I had so much fun at DemiCon 36 earlier this month! It’s been a while since a whole convention felt quite so easy and joyous to me as it did at this year’s edition of the long-running Des Moines science fiction convention.

It was an especially welcome experience because so many other things so far this year have seemed hard and unhappy. I’ve noted this before, in some of the few blog posts I’ve been able to produce in the months since my sister’s death. Science fiction fandom is going through a tough transition on this side of the Pandemic. Convention attendance is lagging at many of the longer-running “cons.”

They came into being in an era when being a science fiction or fantasy enthusiast was “weird.” Not so, these days: these genres have gone mainstream in big ways. It’s no longer hard to find shows in the genre, and our bookshelves runneth over. It’s also no longer too hard to find others who enjoy “sci fi.” We need travel no farther than our computer to find people with similar interests.

So, What’s the Need for an SF Con?

Even if we no longer need to travel outside our own home to meet others who love science fiction, it’s actually good for us to do that occasionally. How so? Because one of the glaring gaps in many people’s lives is community. Chatting online isn’t the same as chatting face-to-face in person over a tabletop game or while wandering through the art show. Nor is it like going to room parties (DemiCon is one of the few where people still remember how to throw a fun room party).

And make no mistake, people who return each year to a long-running sf con are a special community. I remember when I was a camp counselor, or when I was a teacher at the start of the school year after summer vacation. One of the highlights of Opening Day, for both kids and adults, was seeing each other again. After several months or a year, everyone enjoyed talking about the changes, and getting caught up on each others’ lives.

Talking with other authors and fans “IRL” is one of the major reasons why I had so much fun at DemiCon 36. Another is the specific fellow authors and fans I encountered at this little convention. The conrunners have managed to maintain that old-fashioned sense of all getting together with old and new friends to do something we all love.

So Much Fun at the Art Show

DemiCon doesn’t field a big art show, but it usually has a nice range of local and mail-in art from excellent artists. Jewelry, pottery, wood, fabric arts, and more filled the sculpture tables and hung from art show panels, alongside prints, paintings, and other work. And of course, a panel of my paper sculpture. Enjoying the Art Show is one reason why I had so much fun at DemiCon 36.

My good friend Lucy A. Synk had a nice display on several panels. Followers of this blog for the last several years have had many chances to see her artwork, be it photos of her art show displays, illustrations she’s created for Weird Sisters Publishing, or art we’ve licensed for this website.

Longtime friend and excellent painter Erin McKee was there, too. Although she’s been far more focused on her Pawsitive Dog AZ dog training business in Arizona, she did bring some artwork to the show. It was a pair of large posters of her “cave art” paintings. Originally created back in the early 2000s, they come across at first like something from Lascaux or Altamira . . . until you take a closer look.

Fun With DemiCon Authors and Fans

We authors at DemiCon 36 were a small group, indeed. I didn’t realize quite how small until I discovered most of my panels were solo efforts! I had official fellow panelists in only one of the six events for which I was scheduled.

However, by late Saturday I had gotten to know enough of the attendees, several of whom also write or are quite knowledgeable, that I was able to fill out a couple of my officially-solo panels with recruits from the audience. And whether they joined me “up front” or not, all of my panels turned out to be full-group-participation events.

Every single one of my DemiCon 36 audience members were intelligent, well-spoken, and very cool folks! They were the number-one reason why I had so much fun at DemiCon 36.

A Look Ahead for a Small Convention

Small, fan-run sf conventions are an endangered species in the current economic landscape. More and more of the conventions that survive today are those that are growing into ever-larger operations with a distinctly media and/or anime focus. That definitely seems to be the trajectory with SoonerCon, a summer convention I’ve often written about, both in this blog and on my more art-oriented Jan S. Gephardt’s Artdog Adventures blog.

For most of my adult life, fan-run conventions were the rule, not the exception. I learned a good bit of what I know about publishing, writing, and art as a result of such events over the decades. They always seemed like such a fixture in the landscape. And when they go on for more than 50 years in a row, one begins to think they’ll never end. My “home convention,” ConQuesT saw 54 consecutive repeats before it stopped after 2023. We had a “Mini-ConQuesT” this year, but it fit into one fan’s house and had at most 20 attendees. Not the same!

Of course, the one immutable law is that all things change. The day will probably come fairly soon when small, fan-run cons are no more. Until then I intend to cherish the ones that remain, for as long as they can last. Indeed, that’s probably the most fundamental of all the many reasons why I had so much fun at DemiCon 36.

About the Author

Author Jan S. Gephardt has been attending science fiction conventions since 1983, when she displayed a few small ink drawings at a Fool Con in Overland Park, KS. She has since developed a unique, mixed-media paper sculpture approach to her artwork, experienced careers in sf art promotion and teaching, and founded Weird Sisters Publishing with her sister G. S. Norwood in 2019.

She is the creator of the “XK9 Saga,” a science fiction series about uplifted police dogs who live on a space station and (among other things) solve mysteries with their human partners. Her XK9 “Bones” Trilogy is now complete and widely available. Meanwhile, she’s already more than halfway finished drafting the next novel in the series, titled Bones for the Children.

IMAGE CREDITS

Many thanks to DemiCon, Des Moines, IA, USA on Instagram for the “Interstellar DemiCon” logo design used in the first illustration. Jan took the photo of her own artwork for the second, and created all of the square designs used in this post. Many thanks to new Weird Sisters Publishing partner, Tyrell E. Gephardt, for the photos in the fourth montage.

We are grateful to Amazon.com for the four cover images used in the third illustration. They come from the book pages for Birthright: Book 1 of the Temujin Saga by Adam J. Whitlatch; Dead Man’s Hand (The Unorthodox Chronicles Book 1) by James J. Butcher; Amazing Robots!: Quanta Publishing 2025 Science Fiction Anthology, which includes a story by T. R. Benjamin; and The Three Lives of Sonata James: A Tor.com Original, by Lettie Prell. Where possible, we tried to use first books in a series, in case you’d like to explore all of the books in order.