In case anyone was wondering: Not going to Readercon

During my long period of underemployment and borderline depression--beginning, not even coincidentally, right around the Big Terrible--I got out of the habit of attending conventions, even the ones I really like. Since the Millennium Philcon in 2001, I believe the only conventions that I have attended are the ICFA, Alt.Polycon 9 (Baltimore, Jan 2005), and half a day of the Science Fiction Research Association conference last month in White Plains. Oh, and maybe part of a Lunacon or two.

I've gotten out of the habit of planning to go to conventions. By the time it seriously occurred to me to think about whether we could attend Readercon, we'd probably missed the window of getting on to programming and then it turned out we were overcommitted socially and financially in July anyway. Deep sigh. I very much would have liked to see many of the people there--especially grahamsleight, with whom I didn't get to spend enough time at the last ICFA and who is coming such a long way for it.

The conventions I'd most like to attend regularly or somewhat so are:

• The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (late March, Florida)


• Minnicon (April, Minneapolis)


• Readercon (July, greater Boston area)


• Trinoc*con (July, Durham)


• Philcon (November or early December, Phladelphia)


• LunaCon (early March, metro New Jersey--on those years that it doesn't conflict too much with the ICFA)

That doesn't actually seem excessive, especially since two of them are within easy driving distance (Readercon and Philcon); a third (Minnicon) I might be able to combine with work, since my company's headquarters is in Minneapolis; and a fourth (Trinoc*con) could be combined with a visit to my family and friends in North Carolina.

Maybe we can turn around our con-going habits this fall with Philcon.

Update: It occurs to me now a couple of hours later that I'd also love to go to a full-on gaming convention--presumably either Origins (late June) or the World Boardgaming Championships (August, Baltimore).

Update again: Capclave (metro DC, October) would also be nice. We always used to enjoy Disclave, and Capclave seems to have picked up the best parts of that.

Jim Baen, 1943-2006

Everyone who cares to know that probably already knows this, but Jim Baen died on Wednesday following a massive stroke two weeks before.

Through mutual friends, I knew almost immediately that his prognosis was not for recovery, which rendered deeply sad the long comment-streams about how maybe it was a minor stroke and he'd be soon up and about and continuing to make the world safe for science fiction. And I had enough reason to be sad; my tastes in sf diverged wildly from Baen's, but he was a force for good within the field. Foremost was his giant financial gamble on principle that readers should be treated as customers rather than thieves, which lead to the creation of the Baen Free Library and the world's only sane e-book publishing line.

Undersung in recent discussions is the degree to which Jim Baen was personally devoted to the idea that science fiction has a history older than last month's top-of-the-list. A significant portion of Baen Books's output was republishing, and unlike the completely admirable NESFA Press, Baen could actually put old sf into mass market paperback. Some of those republication projects did very well, and some of them did very well indeed--the James Schmitz collection series sold, from what I've heard, 50-100K per volume.

Also, a personal loss, he was one of the few major figures in modern sf whom I never really met. The late, lamented Fanoclasts held one meeting in Baen's house--its sole meeting on the US mainland, hosted by Fanoclast Toni Weisskopf--but Jim did not attend. He waved at us as we attendees as we went past, but that was it.

Dave Drake wrote an excellent memorial to his oldest friend which you should definitely read if you haven't, if you care about sf at all. And he and Toni conclude thus:

Toni Weisskopf and Dave Drake suggest that people who wish to make a memorial donation purchase copies of THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN and donate them to libraries or teenagers of their acquaintance.

We're donating six.

My first attempt at embedded video

Let's see if this works. Here's a rebuttal to Al Gore, supplied by the future's very own Bender:

( Beware the L33T Tech o the Future! )

nellorat and I saw An Inconvenient Truth last month. It's one of the best documentaries I've ever seen, up there with Sherman's March, Night and Fog, The Fog of War, and The World of Tomorrow. It's unabashedly a move about AL GORE--specifically, about Al Gore's lifelong mission to stop global climate change--but fuck it, he's earned that.

Update, and request for technical assistance:

When I preview this post in SeMagic, it works fine, but the actual posted LJ page has a bunch of garble instead of the embedding code. Anyone know what's up with that?