Category Archives: Conventions

Con Report: BayCon 2023!

BayCon 2023
BayCon 2023!

 

So, last weekend I went to BayCon in Santa Clara. It was the first time I’ve been to a con by myself since TimeCon ’87; since then I’ve been with friends or with Jennifer. I was expecting to feel kind of lonely and sad without Jennifer at the con with me, but I didn’t. I made new friends, I met old friends, and I met other writers (including old friends who are writers), and in general I had a blast.

Cover of The Repossessed Ghost
The Repossessed Ghost by Brian C. E. Buhl

My good friend Brian C. E. Buhl launched his debut novel, The Repossessed Ghost, and I snagged a limited edition signed copy. I also met some other writers, but I already had copies of their books, and since I hadn’t brought their books with me, I didn’t get any signed. Ah well.

There was also gaming at the con, but I didn’t avail myself of any games since I had simply too many panels to attend or people to meet and have meals with. One of the people I met with on Saturday morning was a new agent. Mind you, I don’t have any projects ready to pitch to an agent (the novel And the Devil Will Drag You Under isn’t close enough to ready), but it was a good conversation nonetheless. They invited me to lunch, which I’m told is a good sign, but I needed to get coffee and head to Brian’s reading.

I went to panels on AI in writing and the arts, on panels about general topics in writing, and a panel that had five writers doing a dramatic reading of (of all things!) Modelland by Tyra Banks. I am not 100% convinced that this book really was written by model Tyra Banks; it might have been ghost-written, I suppose, or someone wrote this and slapped her name on it. Either way, it was really, really bad, and perfectly deserving of five writers doing a dramatic reading in exaggerated tones and voices.

I checked out the dealer room, where I bought a t-shirt, a pair of robot earrings for Jennifer, and way too many books. A pair of books that caught my eye were From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine’s Journey through Myth and Legend, by Valerie Estelle Frankel, which outlines a very different version of the Heroine’s Journey than Gail Carriger does in her book on the topic; and The Villain’s Journey: Descent and Return in Science Fiction and Fantasy, also by Valerie Estelle Frankel.  I also picked up a copy of Classic Monsters Unleashed, which looks right up my alley.

Each night I headed back to my hotel room after dinner and flumpfed onto my bed. I fully intended each evening to get back up after an hour or so, but it just didn’t happen, so I missed most of the evening events and parties, which makes me kind of sad. Maybe next year I will budget my energy better.

Dragon*Con is in a couple of months. I have friends who are going, but I am not, even though some of my favorite writers will be there. I haven’t been there since 2006, when attendance was something like 30,000; I understand it’s much larger now, and I’m likely to get overwhelmed. Also, I entertain this fantasy that the next time I go to Dragon*Con, it will be as a guest. It’ll happen.


As I mentioned, the last con I went to on my own was TimeCon ’87. I went to TimeCon ’86 (on my own) prior to that. I also attended TimeCon ’88 with a lot of friends. I’ve been to several cons with friends or with Jennifer since then. I’ve only been to one con that I didn’t have a lot of fun at and that con shall remain nameless for now.

For a bonus bit of blog, here are the program covers for two of the TimeCon events that I attended in 1986 and 1987. Anyone remember these?

Cover of the TimeCon 1986 Program Booklet
Cover of the TimeCon 1987 Program Booklet

Living in a Post-Monstrous Age

I had a blast at FogCon, as I usually do. The panels I attended were all fascinating, the people were great, &c. I was a little miffed that the bio I wrote for myself on the website didn’t manage to make it into the printed program, but I’ve learned to live with small disappointments like that. I also enjoyed hanging out with other writers and talking craft and projects with them. That’s always worthwhile.

The panel I was on, “Cuddly Horrors from Outer Space”, went in a direction that I wasn’t expecting, and as a result I felt a bit out of my depth at times. I was far more prepared to discuss cosmic horrors and Lovecraftian critters and how making them cute is, in a sense, defying the nihilistic culture we live in, so when we veered into social commentary about Dracula and similar creatures of imagination, I was a bit surprised. And although I felt I didn’t have much to contribute to that particular part of the conversation, I enjoyed it.

The more I think about it, the more I think we live in a culture with more “defanged” monsters than actual scary ones: monsters which are cute and cuddly, rather than horrific and scary. It’s far easier to buy a plush Cthulhu than a monstrous statue of him, for example; and cartoon images of vampires and werewolves abound, to the point where they show up on Sesame Street as the Count and Stephanie Myers writes about glittering vampires playing baseball in the sun.

The “Disneyfication” of horrifying cultural tropes came up as well. Many of the folk and fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm were cautionary tales for children (and some were meant for adults), and some were just plain scary for the sake of being scary, but Disney transformed the original Snow White into Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. As a result, the original horrific element of that story is lost in a whirlwind of singing birdies. Of course, as time has gone on we’ve seen reimaginings of, say, the “Princess” trope, where the definition of a Disney princess has gone from the meek and helpless Snow White to the nearly (but not quite) feminist characters found in Frozen. I think more work needs to be done with these tropes, but I am heartened by what we’ve seen so far (yes, there are feminist retellings of these fairy tales but on the whole they’re meant for adults and not for children).

We also talked about humanizing monsters, making them sympathetic, and about exploring the human side of them. We see this in works such as Frankenstein, where in the novel the creature is meant to be sympathized with and Frankenstein himself is the weak and pathetic character who runs screaming from what he’s created and refusing to take responsibility for it. Seeing our own reflections in these monsters helps us, I think, reflect on our own humanity.

Of course, we also have shows such as Hannibal and Dexter, which invite the audience to see serial killers as sympathetic creatures in spite of their terrible crimes. This brought the conversation, in a roundabout way, to a discussion of our current political climate, in which we “normalize” monstrous people such as Nazis and fascists and find coverage of them in The New York Times, while the forces of good, such as the antifa movement and Black Lives Matter are rendered monstrous.

We talked also a wee bit about “humanizing” zombies, though I am pretty sure we agreed that the point of a zombie is that it is a creature that has lost all dredges of humanity entirely; and thus the moment you start to humanize them, make them sympathetic, then by definition they cease to be zombies. I can’t think of any exceptions to this off the top of my head. Even novels like Scott G. Browne’s Breathers, which is told from the point of view of the zombie, doesn’t really have any zombies in it.

I don’t know for sure. Am I moving the goalposts here, redefining what it means to be a zombie as I discuss the concept? There are plenty of iterations of the vampire motif, so why not so with zombies?

On the whole, then, I think we live in a post-monstrous age, where the supernatural creatures are no longer scary and the monstrous within isn’t examined anymore. While zombies might represent the faceless evils of racism and consumer culture, it’s still pretty easy to find plush zombies in the stores and online through ThinkGeek. Even Sadako and Samara, the yurei that feature so terrifyingly in The Grudge and The Ring so supernaturally, were recently pitted against each other in a more comedic film (in much the same vein as Freddy Vs. Jason).

Are there monstrous beings anymore? Can we be frightened by vampires and werewolves and Cthulhu anymore? Is it even possible? Or can we still find horror within, reflected by media overgeneralizations of cultural forces?

I’m going to have to think about this some more.

 

Con Report: FogCon 2015

This past weekend, Jennifer and I went to FogCon, a small science fiction and fantasy convention based in Walnut Creek. It was fun — a LOT of fun — but now I am suffering the post-convention blues. Big time. Sigh. Maybe a quick blog post about the con will help me recover.

For one thing, the is probably the first convention in a long time where I haven’t participated in the writers’ workshop. For one thing, I just didn’t get to the application process on time; and, for another thing, I feel pretty sure that I’ve gotten as much out of these workshops as I am going to get.

The highlight of Friday (day one), was a reading which featured my friend Andrea Stewart, who read from her upcoming novel Loose Changeling (which will be available on April 1 from Amazon — check out the Changeling Wars website). Andrea is a fantastic writer. You should definitely check her out and buy her stories and books.

Saturday morning I attended a panel called “The Road”, which was essentially about road stories in science fiction and fantasy, and variations of the theme. It was interesting, and I came away with plenty of ideas for various stories. During the panel, I noted one fellow who had hearing aids that were wired to purple discs that were attached to the sides of his head. I was fascinated by these, but I didn’t have the chance at that panel to ask him about them.

I did meet up with him in the lobby later that day, though. We were headed in opposite directions, but I (probably quite rudely) stopped him and said, “I’m interested in those purple discs attached to the sides of your head. What are they?”

“Oh, they’re cochlear implants,” he said, which I found interesting because I always thought that cochlear implants were internal, not external. We chatted about this for a few minutes, then he looked down at my name badge.

“Wait,” he said. “Richard Crawford?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Richard SCOTT Crawford?”

I looked at him askance. How did this guy know me, and how did he know my middle name? Maybe he was a fan of my writing, though I didn’t think I had any fans outside my circle of friends.

But then he showed me his name badge, and I was delighted to see it was Aahz, a friend of mine from college (though I originally knew him as [REDACTED]). We hadn’t seen each other for almost thirty years, and meeting him at the con seemed pretty random. He introduced me to his primary partner, and we had a fun conversation, though we didn’t really get a chance to catch up with each other until Sunday at lunch. Turns out he’s learning how to be a square dance caller, something which I found really interesting; there’s a host of things to know about square dancing, as it turns out; in addition to the basic moves of square dancing I learned in 8th grade at Lawrence Academy, there are something like 100+ moves that each dancer must memorize and execute on the spot the moment it is called out. And the caller has to pay attention to the music, its beats and its melodies and nuances, and call out the most appropriate move. I hadn’t thought there was so much complexity to it.

Sunday afternoon (Jennifer wasn’t able to make it to the con on that day), I went and attended another reading, this time featuring Sunil Patel and Effie Seiberg. Both of them are very talented writers, and I really want to spend money and buy things that they’ve written.

All in all, a great con. I’m looking forward to going back next year.

Oh, and there were guests! Catherynne Valente and Kim Stanley Robinson. And the ghost of Joanna Russ. All of them worthy guests, although I wish I’d gotten a chance to meet up with Ms. Valente to have her sign my copy of The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland. It’s a great book. I recommend it.