By Mark Mitchell

For most attendees, science fiction conventions are a time to look one’s best: to dust off one’s Klingon uniform and get the old Ewok pressed.

Last weekend’s Mountain-Con convention was no different. Science fiction fans from all around the greater mountain area met in celebration of speculative fiction in all its forms, dressed in the ceremonial garb of their peoples.

It is at such gatherings that we receive a fleeting, but insightful, glimpse into our future. Traveling in space at hyper-speed, befriending the un-befriended and saving entire galaxies, including our own, with our advanced recycling methods.

But something went terribly, horribly wrong. Apparently in the future, one of society’s most treasured institutions has been seriously affronted: our fashion sense. It’s as if your favorite cat exploded and your grandmother got punched in the stomach and the horror you felt was transferred wholesale to a pair of nylon space pajamas.

Triangular shoulder pads, midriff safari ensembles, leather pants with giant codpieces and ruffle-y chemises-it hurts us deeply in the soul. It shocks us in the same way that looking at the picture of a charred head of a wartime soldier in Time/Life did when we were kids-but way worse, because these people paid tons of money and did it to themselves.

It is in our best interest as a society to take note of these echoes from the fashion future, and learn a serious lesson before it is too late to turn back and the only clothes available are faux-metallic, “Starlight Express”-like numbers and nuclear fallout has made everyone a mildly retarded robot impersonator.

In a cautionary spirit, here are a few examples from the Mountain-Con of the fashion horrors that await us:

What It’s Supposed To Be: A “Star Wars” Imperial Stormtrooper

What It Actually Is: One can imagine that whoever “sewed” this number did so by laying a number of white paper plates onto his or her kitchen floor, grabbing a saddle and piloting a glue-covered Larry King by throwing medicine in the direction he needed to go. Whatever stuck to King was laminated and worn as an outfit.

What It’s Supposed To Be: A Klingon commander

What It Actually Is: Is there a word in Klingon for ‘ugly’? Yes: ‘moH.’ And moH it is. It’s easy to think that perhaps the costume is just on backward. But then you realize that this person meant for it to look that way. It’s like when you saw the guys of Kriss Kross with their pants on backward rapping about missing their school bus. You knew that they were about five minutes away from never, ever working again. Society can only tolerate so much before it finally says, “Wait. We all just bought a CD by two kids with their pants on backward. What the hell is the matter with us?!” Behold the cloth-like manifestation of the specters of Kriss Kross. Be very afraid.

What It Is Supposed To Be: A woman warlock leather and chrome bikini ensemble.

What It Actually Is: A stripper costume. But a crabs-infested stripper. With herpes.

Yes, we’ve seen “the future,” thank you very much, and as it stands right now, it’s a brightly lit, shoddy, soulless bore. A regular citizenry of McFlabby consumers, sauntering about walleyed and dough-faced, encased in a puffy chrysalis of Gore-Tex and packing foam.

In fact, there can be no explanation for these conventions other than that our future selves traveled through time and placed these sci-fi convention-goers in our path as a dire warning to our time. A cautionary tale to rally the masses. We must fight the fashion future. It must be re-imagined, as the present vision is proving to be a failure. And do we just scoot hither and yon in our cocoons while the very foundation of our republic crumbles?

We can save the whales, rescue Spock, and still be home in time for dinner. But please god, let us do it in natural fibers.

Mike Terry

Trekkies Sam Warden and Scott Cagle learn self-defense moves in case they ever find themselves picked to fight against each other as Spock and Captain Kirk once did.

Mike Terry

“Which one doesn’t belong?” A TK-1958 Storm Trooper listens in on a panel discussion during the Mountain Con science-fiction convention last Saturday.