Yesterday’s New York Times features an article about SF conventions, in the travel section, of all places.
Officially, the 25th annual staging of MidSouthCon, a three-day-long celebration of science fiction, role-playing games, fantasy artwork, medieval weaponry and just about every leisure pursuit that prefers to envision the cosmos as it might have once been or might someday be, would not begin until later that afternoon.
But everywhere you looked, there were signs that the fantastic was already encroaching in a “Twilight Zone”-like manner upon this ordinary 400-room, airport-adjacent hotel: vendors were unloading their caches of well-worn, pulp-reeking paperbacks, conference rooms were being prepared for debates about the state of the “Star Wars” franchise and the most recent season of “Doctor Who,” and at least one conventioneer wanted to hang out with others who like to pretend that they are vampires.
While the emphasis on look-at-the-funny-costumes is a little heavier than I’d like (the cons Kate and I regularly go to aren’t big on costumes), the article as a whole is actually pretty good as such things go.