Science, comics meld
Convention, simultaneous march share message, with cosplay or not
There was a March for Science going on over the weekend near downtown San Jose and a comic book convention a few blocks away.
For a several minutes during William Shatner’s “Star Trek” event Saturday, it was hard to tell which one the actor was attending.
“It’s going to happen!” Shatner said to a captivated audience during his surprise appearance at Silicon Valley Comic Con’s “Star Trek: The Next Generation” 30th anniversary panel.
“The glaciers are going to melt. The currents are going to turn. The climate is going to change. We’re in for a terrible time. … We have a chance to to mitigate it all, but we
have people who are governing us who are literally burying their heads in the sand.”
It was clear that this year, the second annual Silicon Valley Comic Con at the San Jose Convention Center doubled down on its mission to merge fantasy and hard science. Conventiongoers still dressed as Deadpool and Dr. Who, bought comic books and sought autographs from a guy who played Flash Gordon in a 1980 movie panned by critics, but they also attended panels surrounding the three-day convention’s theme, “The Future of Humanity: Where Will We Be in 2075?” NASA, the SETI Institute and smaller groups, including San Jose State University’s Students for Exploration and Development of Space, were among those with booths in the main hall.
“I think it’s a great idea,” said Leonard Rose of Hayward, who has been attending Bay Area sci-fi conventions since the first one, a 1975 “Star Trek” convention at Lincoln High School in San Francisco.
Rose and his wife, Bea, dressed in 1960s “Star Trek” uniforms, spent 10 minutes talking to a NASA representative about Earth-size objects orbiting other stars.
“Science fiction actually started off with extrapolation on science, and what could actually happen if some of these potential science and engineering inventions could be true,” Rose said.
That was also the assertion of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak when he started Silicon Valley Comic Con last year. The first one was a success, but it often seemed like two different conventions, with the real-life and fantasy elements not always merging in a natural way.
If anything, the tech aspect was amplified in 2017, with more scientists, panels and the-future-is-now displays including Pepper the Robot from SoftBank Robotics Corp. and numerous virtual reality companies.
The convention also physically expanded. After long lines and crowded halls created a logjam last year, organizers opened up the activity outside the main hall, including a free outdoor festival complete with a technology center and beer garden in Cesar Chavez Plaza across the street.
Silicon Valley Comic Con CEO Trip Hunter said Sunday that while the numbers were incomplete for this weekend, he thought they would be as strong as or stronger than 2016, when more than 60,000 attended.
Hunter reiterated that no matter how popular the convention gets, it won’t ever move to San Francisco or Los Angeles, like the last big Bay Area convention, WonderCon, did a few years ago.
“We’re not moving. That’s Woz’s directive,” Hunter said of the Silicon Valley resident, who has taught fifth-grade computer classes in local schools. “He just doesn’t have interest in doing this somewhere else.”
If the convention-goers were voting by their cosplay attire, it is still primarily a comic book and fantasy convention. There were very few costumes based on anything in real life. At least three father-daughter teams dressed as Wolverine and a blade-knuckled preteen X-23 from the recent movie “Logan.” Other large groups showed off hard-core “Star Trek” love, with a group of five men dressed as different ships from the television series, and “Stranger Things” cosplayers dressed as Eleven — complete with a box of Eggo waffles — and Barbara.
One of the largest crowds during the outdoor festival gathered Sunday for the Rover.com dog cosplay contest, featuring a dozen pups dressed as pop-culture favorites, from a Storm Trooper to Wonder Woman. Fans who cheered for the dogtestants included Wozniak, who posed for photos with the show’s big winner, a piebald dachshund named Layla dressed as Toothless from “How to Train Your Dragon,” and her handler, Barbie Garrison of Manteca, appropriately in “Game of Thrones” cosplay as Daenerys, Mother of Dragons.
The marquee guests who represent movies, TV and fantasy outnumbered the science celebrities. Actor John Cusack and “The Flash” stars Grant Gustin and Tom Felton were among the headliners — with the San Jose event being Gustin’s first con appearance.
“I’ve never been to one of these,” admitted Gustin during a lively Q&A at City National Civic during the convention’s last day. “It’s a very passionate fan base, which is fun.”
“It is a lovely thing,” added Felton, who also earned cheers from “Harry Potter” fans who love him as Draco Malfoy in the movies. “Sometimes it is a daunting thing to be approached by crazed fans, but you guys are all super friendly.”
It was quite the contrast to some of the science-focused panels, including a thoughtful Saturday afternoon conversation focusing on the underrepresentation of female engineers and mathematical scientists in the U.S., which were sparsely attended.
But the most celebrated guest this year may have been Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin . The 87-year-old moon-walker’s solo show at City National Civic auditorium was at least as packed as the “Star Trek”palooza the same morning that included Shatner and most of the cast of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
“People ask me, ‘Why do we need to go to Mars? Why do we even need a space program?’ ” Aldrin told the crowd. “Because by venturing into space, we improve life for everyone here on Earth.”
Across the street, SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak was enjoying the scene from the extraterrestrial-seeking institute’s valuable real estate near the center of the convention hall. Acknowledging that a very small percentage of convention-goers came there for the science, he still hopes to return to Silicon Valley Comic Con next year.
“In general, this is maybe not the demographic for fundraising, but it is the demographic for getting people interested in what we do,” Shostak said. “We convey some of the science to the people here — it isn’t all just ‘Star Trek.’ There are experiments that could tell you that somebody is out there, and they’re going on today.”
Chronicle arts content editor Mariecar Mendoza contributed
to this report.