Sex with storm troopers

A journey to the heart of science fiction fandom reveals that selling out is a geek survival trait.

By Annalee Newitz

Sept. 11, 2001 |

It's 1 a.m. Saturday, Labor Day weekend. Slightly intoxicated, some friends and I wobble into the basement of the Atlanta Hyatt and find a roomful of big, soft chairs facing a small stage. About 10 people are in the room, some of them dressed like medieval peasants, most of them with guitars in their laps.

A man in the back of the room starts strumming his guitar. He's the quintessential nerd: coke-bottle glasses, unstyled hair, a large belly. He sings a song about the days when giants walked the earth, when everyone was peculiar and it didn't matter.

We are somewhere in the bowels of the science fiction convention DragonCon. We are attending the Open Filk -- an open mike gathering at which people perform science fiction-themed songs, often set to familiar tunes.

It's so cheesy that at first my friends and I giggle uncontrollably, covering our mouths and wheezing to hide our too-obvious rudeness. But then the deeper meaning of the song starts to sink in: It's mournful and sincere, a tale sung by an outcast aching for acceptance. The land where the giants walk is a place where geeks can hold their heads high, a place where difference is respected rather than punished. This filker is singing the deep geek blues.

After listening to several more filkers, I get up to leave, thanking the guy who sang about giants on my way out. His irony-free self-expression might be alien to my more cynical universe, where sentimentality has become a form of mockery. But I'm beginning to wonder if he's what I'm seeking -- the core of truth beneath DragonCon's veneer of commercial science fiction hype.

Often called the biggest science fiction convention in the United States, DragonCon attracts more than 20,000 people to the Hyatt Regency and Marriott in downtown Atlanta every year for a three-day orgy of SF fandom. Giant exhibition halls are packed with people selling everything from rare 1960s Lois Lane comic books and pirated Japanese anime, to the latest role-playing games (RPGs) from White Wolf. Attendees spend their days at hundreds of panels learning about the finer points of fandom: how to speak Elvish, dress like a Klingon, rediscover old comic book favorites or identify the specialness of each Doctor in Doctor Who.

The main competition for DragonCon on Labor Day weekend is WorldCon, a literary SF convention featuring appearances by "respected editors" and postmodern writer-brainiacs like Samuel Delany and Cecilia Tan. DragonCon, on the other hand, is lowbrow by comparison. The keynote speaker is bad boy Harlan Ellison. The scene? A bunch of "tracks" devoted to "Star Wars," "Star Trek," "Xena" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." A special midnight session is dedicated to Internet porn. Gore special effects wizard Tom Savini promises to sign pictures of himself wearing his signature "cock and balls" pistol, featured in the splatterfest movie "From Dusk 'Til Dawn."

Of course, I had to go to DragonCon.

Only there, hidden under the slag heap of pop cultural debris, could I find the savage, romantic heart of fannish geekdom: the people who wail out the blues, not the ones who hawk trinkets for cash.

Next page: "People used to say I had the best ass in fandom"