This year at Dragon*Con, we are going to hold a trial for various villains of literary science fiction and fantasy. Fun, right? Unfortunately, I'm having trouble deciding which villains I should suggest to our fearless leader, vampry. Any ideas, peanut gallery ( Read more... )

I'm making this post public because I want as much input as possible.

I have convinced myself (with a little encouragement from grey_bard) to run an unofficial reading party at this year's Dragon*Con (probably on the Marriott's tenth floor) celebrating the worst media tie-in novels ever written. I already know that I want to treat you all to some dramatic ( Read more... )

Years ago, selenak wrote a nice summary describing some of the ways in which distrust of benevolent parental figures has filtered into current-day science fiction and fantasy. Well, my dear friend, we can add one more show to the list: Stargate SG1, which begins to de-throne Oma Desala and the Ascended Ancients as superior mentor figures in the sixth ( Read more... )

What Is Science Fiction?Given how exercised the mailing list seems to be getting about the above question, I think we can fill an hour - or more - with some very interesting arguments over definitions and gradations (i.e., hard versus soft versus fantasy) and TV-Guide-style ignorance. And I'm reasonably sure we can talk about this face-to-face ( Read more... )

Continued from here.

Monday morning, I went to see LeVar Burton and was utterly impressed by how smart and centered he appeared to be. Being a child of the 80’s, I knew LeVar from Reading Rainbow before I was aware he was on Trek, and I did in fact take the opportunity to thank him for his commitment to that project, which I’m convinced did a lot ( Read more... )

... I already have a multi-fandom notion:

The News Media in Modern Genre Television

This panel will explore the portrayals of journalists and news stations in our recent and current favorite programs, including Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, etc ( Read more... )

Ok, selenak, here's the part you've been waiting for. ;) Continued from here.

The B5 genocide panel was pitted against the Masquerade, which virtually assured that we would only have around fifteen people in the room. This actually turned out to be good thing, though, because these were fifteen people who cared about what we were talking about. And ( Read more... )

Continued from here.

After the Farscape panel, I, being ambulatory, decided to go window shop in the dealer’s room. Not that they had windows, but you get the idea. While there, I was cornered by searose, who invited me to dinner at a local Chinese buffet later in the evening. I accepted and then went back to my room to take a bit of a nap ( Read more... )

I will be posting Sunday in bits and pieces as I find free time to nab during the week.Having stayed up so late the previous night, I woke up a little bit later on Sunday. But despite certain Centauri-like excesses, I was actually feeling pretty good in the arthritis pain department. Thus, I decided to ditch the wheelchair for a day so that I ( Read more... )

Because I realize I still owe you more. *g*

( Saturday )