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This weekend during intersession college students from Columbia to the University of Chicago will fill Sever Hall for the Harvard Radcliffe Science Fiction Association’s (HRSFA) fifth annual conference, Vericon.
The conference, which is expected to draw about 200 participants, will screen a number of science fiction movies, organize role-playing games and feature guests like New York Times best-selling author Jacqueline Carey.
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“The science fiction culture, the fringe culture, is definitely not so well accepted at Harvard,” said von Korff.
Mainstream interest in science fiction, said von Korff, has grown in recent years thanks to several key movies. “[Science fiction] might have become so big lately just because of a few movies that were done really well—X-men, Spiderman, and then you have Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings,” von Korff, the guest coordinator for Vericon said. “They got the public imagination going.”
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Vericon isn’t the only conference celebrating science fiction being held in the area this year. Last weekend, 2,500 fans attended Arisia 2005, another local science fiction convention. Other conventions are scheduled for February, March and April in the Boston area. Moreover, until recently the Cambridge Public Library housed the most extensive public science fiction collection in the state.
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