In a previous post, the two of you who read it will note I planned to write about my very first DragonCon. I assume that, someday in the future, this page will not be a 50/50 split between my publication news and DragonCon reminiscing, but for now it appears that’s what it is. I’m okay with that.
Now, before I get into the details of that very first DragonCon and regale you with such stories as “John Ringo and the Red Leather Demon Hand Bikini”, or “My Close Encounter with the Screaming Pineapple Head”, I have a background to develop.
The big question is why? Why do I feel it necessary to travel back in time, to re-live the past, to look backward instead of forward? Several reasons. First, as I mentioned in this latest DragonCon After Action, this year I brought the son of the person who brought me to my first. As such, it is as fresh on my mind as it is near and dear to my heart.
Another reason is that this Friday is the release of “Negotiation”, in which my first accepted for publication story, “Blind Fury”, is featured. Not to be confused with “Sanity Check”, my first ever published story, which was in “Storming Area 51″ by Bayonet Books- this was accepted later but published earlier in order to coincide with the actual (fizzled) storming itself. “Negotiation”, due out this Friday, 11 Oct., is a Four Horsemen Universe anthology centered on the alien assassin race therein. It was dreamed up, edited, and pushed to Chris Kennedy Publishing by Marisa Wolf and Kacey Ezell.
Kacey is, ultimately, the reason I go to DragonCon.
Back in 2001, up and coming author Kacey Ezell, who I knew from the Academy, was a student pilot in training at Ft Rucker learning to fly helicopters. Also in her class was a woman named Tamara Archuleta. Kacey, as she and John Ringo will tell you, is an enormous Dragonriders of Pern fan. She had found her way into an online “weyr” writing group. Said group invited her to DragonCon. She invited her pilot classmate Tammy who, she discovered, was a tremendous sci-fi/fantasy nerd. The two had an amazing DragonCon in 2001 and I believe you can still find pictures of them if you know where to look. I will leave it to Kacey if she someday wishes to tell that story. To highlight the timeframe, September 11th, 2001 was days later.
Tammy came away knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was going back. So, when she met me, it was a thing that any prospective suitor had to be willing to attend. I could not refuse, nor would I have wanted to.
Now, let me set the stage on the year. In my mind, it was the birthplace of modern day fandom. “In my mind” means I recognize there will be many who disagree with my take, but this is from my perspective. Remember, as I go down the list, that all these things were fresh and new. They were not yet tired old tropes buried on piles of reboots and over played out themes.
The very first Harry Potter movie had been released the previous year. You can see what came from Harry Potter in the years since. Attack of the Clones had just been released. Love or hate Episodes I thru III, they re-lit the Star Wars franchise and fandom therein. Fellowship of the Ring had arrived the previous December, and The Two Towers had not come out yet. The Lord of the Rings re-ignited passion for the not only Tolkien, but fantasy as a whole. The FIRST X-Men movie was only two years old and X-Men 2 would not be out until the following year. The FIRST Spiderman, before the rapidly refreshing reboots, was only a few months old. Superhero movies had waned after Batman & Robin had tried to murder the genre outright, but after X-Men and Spiderman, it’s fair to say a few more were forthcoming. Star Trek: Nemesis (again, love it or hate it), the final next generation movie, would be released in two months. For Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars alone, it was an incredible time to be a fan.
On TV, only Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel fans knew the name Joss Whedon, and a little, unfairly doomed show called Firefly was set to launch in a mere couple weeks. A few already forgotten shows like Witchblade, Birds of Prey, and Dark Angel were doing their best to bring sci-fi/fantasy to the mainstream. Babylon 5 had concluded a few years prior, proving that space shows that weren’t Star Trek were viable and opening the door for shows like Farscape and Lexx (Tammy loved the latter). Star Trek itself was on its fourth reincarnation as Enterprise, which was about to start its second season.
In literature, only four Harry Potter books had been published. There was a track at DragonCon dedicated to Wheel of Time fans, who awaited Robert Jordan’s tenth novel in the series. Anne McAffrey was still writing Dragonriders of Pern, and her son Todd would not publish with her until the next year. Eric Flint’s 1632 was new to the scene. David Weber had just published his tenth Honor Harrington novel, but the Royal Manticoran Navy fan group did not exist yet. A new up and coming author, John Ringo, had only three Posleen books and two Empire of Man books with David Weber. Laurell K. Hamilton, a favorite of Tammy and Kacey, had just published her second Merry Gentry book. Anita Blake was one book beyond Obsidian Butterfly, where she had adventures in Albuquerque and dined at Los Cuates, to Tammy’s great amusement. Tammy and I were in training in Albuquerque and at this time and she took me there to eat for that sole reason. Elsewhere in sci-fi/fantasy literature, Stephanie Meyer had not yet had a dream about a vampire-loving girl and, as such, vampires did not yet sparkle.
Anime, a term barely known outside subculture, was on the verge of bursting into mainstream acknowledgement. Dragonball Z, Macross, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, and Sailor Moon, to name only a few, had only been in the states for a few years. Gundam had just been reborn into its most popular incarnation. Yu-Gi-Oh! and Inuyasha had only existed for a couple years. Naruto was a few months from being released in English.
Cosplay was unheard of in the mainstream. The World Cosplay Summit would not exist until the next year. There were people with cool costumes, but “cosplaying” was not a term I would learn for another couple years. The 501st Stormtrooper legion existed, but the Star Wars fans had just caught on that, due to Episode II, everyone could be a Jedi.
In the gaming world, Everquest still reined as the founder and king of the massive multi-player online role playing game. Steve Jackson’s original “Munchkin” was little over a year old. WizKids, the founders of the collectible miniature game, had existed for two years and had launched their Hero Clix and Mechwarrior: Dark Age lines within the preceding months.
I will admit I have no clue where the comic book world was during this time, though Tammy could definitely have filled me in if I had asked. I do know that The Walking Dead comic would be released the very next year.
Across the board, I know I have missed many, but this is a sampling of the state of fandom in 2002, when I attended my first DragonCon.
All of this is not to say that fandom began that year and at that DragonCon. My point was that it was at a time when all the genre’s and all the fandom was set to explode. Helping it all along was the burgeoning internet, in which neither Facebook or even Myspace yet existed. Social media aside, it was in those early days of the web that fan groups began finding each other and realizing that they were not alone in their fandom.
One more factor, as mentioned above, was September 11th. The country was still reeling from it and people were searching for an escape more than ever. Science fiction and Fantasy, across the media, obliged.
I, myself, had somewhat suppressed my nerdy side for quite sometime, namely the year I was in Pilot Training. However, upon meeting Tammy, a badass helicopter pilot, two time World Karate Champion, and gorgeous holy grail of geekdom that she was, my nerd re-emerged. With her coddling, it re-emerged in spades as she introduced me to LARPing (yes, I will now admit it), miniature gaming (we created respectable Warhammer 40K armies in a remarkably short time), and role-playing game’s that were not just D&D. Indeed, we made it a goal to single-handedly keep the Clockwork Jabberwock, on Nob Hill in Albuquerque, in business. We did not succeed, but in the process we collected libraries of White Wolf’s Hunter, Vampire, Werewolf, and Changeling books as well as 7th Sea and Legend of Five Rings.
So my personal fandom, under her watchful eye, was exploding as well. That is the frame in which I found myself traveling to my very first DragonCon.
