i made it home, though it wasn't easy. the story is long and rambling, so of course i have the urge to subject you to it. in short: i missed my flight, all the other flights were sold out. i talked my way onto my flight, but it then sat on the runway for three hours before we finally left. total time between leaving my hotel in madison and arriving at home: about 9.5 hours.
as i was stuck in air travelers hell yesterday, i mulled over some thoughts about wiscon. this was the tenth anniversary of my going to the con; my first one was in 1996. i was thinking about how it has changed over the years. as i mentioned before, it's a feminist science fiction convention, most panels are about science fiction or politics or both. over the last ten years, the political bit has changed a lot more than the sci fi bit. sure, there are new books and t.v. series (in the old days the con would practically stop when babylon five came on. in these times of dvds and tivo, the con stops for no one). vampires were the shit in the mid-to-late 1990s, now they're a lot less prevalent (not that they don't still have a following).
the biggest change has been political. when i started the leftist/feminist aspect of the con was almost all theoretical. people would deliver papers about political theory, and everyone would debate the theory on a fairly abstract level. the most practical calls to action i remember were mostly demanding new topics be addressed in science fiction novels.
over the past few years the politics has gotten a lot more concrete. people talk about voting. people talk about running for office. people talked about boycotts. people talk about the news media. people talk about blogs. actually, i was surprised by just how much political blogs came up. avedon was plugging her site everytime i saw her speak. but she also plugged a lot of other familiar urls, many of which can be seen on the right margin of my site.
it can be fun to think about wiscon as some kind of microcosm of the left. i'm not sure if it is. i don't think the people there are any kind of representative sample. but i hope that it reflects a larger reality somehow. ten years ago i met a lot of politically aware people who were upset, but also disengaged from politics. well, maybe "disengaged" is the wrong word. they were deeply engaged in their own political subculture, but that subculture had only tenuous ties to the rest of the country. but now people want to become more active with the non-fandom universe.
the last five years of the bush administration has riled people up. and they seem willing to do a lot more than just writing a science fiction story about it.
