Sanderson’s family comprises his wife and two children, aged two and four. I ask if they had started going to conventions yet. “Not yet,” he replies with a smile, “but within a few years they will. I go to a con about every couple of months and my wife comes with me when she can. Like a lot of people, I’m very concerned about the ‘greying’ of fandom. We need to get children interested in the genre as early as practicable; certainly by the early teens.” He went on to say that Stateside conventions are becoming more and more family-friendly. This must encourage the younger fans to attend: not just children, but their parents. At Doomcon 2012 (Swancon 37), where I met Brandon Sanderson, every effort is made to make the event as family-friendly as possible, and I believe this is true of interstate conventions as well. Here in Australia, we usually think of American cons as huge affairs with thousands of attendees, but Brandon Sanderson assures me that this is not always the case. “Most cons in my area are quite small and family-friendly, like Swancon,” he says “Some only attract a couple of hundred people.”
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