Why does this brawl between rival Star Wars and Doctor Who fan clubs sound like a scene from Fanboys? http://t.co/YecFnnhdpl
Tagged: fandom RSS
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Capt. Xerox
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Capt. Xerox
If you’ve attended Montreal’s Con*Cept convention in the past, you probably received this message:
What : Convocation for a special general assembly
When : January 20th, 2013, at 12h30
Where : Hôtel Espresso, 1005 rue Guy, Montréal, room to be determinedAgenda
======1. Start of the special general assembly
2. Reading of the agenda
3. Resolution to dissolve/liquidate “ConCept SF&F inc”
3.1. Nomination of the liquidator
3.2. Disposition of the goods4. End of the special general assembly
Marc Nadeau
ConCept SF&F inc – Secretary-treasurerIt’s sad news, but probably not surprising. The convention has been limping along for a few years now, not due to any lack of effort on the part of the organizers. Bravo to all of the volunteers who have worked so hard since Con*Cept began. I have a lot of happy memories from my visits.
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Capt. Xerox
Sound’s like Ottawa’s Can-Con is growing. Too bad Montreal’s Con*Cept is going in the opposite direction. http://t.co/Scr3VIzq
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Lazarus
Still small for sure but I find it hard to believe that last year there were only 125 people. That number is probably from the first year and there was a noticeable increase last year.
I had an interesting conversation last weekend at the Montreal Comicon (I went Saturday only) with someone who was trying to keep Concept afloat. He thought that the recent success of those comicons probably had an influence on the downturn at traditional SF cons. It’s hard to argue. I went to both Ottawa and Montreal comicons this year and spent considerable coin at each. I can easily see people having to decide on one or the other. I guess I’ll find out this weekend at Can-con.
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Capt. Xerox
The subject has come up at other cons. Comicon and media-related cons are bringing in the young folks, but the traditional fan cons are declining in attendance because those fans are aging and they’re not being replaced in sustainable numbers. What are media cons doing that the others aren’t or is it the subject matter?
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Capt. Xerox
Did you see the news on who won the Worldcon bid for 2014? It was London. Weren’t the Olympics enough? http://t.co/tuw67GWZ
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Capt. Xerox
Can you find yourself in one of the thousands of photos in the Midamerican Fan Photo Archive? http://t.co/hFxRyNsj
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Capt. Xerox
Never been to a Worldcon? Mike Resnick offers this informative guide for beginners. http://t.co/LPkkYokx
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Capt. Xerox
I was just perusing the list of Hugo nominations. I am going to go out on a limb and predict, without reading any of the nominated novels, that China Mieville will with for Embassytown.
Okay, I confess that I have read some of Embassytown as I picked it up in anticipation of it being nominated. I think that there is enough being said and written about the book that it will be an easy winner.
Seeing that the Hugos are more of a popularity contest these days, I think the closest competitor for Mieville will be George R.R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons, not because it’s a great book, which it very well may be, but because Martin’s Game of Thrones has been such a success in its HBO television adaptation. That name recognition factor will go a long way to helping it win votes.
Don’t get me started about how something with dragons in the title is being nominated for a science fiction award. You don’t see stories about rockets and robots when the World Fantasy Awards are handed out.
Probably the strangest nomination is for something called “The Drink Tank’s Hugo Acceptance Speech” by Christopher J Garcia and James Bacon from Renovation. How meta is that? If it wins, could the acceptance speech for that award be nominated for a Hugo next year?
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Jeffrey Allan Boman
I’ve known Chris for about 6 years now. He was one of my nominators for DUFF in 2010. He’s a very entertaining person, so his speech was likely gold.
I’m glad his zine (which I’ve written for) won. In the past years podcasts and other unrelated things have instead. He deserved one just for being prolific.
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Kevin
The Hugo Awards are not exclusively for science fiction. It says so right in their official definition in the WSFS Constitution, section 3.2.1: Unless otherwise specified, Hugo Awards are given for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year.
The World Fantasy Awards are presented by a small jury with strong administrative powers to arbitrarily define what they consider “fantasy” and “not-fantasy.” The Hugo Award administrators are strongly discouraged from applying any form of value judgements on the works, and to leave the decision as to whether a work is SF, Fantasy, or related to the field in some way up to the voters. Think of it as having a “jury” of over 1,100 members.
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Capt. Xerox
Thanks for the clarification. I never looked that closely at the definitions for the awards. In my mind, they’ve always been awards for science fiction, but clearly they are not. There certainly have been other fantasy books that have been nominated and won over the years and a few borderline cases that had me scratching my head over their inclusion.
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Capt. Xerox
An entertaining story about an 85-min edit of the Star Wars prequels that seems oblivious of http://t.co/6bp4UOxY. http://t.co/I87C8LHS
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Capt. Xerox
Before the web, fans complained about movies in Starlog letters. James Cameron replied to some of them in this essay. http://t.co/KzneNaQm
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Capt. Xerox
Interesting story about how CBS blocked fans from filming an unused Star Trek script written by Norman Spinrad. http://t.co/0xv52ooL
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Capt. Xerox
Montreal's fan-run science fiction convention, Con*Cept, has had its ups and downs over the past 22 years, but it keeps soldiering on. I've been to all of them except two and still have the programmes squirrelled away somewhere to prove it. The most recent edition of the now venerable con was this past weekend.
Time constraints usually mean I can only attend one day of the three-day convention so I normally choose Saturday which is the busiest of the three. This year's author Guest of Honour was the prolific Eric Flint, a name which is certainly familiar, but I can't say I've read much of his work.
After registering, I took in a panel about e-books upon which Flint was one of the panelists. Many of the fans in attendance were brandishing Kindles or Kobos and seemed to be converts to ebooks. The panelists agreed that electronic books had a bright future, but Flint doubted that they would supplant paper books completely. He figured they would develop in parallel and stated that history is filled with instances of one technology coming along to edge another aside, but not completely eliminating it. Perhaps, but I don't see many people listening to music on 8-track tapes or reading texts on papyrus scrolls.
Next up was the GoH speech from Flint. He spoke at length about his upcoming books that are part of his sprawling 1632 series which are alternate history stories. The bulk of Flints books are co-authored with other writers so he spoke a bit about collaborations and how they work. Flint came across as a no-nonsense type who knows how to make a buck out of writing.
I then sat in on the speech from the media GoH which was Agam Darshi, a Vancouver actress who appears in the TV show Sanctuary. I can't say I've ever seen a single episode, but thought she might have something interesting to say. She didn't. She just seemed young and not used to speaking to an audience. She admitted that it was her first convention and seemed happy that it was a small one, there were perhaps 30 people in the room for her speech.
I spent a bit of time in the dealer's room, but can't say I bought very much. I bought a few pins for one of my kids, a book and a used board game. There wasn't much there of interest to me. I normally gravitate to the book dealers, but there was only one small-press publisher selling his wares, a few obscure fantasy and vampire authors with their books and some used books in the con's "garage sale" section.
The next panel was probably the most interesting. It was about politics in science fiction which quickly evolved into a discussion about science fiction and politics. The distinction being they didn't discuss books with political content as much as they spoke about the poltical climate in which authors work or have worked.
The final panel I sat in on was called Anarchy and State and didn't have much in the way of science fiction content and, while not exactly an anarchic affair, it wasn't far off.
The last event I attended was the annual auction with half of the proceeds going to a literacy charity. The lots weren't very interesting which meant there wasn't much in the way of heavy bidding. The only thing that I really wanted was a lot of four Steve Jackson board games, but when the bidding hit $90, I dropped out, figuring I could buy the same games for about $100 so what was the point? I did pick up a lot of 5 graphic novels for $12, though, which was a pretty good score.
Since I was operating on a mere 5 hours sleep from the day before, I decided to check out early and headed home.
I can't say it was the best Con*Cept I had ever attended, but I'm glad I went. Support your local con, I always say. -
Capt. Xerox
Just reading Ansible and wonder how Fancyclopedia 3 differs from the Fanac Fan History Project of the Fan History Wiki. http://ow.ly/5Snn7
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Capt. Xerox
Just reading Ansible 286. Love Langford’s comment on not getting a Hugo nod: “So long, and thanks for all the rockets.” http://ow.ly/4QPKc
Kevin are discussing.
Jeffrey Allan Boman 1:52 pm on January 4, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
With the exception of the 3 1-day Relaxacons, I’ve been at Con*Cept since ’92, and was on concom from 1993-99.
I’m sorry to see it fail.