#worldcon 74

Cover illustration by Jack Gaughan

Notes From WorldCon: One is Ag, the Other’s Au.

I just had a brief twitter exchange with Kurt Busiek that started because I saw him tweet something and I randomly remembered that he had been at WorldCon and on my “hope to meet” list. I’ve been a fan of Kurt Busiek’s work for as long as I’ve been aware of it, entirely thanks to my older brother Max and his interest in Astro City. I can’t say I’m a wild fanatical fan. I don’t own any Astro City…

Notes From WorldCon: The First Time I Met George R.R. Martin

…was very brief, though so was the second. But the time that I was certain would be the point at which I came physically closest to the man was during one of his scheduled signings (the first of seven, in fact), when I placed a slightly worn copy of Card Sharks, upside down to me and opened to the title page in front of him. He looked at it in what I interpreted as mild confusion turning to what…

Notes From WorldCon: Everything’s Up To Date in the Westin at Crown Center

I was avoiding saying directly which hotel I was in before and to a large extent during the con because there have been issues, but Jack and I had a very nice time in the Westin at Crown Center. We had been booked into the aging but beautiful Hotel Phillips, which is apparently undergoing extensive renovations and had to shunt a certain number of its guests to another location. We were little…

Notes From WorldCon: How Zoë Quinn Healed My Soul

Often when I say critical things about Gamergate—or more particularly, about Gamergate’s roots and the conduct of the man who whipped up the initial harassment squad that became Gamergate’s core—I will get a gator in my mentions sidling up to say something like, “Oh, and of course you think that Zoë Quinn is a perfect darling little angel who could do no wrong.” I don’t know what Zoë Quinn’s…

Notes From WorldCon: It’s A Major Award

When an actor receives something like a Screen Actor’s Guild award, they often say something along the lines of “It means so much more to me, because it comes from my peers.” The most direct equivalent of this in the U.S. genre literature world would not be the Hugos, but the Nebulas. The Nebula Award is a guild award, presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and…