Winnipeg, Manitoba hosts the virtual edition of Keycon, and registration is free. The schedule features a number of events, from crafting to SF novels to Trek to Randy Rainbow parodies. I’m involved with one reading and two panels– one event each day.
If you’re looking for a virtual taste of a smaller SF/Fantasy Con, check it out.
Missing SF conventions? Michigan’s Penguicon, a meeting of SF/Fantasy Fandom, Techies, Open Source Coders, Hackers, and general nerds-at-large goes online this year, with a cost of only $10:00. It actually opened yesterday, but it really doesn’t take off until tonight, and there’s still a lot of virtual space available.
The 79th World Science Fiction Convention has been delayed until December 15-19, 2021, when it is hoped more real-world event can take place. DisCon III will be held in Washington, DC, and the Hugo nominees for this year include:
Best Novel
Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse (Gallery / Saga Press)
The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tordotcom)
Network Effect, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)
Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
The Relentless Moon, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
Birds of Prey, written by Christina Hodson, directed by Cathy Yan (Warner Bros.)
Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, written by Will Ferrell, Andrew Steele, directed by David Dobkin (European Broadcasting Union/Netflix)
The Old Guard, written by Greg Rucka, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Netflix / Skydance Media)
Palm Springs, written by Andy Siara, directed by Max Barbakow (Limelight / Sun Entertainment Culture / The Lonely Island / Culmination Productions / Neon / Hulu / Amazon Prime)
Soul, screenplay by Pete Docter, Mike Jones and Kemp Powers, directed by Pete Docter, co-directed by Kemp Powers, produced by Dana Murray (Pixar Animation Studios/ Walt Disney Pictures)
Tenet, written and directed by Christopher Nolan (Warner Bros./Syncopy)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
Doctor Who: “Fugitive of the Judoon”, written by Vinay Patel and Chris Chibnall, directed by Nida Manzoor (BBC)
The Expanse: “Gaugamela”, written by Dan Nowak, directed by Nick Gomez (Alcon Entertainment / Alcon Television Group / Amazon Studios / Hivemind / Just So)
The Good Place: “Whenever You’re Ready”, written and directed by Michael Schur (Fremulon / 3 Arts Entertainment / Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group)
The Mandalorian: “Chapter 13: The Jedi,” written and directed by Dave Filoni (Golem Creations / Lucasfilm / Disney+)
The Mandalorian: “Chapter 16: The Rescue”, written by Jon Favreau, directed by Peyton Reed (Golem Creations / Lucasfilm / Disney+)
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: “Heart (parts 1 and 2)”, written by Josie Campbell and Noelle Stevenson, directed by Jen Bennett and Kiki Manrique (DreamWorks Animation Television / Netflix)
How often does the Bureau get a shout-out in the acknowledgements of a novel?
The Con was released t Friday, November 13, 2020. The e-launch party will be streamed on Twitch-TV at 6:00 pm EST on November 14. Anyone can watch by clicking the link. If you create/have an account and log-in, you can participate. Has your favorite fan convention been canned due to COVID? Consider The Con: SF Fans meet the Jane Austen Society at a hotel that may also be hosting an actual alien presence. High tea, a robot battle, nerds gone wild, religious LARPERS, the Augur of Quaoar, and the quest to answer one of history’s great questions: does anything we do matter– or is it all just a con?
Even in the era of the World Wide Web, traditional fanzines still exist. Of course, they’ve gone online.
Fandom, too, survives, even if the pandemic keeps people apart. An SF Club geographically local to me released their latest issue (#62) of their fanzine, SideTrekked, which…
Michigan’s otherworldly Penguicon, a meeting of SF/Fantasy/Techie/Open Source and other interests, has, like other Cons, been cancelled for 2020. However, it lives on this weekend as Virtual Penguicon.
Some events continue as prerecorded videos, while others will be streamed live through various platforms.
I will be participating in two on Saturday, a reading from my forthcoming novel, The Con, and To Boldly Make Discovery in the Expanse AND what would your Space TV Franchise look like?, an examination of current space-faring shows and what we might like to see in the future. The panel features Larry Nemecek, Trek superfan and SF author, actor, editor, archivist, consultant, interviewer, and producer, and Eric Choi, writer, editor, and an aerospace engineer who has worked on several high-profile NASA projects.
It’s free. We hope some of the Bureau42 regulars will turn up online.
Check the site for details. Note that some online elements remain in process and may be incomplete or temporarily unavailable. Here is the Schedule.
The 2019 Hugos were awarded on the weekend at 77th World SF Con in Dublin, Ireland.
Video courtesy of orbzine
The two winners everyone wants to know: Best novel went to Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars which we reviewed here (I was, to be honest, lukewarm on it, though it has a great premise) and Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse, which we reviewed positively here won for Best Dramatic Presentation, Longform.
You may find the others at the link in the first sentence, or below.
I’ll get around to completing Stranger Things, and I’m going to do a “remainder of the season” review for Handmaid’s Tale, which doesn’t get much attention here. Meanwhile, I recently attended and paneled at Ad Astra in Toronto. Naturally, I made a short video:
That last clip shows the moon and Jupiter. The sky was clear enough to see the four largest Jovian moons quite nicely with a telescope.
I’ve been absent from Michigan’s Penguicon, a meeting of SF/Fantasy Fandom, Open Source / Linux, Hackers, and other loosely-related tribes, for five years. I’m glad I returned. The event has changed, but it remains an experience worth having.
I put together a video of the third annual Forest City Comicon, which featured Billy West, battling vikings, cosplay, and more:
Of course, there were other Cons held recently…..