I’m off to Worldcon in the morning. Will be back late on Monday. Probably won’t post much while I’m away…not that I’ve been posting much while at home, but just thought I’d post a notification. I might, however, be twittering up a storm. So if you gotta get your JJA fix, check out http://twitter.com/johnjosephadams. At the very least, I was planning to live-microblog the Hugos, so if you just can’t wait to find out who won, check my twitter feed on Saturday evening.
I’ll be attending Worldcon this year, which will be in Denver, August 6-10. While there, I’ll be on the following panels:
I haven’t seen program descriptions of these panels, but they sound pretty self-explanatory.
Also, on Worldcon Thursday, I won’t be at the convention itself, but will instead be going on a VIP tour of the NORAD facility at Cheyenne Mountain, which, as you may know, features prominently in many SFnal stories, such as Stargate and War Games, not to mention Jerry Oltion’s story in Wastelands, “Judgment Passed.”
UPDATE: I begged off the above-mentioned Mars panel due to it conflicting with the pre-Hugo reception for nominees (or in my case, nominees’ designated acceptors), and the fact that getting from the panel to the Hugo ceremony by the appointed time for nominees/acceptors would make things difficult.
I’ll be attending Readercon next weekend (July 17-20). Here’s what I’ll be up to at the convention:
Friday 2:00 PM, Salon G: Panel
What Has It Got in Its Apocalypses? John Joseph Adams, Jedediah Berry, Leah Bobet, Elizabeth Hand, Faye Ringel (L)
Cormac McCarthy’s _The Road_ never identifies the cataclysm that has destroyed society. So the novel is clearly not at all about any specific Bad Thing that might happen to us; rather, it uses the post-apocalyptic setting as an amplifier of human nature. To what degree has this always been true (if not quite so overtly) of the post-apocalyptic novel, whose history goes back to well before the Bomb? Why have authors sometimes explained the Bad Thing in detail anyway?
Friday 9:00 PM, VT: Group Reading (60 min.)
Wastelands Group Reading. John Joseph Adams (host) with Paolo Bacigalupi, Dale Bailey, Elizabeth Bear, John Langan, Jonathan Lethem.
Readings from the reprint anthology (subtitled Stories of the Apocalypse) edited by Adams and published by Night Shade Books in January.
The other day, I issued A Challenge to Con-Loving, Web-Savvy Fans for someone to create an SF con database searchable by zip code. Shortly thereafter, Nathan E. Lilly responded with Convention Finder.
Looks to be pretty cool. It’s still kind of in beta-mode; there’s only a few cons in the database so far. Spread the word and let’s see if we can’t fill that thing up. It’s really only useful if it’s got most of the conventions out there entered into it.
You know what some web-savvy fan should do? Gather up data on all of the science fiction conventions held every year (here’s a good place to start) and set up a database so that users can enter their zip code to discover which cons are closest to them. It would also be nice if you could search by date, so if you’re hankering for a con mid-April, you could, at a glance, see what’s happening.
Ah, cons. How I’ve missed thee. With World Fantasy being my most recent convention appearance (at the beginning of November), it had been quite a while since I’d immersed myself in the realm of fandom, and it was good to get back to it at Lunacon this weekend.
Lunacon was once again held at the Rye Town Hilton in Rye, New York, otherwise known as "the Escher Hilton" due to its funky floor plan that makes you feel as if you’re trapped in an M.C. Escher painting. For example, if you step off the elevator on the fourth floor and walk down a certain hallway (which slopes downward at a slight angle), you end up on the seventh floor; so in fact instead of going down a bit as you might imagine from the slight decline, you in fact somehow climb three floors with nary a slope in sight. In other words, the perfect place for an SF convention.
I drove up a day early to hang out with pal Rob Bland. We had dinner and chatted enough that I got a bit hoarse before the con even started, and then hung out in the room playing Guitar Hero, which I brought with me despite the Rye Town Hilton telling me over the phone that doing so was forbidden (because, one presumes, they have their $10/hour video game rental service). I figured there was no way they’d actually know I brought my illicit PS2 into the hotel so long as I hid it from the maid, so I went for it. And it worked. In case it didn’t, and since I was driving to the con, I brought a small TV with me so shredding would not be denied. Yes, I realize that’s a pretty geeky thing to do. But so is going to an SF convention.
I’ll be attending Lunacon next month (March 14-16), and just got my panel schedule. Here it is:
FRIDAY, MARCH 14TH
Track: Craft of Writing
Start Time: 03/14/2008 8:00:00 PM End Time: 03/14/2008 9:00:00 PM
Room: Poplar
Title: The Art of Criticism
Description: Experts review the state of the "art" of fantasy review and criticism. Is there too much out there? Too little? Are reviews helping or harming the field? Where can a reader go for reliable reviews? And, of course, what practical things can a writer do to insure a fair review? If you write
reviews, what is the best way to give an honest review without alienating either the readers or the author in question?Participants: John Joseph Adams, Peter Heck, Kim Paffenroth, Steven Sawicki [M], Ian Randal Strock,
SATURDAY, MARCH 15TH
Track: Track 51
Start Time: 03/15/2008 3:00:00 PM End Time: 03/15/2008 4:00:00 PM
Room: Odelle
Title: How I Learned to Stop Worrying, and Love the Post-Apocalyptic Story
Description: John Varley said "We all love after-the-bomb stories. If we didn’t, why would there be so many of them? There’s something attractive about all those people being gone, about wandering in a depopulated world, scrounging cans of Campbell’s pork and beans, defending one’s family from
marauders." Why *do* we all love after the bomb stories? What is it that makes them so compelling? Subconscious cultural anxiety? Is it Thanatoses,
schadenfreude, or something else entirely? There is no track 51. Move along.Participants: John Joseph Adams, Terri Osborne, John J. Pierce [M]
SUNDAY, MARCH 16TH
Track: Media
Start Time: 03/16/2008 1:00:00 PM End Time: 03/16/2008 2:00:00 PM
Room: Maple
Title: The Golden Age of Piracy
Description: The 18th century–the so-called Golden Age of Piracy–saw many parts of the world (not just the Caribbean) subject to merciless raids, unthinkable violence, and paralyzing terror. Today, we are living in another kind of Golden Age of Piracy–a Golden Age of Pirate Entertainment. Movies, novels, TV, video games–pirates have infiltrated seemingly every medium. Why is it pirates have so captured the imagination of genre writers, and what are the best examples of such fiction and/or film?Participants: John Joseph Adams, Ellen Asher, Andrea Kail, Alex Wittenberg [M]
Yay for pirates and post-apocalyptic panels!
Last night, I attended the annual SFWA Authors & Editors Reception (known colloquially as the "Mill ‘n Swill"), which was held, as it has been for the last several years, at the Society of Illustrators in Manhattan. Met with a bunch of folks for dinner beforehand, at a great Indian restaurant called Agra, which is located conveniently a block or so away from the reception’s venue. At dinner were some of the usual suspects, such as Doug Cohen, Andrea Kail, Chris Cevasco, Carol Pinchefsky, as well some new folks and a guest-appearance by Tor editor David Hartwell.
One of the new folks I met was Greg Cox, who turns out to be Richard Matheson’s editor; he commented that due to the upcoming film based on Matheson’s I Am Legend, the book will finally be hitting the bestseller list, after only 50 or so years of being in print. This was a funny coincidence, as I was invited just this week to participate in a segment for NPR about I Am Legend, its film adaptations, and its relevance to post-apocalyptic fiction in general. (That’s where I come in; as an expert on post-apocalyptic fiction.) I’ll post more about that when I know more.
We showed up at the Society of Illustrators at about 8, an hour or so after the event started only to discover that there was no coat-check this year, and all of the self-serve coat racks appeared to be full. It being pretty fucking cold outside, I was well-layered, and would have liked to dispose of my trench coat, but it wasn’t all bad; carrying it around did afford me the opportunity to be chivalrous later on when I offered it to a chilly Jae Brim. (It was chilly because the top floor of the venue opens up onto a rooftop balcony, and many of us had gone there to escape the oppressive heat of the hundreds of bodies inside.)
Ran into James Cambias, one of the contributors to the The Pirate Issue (and a regular F&SF author), and chatted with him and his wife for a while. Actually, just prior to running into him, Diane Turnshek–director of the Alpha Writing Workshop for Young Writers–had just introduced me to three of her Alpha graduates and had me explaining the ever-so-fascinating tiers of the JJA rejection system. I didn’t manage to finish and ended up chatting with Jim instead. I did apologize when I found them later, but if you three are reading this, I just wanted to say again–sorry!
Saw a bunch of other people, of course, chatted, ate pretzels, etc. Fun, but nothing to write home about (then again, I just blogged about it, so maybe it’s worth writing home about after all). It’s probably more of a cool and/or important function if you don’t know a lot of people in the field and don’t live in the New York area or don’t go to conventions, but for a con-regular, tri-stater like me, it didn’t quite live up to my expectations.
Justine Graykin, author of “The Perfect Hook” from the Shimmer blood-thirsty pirate issue, took some photos at the pirate party at World Fantasy earlier this month.
Here’s me and the pirate wench Shimmer kindly provided for me:
Take note of the hook. Here’s me again with the hook:
Here’s Justine herself, reading “The Perfect Hook” at the WFC pirate reading:
And last but not least, here are everyday Shimmer pirates Beth Wodzinski (Captain/Publisher) and Mary Robinette Kowal (First Mate/Art Director):
If you weren’t there, you missed out! But you can still enjoy much of the fun by BUYING A COPY OF THE PIRATE ISSUE. You know you want to.
In a comment, SMD asked:
Do you know of any other large fantasy or science fiction conventions that would be really geared toward the literary side of fandom?
Depends on how large you mean when you say large. World Fantasy had about 1150 members this year (the largest in its history, actually, though there’s usually about 1000 attendees). Slightly smaller than that, but still really really good (and literary) are Readercon and Wiscon. (If you look through my archives on the blog here, you can find con reports for those two.)
I hear Boskone and Capclave are both really good in a similar way, but I haven’t been to either of those yet.
Other conventions I’ve been to that I like include Lunacon and Balticon; both have good literary programming, but they have a lot of other SFnal-related programming as well (so they’re not literary focused per se). Balticon the year I went had a large podcasting contingent, if you’re interested in that.
(It’s also worth noting that the year I went to Balticon, they had major guests like Gene Wolfe, Neil Gaiman, and Peter Beagle, but it kind of seemed like they were among the only 10 or so working writers who were actually there, and they didn’t seem approachable. Heck, I never even saw Neil Gaiman, except when he was on stage. Not sure if it’s always like that, but it’s probably because it’s the same weekend as Wiscon.)
And then of course there’s Worldcon, but I’m sure you knew of that one already. And that one’s certainly multimedia and doesn’t have as much of a focus on the literary side (though since it’s so big, it always has plenty, you just have to resign yourself to the fact that you’ll see people wearing costumes walking around).
I may be forgetting something. If I remember anything else, I’ll update this post. If anyone else wants to chime in with their recommendations, feel free!
