The Crotchety Old Fan

As mentioned earlier today, a mention for which I have already been roundly castigated by none other than Jeff VanderMeer, who’s work I unsuccessfully nominated (Finch for Best Novel) and who – despite his obvious mastery of the English language could come up with no better word to describe my justifications than “babble” (both Jeff [...]

Got an email from someone who suggested that I put out my own list of things I’ll be voting on when it is time to nominate for the Hugo Awards (to be given at Aussiecon 4).
I’ll do that, sure. But first I have to figure out what those nominations are going to be.
I know [...]

If you are, you have an excellent opportunity to check out the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum’s SF+F short film festival on January 30th.
It will be their fifth one, in fact and, if the descriptions on the EMPSFM website are anything to go by, should be very interesting and entertaining – like this one:
AFTERGLOW
Country: USA
Year: [...]

Wow. It is finally finished.
For those who have not been following along, getting this first issue out, as rough as it is, has been a beeyatch!
Turns out I had a codecs issue with movie maker.
I screwed around for an entire day trying to get it chopped up into 4 managable eight+ minute segments, but [...]

Balticons back in the 70s/80s had good attendance.  Haven’t been to one since them so I don’t know where they are at now (Balticon promoters/comittee feel free to jump in) – but I seem to remember attendance in excess of 800-900 (873? is the number that springs to dim mind lo these many years later.)
What [...]

Over on the LTSNBN, there’s a lot of discussion regarding what “real” conventions are and are not.  (I am ego gratified to see that my articulation of the “experiencing vs participating” difference is holding up fairly well.)
One point of distinction is that of the presence or absence of “actors” offering signed photos of themselves for [...]

I’ve just spent close to an hour reading much of the posts and comments responding to International Science Fiction Reshelving Day (11/18/09 – go there for details), and I must say that I am a bit bemused and befuddled by the energy that so many seem to have devoted to dissing a group of people [...]

HAL is still in hibernation and floating about somewhere in Jupiter’s moon system. Meanwhile, I’m down here on Earth, still waiting for them to build Moonbase Clavius so they can discover the Monolith and get that whole story arc kicked off.
Waiting for that to happen doesn’t waste nearly enough time and, while I can think [...]

The minions over at TLTSNBN are in a posting uproar following Mike Resnick’s, ummm, polemic?, over at Baen’s Universe, in which Mike castigates WSFS and shows favoritism towards (shudder) commercial cons over fannish cons.
The commentary by the (suspected, rumored and not self-appointed) lords of creation runs the gamut from simple outrage over the fact that [...]

Because it pisses me off that one of the major media faces for genre is such an unfannish, disconnected, seemingly profit-oriented, low-brow, least-common-denominator, appeal-to-prurient-interests, 1984ish thought-control piece of…
None of which would matter any more than the proverbial hill of beans if they weren’t successful at what they do.
Which pisses me off even more.  If our [...]