THE science-fiction fan stereotypes of geeks with their nerdy obsessions, their elves and robots and lack of sex lives remain, as do the cries of "why don't they take up more intellectually challenging interests like Big Brother?" But the jokes are way behind the times and it's hardly accurate to call it a minority genre anymore. Fantasy and sci-fi - or SF, as the touchier fans prefer to describe it - has taken over the mainstream.
The biggest movies are often based on comic strips or fantasy classics, from Sin City to upcoming V For Vendetta. The launch of a new Harry Potter book is one of the biggest arts event of the year while allegedly childish TV shows like Doctor Who and
Buffy the Vampire Slayer tackle questions of ethics, mortality and sexuality often absent in 'serious' drama.
Even hardcore sci-fi fans see less of a need to be defensive about the genre - which opens up more interesting possibilities. As leading fantasy author Neil Gaiman put it while hosting an awards ceremony earlier this year: "There was a battle for the minds of the world and we appear to have won it. And now we need to figure out what we're doing next."
Where they might start is at the World Science Fiction Convention - Worldcon for short - being held this week in Glasgow. Hardly a product of the current boom, it is actually the 63rd Worldcon. The event has grown from an idea by a handful of magazine writers in 1939 to a huge event which is due to attract some 4,000 fans from Europe, America, Asia, Australia and even a Vatican delegate (Brother Guy Consolmagno, a Jesuit astronomer).
An exhaustive programme of events ranges from the daft to the deeply serious and academic study of the genre. Where the geeky charge might be justified is in the awesome organisation.The event is put together by volunteer fans who spend years first bidding to host (like the Olympics) then relentlessly planning.
Also at the event is the science fiction equivalent of the Oscars, the Hugo Awards, which this year indicate one new direction for the genre: for the first time in their history, all the nominees for Best Novel are by British writers.
Edinburgh writer Charles Stross, who's in the running for his novel Iron Sunrise, reckons this is no coincidence. "The social context of the UK is more open to the future, the old pessimism has been scrubbed and there's a view that you can engage with the future again. There is quite a lot of optimism in British science fiction, much less of the sackcloth and ashes and 'we're all going to die' attitude that it used to have, whereas the Americans have become more entrenched and fearful since 2001."
But the Hugo novels are hardly disengaged with the present. Iron Sunrise is about an arms inspector trying to avert a war between colonial planets; China Miéville, nominated for Iron Council, is a Marxist and former general election candidate writing about revolution in a futuristic city; Ian McDonald's River Of Gods imagines India marking the centenary of independence; Iain M Banks (nominated for the first time) tackles religious intolerance and globalised culture in The Algebraist. Even Susanna Clarke's crossover hit Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, though ostensibly a 19th Century fantasy novel of manners, had a highly modern marketing push setting it up as the successor to Harry Potter.
"We're going through a golden age of science fiction and it's very much driven by the UK," says Vince Doherty, one of the organisers of the Worldcon.
Doherty, whose day job is in the oil industry, is keen to dispel the stereotypes surrounding sci-fi fans, especially the image of them dressing as Klingons. "We do have some people who walk around in costume and that's their thing but we do other stuff as well.
"We're very much about the genre as a whole; most of focus is on books but you can't separate that from films and TV and gaming. There's still a stigma attached to science fiction or any genre, but science fiction was here long before that and will outlast it."
Christopher Priest, a guest of honour at the convention could be regarded as someone who has beaten the stigma. His 1995 novel The Prestige won the James Tait Black Prize, a mainstream seal of approval to go with his four previous Hugo nominations.
"I don't think of myself as a science fiction writer but I wouldn't deny it," he says.
"But there are some people who only have to hear it's SF and you hear the crash of a mind closing. Margaret Atwood, for instance, writes really quite good science fiction but will not say the name."
Worldcon 2005 is at the SECC, Glasgow, 4-8 August. Memberships available at the door, £120 (£32 children) for the full event, £25-£40 (£5-£10 children) for single day admission. Details www.interaction.worldcon.org.uk
