Breaking It All Down

Vol: 1 No: 1 Fall 2013 About the Front Cover “Science fiiction and Anime together? Sounds like Gundam to me. Or at least, 80s era gigantic mecha with a realistic bent. A proper sense of their massive scale is a must.” About the Artist Brian A. Caslis is an artist living in Oregon. You can find more of his work athttp://greencoat7.tumblr.com/ Vol: 1 No: 1 Fall 2013 Hello, and welcome to Breaking It All Down: The Zine! This is meant as something of a companion volume to my web-series “Breaking It All Down”, as occasionally viewed on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/CountZeroOr. Part of the point of the show was to discuss science fiction books and movies, as well as discussing video games from a literary SF perspective. Over time, I realized that while I had a certain degree of engagement with younger audiences, older SF fans generally prefer to take in discussion of SF in writing, rather in videos, with a few exceptions. In particular, Harlan Ellison has started up his own YouTube channel, which thus far he’s been using to upload some of the older video clips he did for The Science Fiction Channel (back before it contracted a case of Syfy). Consequently, if I wanted to get in a dialog with older fans who might be interested in my views on SF, it would have to be in writing. However, in this day and age of blogs, combined with the fact that I’m already writing for a web page – Bureau42.com, I would, theoreti- cally, have that covered, I thought. Then I went to OryCon 34 and got to meet Ben Yalow, Jerry Kaufman, and Susanne Tompkins, and went to the great panels they did on the history of SF fandom, and in particular, the panel on fanzines (a panel that was sadly under-attended). These panels inspired me to start seriously considering doing a fanzine. With a fanzine, I could cover material that isn’t necessarily conductive for a video review (or which would be hard to review as a video review), and it would let me cover material in a less structured fashion then Bureau42’s fairly rigidly reviews. So, before I get any further, I might as well introduce myself. I’m 27 years old, and I’ve been a fan of science fiction since I first learned to read. I taught myself to read not through Dick & Jane, but through computer magazines like Byte Magazine, and juvenile SF novels like Journey to the Mushroom Planet and Robert Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. My interest in science fiction and fantasy served as my gateway to other aspects of the wider world of geek culture. SF and fantasy games like Final Fantasy & Metroid drew me into video games because they were science fiction. SF and Fantasy anime films and series like Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Record of Lodoss War drew me into anime fandom. Themes and concepts taken from SF, Fantasy, and supernatural horror drew me into interest in heavy metal music. Further, the more fantastic elements of martial arts films, particularly the Wuxia sub-genre, drew me into a fandom for martial arts films. Now that I’ve gotten across who I am, and where I’m coming from, in terms of fandom, hopefully you’ll come along with me as I docu- ment my explorations through SF and Fantasy. - Alexander Case P.S. Why title the zine, and my show “Breaking It All Down”? Well, I’m a fairly analytical guy. When it comes to the books & comics I read, the films and shows I watch, and the games I play, I like to metaphorically take them apart, to see why they work, or don’t work, for me the way they do, and to see how they’re made. It helps me appreciate the work better. Also, to my knowledge nobody’s using that title for an internet review show or a fanzine, so there’s that. I’d also considered using a title that was a variation on “Prisoners of Gravity”, in homage to the Canadian TV show, but I was slightly concerned that it’d come across as too derivative. Editorial: After this year’sFighting WorldCon, there was the a lot of discussionAging about Literaryof SF SF fandom Fandom by people who have been in fandom longer than I have, and how the attendees of SF conventions are generally getting older, with fewer new faces showing up, and the existing faces growing older, a fact made more significant with the passing of Frederik Pohl this year. So, this got me thinking. As I mentioned in my introduction, I’m 27. Last year, when I attended Kumoricon, Oregon’s local anime, I was generally the oldest guy in the room. However, when I went to Orycon just a few months later, I was one of the youngest guys in the room. This made me think – how do we get more people my age or younger interested in Literary SF, and to get them active in fandom. As I thought, I looked over the Hugo Awards nominees of the past few years, as the winners of the Hugo Awards can sort of be considered to be a good rubric of what is “mainstream” in terms of the kinds of works that fans at SF conventions are consuming. The winners of the Hugos might not be universally beloved by fen, but enough people read them or watched them and enjoyed them to get them nominated. I came to realize that if younger audiences are to start getting involved in literary SF fandom, there needs to be programming at literary SF conventions that provides some crossover with their existing fandoms, which means in turn that members of fandom, particularly those which are active in attending and organizing conventions, need to explore some new frontiers of SF, or re-explore some older frontiers that have been left alone for some time. Some steps have been made in this direction already. In 2009, graphic novels got their own category with the Best Graphic Story category, allowing creators of comic books and hopefully in the future, manga, to stand on their own, without getting lost in the shuffle of the Best RelatedW ork category, alongside non-fiction books and music. However, anime, manga, and video games generally haven’t gotten their due. To be fair, Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli won a Hugo Award for the excellent film Spirited Away. Yoshitaka Amano, who has been highly acclaimed for his art design for the Final Fantasy series of video games, his illustrations for the Vampire Hunter D novels, and the art for the Japanese editions of Michael Moorcock’s Elric saga, shared a Hugo Award with Neil Gaiman for the book Sandman: The Dream Hunters. So, considering that anime conventions trend to younger average attendees then literary SF conventions, and keeping in mind that literary SF fandom and anime fandom used to heavily overlap, before they effectively broke up, how do we get the two fandoms back together to get that fresh blood back into fandom, without hav- ing to resort to Parent Trap-esque hijinks? In short, the answer is cross promotion. You have to get attendees of anime conventions interested in picking up science fiction novels, you’ve got to let them know that literary SF conventions are there once they’re hooked, and once they’re in the door, there’s got to be programming about anime so the anime fans that you’ve brought in have something to do if there isn’t any other programming that interests them. Image from the anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. To do this, literary SF conventions basically have to put a working relationship together with their local anime convention, if there is one. For the programming at the anime convention, the focus needs to be on introducing people to literary SF, in the contest of the bigger picture of anime and manga. Talk about works that have been adapted from western SF novels to anime, such as Starship Troopers, the Tales of Earthsea series, and Lensmen. If the adaptations aren’t very good, bring that up, and talk about why the originals are better. Then, from there, also talk about works of SF and fantasy that anime fans might enjoy, based on anime they might like, which would lead into the question and answer part of the panel. This means that whoever is on this panel really needs to know their stuff about not just SF and Fantasy, but also anime. Additionally, at this panel, the panelists need to take advantage of the opportunity to also promote the SF convention, in addition to any booth the con has in the dealer’s room. Also, you need to price admission to your convention at a level that younger fans can afford. Ideally, pre-registration prices should be low enough that if an attendee at the con’s local anime convention goes online to pre- register, they can either afford registration on their own. Ideally, it would advisable to compare prices for pre- registration with the local anime convention, so prices escalate at about the same rate, and if the con can afford it, prices are also comparable. WorldCons are something of an exception to this, due to the expense of running a WorldCon, in addition to all the expenses that need to be incurred for the WorldCon bid. Still, if there is room there to lower admission, especially with pre-registration 2 years out, it would probably be worth it to do so.

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