The first time I saw Stan Lee was at Chicago ComicCon in 1976. I was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the first major Comicon in the Windy City (slated for August of that year) was enough to ge
Bubbling up in the simmering pot of our incomprehensible global pandemic, it is wonderful to realize that an event like Futurecon, has formed in the broth! The brainchild of many organizers, includin
The New England Science Fiction Association, NESFA, has been running cons for a while. Getting close to sixty consecutive years. They managed to squeak out a terrific Boskone 57 in February of 2020,
“Early cyberpunks drank the kool-aid of neoliberal transreality,” Sherryl Vint In this surrealistic slow-motion transformation of our human society we have all become Number Six, isolated in our own
For those of us born back in the halcyon years of the last century, the year 2020 always seemed like a futuristic milestone. Would we be jet-packing through blue skies in our post-scarcity economies
For those wondering about the booming science fiction scene in the People’s Republic of China, you might be curious to know some background information about the Science and Fantasy Growth Foundation
On March 17th, 2018, Melon Conference 2 was held in Hong Kong. In this interview, the author and keynote speaker at the conference, Allen Steele, shares his thoughts on the current state of SFF in H
It’s strange to think about the fun-fest of Readercon — which it always turns out to be — as a hotbed of controversy where ripples of fallout will radiate outward for weeks and months after the event. On the other hand, science fiction fandom is a sort of canary in the coal mine of society at large. The feuds and alignments and banishments and rapprochements that swirl around fandom, punctuated by mass scrimmage events (also known as cons), are now inextricably linked to the culture wars raging around us. It wasn’t always this way. Long ago, in never never land, cons were communal freak-outs held by like-minded escapists as a sort of exhibitionist rebellion against the bleakness of mundane culture. A con was where your propellor beanie, flowing cape, Vulcan ears, and purple velvet bag-of-holding concealing a pint of scumble were perfectly normal, and you were surrounded by fellow fen celebrating the freedom to be weird.
The MICE invasion of Cambridge was a swarming crowd of anarchistic fun. Hundreds of comix-crazed attendees jammed the halls of Leslie University, chatting with 200 comic artists and publishers. Tab
Readercon is generally my favorite con of the year, and in 2015 Readercon was up to the usual standard of fun times and excellence. The guests of honor Nicola Griffith and Gary K Wolfe were on hand throughout, and the memorial GOH was Joanna Russ. How could you go wrong? Indeed there were no less than three sessions on the life and work of Joanna Russ, including the participation of the author’s long-time associates: Jim Freund, David Hartwell, Michael Dirda, Ron Drummond, and Samuel R. Delany. Freund told some great stories about the early days of his career at WBAI Radio in New York, when he was literally living in the station offices, and broadcasting his radio show, “Hour of the Wolf,” five days a week at 5:00am. One time Freund called up Russ at about 8pm and invited her to join him for an interview on Hour of the Wolf. Russ declined the interview, but she did invite him out to eat at a nearby diner. The meal turned into an eight hour long conversation. Finally, having talked through the night, at about 4:30am, Russ asked to stop over at the Radio Station to use the bathroom on her way home, while Freund was getting ready for his show. Just as he was going live, Russ stopped by the control room to wave good-bye, and she heard Freund say into the microphone: “This is the Hour of the Wolf, and my guest today is Joanna Russ.” The first words Russ spoke on that particular live broadcast were: “You motherfucker! I’m going to kill you!” Which she subsequently did, by killing off the character based on Freund in her novel, We Who Are About To.