Wait 'till the fire turns green

It's now been approximately 19 months since the Covid-19 pandemic first manifested in the Wuhan region of China and 15 months after it made its way to the United States.

As you might've guessed, the North American science fiction community took an especially hard hit, since conventions were one of the things most adversely affected by lockdowns in terms of force majeur shutdowns of events held in hotels and convention centers; this didn't kill off conventions in their entirety, but it forced them to either go online or suspend operations in their entirety, which means that not-for-profit (or even small for-profit) cons operating on a shoestring budget will be hard-pressed to return despite expenses such as booking hotel and convention space not being an issue due to the shutdowns.

So how to do it? The solution that many conrunners will adopt will be a hybrid model in which lower numbers of on-site attendees will be buttressed by online attendees. There's every possibility that on-site attendance may increase to pre-pandemic levels by 2022 if completely ideal post-pandemic conditions are in play by that time. However, there's no guarantee that that would be the case; new strains of the novel coronavirus may crop up that are resistant to vaccines, and if not the possibility of large amounts of people becoming apathetic or outright blase about Covid-19 as a continuing threat to public health can't be ruled out. We've already seen what remaining ignorant about this disease can do; the antimask and antivaccine movements in the US have made opening large-scale events problematic, and unfortunately they'll probably continue to do so. Holding something as large as San Diego Comic Con would be anything from difficult to downright nightmarish under such circumstances, but a hybrid model - though less financially lucrative - would be far safer, at least for 2021.

A hybrid model for SF conventions still raises the question of how to accomplish an on-site presence that can be considered safe for in-person attendees. What concoms would need to do is closely coordinate with hotel management in terms of rules concerning reduced function space occupancy, cleaning and disinfecting of frequently used areas, proper social distancing for waiting in line for events, etc. Concoms may need to either increase the size of their Ops or security divisions to assist the hotel with their more stringent safety rules - or, in fact, take responsibility for them in public con space themselves. This isn't merely a question of making sure attendees don't become infected and sick - a hotel that refuses to host a convention because of staff negilence means that that convention will have to go looking for a new venue. Worse, it could mean that they're getting sued by an affected attendee as well. Cons may have no choice but to create entirely new concom divisions intended to deal with such post-pandemic issues and nothing else until the pandemic is finally over with.

All that being said, conventions are still such a central element of fandom that they'll never go away entirely. They may need to be retooled in order to keep functioning in a post-pandemic atmosphere, but there's no reason not to make the effort. Fandom has survived several wars and tons of worldwide political upheaval since Nycon I in 1939. There's no reason it can't survive this as well.

My personal $0.02 on convention cancellations due to the pandemic:

Even if we're exceedingly lucky and this thing eventually burns itself out like the 1918 flu pandemic did, it took that particular disaster roughly two years to be over and done with. Even if it only takes a single year from now because of a variety of factors (including the fact that we have better medical and scientific knowledge and treatment techniques than in 1918-19), that still means that it might not be safe to hold conventions until May 2021. That means that cons running from Anime Central this year until Acen next year won't be able to be held - or held in the same way they used to be.

This also means that local events ranging from Acen through Gen Con, Wizard World, Windycon, Capricon next year and possibly Acen in 2021 might all be washouts. No one can entirely predict how the pandemic will play out by then, but if the Illinois rule holding public events down to 50 people or less continues to be necessary that would completely wipe out all of the aforementioned conventions that are held in Illinois. As for Indiana, their events have to follow state law as well. And large events held outside the area like San Diego Comicon, Dragon*Con and Worldcon would have to follow their respective local law - or just admit that the accompanying liability issues just aren't worth the risk. And, IMO, they're not.

With all of those factors laid out on the table, this much can be said - conventions may have to sit on their budgets until a time they can be held safely. Vendors may have to rely on online or mail-order sales instead. And fans may have to find new ways to network or hold online "conventions" until we get out of this mess. Yes, the situation is bad. Quite bad, as someone who both staffs and attends conventions. But it's still far better than the alternative.