Once again I’m headed to Balticon over Memorial Day weekend. I’ve been attending there for decades, and speaking or presenting there for a few years now. I consider them my “home con” if you will. They have had some struggles of late and some of my friends have moved away from this convention in particular. We’ll see what it brings this year.
My schedule for the panels I’ll be on:
Start Time Duration Room Name Session ID Title Sat 2:30 PM 1 Hr James 45 What Makes a Good Player Sat 5:30 PM 1 Hr James 29 Coming out of the Dungeon Sun 1:00 PM 1 Hr Guilford 24 So you want to be a Game Master? Sun 2:30 PM 1 Hr Room 7029 167 Making a Book Club Work Sun 4:00 PM 1 Hr James 140 Being a bad guy without being a Bad Guy Sun 7:00 PM 1 Hr James 43 Your Player Said What?? Mon 10:00 AM 1 Hr Mount Washington 259 Knights of the Virtual Table
I’ve seen a couple of different posts lately that talk in various aspects about how poorly certain conventions either have been run or are currently being run. I think a new pastime is going after convention staff and criticising what they do. Admittedly, some of them do need a critical eye turned their way. Creating something for other people to consume is not an easy thing. Doing that – putting your work out there for the scrutiny of others – is no easy thing. Creating something… anything is work. I have found it very difficult dealing with people who make nothing of their own but take great joy when they criticize or tear down the things that others have made. I know, I know – not something new. Internet trolls have been around and they are not going away.
Let’s start with World Con. A group of volunteers working to create something for the world and getting bashed left and right. Sometimes (often) justified, and sometimes not. Their choices for the current incarnation have been subject to a lot of scrutiny. I don’t know if the current set of choices under the critical eye were given much in the way of thought in terms of how others may react. Using tools like AI to create their convention seems like a time saving idea. Others have seen that as catastrophic and called it that. Do I think that using AI is some desperate or despicable act in terms of running a convention? No. No I do not. Do I think that it’s very easy to point fingers at a volunteer crowd when they are overwhelmed with work and say clearly you should have thought this out? Yes, it’s very easy to point fingers. Do I think there are better choices out there? Maybe. I’m not a fan of AI. I don’t suspect that I ever will be. Do I think that worldcon should use all the tools at its disposal? Absolutely. I would say that there needed to be some thought given to how those tools are presented. I think AI at this stage of its development is problematic on a good day, but I don’t know that it’s an end of the world scenario. They’re not creating Skynet, they’re sorting panelists and other information sorting tasks. Is a human touch better? When it comes to dealing with people and how they feel, it sure is. Worldcon has done enough damage to itself over the past few years that this just feels like piling on.
Worldcon clearly has a long way to go. They have struggled and they will continue to struggle. I actually hope the learning curve will help them to become a better and stronger convention going forward in the future. Long ago the con that presented the Hugo was a powerful thing. Now? Now I wonder at the value of the brand. I have stopped advocating to get onto the Hugo nomination list. Maybe someday that will change. Here’s a thing I wrote about my last interaction with them: https://www.ehardenbrook.com/withdrawal/
The other convention is a convention debacle that has been making the rounds on book tok and reviewer blogs. It is either a monumental underestimation by those without experience OR a naked cash grab by some less than scrupulous company. I’m talking about the “Million Lives” convention for ‘Romantasy’ authors and fans. I have no first hand knowledge of the event – but the reports are calling this the equal to the Fyre Festival. Check out one of the reports here.
The thing about this kind of event is… effort. Fans, particularly fans laying out hundreds of their hard earned bucks, want results. I’ve seen it first hand. I know the sort of effort it took when the kids programming team set out to run a successful weekend for a few dozen children. Now amplify that to a point where you believe you’re going to fill a section of the Baltimore convention center. That’s a tall order.
This debacle feels like one of two things. First, it could be an ‘event company’ that really overshot on their first attempt. If that’s true, this will kill that company. Second, and the more cynical part of me believes this, the so called event company is at least a partial scam because they can skate away with the cash and it doesn’t really matter what happens with the attendees in their view. This particular convention (from all accounts) was a complete disaster. When I say complete – I mean from the things that people take for granted, like directional signage, all the way through an entertainment venues layout. The use and decoration of spaces in a convention location will only go so far. A bare concrete floor generally doesn’t say fantasy ball to me.
Grandiose visions, expansive events and immersive atmosphere take time, effort and cash. Emphasis on the effort.
I guess (in this jumble of words that I have just sort of laid out here) what I’m trying to say is creating a thing like a convention is not easy. It is time-consuming and takes a team of dedicated people to do it. Sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes things go catastrophically wrong. Sometimes that is the fault of the staff and sometimes it’s not.
I hope, as I head out next weekend, to attend a convention, that Lessons Learned and growth will be part of how things are moving forward. I really wanted to go over these things just because I want to see Science Fiction and Fantasy conventions succeed. What does that level of success look like? I don’t know. Maybe everyone wants it to become Comic-Con but what we will be left with in the end is returning to something like what conventions were in the past. Smaller events, more tightly controlled and made for and with the Fans.
After I return from the Baltimore science fiction convention this year I intend to do a write-up as I always have in the past about my personal experiences and my thoughts on how things went. Maybe, if I’m really energetic, I’ll be able to post while I’m there! Stay tuned to find out!
Along with writing, running games and creating stories I still create art. Well ‘art’ is a strong word, but I still make covers for Watch The Skies. At this point I know I’ve done more than 200 different pieces. Working and reworking those covers is a process. I’ve gotten a lot better and a lot faster at the process over time, but there are still a series of choices that have to be made each time. Sometimes I create options for the covers that never see the light of day. This month was an example of my method and I thought it would be a good idea to post up a couple of the options just for the sake of seeing the process.
When I’m working with photos in particular for any of the things that I’m creating, I often will use various filters through the computer to make these pictures look more seamless than they really are after I’ve compiled all the pieces. I know that using filters isn’t necessarily the same as drawing and/or painting with color to create the same effect, but given a shortened time frame the computerized tools are generally the option I need to go with.
Here are a couple of alternates that I created for this month’s cover of our Fanzine.
Hopefully seeing these variations and knowing that there were other covers, other pieces that were attempted and discarded would help anyone who’s looking at the process of others in order to inform their own working steps. Creating a draft for writing is essentially the same thing. Computers are fantastic for copies. You have the ability to create a thing, then take that base and start again in a different direction. Running multiple iterations until you find the one that you think will work can be a long process. I think that could be an interesting discussion topic actually – how many iterations of a thing are you comfortable with before you put it out where the public can see it?
There has been some recent (well, relatively recent but I’ve been slow to post) buzz around a television series based on Dungeons & Dragons.
In theory, this makes me happy. The issue is that being too excited to see something like this frequently leads to a big let down or massive disappointment. I’ve been burned in that department before (looking at you D&D movie from 2000). Sure, the latest film Honor Among Thieves did really well and was a lot of fun to watch. It had some great moments and an enjoyable story. There were big name actors involved who actually took on the story, rather than taking on the roll as a… diversion or escape from some other engagement they didn’t want to deal with. I liked it and I’ve watched it more than once. I went and bought a DVD (yes, hard copies personally owned are still a thing) to support the idea that they should make more.
So, why am I not more excited about this?
Fantasy is a very easy genre to do badly. It’s also super easy to mock when it all goes wrong. It’s also maddening when the ‘fantasy’ aspect is wrecked in order to shoe horn in some standard Hollyweird bullshit that some executive who’s never liked that “geeky stuff” anyway thinks it needs. “Where’s the lovers triangle and who’s playing the handsome but misunderstood hero”? Insert vomit noises here.
The good – D&D is now socially mainstream enough that shows and movies are not immediately shelved. There’s hope that this new TV show (streaming show likely) will actually show D&D related things. Real actors, quality effects and a decent story. One article I read (like here) also gives some “geek cred” to the creators behind the process.
The bad – It’s a series, so there’s likely less in the effects budget and that’s kind of a big deal when it comes to magic spells and mythical creatures. It’s being set in the Forgotten Realms, but nothing more specific than that. That’s kind of like saying I’m making a TV show about the police and it’s being set in America. Thanks. Way to narrow it down. There’s an absolute mountain of material there, but that’s where the trouble always begins. The mountain of material falls into the trap of trying to mention it all. We even saw a peek of that in the movie. How many little ‘nod to the fans’ things were spliced between the scenes that moved the story? Can we use any of the things they used in the movie if this show isn’t attached to it? IF we can’t, does that mean we’ll never see anything else from the Red Wizards of Thay?
The worrisome – It’s being set up on Netflix as of right now. I like them as a streaming service generally. They are, however, notorious for giving a show five to eight episodes, letting it start to generate some buzz, then just killing it altogether. That would just make me more mad if all of the stuff above was actually navigated successfully and I was actually a fan of a good show and they axed it.
It’s a lot of unanswered questions. I’ll keep watching for more, but my hope is… guarded.
I’m happy to say that I’ve been invited to be a panelist at the annual convention of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society again this year. I’m very excited for it!
Fandom in general and conventions in particular have had a lot of hard times lately. Things that might have been easier to deal with in different social environments have become bigger and noticeably more damaging. Sometimes for the better – exposing less than wonderful people and removing them from the processes. Sometimes for the worse – bending to inappropriate social pressures and attacking people without just cause. All of these things have made what was once a shining thing for me a lot more tarnished.
I have been attending or speaking at this particular con for somewhere in the realm of 30 years. I’ve been through a number of things with them, a number of locations and a bunch of changes. I know a number of people who’ve decided to go other directions and can’t or won’t forgive the people running this convention enough to support them. I understand that – I have made that choice with a number of other conventions myself. I’ve decided to keep going here, and I’m glad they’ll have me.
I got my draft schedule the other day and I started digging into panels and descriptions.
I’ve shifted away from a lot of the author things. I haven’t had anything published in so long I almost don’t remember the process. I am still connected to fandom and gaming, so I’ve been added to a bunch of those panels. My draft list is:
What Makes a Good Player?
So you want to be a Game Master?
Coming out of the Dungeon
Being a bad guy without being a Bad Guy
Your Player Said What??
and – Making a Book Club Work
I spent a fair portion of my afternoon writing up a bunch of notes for these descriptions and doing some homework on my fellow panelists (not going to get caught off guard again if I can help it). I can’t wait to see what everyone else has to say… and I am really looking forward to coming back and giving a full report on it here. Stay tuned!
I have volunteered as tribute… I mean, I volunteered to be on panels at the Baltimore science fiction society’s convention again this year. I made that choice back around the first of the year (or maybe earlier?) when they sent out invitations. I haven’t heard anything yet, but that’s typical for any convention – many details, including schedules, run close to the last minute. I expect the schedule won’t be final until close to Memorial Day weekend (when the convention happens).
I understand there are any number of folks out there who are very down on Balticon and the people running it. I’ve witnessed some people getting rotten treatment and half ass apologies or no apologies. I know a large number of authors and vendors who are specifically not going this year, and likely never will again. There have been struggles.
Part of me very much wants to support my friends. I know first hand how behind the scenes stuff spirals out of control and becomes ‘news’. I’ve stopped all support for any worldcon and Philcon specifically for personal reasons much like theirs. I’ve posted about that before, both here and other places. Treating people shabbily is not excusable.
Balticon was the first convention I ever attended back in 1993. They were the first convention to invite me as an author guest. They were the first convention I displayed art at. They’ve been my ‘home con’ where I’ve participated for more than 3 decades. I’m going again this year. I am hopeful for improvements, but mindful of what has gone before.
Let me tell you something that isn’t a secret: people like good stories.
Somehow, people that create entertainment media tend to forget that. Sometimes the reviewers do too. A couple of years ago I wrote up a post about what you should be watching. The show in question is called “Love, Death & Robots”. It burst onto the scene with stunning visuals and garnered a massive response. New, short animations with crazy good stories from a list of authors known for their stories. I watched them all, then I re-watched them all, then I spent some writing time reacting to them and telling others about it. There are fantastic stories and mind blowing art in there. I still recommend watching them.
Last month Amazon dropped a series called “Secret Level”. It seems to me that this series is a direct reaction to, or perhaps decedent of Love, Death and Robots. I watched them all, despite Amazon being the terrible corporation that it is (I despise that we paid for no commercials and then they basically said, yes but pay more of live with them). As I watched them I could clearly and easily see how this series followed (mimicked?) the other. Thing is, it felt hollow. There was something missing. OH, that’s right. Story. All the episodes were meant to showcase a video game and the star studded voice actor line up. The episodes did that with gusto. The artwork and animation were amazing… but honestly, I expect that from companies that literally create the computer renders for the games they’re using as the basis for the episodes. OF COURSE they’re going to look good. I’d actually bet the people behind the scenes were able to save some amount of work by getting already created computer models from the game companies and/or using the same model software to create the shots for the series. Genuinely screen capture worthy shots. Fantastic looking, mesmerizing color. Very shiny… and kind of boring. If you’re not completely invested in the video games already, there’s almost nothing there beyond that.
To be entirely fair, I haven’t played video games in a very long time. I started in 8-bit land and never really progressed much further. Perhaps there are gamers out there who think this series is the quintessential embodiment of their favorite intellectual property. I don’t know. I clearly don’t get it. Some of the voices were recognizable. Some of the shows moved faster than others, some had more pull than others, but they all felt incomplete. The story just lacked. One in particular – the one with Arnold as the main voice actor – was absolutely unwatchable. I shut that one off and skipped to the next one.
I was going back through the site I use to track websites I want to read but can’t keep up with every day and found two old posts about this show. One touted the A-list cast and moving imagery. The other was about the series getting green lit for a second season before the entire first season was finished airing. Both of those short articles said the very same thing. Great voice talent. Great video game franchises that you will recognize. Neither one said anything about story. Not a word about it.
Before anyone tries to say I’m just a video game hater, that is not true. I understand there is, in fact, a great deal of story built into these game franchises. Stories in these games have fascinating ideas and can have massive, ever changing worlds involved with them. It’s a constantly changing field that offers up an immersive form of entertainment for all sorts of folks. It’s also a massive industry. I understand why show runners would try to take a video game property and create a show or movie from that.
Not every show can be a hit. Not every story moves you on a deep and meaningful level. A show really does need a story! There’s no two ways about it, this secret level can remain locked in my opinion. If you want to make it better, get an actual story to fit into these short episodes.
I spent my evening at the monthly meeting of my local science fiction (and fantasy) fan/reading group tonight. We’re about to wrap up our 26th? year. We’ve been at it a long time. One of the things we’ve been doing during that time is creating a monthly fanzine.
There was a time when I was very bitter that we were clearly eligible for winning a Hugo award in the fanzine category and could never gain any traction, even with our own members. That eventually slid into disappointment more than bitterness, and then into happiness that we weren’t tied to scandals and terrible nonsense.
These days, we keep creating the fanzine because it’s a small thing that brings us joy. A few dozen ‘subscribers’ and a way to get some relatable content out to our friends. Yes, we’re still eligible to win a Hugo but I’m no longer certain it’s a thing we would want.
Jeff dug up some physical copies of old covers. For many years we had an actual, printed paper copy to hand out live and in person to anyone showing up for the meeting. These old pages showed me a variety of the kind of artwork I’ve done over the years. A lot of what I saw here was cringeworthy. Some of them I like to this day.
I don’t post as much about my art here these days in part because there’s less of it than there used to be. I just don’t have the same amount of time I did before. There are so many things to do in this world that sometimes I lose track and don’t create as much art as I’d like. Even the cringey stuff. Gotta break some eggs and all that.
I suggest doing art. Create something. Save it if you like OR give it to somebody. Someday it might come back to you so you can see how far you have come.
This is one of those posts where I put it here, on my site so that when anyone questions it I can say definitively that I own it.
The weekend before Thanksgiving I headed to Cherry Hill (yes, the Philadelphia con is in NJ) for the annual science fiction convention put on by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society. I’ve gone to Philcon for many years, and have been invited to be on panels for many years as well. This convention is the home of a couple of the most legendary convention stories, including defend the pizza, and Yes – I realize that was 9 years ago.
Blame to me. I glanced at the convention requirements, but I did NOT read them as thoroughly as I should have. I see this now, I saw it then. It still didn’t make me at all happy. You see, the convention, as a private organization, can make any requirements it sees fit for entry into their event. They did. They required a Covid vaccination update that fell within certain parameters. IF you were just vaccinated back in ’22, that wasn’t good enough. You’d need a PCR negative test if you didn’t have a booster dated this year (basically).
They’re not wrong. *I* am the danger vector. Since the CDC declared an end to the public health emergency back in May, and even before then, I have been traveling for work. I’ve been from Georgia to Oregon. In 0 of the places I’ve been since May has anyone asked for proof of vaccination, let alone very specific versions of the vaccine. I haven’t even seen a mask in months. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not out there trying to catch anything, I just haven’t given things much more thought than basic precautions. I even still keep my CDC card with me. Proof of vax, even if I don’t really need it anymore. Except now I did, and it wasn’t good enough.
Imagine my shock when the convention staff told me I wasn’t allowed in.
I’d booked a hotel, I’d made the drive, I’d set up things for the panels I was going to speak on and even ordered (and pre-paid for) a t-shirt for the first time in years. Nope, you’ll have to go away.
Once I got past my initial shock, I was actually angry at this rule. Again, not their fault I didn’t know, and I know that. I was as much stunned they made the rule more than anything. It was excessive, at least to my way of thinking. I shared my opinion with a friend and he suggested I just go to the local pharmacy and get tested. Excellent plan.
I drove to a local Walgreens and headed to the pharmacy counter. The worker there kindly explained that a PCR test required lab work and there was no way I was getting that at this hour on a Friday night. I looked around, trying to figure out what to do with my rapidly building level of frustration. As I looked around, I realized there was almost nobody in the store. I looked back at the girl behind the desk and said, “What are you doing right now?” She was taken aback so I added, “You’ve got boosters, right? I want one.”
So, 15 minutes later I had a shot in the arm and a newly signed and dated entry on my CDC vaccination card. I drove back to the hotel, parked the car and headed back to the check in desk. I plunked the card down on the desk and asked for my entry badge. The very same person who refused me before glanced at the card, saw the date that ended with ’23, smiled and welcomed me.
That’s the part that really bothered me later. It was the same person that felt it was so important to turn me away previously. It looked like I met their rules, so they were happy and welcoming. The part I’m glad she missed was that I had literally been gone for about a half an hour and still didn’t meet the requirements for entry. You see, those shots technically require a 2 week time period to become effective… and the rules said that too. A shot in the arm that day didn’t actually help anyone in the immediate time frame. They could have just as easily turned me away again…
I’m glad they didn’t. Laying out the money for the trip was a doable thing, but not for absolutely no return and no access to what I came there for. What it did was cement in my mind that this convention wants to never change, and if that means dying then so be it. In my personal experience over the past decade the attendance, the panel variety, the guest list and many other aspects have been dwindling. This year I was shocked at the lack of people. I’ve said the crowd was thinning before, but I saw so few people there I didn’t believe the attendance was more than about 200. It was dismal. The panel list was smaller, the guest list was smaller and the principle speaker wasn’t able to attend (last minute illness). Part of me can’t help but wonder if the policy had a bigger hand in that dip in attendees than just the rumors I heard. Yes, I know of at least 2 guests that said they weren’t coming back based on the rule. If I know of two, how many more were there? How many attendees just didn’t bother? What was there to draw them in?
The hotel hasn’t changed in all that time either. Admittedly, they’re working on remodeling the place, but I think this photo was symbolic of my weekend.
Worn, broken and barely hanging on. That’s it. That’s what I got from the weekend and even after waiting a week to get past the immediacy of my feelings, the impression has not improved. If anything, it’s gotten worse.
My panels, and my fellow panelists, were good. There were never more than ten people in any panel I was on (or that I attended), but the people that were there still held some enthusiasm. I was able to connect with a couple of con attendees, so that was great. I got to see my friends and may have even weaseled my way into a couple of short story anthologies for next year.
Still owning the fact that it was my screw up in not practicing what I preach and failing to read the fine print, this year just left a bad aftertaste. This wasn’t a good con. I had witnessed struggles in an indirect way with this con before, but I went with the benefit of the doubt. I wasn’t there in person to witness the challenges, so I could just try to keep things going. Not so much anymore. I’m glad I made the connections I did. I’m glad I saw my friends again, but I’m going to have to wait until next year rolls around to decide if I’m actually going to attend Philcon again. Ever.
We’re closing in on the end of the 23rd year of the fan group Watch The Skies. It’s been an amazing run and I genuinely hope it rolls at least another 23 years or more.
We still publish a fanzine each month and I still get the opportunity to make cover art for the various issues. The August book we were discussing was called Paradox Hotel. I liked the visual concept of various versions of the hotel being slightly out of focus with each other. A blurry filter over the camera lens. I pulled together some images and set to work. Here’s the cover for the August issue:
