Better Latent Than Never

[howeird]

Bought supporting memberships in the 2007 and 2008 Worldcons. About time I put my money where my mouth was, instead of just my foot.

May even upgrade to attending membership for Denver, depending on lots of things, like whether I'm still employed, going to SeaFair (which is the same weekend, I think), still single, and how their programming shapes up. Writer GOH is Lois McMaster Bujold, which I think may over-fantasy-ize the con for me. Or not. Maybe I should read Falling Free which sounds more sci-fi than fantasy from the little blurbs I've seen. I'm open to suggestions.

Comments

[nevynn.livejournal.com]

LMMB's Vorlord series is good Sci-Fi. Heavy on the fiction, light on the science. Good stories over all. Good series. You may as well start with Falling Free, and go from there.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

She has more sci-fi than fantasy published, but she's pretty much only written fantasy since around 2002... it would be a tough call for me to say if she's more fantasy than SF. The Vor books are fun. Warrior's Apprentice would be a decent place to start.

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

Like Baycon, the GOH has little to do with the overall flavor of the con fantasy/SFwise beyond a few panels.

[howeird]

I love the flavor of Baycon, especially with eggs.

Does the host city's fandom have a large influence on programming?

I'm thinking of two models. The national Peace Corps alumni do the planning for their conferences in DC, no matter what city hosts. Those are pretty uniform from year to year. But the Bay Area annual meeting is planned by the host city, and some years it's hard to tell it's the same conference as the previous year, except for the core people who always attend. Which one is Worldcon?

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

As always, the answer is "yes" (=both). There's always a local flavor, but that's a general thing. There will be panels on "the locals influence on the genre" or "our city in genre" some such. There will be "this years" theme for some events.

Then there will be the standard panels that occur, plus there will be panels based on who's coming (not just GOH, but some of that).

With Bujold there will likely be panels on humor in genre (since she's well known for that). But there is always a panel on humor in genre, or something like that panel. With Sternback as aGOH there will be a panel on space art, but there always is.

Non-US Worldcons will, of course, be slightly more heavily overtly programmed and themed to local flavor than a US Worldcon, since a lot of the Worldcon stuff already is U.S. in nature (e.g. Interaction had more European authors than most U.S. Worldcons, there will be more Asian authors in Yokohama than Denver).

Did you get to LACon? It had a "Hollywood" feel to it, because they had the contacts and resources to bring in film industry folks - and they were all local. But beyond the window dressing, it was not technically a lot different than 2001 Chicon or Interaction or ConJose. [window dressing can be a lot - a mall visit to Santa can be a lot different than a visit to the Easter Bunny, despite the essentials being the same]