17 August 1997: Listless

Sunday, 17 August 1997:

Listless

This morning we had a meeting to plan WisCon 22. WisCon is an annual Madison science fiction convention with a feminist emphasis. It's organized by the local group SF3 ("SF-cubed"), and I'm the Webmaster for their site, so I was at the meeting in that capacity.

I deal with enough politics elsewhere in my life, and I am basically indifferent to the politics of SF3; basically, whatever they want to do is fine with me. (This seems a safe approach, since the last two WisCons have been wildly successful.) So I basically showed up to learn anything I needed to learn, and have a free bagel.

Many SF conventions are struggling to stay afloat, in large part because of a lack of people-resources to do the important jobs (hotel liaison, coordination, programming, security, etc.) that require planning and effort. Moreover, the advent of Star Wars, Star Trek and their ilk have routed many young (30 and under) fans who would otherwise have been serious reader-fans into media fandom. There's nothing wrong with this, but I think it has helped to deplete the pool of fans who would have helped run more serious conventions (and in my arrogant opinion, written science fiction is orders of magnitude more serious than media SF; don't even get me started on manga).

I feel a little guilty about this because I'm not very interested - or willing - to take on those critical, time-intensive jobs myself, although I'd probably do a decent job due to my organizational skills. (My interpersonal skills, on the other hand...) But I try to contribute in some other ways, when I can. Maybe I'm just not fated to become a back-room SMOF type.

After the meeting I made a run to Borders Book Store and bought some (no surprise here) books. Borders is actually the best store in town for buying new books. We have a Barnes & Noble, but I find them execrable in terms of selection, so Borders is it.

That's selling Madison a bit short, though; Madison is in fact a haven for used book stores. There are about six good used stores within walking distance of my apartment, and a good comics & SF store two miles south of here. And on the west side of town is an excellent store named the Frugal Muse which sells used books, CDs and videotapes, and has the best prices in town. So I have no shortage of things to read or books to buy. (Madison is also a haven for used CD stores.)

I felt rather listless this afternoon, and frittered away much of the day on the Internet (i.e., not accomplishing much). It was cold and rainy today, which may have affected my mood (although I usually like rain). We've now had a day of 65-as-the-high-temperature on either side of the middle of August; strange.

Round about 7 pm I decided that I wanted to:

Go get a gyro;
Go for a walk along Lake Monona shore (right near my apartment), and
Do some reading. I knocked down another 60 pages of John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, which is still merely okay.

And that was my day. Woo-hoo.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)