Issue #2 of Yipe, the costuming fanzine, is now online. It includes reports from various events, articles by my friends Espana Sherrif and Jean Martin, some extreme mockery of Chris Garcia (because everything involving Chris has to be extreme in some way) and another photo of the Sparkly Goths from the St. George’s distillery visit. That one isn’t as good as this for Kevin and myself, but it does show Kevin Roche and Spring very nicely.
And for the benefit of those people who still maintain that costuming has no place in the science fiction community, here’s the Secretary of SFWA in an outfit she wears for her day job.
Who “maintain[s] that costuming has no place in the science fiction community”? I’ve never heard anyone maintain such a ridiculous notion. Costuming at SF conventions has an honorable history dating back to the first Worldcon, and any student of arcane fannish history should know that.
DB: Obviously you’ve never attended serious conventions organized by serious literary people who are worried about costume cooties getting on them. Then there are the folks who worry about those crazy costumers taking over fandom. It’s a slippery slope, after all.
(I’m not making this up, nor am I even engaging in hyperbole. Only the sarcasm is mine.)
Andrew: Evidently I have not. Every large SF convention I’ve ever attended consideres the costume presentation to be a major event. True enough that some smaller conventions, including some I’ve worked on, have declined to have organized costuming because of their size and focus, but even they have generally welcomed jewelry and occasionally clothing dealers into their otherwise 100% book dealer’s rooms. Still, costumers have their own small conventions that perforce leave other things out. And the attitude of the smaller conventions I describe, even if it rejects costuming as part of their particular mix, even if they’re rude about doing so, is emphatically NOT the same thing as “maintain[ing] that costuming has no place in the science fiction community.”