Fandom

When I first heard about Star Wars Uncut, an effort to splice together a version of the George Lucas movie from scenes filmed by individual fans, I thought the idea was lame, but now that I've seen the trailer for the final version, I am much more excited. I am curious, though, to see if sitting through the entire film is bearable or if it's only the trailer that's worth watching.

The idea of making a fan film is daunting, but this project takes off some of the pressure because you only have to recreate something that already exists rather than come up with something original of your own. Hey, that kind of sounds like Hollywood today.

If you are interested in making fan movies of your own, IO9 recently ran an item about how to make science fiction films on the cheap. There's lots of good stuff there.

For more inspiration, check out this interview with Roger Corman. Sure his budgets are bigger than just about any fan film-maker, but he's a good example of doing a lot with a little.

To get an idea of some of the interesting short science fiction films that are being made, here's a cool alternative history story set during World War II and another project called Dark Matter which is a sort of online attempt to recreate an anthology series of stories like Twilight Zone or the Outer Limits.

Worldcon is over, but I've been stumbling across links today related to the convention, so I thought I'd dump them here before moving on to other topics.

One of the highlights of the weekend was the conversation between Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman and Hugo-winning author Charlie Stross. I've already mentioned it in the comments elsewhere, but I am repeating myself for those that don't dig that deep. A transcript of the interview can be found here and you can even download audio of the event.

Krugman admits that he was inspired to get into economics because of science fiction, specifically Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy.

Wired wondered whether it's time for the Hugo to open up a videogame category. If makes sense to me. Now if only they'd dump the semiprozine category.

AMC trumpeted the Hugo win of John Scalzi, who blogs for them. He won in the non-fiction category.

We'll trumpet our own Thoth for winning an Aurora. Wait, we'll let him do it himself. Congratulations, Thoth for a job well done!

The winner of the Aurora for best novel was Edward Willett for his book Marseguro.

The Canadian Press reported on the event saying how it was a great showcase for Canadian talent in the science fiction field.

Worldcon is over for another year and I wouldn't have missed it for the world. It was my first and it was as great as I thought it would be. I don't have experience at other cons with which to measure it, but judging from the comments I heard from other con-goers, Montreal was as good a con as any in recent years.

I enjoyed getting autographs from some of my favourite authors and seeing them talk on various discussion panels. What you quickly discover is just how nice and approachable just about all the authors are. The exception is probably Gaiman. It's not that he's not approachable, it's just that so many people want to approach him that he is whisked from event to event by his Amazon bodyguards. He must be exhausted.

The biggest drawback is the sheer number of events at the convention. There are so many great panels going on simultaneously that you can only see small sampling of the ones that interest you.

I decided to start my day today with a panel attended by Connie Willis and S.M. Stirling just because they were on the panel and I hadn't seen them yet, except for in the signing area.

The panel was about historical research for science fiction writing. I was glad to hear from Willis that she's about to publish a two-part book about the London blitz. Her novella Fire Watch, also set in that time, is one of her best stories so this has the potential to be great.

Lazarus and I converged on the autograph room, each wanting a signature from Charlie Stross and John Scalzi. Lazarus also wanted to get one from Julie Czerneda for a book which he's been carrying around for 10 years and never finding the moment to nab her for a signature.

I got the Scalzi signatures and Lazarus got the Stross signatures. We probably should have done it the other way around. I had the misfortune of never hearing Stross on any panel. In fact, I never even saw him and have no idea what he looks like.

We hurried off to a panel about the Drake Equation and Fermi Paradox, but it was SRO. Fortunately, after 20 minutes in to the 90-minute event, we were able to swap rooms with an adjacent panel which had a room three times the size and only three people in it.

It was one of the most cererbral of the panels I attended throughout the convention, but possibly the most interesting. Panelists talked about the Drake equation and the excuses we use to explain why we haven't detected any aliens yet which is the Fermi paradox.

Shortly after lunch, I attended the Technobabble Quiz show where the audience pitted wits against the panelists, who were other super-fen, on trivia questions about science and science fiction. Points were awarded for getting the correct answers as well as amusing ones. Hugo-winning fanzine Steve Silver won the event, but the audience came in a close second. I managed to score some points for knowing that limnology is the study of lakes.

I ended the convention with a panel on the pathologies of fan culture. It was also SRO and a fascinating discussion about fans. The upshot was that despite many believing that they are somehow intellectually superior to the general public, the reality is that we are not. We are just another subculture and all subcultures have superiority tendencies.

Before leaving, I took one last tour of the dealers' room and found a batch of signed books at the Chapters table so I added some more to my haul from this con. They were actually books that I had wanted to buy anway at some point and since these were autographed, that was enough to make me crack open my wallet and, unlike some independent dealers, Chapters doesn't charge a premium for a signature.

That's the end of my report of the Worldcon that was. We will return to our regular programming tomorrow.

Today was the big day for the Hugo Awards. I'm not at all surprised that Guest of Honour Neil Gaiman won for best novel for The Graveyard Book. It got my second place vote after Neal Stephenson's Anathem. Even Gaiman admitted on stage that he was a bit surprised to win it because he was convinced Stephenson would take the prize and, as a result, he didn't have a victory speech prepared.

Considering the Gaiman cultists were attending the convention in force and Stephenson's novel was not released in an electronic format for convention members to read in advance of voting, it's no shock that Graveyard Book won. It's also a great book despite the politics of how people voted.

In an earlier panel on the secret passions of Neil Gaiman, he said that he'd probably write another book connected to the Graveyard book and suggested it might be a brick that would take him years to write and said that if The Graveyard Book was The Hobbit then his next book would be its Lord of the Rings.

He doesn't necessarily want to go back to the characters of The Graveyard Book, but to explore some of the larger forces at work in that universe in a more epic way.

He also spoke lovingly of his beekeeping and former hobby of growing exotic pumpkins. His acolytes ate up his anecdotes, but, despite his humourous delivery, were rather banal.

The Hugo ceremony was a fun affair and I was glad I got to see it in person. I made it a point of only voting in categories for which I felt I was familiar enough with the candidates that I could cast an informed vote, but it's clear that a lot of people vote on name recognition only, especially in some of the fan categories.

The best fan writer and artist each urged voters to consider choosing someone else in the future as they had won enough Hugos. David G. Hartwell has won three himself and said he wanted to withdraw from future awards.

The only other award I wanted to mention was the best dramatic long form presentation. I was glad to see Wall-E win instead of Batman: The Dark Knight. I think the comic fanboys split the vote with Batman, Iron Man and Hellboy to let Wall-E win. Besides, it's a much better science fiction story than any of those other popcorn films.

Like other days here at the con, I've been attending panels and hanging out for autographs with the occasional foray into the dealers' room. Things must be slowing down because I didn't buy anything today and collected only one autograph, this one from Jo Walton who I asked if she's coming to Con*Cept this year, a con she missed last year because she was out of town. She said the would most likely be able to make it this year which is good news because she is such a bright and funny person to have in a room that she makes any panel instantly enjoyable.

Some of the panels I attended today included one on the singularity. Peter Watts moderated the discussion between Gregory Wilson, Jody Lynn Nye, Paul Chafe and Walter Hunt.

Chafe was the only one to have written a story on the subject and the rest of them scoffed at the concept, pretty much saying it would never happen. However, if it ever did, they admitted that we probably wouldn't be aware of it until long after it happened, sort of like puberty.

Another interesting panel was about publishing scams. On the panel were writer James D. Macdonald, who runs a site called Absolute Write to help fight such scams, and Teresa Nielsen Hayden and Ginjer Buchanan. It was quite informative and the contents could be summed up as they should pay you, you shouldn't pay them.

Because I hadn't seen Larry Niven yet, I chose to attend on of the few panels he was on. This one was about the economics of interstellar trade. James Alan Gardner, James Cambias and Steve Miller were the other panelists. Niven didn't speak much, but he was amusing when he did. The panel was fairly dry, as you might expect with a bunch of hard SF writers, but the bottom line was there probably very few commodities that would be valuable to trade over insterstellar distances.

The final panel of the day was before the Hugos and not very well attended. I suspect too many people were trying to grab a bite to eat before the awards ceremony or were already in line for the grand hall where they were taken place.

This panel was about science fiction criticism and what effect the internet has had on it. There was some gnashing of teeth that anyone and everyone's a critic now, no matter how uninformed, and the internet gives them all a platform to spread their criticisms. This somehow diminished the authority of experts with informed opinions, but as one audience member pointed out only a small minority of readers prior to the internet would care enough to read these sort of academic and important opinions and that percentage of people who care on the internet remains just as minute.

Just one more day before it's all over. I expect Monday will be less busy as many people are already decamping to return to wherever they came from and only the hardcore and the locals will remain.

It's the weekend so the halls of the convention centre are getting busier as attendance to the Worldcon grows. I don't remember the last body count, but it was well over 3,000 attendees. I'm sure that number will be significantly higher by the time they finish counting.

My schedule seemed less packed today, maybe because I wasn't wasting as much of it waiting in line to get things signed as I did yesterday. I did get some books signed, but the lines were much shorter. I started with Robert Silverberg, an excellent writer who is one of the greats in the field, but who, in my opinion, is almost taken for granted because he's been so consistently good for so long that you stop noticing it.

Despite him being on only a handful of panels, he seems to be omnipresent. You constantly see him in the halls talking with some fan. I asked him to sign a copy of Gilgamesh the King, a book I've never read, but asked him if it at all informed the Hugo-winning novella Gilgamesh in the Outback. He said that he used historical research about the character for the two stories, but that was about it. I can tell you that the novella is a great read and it ranks highly on my ever-shifting list of favourite stories.

Later, I met with Joe Haldeman to get his autograph. I asked him if he had ever been to Montreal and he said a few times. The most memorable was a trip to the world fair, Expo 67. He came home to find his selective service notice which meant he had been drafted in to the army where he went to serve in Vietnam, an experience that coloured a lot of his later writing, especially his famous book The Forever War.

I got the ubiquitous David G. Hartwell to sign an an anthology of Canadian science fiction that I had kicking around called Northern Suns. I'm kicking myself because 80% of the writers in that anthology are here and I could probably fill the thing up with signatures like a yearbook.

The last signature of the day was from Peter Watts, a Canadian author who I greatly admire, especially for his book Starfish. He had no signing sessions scheduled so I stalked him at one of his panels where he graciously signed the book and personalized it with something witty. He was also amazed to see that it was a first-edition hardcover, something that even he doesn't own. He says the first run was small and sold out before the second printing which is what he got from Tor.

The great revelation for me was that despite the morose and messed up people in his stories, he is a laugh riot. He moderated a panel about why there are no cross-genre hard-SF stories. For example, why are there no hard-SF westerns?

Karl Schroeder was also on the panel and the two of them were like a regular comedy team as they pondered the question. I don't think the panel ever came up with a conclusion because they struggled with an attempt to define hard SF as well as the definition of cross-genre. For example, how many horror tropes do you need in an SF story before it gets labelled as cross-genre?

Earlier, I went to the Tor presentation about their upcoming books. Tom Doherty was there along with several of his editors, including David G. Hartwell who came late because he was in a meeting of the WSFS who were debating whether the semiprozine Hugo category should be preserved. Hartwell, who's perpetually nominated for the New York Review of Science Fiction in that category, made sure to vote for its preservation which it was.

They were most excited about the last installment of the Wheel of Time books, which didn't interest me, but there were several other titles which did so I jotted down some titles and I'll no doubt be spending more money on books.

Another panel I attended was about online magazines. The panelists discussed the dirty truth about publishing, whether it be electronic or print, is that it doesn't really make money. Everyone's in it just because they like it.

The lifespan of the average online magazine is only a little bit longer than a fruit fly, but some have managed to hang on for years. There was discussion about the perception of online fiction as being somehow less important because of its impermanence. There was some annoyance about the fact that many online magazines have more unique visitors in a month than the big three print magazines have monthly subscribers, but it seems that these prejudices are slowly changing.

Much of it is generational as younger people become more comfortable reading things on screens unlike the old-timers who want everything on paper. The editor of Clarkeworld was there as was writer Leah Bobet, who is also an editor from Ideomancer. Online magazines mentioned during the panel that I'll have to check out are Sybil's Garage, The Gloaming and Fantasy Magazine.

I also went to the fan fund auction which was meant to raise money for TAFF, DUFF and CUFF. These funds help send fans from one part of the world to another to foster links between people in different parts of the world. It seems archaic in this era of instant communication, but nothing really substitutes for F2F meetings. My contribution was a $13 bid for a hand-made object d'art with a robot motif. I bid on the prize to have my name immortalized in the next Neil Gaiman novel, but it was nowhere near the final bid of $700.

I went to one other panel before the masquerade which was about comic books, but I came in late and they were so off topic that I didn't really pay much attention.

The masquerade was pretty spectacular. Some of the costumes were very well done. Okay, they were all well done, but I'll leave it to the judges to pick a winner, because I can't.

And thus ends my broadcast day. More panels are in store for tomorrow, maybe a signing or two and, of course, the Hugo Awards ceremony.

Day 2 is done for me at Worldcon, but for the hardcore party crowd, the evening is far from over, but after 12 hours of panels and book signings, I'm pooched.

The biggest disappointment for me was the news that Ian McDonald wouldn't be attending the convention. He's one of my favourite writers and I was anxious to get to meet him. I was also disappointed to learn that Norman Spinrad couldn't come. There was actually quite a long list of people who had cancelled, although attendance was noticeably higher, presumably because it was a Friday, and I expect it will grow during the weekend.

My first order of business this morning was to get in line to get a ticket so that I could stand in line again later in the day to get Neil Gaiman to sign a few books. The idea of limiting the signing to 200 ticket holders sounds good, but instead of being disappointed when you are turned back during the signing, it just pre-empts things by getting you disappointed when you are turned back when they run out of tickets.

Once that was done, I attended a few creative writing panels. One was with editor Ellen Datlow and writer Delia Sherman on the relationship between editors and their writers. Because the two had worked together closely over the years it was interesting to hear about the process they use to get a story published.

That panel was followed by one with writers Eileen Gunn and Rich Chwedyk, both Nebula Winners, about how they write characters in such a way to make them readily distinguishable to the reader. It is a challenge because I know I've read plenty of stories where I had no clue who was talking in a given scene.

Chwedyk was articulate enough, but he droned on about his dinosaur stories and for this non-reader of those stories, it wasn't very interesting. Gunn was more laconic and offered up the secret of writing as taught to her at a con years ago by William Gibson. I'm paraphrasing, but he essentially told her that she needed to stop being your own worse critic and avoid the natural instinct to think your writing is terrible.

Next up was a panel about New Media that had Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow, Melissa Auf der Maur, Ellen Kushner, Tobias Buckell and one other participant.

It was well attended and a very funny and interesting discussion about how digital technologies are transforming the ways that artists create and distribute their work.

After that panel, I went off to get a book signed by Connie Willis. She was very pleasant to chat with and while I was waiting to get my book sign, Robert Silverberg dropped by to tell her of that night's dinner plans. As he walked away, she gushed that he was the most gorgeous man in science fiction when she broke into the field and she thinks he still is. I'll take her word on that, but I must admit he does cut a dashing figure for a man of his years.

I also got Robert Sawyer to sign a copy of Flash Forward, the book which is about to be adapted as a TV show. I expressed to him my doubts that the story could be made into an episodic television series. All he could tell me is that he was sworn to secrecy, but that the writers had come up with a clever way to adapt it and that they'd already plotted out five years of episodes.

When that was done, I visited the dealer's room again where I picked up a NESFA anthology of Robert Sheckely novels. I was fortunate enough to discover that it had been signed, which i a bonus.

Next up was another book signing. This time with Guy Gavriel Kay. I'm not a fan, only because I've never read a word of his writing, but my wife is and I toted along the Lions of Al-Rassen to have him sign it and the hardcover version of that is like carrying around two bricks. He was also very gracious with his fans and a pleasure to talk with, even if the encounter is for only a few minutes.

The line-up to get books signed with Kay was extraordinarily long and I noted that many of the fans were women. The interesting phenomenon about that is there is a lot more talk about people in line about Kay's books whereas in other lines that are either mixed gender or primarily male, there's less interaction.

While Kay was signing, there were other authors in the autograph area which were lucky to get two or three fans come up to them. Some of the people around me were commenting on it and I told them about the time I saw a lonely Kay at a Con*Cept signing session more than 15 years ago while fans were busily fawning over Roger Zelazny. You've got to pay your dues.

While waiting for that book to be signed, I overheard that the Gaiman line was already forming an hour ahead of time. I saw the line and realized that I should get in there. It was a wise decision because I ended up waiting an hour to get my books signed by him because I saw him still signing books two hours later and I figured he'd be there another hour and the session was only supposed to last 90 minutes.

Gaiman seems to have an entourage of attractive young women who are his aides. They also tend to wear black leather jackets which makes me think they are some kind of amazon bodyguards, kind of like the all-female force that protects Libya's Moamar Khadafi.

Lazarus and I tried to find the Aurora ceremonies, but failed. We wanted to go because Thoth was nominated for fan achievement - fanzine. Too bad we missed it, because he won!

Instead, we went to dinner in Chinatown where we had Vietnamese soup then returned for a panel about ebooks. All of the panelists were electronic-book advocates as were many of the people in the audience. The consensus was ebook readers are only going to get better and more people are going to want their books in that format, but they admit that paper books aren't going to be completely replaced by them, at least not yet.

Finally, we went to the Chesley Awards ceremony where the year's best science fiction and fantasy art is rewarded. It was great to see some of the nominated works projected on a big screen, but the ceremony was painfully amateurish and their desire to translate it word for word ruined the pacing, not to mention numerous technical glitches slowed them down. It took half an hour before the first of a dozen or so awards were handed out.

Still, it was nice to see the folks who make those amazing covers that make us pick up those books be rewarded for their fine work. For a list of winners, check out John Picacio's Twitter feed where he lists them all, including his own.

Now it is sleep time for me so that I can be back up early tomorrow for more battling at the con. I plan to get a few more books signed, but to attend more panels than today and check out the costume masquerade.

I'm just back from my first day at Worldcon. It was as overwhelming as I expected. I knew it would be after studying the draft version of the programme. In any given hour there are about four things I want to do and I know I can't do them all and have to be strategic in my choices.

I got there early and was registered within a few minutes. I caught up with Lazarus and Thoth and saw a few other people I knew. There wasn't much to do early on as the dealers and art show weren't set up and the panels didn't start for another few hours so all I could do was buy the t-shirt.

I chose the one with the Jean-Pierre Normand painting of a space station because I don't at all like the official hockey-playing skunk furry version drawn by fan GoH Taral Wayne.

After hanging out for a few hours, I attended my first panel. It was about the use of social media networks by writers and whether they could use it as an artistic medium or as a way to connect with fans.

Artist John Picacio, agent Jenny Rae Rappaport and writers Mary Kowal and Walter Jon Williams were on the panel. Three of the four panelists had fully embraced Twitter and Facebook as ways to connect with fans and promote their work, Williams was the dissenting voice. He had a blog, which he disparaged as a waste of time that could be better spent writing.

Kowal, who pretty much won the Campbell Award last year on the strength of her ability to network, told Williams that his promotional efforts weren't working because he wasn't doing it properly. Perhaps, but I can say that I've read Williams stories, but can't say the same for Kowal and wonder if being good at online self-promotion will sell more mediocre books than well-written ones.

Next up, was a panel about replacing soldiers with robots. I was mostly interested to hear what Joe Haldeman's take would be on the subject as he was on the panel, but it turned out he couldn't make it so there was a last-minute substitution.

Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Paul Chafe, Lauren Beukes and Mike "Sparks" Rennie sat on the panel and it was a far-ranging discussion which, at times, became political as real-world uses of high-tech in Afghanistan and Iraq were discussed. Since many in the audience were America and the panelists were two Brits, a South African and a Canadian, let's say there were some differences in opinion. There were no harsh words, but a few ideological speeches were made. All in all, though, it was an excellent session and Rennie was quite adept at keeping things under control.

The next panel was an hommage to John M. Ford which had Neil Gaiman, Jo Walton and others, but by the time I got to the too-small room for Gaiman's groupies, it was standing-room only so I moved on to my second choice which, it turned out, had been rescheduled so I had to settle on a third choice.

It was about international science fiction and featured a panel of four speakers who's first language was not English. There was moments of insight to be had, especially about Japanese publishing, but it was not so interesting so I had to bail after about an hour of the 90 minutes.

Lazarus and I had dinner in nearby Chinatown, then we came back for another panel, but it was already 30 minutes in so we took in the art show instead. There was some great stuff there, but there just wasn't enough science fiction art for my tastes. The trend these days seems to be vampires, dragons and other fantasy themes. I'm just surprised there were no unicorns.

I wrapped up my day with a visit to the opening ceremonies hosted by Canadian author Julie Czerneda and Montreal artist Jean-Pierre Normand. It was delightfully amateurish as the introduced Canada's first astronaut, Marc Garneau, who gave a nice speech, the Anticipation organizers and the various guests of honour who. The presentations were interspersed with a performance by a contortionist from the Montreal Circus School. Weird, but dazzling.

I'd been at it for 12 hours and while I was tempted to stay for just one more panel, I knew I had to call it quits. There's still tomorrow and the day after that and then the day after that and then one more day. As for the hotel parties, I'll leave that to the out-of-towners. What happens in Montreal stays in Montreal.

If you're interested in more takes on what's going on at the convention that are more articulate than mine. The Gazette is blogging about it as is the Ottawa Citizen. You can also follow the topic on Twitter.

If you've been to a science fiction convention lately, you'll notice that most of the attendees are not as young as they used to be. A lot of cons are seeing declining attendance and no one is quite sure why.

The reality is that many social organizations are seeing a decline in membership as the population ages. The Kiwanis and Rotary Clubs are examples. Perhaps we're all too busy typing away to each other in cyberspace that we don't want to get off of our ever-expanding asses to meet each other in realspace.

Is it conventions that are dying or is it science fiction? Every generation seems to proclaim that the genre is dead only to see it continue. Maybe we're not going to cons because SF isn't the draw it used to be.

There is some hope that the new Star Trek movie will boost the popularity of Trek conventions now that there are some new actors that will be available to parade on stage before the adoring crowds.

I just hope there are no more stories like this Boston fellow who collected money from folks for a convention that was to feature stars from Battlestar Galactica only to cancel at the last minute and forget to give everyone their money back. If that happens too often, no one is going to ever go to a con again.

Fan fiction has been around for a long time, but the web has made the hobby even stronger. Boing Boing points out that even professionals dabble in it. Author Steven Brust recently released an unauthorized Firefly novel that he wrote.

More interesting to me is the concept of the fan-edited movie. These aren't fan films, which are also a thriving hobby, but professional movies that are re-edited by fans to make them different, and to some eyes better, movies.

The Phantom Edit was one of the earliest examples where someone took George Lucas' disappointing Star Wars prequel The Phantom Menace and trimmed it down by mostly eliminating scenes of the annoying Jar Jar Binks.

At FanEdit.org, fans have submitted hundreds of movies of all genres for you to discover. Science fiction is well represented with Star Wars, Star Trek and The Matrix movies being among the most popular.

re you a science fiction addict? Here is the confession of one such addict. Confession is a strong word. I don't think that being a fan is the geeky sin that it once was. It turns out that even former U.S. President Bill Clinton subscribed to the Sci-Fi Channel during his time in office.

While not exactly in leauge with the civil rights or suffragette movements, geek acceptance has come a long way from the early days of fandom.

Today, we're immersed in a science-fiction-saturated world where the genre is practically mainstream. It wasn't always so. Imagine what life was like for fans back in the 50s, or even earlier. You can take a look back at that time by gazing upon these crazy photos from the 1957 Worldcon. I don't know which is crazier, the fact that all the men are wearing ties and sports jackets or that costuming existed way back then.

Despite today's acceptance of the genre, some critics argue that it is devoid of new ideas and some think that perhaps, at it's core, it's actually a religious movement that has failed. Perhaps.