Loch Lomond, and SF Fandom
So yes, Ceej and David did indeed come down to visit today. I think we all woke up fairly late, so they got here a little after noon. I spent the time while they were commuting cleaning up the place, including filing away a big stack of papers in my study which have been sitting (and accumulating) since I moved in. Guests is always a good impetus to do some cleaning.
CJ pronounced my apartment "nice", although they both echoed John's sentiments that it's rather far away from everything, and in particular that it's about 10-15 minutes away from any of the highways. Certainly an annoying point. It is pretty far from things even by highway, too. They also got to meet the cats. Newton was pretty friendly once he'd given them a good sniff-over, but I actually had to drag Jefferson out from under the bed later in the day to meet them. He didn't quite warm up to them, but did eventually start doing his 'rounds' at the windows and playfighting with Newton while we were all sitting at my dining table.
The first thing we did, once they got here, was to drive to Los Gatos (south of here) to have brunch at a brew pub, and then to Santa Cruz (even more south, over some mountains) to go hiking at Loch Lomond, a rather nice lake with some good hiking trails. It required a rather windy route to get there, through some hills with some rather interesting housing (most of the houses seemed to have their main entrances on their second floors, with stairs leading up to them; it didn't seem like an area prone up flooding, though. Maybe they have mudslide problems?), but it was worth it. The lake was very lovely and I took several pictures.
On the hike we also talked about (among other things) ways in which science fiction fandom dissatisfies us. My main beef with it is that it seems all too often not to involve any written science fiction (it's pretty hard sometimes to call the TV or movie stuff "science fiction"; most of it is really fantasy, not SF). We talked about ways in which The New York Review of Science Fiction leaves us unsatisfied (too academic in tone, for instance), and about conventions and fanzines.
I observed that if I were to publish a fanzine, it would probably be a monthly 8-pager (or thereabouts) which would restrict itself to dealing with SF novels or short stories, and issues arising from such, and I'd want to publish letters and essays from other people writing about such things. Get away from the endless travelogues, political diatribes and self-exploration essays which seem to populate most fanzines.
Someone once commented to me that they didn't see a whole lot of point about talking about SF in fanzines; if people can read pros talking about SF, why bother reading what amateurs have to say about it? Why not ask their friends, or read it themselves? It's taken me a while to come up with a response to this, but I think the best response is that SF fandom should first and foremost be a venue for people with an interest in science fiction to be able to share their interest with other like-minded people. If fanzines aren't promoting a connection of such people and facilitating discussion of specifically science fictional issues, then I think fanzines have failed at their job - or have evolved into something which should no longer be associated with the term "science fiction".
Actually, I feel that way about a lot of things in fandom. When things like costuming, filking, crafts and the like have become something even half as important as the science fiction itself, then I think fandom has failed in its purpose as regards science fiction.
We went out for Italian food for dinner, and then came back and played a game of Settlers, which CJ won, having started from a fairly strong initial position. She says it's the first time she's even won a Settlers game, and she seemed fairly cheered by this.
By this time, it had gotten rather late, so we forewent a second Starcraft game, and I lent CJ my tapes of Ken Burns' Baseball documentary series, and they took off. David had suggested that we could play Starcraft on-line at battle.net, but CJ and I both prefer physical presence so we can deconstruct the game afterwards. But, I might try playing the game over the net on my own once in a while, and get some practice.
Overall, another fine day. But any day you can go out hiking with friends is a fine day.
Holiday tomorrow! Woo-hoo!
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