroundings. The benches – I hesitate to call them sofas – artfully placed around the foyer were so misshapen and uncomfortable that they could only have been designed for an alien physiology.

Host to a mere couple of thousand attendees, these cavernous interiors were unforgiving. One of the great charms of a Worldcon is the experience of rounding a corner and bumping into a writer of near-mythical proportions. Such serendipity was impossible at AussieCon. Occasionally, as I traversed the foyer, I would spot George R. R. Martin in the distance. This gave rise to a quandary. Should I, a complete stranger, home in on him like a shark? Alternatively, I could adopt the stalker strategy and shadow him until he drifted into a confined space; only to pop out with an introduction once he was trapped.

In practice, the majority of meetings seemed to take place between people travelling on opposing escalators. They would laugh, touch hands and issue forlorn promises to catch up later as they were whisked apart by the remorseless grind of technology. I was amazed at the foresight of the organisers, selecting a site that provided such a brilliant metaphor for the science fiction dystopia.

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The climax of any Worldcon is the Hugo Award ceremony, where science-fiction’s best and brightest vie for the phallic rocketship that is the Hugo (this year mounted on a kitsch William Rickerts inspired base). On the surface the Hugos may look like the Home-Brand Oscars, but at how many other award ceremonies would you find not one, but two, nominees entitled Palimpsest? The AussieCon Awards were deftly hosted by Garth Nix, and provided their share of excitement. Seanan McGuire took out Best New Writer, while an almost unprecedented tie saw ‘Best Novel’ shared between China Miéville’s The City and the City and Paolo Bacigalupi’s debut book, The Windup Girl. Best of all, ‘our Shaun’ won the Hugo for Best Artist, whereupon the cheers lifted the roof. One of the highlights of the convention was witnessing the way that Shaun Tan’s profile skyrocketed with the international guests, many of whom had not experienced his art or writing beforehand. For his part, Shaun admitted that his teenage dream had been to become a science fiction author.

I shall pass over the Hugo afterparty, but suffice to say that by Monday morning, the con-attendees were flagging. Half of the professionals had already slipped home, the other half were hungover and exhausted. They slumped at their panels, lecturing to the faithful who still remained. The closing ceremony itself was a damp squib. After a preview of next year’s Con in Reno, Nevada, the lights went up and the presenters abruptly left the stage.

‘It’s over,’ called someone in the audience. ‘You can go home.’

And so we did.

Jack Nicholls lives in Melbourne and has been lurking on the periphery of the science-fiction community since he was a baby. He is currently undertaking a Masters of Environment degree; mainly because Kim Stanley Robinson’s books told him to.

 

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