This past week I braved the rigors of flying in America (spoiler: flights were thankfully uneventful) to go to Orlando, Florida for ICFA. That stands for the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, which is put on by IAFA (the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts). I have been going to ICFA for maybe a dozen years; it is one of my favorite conventions. A lot of that has to do with the writers and artists who attend, in addition to the academic professionals who come to deliver papers and be on panels. Possibly the most satisfactory programming–to me, anyway–is when you have academic and creative folk on a panel, sharing perspectives.
What kinds of things get talked about? Here are the titles of a handful of panels and discussions:
- The Haunted House is a Fruiting Body: Fungus in Moreno-Garcia and Kingfisher
- Devil’s In the Details: place and personhood in Horror
- Monstrous Adaptations, Translations and Appropriations
- A Wolf in the Fold: Werewolves in Modernity and Post-Modernity
- Accepting, Resisting, and Complicating the Zombie
- History is Written by…The Power of Alternative History in Fantasy
Plus, there are readings by the creative guests, and a performance of flash plays (disclaimer: I usually wind up performing in the flash plays. This year the plays were so flash they were one minute long, intermixed with improv. It was enormously fun). There are banquets and awards dinners which I usually don’t attend, and a ton of people to talk with.
Part of what I like about ICFA is that so much of the time my head is down and my attention is on my own paper, and I don’t think about what someone trained in reading and understanding text in a literary or philosophical sense might think of what I’m doing. And that’s a good thing: if I thought about that too much I very likely would not write anything ever again. But to see the kind of thoughtful critical treatment of fantastic literature that the participants at ICFA provide is heartening. I came up in a time when SF and fantasy were the decidedly junior members of the literary firm; that’s not the case any more.
Like most conventions, though, the very best time is sitting around the pool (Florida, right?) and talking with friends old and new, talking about writing and publishing and the world. Going out to dinner. Looking for the alligator who very occasionally used to waddle by the lake (I saw him once, years ago. Never since).
The convention runs Wednesday – Saturday night. Most participants leave on Sunday morning, but some of us stay an extra day and have an adventure: go to Gatorland or, as I did this year, head to the Blue Springs State Park to see manatees. There were so many manatees, and their calves! Apparently the local term for manatee is “floaty potato.” It is apt. I honestly wonder about the early European sailors who thought manatees were mermaids–that’s what a long time on a ship will do to your perception.
Anyway: ICFA. Highly recommended.