20 May 2002

Down Among the Rad Fems, 1998
by Cheryl Morgan
www.emcit.com/

Cheryl Myfanwy Morgan is of Welsh ancestry but has lived in London, Melbourne and San Francisco. Consequently her accent defies categorization. Her book review fanzine, Emerald City, is published monthly and has now reached 80 issues, a fact that most people regard as indicative of terminal insanity.

Wiscon is a convention that I have been rather ambivalent about attending. On the one hand, many of my friends, including Jean Weber and Lucy Sussex, have recommended it highly. On the other, it is an avowedly feminist convention and, although I am happy to describe myself as a feminist, I am deeply suspicious of some of the movement's flag wavers and am sympathetic to the many people I know who eschew the tag for fear of being associated with man-hating harridans such as Andrea Dworkin. What prompted me to take the plunge was the fact that Sheri Tepper was the Guest of Honour for this year's Wiscon. Regular readers will know that I am a huge fan of Tepper's work. She doesn't go to conventions often. This was too good an opportunity to miss.

I guess another reason for avoiding Wiscon had been the fact that it takes place in Madison, Wisconsin, a part of the US famous only for being unbearably cold in the winter, the Green Bay Packers (boo!) and for being unaccountably proud of producing really bad cheese. Happily I am pleased to say that Madison is a beautiful city and that, if you make sure to go there in the late spring or early autumn, it is a very pleasant place indeed.

The city is built around two lakes with the downtown area being on a narrow neck of land between the two. This is the reason for avoiding it in high summer, or mosquito season as it is known to the locals. It is the capital of Wisconsin and a university town. Friends tell me that it is known as the Berkeley of the Mid-West and I can see why. The concentration of bookshops and new age stuff is positively Californian. Being a student town, it has many cheap restaurants. This is starting to sound like an ideal location for a convention.

And does the con live up to the setting? Oh boy, and how! As you may know, Worldcons can often have around 10 streams of programming running simultaneously and I am lucky if I find more than a dozen panels in the five days that I really do not want to miss. When I saw the Wiscon programme I was struck by the number of times I had to make a really hard choice of which item to attend out of a four or five stream selection.

In addition, the con organization was superb. OK, they've been doing this for 22 years now, but everything seemed to run like clockwork which, for a 500+ person convention is good going. I spotted only one snafu, when a panel I was on got postponed for half an hour without anyone telling most of the panellists. I also felt that the green room could have been open for longer, but then I didn't offer to help staff it so I shouldn't moan.

The attendance list was great too. Well known women writers such as Ellen Kushner, Pat Murphy and Karen Joy Fowler are regulars, as are people that I know less about such as Suzy McKee Charnas and Candas Jane Dorsey. Tepper was there, of course, but I really knew I was onto something good when I came down to register and found Mary Doria Russell just finishing a stint behind the desk.

Mary, it turns out, is a wonderful person. I attended a discussion panel on Children of God and was deeply impressed, not only with her intelligence, but with how relaxed, charming and caring she is. She's the sort of person you would love to have to a dinner party, but you'd also be delighted to have her educate your children. If I ever get to chair a convention, she will be amongst my list of most desired guests.

Sheri Tepper, on the other hand, was a bit of a disappointment. She is clearly very intelligent, and a marvelously witty speaker, but sadly she seems to be every bit as angry and bitter as she comes over in her writing. I was on a panel with her discussing pastoral themes in feminist SF. In her summing up she said that she hoped that some young people would start to try to build some new types of community that had a much more balanced and caring attitude to their environment. That was the only positive thing I heard her say all weekend, and I felt like grabbing her by the shoulders, shaking her and saying, "why the hell don't you put a bit of hope into your books, then?".

I was on three other panels through the weekend - quite a contrast from my experiences at some other cons. The one on non-linear fiction didn't really get anywhere because we ended up talking about what might be possible if the technology were available, rather than what we can do now. The women in science panel was great, largely because the moderator, Linda Shore, was so good at getting the audience involved. For the most part we panelists just sat back and listened.

The seriously interesting panel, however, was the one on Fundamentalism. Much to my surprise, I found myself arguing in favour of religion against people who seemed to believe that if you were religious you had to be a narrow-minded lunatic. It is sad to see how far the Fundies have got in placing a hold on the American national consciousness.

Wiscon rents a bunch of suites on the 6th floor of the hotel which it makes available to anyone wanting to run a party. This was too good an opportunity to miss. I did have a Worldcon bid to promote after all. Fortunately I had Cynthia Gonsalves on hand to assist, the rest of the crew being busy at BayCon. Cynthia was a great help, especially as she came up with the best idea of the weekend. She dragged me out of bed at a totally unreasonable hour of Saturday morning in order to get to the farmers' market held in Capitol Square.

This, of course, brought me into contact with Wisconsin cheese. Anyone who knows anything about American football knows that Green Bay Packer fans are known as Cheeseheads. Wisconsin is a dairy state, and its inhabitants are convinced that they make the best Cheddar cheese in the world. This cheese is normally packed with orange colour and has about as much bite as a geriatric anteater. Residents of Wisconsin would not know a real Cheddar if it fell on their heads. And the sad thing is, that compared to the rest of America, they do produce quite good cheese.

Fortunately this fascination with cheese has led to people experimenting. Whilst they haven't got a clue what Cheddar is supposed to taste like, they are getting very good with a wide range of herbed and European cheeses. Cynthia and I went back to the hotel weighed down with interesting flavours, including something called a Butter Kase which I'd not heard of before and which tasted so creamy you could almost feel the fat piling on as you ate it. No matter what else happened, we were going to have good food at our party.

As it turned out, we were at entirely the wrong end of the corridor. Wiscon people didn't seem to understand the concept of party cruising. Many of them stayed in the Con Suite all night, or wandered back and forth between there and the Tor party where there was plenty of free beer. I had forgotten that Madison is very close to Milwaukee, the original centre of the US brewing industry. We didn't have beer. But we did have chocolate. 10 pounds of Ghirardelli's finest to be exact. The other problem was that there was a vampire party between us and the Con Suite. They had loud music. People tended to avoid them. But gradually, through the evening, stories of cheese and chocolate filtered down the far end of the corridor and a steady trickle of people came the other way.

It would appear that Wiscon people do not really understand how Worldcon bid parties work. We are not a corporation like Tor that can afford to throw a big bash on a PR budget. Those parties get paid for by the pre-supports that people buy. Still, they'll learn. And I did have the consolation that Davey Snyder's Orlando party and Joni Dashoff's Philadelphia party were similarly unproductive. At least I know that if I go back next year I just have to advertise the return of the giant chocolate bar.

My friend Joni's party was the scene of one of the stranger events of the weekend. She had brought with her a small chocolate computer with 'Philadelphia in 2001' inscribed upon it. Eventually it came time to cut into this edible sculpture, and Vicki Rosenswieg was given the honour. She raised the knife high above her head and brought it stabbing down. It went in right up to the hilt, and came out bent at right angles. A large number of bad Yuri Geller jokes followed.

Whilst we were on the weird stuff, I also got the full story of Lise' Eisenberg's Leeds adventure, right from the source. Sadly I didn't have a video camera with me, and there's no way I can re-tell the story as well as Lise told it. Suffice it to say that if you have ever had a fantasy of being followed down the street by a dark, handsome stranger who is begging you for sex and promising nights of unbridled passion, talk to Lise. It isn't quite as good as it might seem.

To sum up, Wiscon was great fun. I'm gonna feel really guilty about not going to BayCon, but I've just got to go back next year. After all, Mary is the GoH.