lickety jackblog

Stupid Boring Reality

As you are all no doubt aware, LACon IV, the 64th World Science Fiction Convention, kicks off today in Anaheim California, and I'm not there. Most regrettable. Nevertheless, I thought I might still let everyone know so that, if you can manage it, you might tune your brain-banana toward the west coast in the hopes of picking up some rogue nerd-emanations drifting eastward on the sweaty humid tail of the Jet Stream.

Guests of Honor for this year's WorldCon are Connie Willis (Writer GoH), James Gurney (Artist GoH), Howard DeVore (Fan GoH) and Special Guest Frankie Thomas (Frankie Thomas, you will be aggrieved to learn, actually passed away between when he was invited to be Special Guest and the time of the Con. Frankie, I'm certain, will be honored greatly in some capacity).

Other notable participants include: Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Ray Bradbury, Pat Cadigan, Gardner Dozois, Ann McCaffrey, George RR Martin, Cory Doctorow, Larry Niven, Frederik Pohl, Rudy Rucker, Stanley Schmidt, Robert Silverberg and Vernor Vinge among countless others (See a full list here.)

In other exciting news, this year's WorldCon will be honoring the 40th anniversary of the launch of Star Trek. As you can probably guess, this is a huge deal. From the website (this is funny/sad): "In celebration of the 40th anniversary of Star Trek, the crew of the original Starship Enterprise have come back![Wait for it...] You'll even have an opportunity to have your photograph taken with them! [This sounds good, but wait for it...] The wax figures of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, & Chekov that stood for 32 years in the Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park, California will be on display in Cadet Central throughout the convention. Stop by and see these remarkable likenesses." (emphasis added)

Ouch. Wax figures to commemorate the 40th anniversay? My understanding, though, is that Walter Koenig (Chekov) will be in the house. Whew.

And if you're not yet convinced that WorldCon is the place to be, get a load of this: none other than Craig himself will be there. That's right, Craigslist's Craig Newmark will be participating in WorldCon this year, sitting on panels to discuss, among other things, the development of online communities. Goddamn, Anaheim California is so definitely the center of the universe for the next 5 days. I'm so jealous of all those bastards who'll be drinking rocket fuel and partying with George RR Martin in the "Brothers without Banners" Suite. It makes me ill.

For Novel and Short Story, Hugo Award nominations for this year have gone to:

Best Novel:
Old Man's War / John Scalzi
A Feast for Crows / George RR Martin
Learning the World / Ken MacLeod
Spin / Robert Charles Wilson
Accelerando / Charles Stross

Best Short Story:
"Seventy-Five Years" Michael A. Burstein (Analog)
"The Clockwork Atom Bomb" / Dominic Green (Interzone)
"Singing My Sister Down" / Margo Lanagan (Black Juice)
"Tk'tk'tk" / David D. Levine (Asimov's)
"Down Memory Lane" / Mike Resnick (Asimov's)

You can see a full list of Hugo categories and nominations here.

Of course, I would be remiss in excluding from this post the always-important Weapons Policy:

It is the policy of L.A.con IV that no real or realistic projectile weapons may be carried anywhere within the convention except during the masquerade or specially approved events.

The use of a weapon during the Masquerade or during a programming event must be approved by the Masquerade Director or the Programming Coordinator respectively. No weapon of any kind may be drawn or wielded in any area of the hotel or convention space.


WorldCon is so kickass.

Labels: nerdcore

posted by dan @ 12:56 PM