A Friend From New Zealand

[mabfan]

Last evening, Nomi and I had dinner with Norman Cates.






We first met Norman two years ago at the 2004 World Science Fiction Convention, Noreascon 4. Norman was the official delegate for DUFF, or the Down Under Fan Fund, which raises money to send science fiction fan representatives between North America and Australia/New Zealand. Norman works at Weta, the company that did many of the special effects for the Lord of the Rings movies and King Kong. So he came to Worldcon both as the DUFF delegate and as a Weta representative.

(Side note: Norman made every set of elf ears that were in the three Lord of the Rings films. For some reason, people love to hear this.)

Being able to get to know Norman is one of the things I love about science fiction fandom. Back in 2004, we encountered him first between panels and then at some of the parties. As the convention was winding to an end, we invited him out to dinner later in the week, since he was going to be sticking around for a few days. So two years ago, we went to a local Chinese restaurant and just spent a few hours talking about all sorts of things -- science fiction, television, movies, international fandom, etc.

We hadn't really spoken to him much since then, just the occasional email. Then, last week, he emailed to say that Weta was sending him to a conference in Boston (the SIGGRAPH conference for anyone who's interested) and that he wanted to see us and to get together with fans. I managed to put him in touch with NESFA and Arisia folk, and we arranged to have dinner with him at Rubin's.

Even though it's been two years, it's like the time disappeared. We went right back to talking about science fiction, television, movies, international fandom, and many other such topics. We kept interrupting each other with tangents and digressions, and we spent a lot of time laughing.

After the conference is over, Norman will be traveling across the country to go to GenCon. What's funny is that almost every time he mentioned the name of the fans he would be seeing along the way, we responded by saying, "Oh, tell them we say hello." We all acknowledged that this is what it is to be a part of fandom.

I love being a part of this community.

Copyright © Michael Burstein; photo copyright © Nomi Burstein

Comments

[lauriemann.livejournal.com]

Norman's staying with us next week (during his drive between Gettysburg and Indianapolis). I also met him at N4 and thought he was fun to talk to. I want to talk to him more about digital compositing than making elf ears this time!

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

Elaine and I were watching X3 over the weekend and I pointed out Norman's name in the credits. If he's passing through Chicago after Indianapolis, have him get in touch with me.

[cicadabug.livejournal.com]

Very cool! If you could pick his brain a bit about the state of fandom in NZ, I'd be interested in knowing more... I've been considering moving there for a long time.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I'm honestly not sure when I'll be talking to him again, but I'll point him toward your question.

[nwl.livejournal.com]

Being able to get to know Norman is one of the things I love about science fiction fandom.

Yes, Norm is a fun person. We spent some time with him when he was in the U.S. a few years ago and we're planning on seeing him again.

Unfortunately, I'm not feeling too good about fandom at this point in time. While there are some good things, the bad things continually strive to out weight them. I'm tired of fandom, I guess. Tired of the pettiness of it all.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Um, I presume you don't care to elaborate? There's pettiness everywhere; I tend to think fandom is one of the places that tries to move beyond it, even if it doesn't always succeed.

[nwl.livejournal.com]

I tend to think fandom is one of the places that tries to move beyond it, even if it doesn't always succeed.

From my experience, fandom pushes the envelope on pettiness. Heaven help you if you befriend the wrong person, work on a convention, or contribute to a club. You're sure to annoy someone who feels you aren't kowtowing quick enough to them. Things have changed since the days of endless feuds in fanzines, but the pettiness is still there. I have a few brief examples.

For the most part it seems to be against a person who is active by someone is not active, but wants the accolades of an active person. In TN, we started a clubzine for the local club, even though this was unheard of in the South at that time. We had an agreement that we would run club stuff as well as articles we wrote or got others to write. The only monetary contribution the club made was postage for members. So club minutes and business was run, but it was mostly content we provided. In the pre-computer days, we did all the typing and layout, commercially reproing until we got a mimeo. We did a zine one ounce in weight each month.

After a few years, we had been trading with other clubs and had gotten some recognition. Well, this made some others in the club unhappy. Another couple had some sort of support with the club president and they wanted to do the clubzine. (They had done fan publishing - apas.) At one meeting, we were told that we were hogging the clubzine and others should get a chance to produce it. Considering it had been our idea and the club's only expense was postage, it wasn't exactly club property. Well, other things had been happening, so we said, "Fine. However, the club will have to come up with another name for the clubzine." We generally begged articles from zine to zine, so the only thing we had to hand over were the addresses of the people we were trading with. The people who now had to produce the clubzine were very unhappy. They assumed that articles and art rolled in with no help from the editors, that the zine laid itself out, etc. They had not counted on it being work, especially as it had to be out at a specific time each month. The zine when through a few editors and died.

We've seen a lot of pettiness at and about cons. One that stands out is when, at the urging of friends at Corflu (the fanzine fan's convention), we host a Corflu in the D.C. area. This was years ago when we were doing a lot more cons. We had been to several Corflus and the feeling was it was time for D.C. to host a Corflu. Well, when we got to Corflu to put up the bid, we discovered that a fan/author who lived in this area was very upset with us. He had hosted Corflu the last time and expected us to get his permission to hold one in Northern Virginia. He didn't bother to contact us at all, but was handing out a zine at the convention saying we were some sort of Star Trek fans (obviously since he didn't know us) who didn't know anything about fandom. Apparently the years in TN, working on Chattacon and putting out a clubzine for about five, as well as Mimosa which we were doing at the time wasn't good enough.

I wanted to drop out of hosting a Corflu, but rwl prevailed and even added this person to the committee doing the con. During the next year, the person accused us constantly of having committee meetings and not telling him about them. Needless to say, it was a less then positive experience and we stopped going to Corflus after that.

But that's just a few experiences. The local club has been going through some bizarreness in the last few years with people who have hosted for 38 years being dumped as a meeting place at the meeting.

I noticed this account of fans on the West Coast behaving badly - http://jbriggs.livejournal.com/45125.html. It goes on and on. If you have run into none of this, you are extremely fortunate.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Wow. I guess we've been lucky in that I haven't witnessed much pettiness, or at least not on that scale. What I have witnessed, though, are a lot of annoying people who don't always get the hint that they're being annoying. (I worry that sometimes I fall into that category as well.)