My Eastercon Program

[ffutures]

Looks like I'm on three program items at Eastercon:

Friday 7:30pm
venue Gladstone
Panel "Victorian Fandom"
The prehistory of our kind.

Saturday 12noon
Venue Churchill
"Empire of Earth"
Marcus Rowland gives an illustrated talk on Victorian and Edwardian military SF.

Sunday 10:30am
Venue London
"Outsider View: Fan Fiction"
Why do people who do not write fanfic always ask the same questions? What should they be asking instead?


I have no real idea what the first of these will be about - I'd imagine they mean early SF rather than fandom, but I haven't actually had any sort of briefing yet.

I'm writing the second now - a talk plus some pretty pictures, needless to say George Griffith and some other familiar authors and artists will be much in evidence! It isn't showing on the programme grid yet because I only reminded them that I'm doing it yesterday.

As for the third, I have no idea what the questions are, let alone the answers, but presumably I will find out...

Comments

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I'll be curious to know what the brief is for the first one. There was something very like fandom happening in the letters column of a children's periodical in the latter part of the 19th century, to the point where the concerns, correspondents, and arguments of the letter column dwarfed the rest of the magazine, as I recall. It wasn't about science fiction, but it was a lot like the way fandom later developed in the lettercols of the prozines.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I remember hearing that the APA started in Victorian times, as did other things very like fanzines (except that they weren't about SF; there again I've seen some of 'our' fanzines which had very little mention of SF in them).

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

H. G. Wells's collection of friends who got together at his house to play war games with toy soldiers has rather a fannish flavor to my mind. I imagine you could find other such social groups.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The most notable is possibly Fred T. Jane and his naval wargaming friends.