Friday

The guy bounds on stage and is greeted with a wave of sound that reverberates deafeningly against all four walls and the ceiling. He's wearing a black denim shirt and jeans, and his hair is a mixture of its natural dark colour and sulphurous dyed yellow. Smirking, he grabs the mike and looks out into a sea of ecstatic faces.

'Anyone here from Brazil?' he asks.

On this particular Friday, given this morning's football results, most people would be glassed or at least booed for asking questions like that in front of a British crowd. But not here. The normal rules do not apply, reality has been temporarily suspended. This is the parallel universe of a SF convention, and James Marsters is having a whale of a time on stage.

Blackpool isn't a place you normally associate with top-quality science fiction. Okay, so the second episode of Adam Adamant Lives! was set here and they were going to film a Doctor Who in the local theme park until the show got suspended, but on the whole you think of music hall and stag weekends and all of life's less sophisticated pleasures.

But here I've come for my first convention since there was a different George Bush in the White House. On this particular June 21^st the weather is positively sullen and a cold wind gusts in over the Irish Sea towards the venue, a hotel at the north end of town. Flags bearing the name of the con flutter proudly - but either the wind's blowing the wrong way or they've been put up backwards, as from the road they all say 'Tneve XFS'. This is my first clue that different priorities are about to take precedence.

Inside is a scene of what looks at first sight like total and utter chaos. With none of the event rooms open yet everyone is milling around in the bar and foyer. A man in a brown leather jacket wanders around asking total strangers if they have a Klingon costume. Ugly green bracelets seem to be the essential fashion item.

I register with the organisers and am issued with my own wristband of doom with my ticket number on it (due to a late booking I am #1902), as well as a goodie bag. This turns out to be full of remaindered books and audio tapes, but there's a free issue of next week's 2000AD - that's £1.40 of my ticket money made back already.

Looking around I am surprised at the diversity of the crowd. There are kids of 6 and 7 here going right through to people in their sixties. All the various tribes of SF seem to be in evidence, judging from the T-shirts on display: Trek, Stargate, even things like Mutant X. But above all there is Buffy and it rapidly becomes very clear that most people are here just to see James Marsters and Emma Caulfield: tickets to have photos taken with the great man have already sold out as far ahead as Sunday morning. A rather good Spike-a-like, whose name I later learn is Steve, is prowling the bar and attracting a lot of attention. The atmosphere is already rather heady and distracting, not just for the attendees but for some old people about to leave the hotel, who are visibly wondering what the hell is going on, and also the hotel staff - I pass a couple of alarmed looking porters, one of whom whispers to the other 'Don't worry, the thing to remember is that it's us what's normal, not them.'

Most of the time, maybe. But not here or now.

I grab a seat and watch the passing parade, surprised at the different accents I hear in the crowd: Irish, German, American, Croydon. Someone starts passing out flyers advertising the fact that the Richard and Judy show will be doing a live feed in an hour and a half and they're looking for people with costumes to be interviewed. 'They're looking for geeks to be in a freak show,' complains one politically-astute nine-year-old.

I discuss the offer with two young women I've got talking to: their accents are pure Cockney. They're considering whether to go and get their outfits ('She's Lara Croft and I'm Princess Leia') so they can go on the telly and maybe get to meet Mazza himself, who'll also be doing an interview for the show. I point out that this will mean appearing on Richard and Judy. They agree that it's a tough choice.

Despite my own lack of a costume I contemplate lurking in the back of shot when the feed takes place, and decide to hang around the bar until the director calls for his extras. Thoughts of TV stardom are banished however, as I find myself next to the novelist and scriptwriter Paul Cornell and his wife, who are having drinks with Nick Setchfield, one of the editors of the magazine that's organised the convention. I abandon any pretence at ironic detachment and say hello, then tell Cornell how much I liked his last CD play and what an influence his first couple of novels had on me as a teenager.

Eyes start to glaze over and I realise just what a horrific bore I must be coming across as. Cornell is being very nice about it but there's still no excuse for this sort of behaviour. Cunningly I salvage the situation by spilling a pint down the back of a passing young woman, thus giving me the perfect excuse for a break in the conversation and a fresh start. Second time around things go much better as we talk about TV drama and what the BBC's doing with Doctor Who and what we're looking forward to seeing this weekend. Cornell happily agrees to sign any of his books I remember to bring in later in the weekend and we go merrily our separate ways. This wasn't what I expected at all.

Drunk on amity and cider I wander through to the dealer's room, which has just opened for the evening. Almost at once I notice a slight, dark-haired woman sitting behind a desk in the corner, signing photos of the Yugoslavian actress Mira Furlan. It turns out that this actually is Mira Furlan, crashing the convention in order to raise a bit of quick money.

I find this terribly sad: five years ago she would've been headlining a thing like this, and now she doesn't even merit a Q and A on the main stage. Someone should bring Mazza down here and warn him: one day, mate, this could be you. Overcome with sympathy, I stump up for a signed photo before going in search of something to eat. Paul Cornell and Mira Furlan inside of ten minutes! I feel I've had my money's worth already.

Over pizza and chips I look around at my fellow attendees some more. The traditional SF fan clichés seem not to apply: while there are indeed some people who seem to have been dredged up from the lower end of the gene pool, there are an equal number who don't. And most surprising of all, the gender balance is just that - a fifty-fifty split. It seems that Buffy has done the impossible and opened up the genre to a whole new audience of young, bright, clever and funny people.

And the atmosphere is wonderful: there's no taboo about not talking to strangers or anything like that. It's incredibly relaxed and friendly. People are dressing to match the way they think they look and not getting ridiculed for it. This isn't the real world at all - but it's my kind of place.

I grab a seat in the main hall, an echoing concrete space at the back of the hotel. The convention logo blazes on a screen over the stage while what look like inflatable replicas of Superman's spaceship from the 70s movie dangle from the ceiling. Reality starts to intrude as a delay, due to technical difficulties, is announced.

From the technical rig this looks like a very professional, slick set-up. My last con was run by amateurs and was charmingly shambolic, which in a way matched the guests they'd secured. The late Jon Pertwee was always a class act, of course, but some of the others counted amongst their credits stints on Countdown and Brookside. All very nice, but not exactly possessing the glitz and cool of having appeared in Dirty Harry or The Matrix. I had worried about the effect of corporatisation on the freewheeling convention spirit, but I'm also a sucker for movie stars.

I head to the bar to get the drinks in for myself and two new friends I've made while waiting. I find myself right behind a guy in full Jedi Knight regalia: cloak, cassock, boots and saber. Feeling bound to do the right thing I ask him if he wants to buy some deathsticks. He declines, and fighting off a strange urge to go home and rethink my life I grab my cokes and go. As I do so I notice the Obi-wannabe is in trouble: everyone is inadvertently standing on the hem of his robe, stopping him from actually moving in the crush for drinks. It occurs to me that it isn't easy being a Jedi.

Finally things get underway and Dave Golder, editor of Europe's best-selling SF magazine and co-organizer of the con introduces the guests, half of whom I wouldn't recognise if I fell over them: Paul Goddard from The Matrix and Muppets in Space - sorry, I mean Farscape, Mira Furlan and fellow-crasher Tony Amendola (he's played monsters and aliens in lots of things, apparently). Also Victoria Pratt and Shiri Appleby, who look very winsome but whom I don't know. Two makeup guys off Buffy, who look like they should be playing drums and bass guitar in a Texan alt. country band. The novelist Robert Rankin is the only non-visual media guest as well as the only British one. Finally, some definite celebrities: Joe Pantoliano from The Matrix and The Sopranos, Andy Robinson and Alexander Siddig from DS9, and - cue utter mayhem in the crowd - Emma and Mazza from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Coming to this thing I'd been rather cynical about some of the guests. They get a healthy whack of money, plus an all-expenses paid trip to Europe, just to be told how wonderful they are and bask in the adoration of their fans. The hardest gig in the world this is not. But something about Mazza's joshing with the crowd, his delighted grin and his utterly sincere-sounding promise that 'We're gonna have some fun this weekend' suggest that this man is not just here to have his ego stroked.

Not that any of the others are either, of course. After the introductions the two DS9 veterans launch into a two-man play they've cooked up for this sort of occasion. It's clearly deeply sincere stuff that they've worked very hard on, but it's also a very heavy-going and intense psychodrama that does not sit well with a steady trickle of people sneaking off to the queue for Mazza photos and the dull roar from the bar at the other end of the hall. Feeling quite sorry for the struggling actors I stick it out to the end and head home for the evening.

Luckily I live close enough to make shuttling back and forth over the weekend cheaper than staying near the venue (this is just as well as every hotel and guest-house in a three mile radius seems to be full). The local hotel managers seem to look forward to these sort of conventions and the business they provide - 'Trekkers, I call 'em,' said one elderly proprietor I spoke to, in rather the same tone of voice I'd expect from a trawler captain describing strange but lucrative deep-sea fish that occasionally wander into his net.

Getting off-site allows me to decompress back into the real world for a while and get my head togther. Friday afternoon and evening have already exceeded expectations, and anything else will be a bonus. It is all proving slightly more expensive than expected, but as long as I don't do anything silly I should be fine...

In the next moderately thrilling instalment, our roving reporter does something probably quite silly. Plus, more adventures in the dealer room, an unexpectedly lucrative guitar, and Mazza has a very busy night at an awards ceremony.

Awix

27.06.02 Front Page

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