io9: cons

See You at Wiscon!

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:20:00 PDT

If any of you are going to be at Wiscon this weekend in Madison, say hi to Charlie Jane, Nivair, and myself! We'll all be there wandering around hoping to find awesomely cool books, as well as dropping in on many of the excellent panels planned for the con. So if you see us, tell us about what you're reading, and what you'd recommend! Nivair is there currently, and Charlie Jane and I are on a plane right now, arriving late this evening.

io9's Complete Guide to Science Fiction Season

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 08:40:00 PDT

It's time for the annual science fiction season to begin. Spring and summer are when giant science fiction flicks hit the screens, and even more giant science fiction conventions open their doors to the hundreds of thousands of light saber-wielding masses. New television series will debut (Clone Wars!), and old ones will restart (Battlestar!) Plus, you'll have a chance to snap up copies of awesome new books from Greg Egan, Karen Joy Fowler, Charles Stross, Ken MacLeod, and Nancy Kress. If you want to know where to go and what to do when you're in a science fictional way from April to August, then look no further than io9's exhaustive, amazing, intensive list of everything scifi this season.

Special Note: We have tried to list as much as possible here, but there are always things that will get left out. If you want to know every single book coming out this season, check out Locus magazine's exhaustive and ever-expanding list. And if you want to know about more cons, check the user-generated list at ConFinder, as well as the Ansible Events List (mostly UK). If you know of sites that list European and Asian cons, let us know in comments so we can add it here.

Image above by Redandjonny.

April

Books
Karen Joy Fowler, Wit's End
Orson Scott Card, Keeper of Dreams
Jeanette Winterson, The Stone Gods
Walter Jon Williams, Implied Spaces

Movies and Television
April 4
Final Season of Battlestar Galactica begins

Conventions
April 4-6
I-CON 27 - Stony Brook, NY - $55 registration at the door
Odyssey Con VIII - Madison, WI - $45 registration at the door
WillyCon X-Treme - Wayne, NE - $20 registration at the door
April 11-13
CoastCon 31 - Biloxi, MS $40 registration at the door
April 18-20
Conglomeration 2008 - Louisville, KY - $40 registration at the door
EerieCon Ten - Niagara Falls, NY - $35 registration until April 8
New York Comic Con - New York, NY - $45 registration
Penguicon 6.0 - Troy, MI - $45 registration at the door
April 24-27
Nebula Awards Weekend - Austin, TX - $50 registration
April 25-27
RavenCon 2008 - Richmond, VA - $35 registration until
UberCon - Edison, NJ - $65 registration
Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention - Lombard, IL - $35 registration
April 26
Uni-Con 2008 - Rindge, NH - $25 registration at the door
April 26-27
Fantasticon 2008 - Copenhagen, Denmark - 15 euro

May

Books
Cory Doctorow, Little Brother
Ellen Datlow, The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy (stories)
Greg Egan, Incandescence
Nancy Kress, Nano Comes to Clifford Falls (stories)
Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, Steampunk (stories)

Movies and Television
May 2
Iron Man
May 9
Speed Racer
May 22
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Conventions
May 2-4
DemiCon 19 - Des Moines, IA - $45 registration
May 9-11
LepreCon 34 - Casa Grande, AZ - $40 registration through April 15
May 15-18
Eurocon-2008 - Moscow, Russia - $100 registration at the door
May 16-18
Chronicling Mars: The 2008 Eaton Science Fiction Conference - Riverside, CA - $110 registration until April 14
KeyCon 25 / CANvention 28 - Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada - 55 CAD before April 30
May 23-25
CONduit XVIII - Salt Lake City, UT - $35 registration until May 1
Oasis 21 - Orlando, FL - $30 registration until April 30
May 23-26
Balticon 42 - Baltimore, MD - $59 registration after April 1
Timegate: Regenerations - Atlanta, GA - $35 registration until April 30
WisCon 32 - Madison, WI - $45 registration through April 30
BayCon - Santa Clara, CA - $70 through May 10
May 30-June 1
ConCarolinas - Charlotte, NC - $25 registration until May 25

June

Books
Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Mercy
Stephen Baxter, Flood
Tanya Huff, Valor's Trial

Movies and Television
June 13
The Happening
The Incredible Hulk
June 27
Wanted
Wall-E

Conventions
June 13-15
DucKon 17 - Naperville, IL - $40 registration until May 1
June 26-29
Midwestcon 59 - Cincinnati, OH - $25 registration until May 25
June 27-29
ApolloCon 2008 - Houston, TX - $30 registration until May 1
June 28-29
ConRunner 2008 - Wolverhampton, West Midlands, United Kingdom - £35 registration until June 21

July

Books
Charles Stross, Saturn's Children
Greg Bear, City at the End of Time
David Louis Edelman, MultiReal

Movies and Television
July 2
Hancock
July 4
Love Story 2050
Jul 11
Meet Dave
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
Jul 18
The Dark Knight
Space Chimps
July 25
X-Files 2

Conventions
July 3-6
CONvergence 2008 - Bloomington, MN - $53.50 registration
Westercon 61: A Gathering of Fen in the Desert - Las Vegas, NV - $60 registration until April 28
July 10-13
Science Fiction Research Association 39th Annual Conference held jointly with the 2008 Campbell Conference: "Teaching, Reading and Creating Science Fiction" - Lawrence, KS - $140 registration until April 30
July 11-13
OSFest: The Omaha Science Fiction and Fantasy Festival - Omaha, NE - $40 registration until June 30
Polaris 22 - Toronto, Ontario, Canada - 50 CND registration until June 2
July 17-20
Readercon 19 with guests of honor Jonathan Lethem & James Patrick Kelly - Burlington, MA - $50 registration until June 30
July 18-20
Lazy Dragon Con - McKinney, TX - registration opens July 18
July 24-27
Dum Dum 2008 - Waterloo, IA - registration information available soon
San Diego International Comic-Con - San Diego, CA - daily registration from $20 to $35
July 25-27
Confluence 2008 - Pittsburgh, PA - $35 registration until early July (date TBA)
July 26-28
Finncon08 - Tampere, Finland - free
July 31-August 3
Oslo Science Fiction Festival - Oslo, Norway

August

Books
Ben Bova, Mars Life
Ken MacLeod, The Night Sessions
John Scalzi, Zoe's Tale
Tobias Buckell, Sly Mongoose
Judith Merril, Not Only a Woman (collection of four Merril novels, two co-authored with C.M. Kornbluth)

Movies and Television
Aug 15
Clone Wars TV series debut
Aug 29
Babylon A.D.

Conventions
August 1-3
Diversicon 16 - Minneapolis, MN - $30 registration until July 14
Fandemonium '08 - Nampa, ID - $30 registration until July 20
August 6-10
Denvention 3: The 66th World Science Fiction Convention - Denver, CO - $200 for full membership until July 10
August 15-17
Con-Version 24 - Calgary, Alberta, Canada - $60 registration
August 21-24
Gatecon - Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada - $135 registration
August 22-24
Bubonicon 40 - Albuquerque, NM - $30 registration until May 1
August 29-Sept. 1
Dragon*Con - Atlanta, GA - $65 registration until May 15, 2008

Additional reporting by Nivair H. Gabriel.

A History Of The Science Fiction Convention

Kevin Kelly — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:30:20 PST

History is fuzzy about when the first science fiction convention actually happened, but we do know that in 1936 some fans including David Kyle and Frederik Pohl took a train from Philadelphia to New York City to talk about all things scifi with another group of fans at the home of Milton A. Rothman, who rivals Forrest J Ackerman for the biggest fanboy in the world award (Rothman had formed The Boys' Scientifiction Club in 1930). However, a group of British fans also got together in the same year to make plans for an actual convention in 1937, and later claimed that a group of fans meeting at a home does not a convention make. So even before the internet, there was squabbling over details and probably even convention spoilers. Some things will never change. In honor of our coverage of WonderCon, we present to you the history of Connage.

The first official (American, anyhow) "World Science Fiction Convention" (now known as Worldcon) was held in 1939, and followed by conventions in Chicago and Denver in the following years. check out the photo above of some fans posing at Coney Island during that first convention, on the top row on the far left is Ray Bradbury.
The first British convention in 1937 attracted 20 fans, including Eric Frank Russell and Arthur C. Clarke.
The WorldCon conventions were suspended after 1941 due to World War II, but resumed in 1946.
WonderCon was started by John Barrett in the San Francisco Bay area in 1987, but has since been adopted and is now part of the Comic-Con International family of Cons. Sort of like the Shazam family.
Comic-Con itself began in San Diego as the Golden State Comic Book Convention in 1970, and attracted around 500 fans. Last year the Con (now the San Diego Comic-Con or just Comic-Con) had over 125,000 visitors.
There are now regional cons including everything from Eurocon to DeepSouthCon to Westercon.
There are even specific cons that cover one range of subjects, like BotCon (Transformers), Costume-Con (costumes, duh), and FilkOntario (filk music, folks music with a scifi/fantasy twist).
That's not even mentioning all of the cons for specific shows and movies that have sprung up, like Star Trek, Farscape, Star Wars, and plenty of others. In fact, the movie GalaxyQuest is completely con-centric.
Our favorite title? The Wrath of Con in North Florida. Either that or the Comic Book Guy's Bi-Mon-Sci-Fi-Con. It's a toss up.

Ride Around In Your Own Criminal-Built Dalek

Kevin Kelly — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 14:02:28 PST

The Australian government might have come up with the most brilliant prison plan ever: use hardened criminals to churn out replicas of science fiction props, and then sell them on eBay. Sadly, they aren't using the money to fund the development of robot prison guards — all proceeds are going to charity. The fools. Why not keep that dough and buy yourself a high tech lair?

The Woodford Correctional Center in Queensland, Australia has built a full-sized Dalek replica from Doctor Who that comes complete with wheels, space for an occupant, and an electronic voice changer. Granted, you have to Fred Flintstone the thing around with your feet, but it's a small price to pay. You can pedal this thing down to your local market and shout "EX TER MI NATE!" until you get arrested. Priceless.

Bidding is up to $3000 bucks Australian right now, which is roughly $2700 US, although you'll have to fly down to Australia to pick the thing up, since they wont ship it outside of Oz. You might also want to check and make sure it's passenger-free when you get it, since these same inmates melted the walls at the prison with toasters in 1997 and escaped. Maybe they've incorporated that same wall-melting in the Dalek's beam weapon.

'Doctor Who' Dalek For Sale [Comic Mix]

Ramping Up for Wondercon

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 13:04:53 PST

If you love science fiction and comic books, and you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, there's nothing more pleasing than Wondercon. From February 22 to 24, San Francisco's Moscone Center will be packed with cool artists, fat longboxes full of tasty comic treats, and panels about everything from the new season of Jericho to the coolest female superheroes. (Yes the entire cast of Jericho will be there.) io9 will be there too, and we're having nerdgasms about pretty much everything.

High on our list of things to do: see Douglas Wolk give a talk; and see honored guests Kurt Busiek (a living god), Terry Moore, Becky Cloonan, J. Michael Straczynski, and Ben Templesmith. Also, we want to hang out with our pals from one of the world's greatest comics blogs, Newsarama (We also want to meet Dave from Dave's Longbox, but we don't know if he ever gets down to Wondercon). There will be tons of other amazing writers, artists, and commentators there too. If you see us, say hi! Maybe we'll even organize an io9 meetup at a local bar.

Wondercon [event site]