Biography
By Mark Plummer
Press [Trousers] to Continue: Through Space and Time with James Bacon
The first time I saw James Bacon he was wrapped in cling film. I never found
out why he'd opted for that particular mode of dress -- somehow the mere
fact that we were at a convention called Inconceivable doesn't seem quite
sufficient -- but the subsequent decade has rather served to demonstrate
that this initial encounter wasn't in any way remarkable and, if anything,
was actually a little restrained. After all, he was only twenty years old
and attending his first UK convention; while the cling film may have been
revealing, it did not expose his full potential.
Since that appearance at Incon -- when he was merely one of several (OK,
two) plastic-wrapped-Irish-fans-called-James -- European fandom has been
repeatedly assaulted by the full-on James Experience. And it is a wonder to
behold, with or without a transparent cling film covering. The last few years
have seen a succession of Baconian productions and co-productions --
conventions such as Aliens Stole My Handbag, Damn Fine Con, and They Came
and Shaved Us, plus an assortment of events arranged under the aegis of
Sproutlore (the Robert Rankin Appreciation Society) -- each more inventive
and extreme than the last, and all seeking to push the envelope of the
possible that bit more so that it isn't merely stretched to its limit but
actually bursts apart altogether, rather like John Hurt's stomach in
_Alien_. And with just as much mess.
So we have become used to him as a personification of excess. But this is
only one -- albeit highly visible -- facet of the bundle of energy that we
call James Bacon. You'll also find him sitting at the back of an Eastercon
feedback session, listening to (and diligently taking notes about) the
myriad attendee grumbles, looking for the genuine issues so that he can plan
to avoid them himself. And later he'll be standing before an audience in
the main hall -- all neatly suited and with immaculately pressed trousers --
to announce the latest winner of the James White Award, which he founded and
administers. And he writes, on paper and on-line -- but always in a
characteristically chaotic manner -- about fandom and Worldcons, what we're
doing and where we're going, challenging the conventions (in both senses) of
the fannish mainstream. He makes you think. Sometimes he makes you think
that he's cataclysmically wrong, but you always know that he cares.
But let's be blunt about this. You'll also find him posting to mailing
lists, asking if anybody has an old vacuum cleaner that can be deployed for
some convention wheeze -- always bearing in mind, as he warns ominously,
that you won't want it back after he's finished with it. Or he'll be in the
convention hotel car park, tying fireworks to skateboards, as committee
members stand by nervously combing the small print of their insurance
policies. And then he'll be off orchestrating a game, the purpose of which
isn't entirely clear although it does seems to involve rubber gloves and
chickens and a godalmighty mess. I suspect that when we come to examine the
James Bacon legacy, it is unlikely to result in his canonisation as the patron
saint of health and safety inspectors.
Yet whatever he's doing, James Bacon is the living embodiment of Nigel
Tufnell's amplifier: he goes all the way up to eleven. And moreover, he
_always_ runs at eleven; I'm not entirely sure I've ever seen him running at
one, five, or even ten, even over breakfast. To paraphrase the Duke of
Wellington, I do not know what effect he will have on the Americans, but by
god, he frightens me. Although not in a bad way.
Because now we must add another facet to James: Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund
(TAFF) delegate for 2004, travelling to the United States for the Worldcon
in Boston this September. It was fifty years ago that the late A Vincent
Clarke won the first TAFF race (as luck would have it, personal
circumstances meant he was unable to make the trip) but the inspiration for
what became a regular event was the one-off fund created to bring Belfast
fan Walt Willis to the 1952 Worldcon in Chicago, so it is perhaps fitting
that in TAFF's fiftieth anniversary year it should send its first Irish fan
across the Atlantic as a delegate. With his ideas, certainly -- and maybe
with his cling film and his neatly pressed trousers.
Mark Plummer
8 June 2004
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