Prepping for Continuum
Tomorrow I’m off to Continuum, following in N. K. Jemisin’s footsteps as their International Guest of Honor. Yeah, no pressure there! (Also, why don’t more U.S. conventions have international GoHs?)
I expect to be plenty busy for the next week and a half, and will be spending very little time online, so I apologize in advance to everyone whose emails I’ll be ignoring until I return. There may be random Tweeting, depending on the wifi in the hotel. But I’ll definitely have lots to share when I get home.
In the meantime, the blog will be going into reruns for the next two weeks.
For those of you who’ll be in Melbourne, here’s my schedule for the convention.
Friday, June 6
- 7:30 – 8:00, Opening Ceremonies
- 8:00 – 9:00, Spicks and Speckulations
Saturday, June 7
- Noon – 1:00, Guest of Honor Speech
- 2:00 – 4:00, Podcast: Writer and Critic
- 5:00 – 6:00, Cover Art Pose-off
- 6:00 – 7:00, Demystifying Social Media
- 8:00 – 8:30, Costume Parade (I’ll be one of the judges)
Sunday, June 8
- 10:00 – 11:00, Kaffeeklatsch
- 1:00 – 1:30, Signing
- 2:00 – 3:00, YA Meet the Authors
- 4:00 – 5:00, Reading (with Andrew Macrae)
- 5:00 – 6:00, Writing Fanfic
- 8:00 – 10:00, Ditmar & Chronos Awards Ceremony
Monday, June 9
- 3:00 – 4:00, Triptych: Gender Stereotypes in Speculative Fiction
- 4:00 – 5:00, Fake Geek Pride
- 5:00 – 5:30, Closing Ceremonies
And then after that, I’ll probably go fall down and get some sleep before taking a few days for sightseeing.
celli
June 2, 2014 @ 10:19 am
Yay, fanfic panel!
Karl-Johan Norén
June 2, 2014 @ 2:19 pm
I can think of several reasons why few US cons have international GoHs, speaking from my experience of running Swedish cons.
The first one is simply expense. Getting a GoH from Britain or Ireland costs a Swedish con circa 10,000 SEK in hotel costs and travel, but doing the same from USA or Canada can easily double that or more, both in higher travel costs and the need of an extra hotel night or two to handle the jet lag. Now, most cons can handle that expense, but it means a bigger investment in the GoH.
The second is the lack of knowledge. Swedish fandom has excellent contacts with the British sf scene, thanks to many of us visiting Eastercons and so on. That makes most British sf writers to known quantities. If we choose a writer from America, we have a much narrower knowledge base, and since the investment is greater that means “star power” becomes more important. We can easily pick up a relative unknown from Britain since we know he or she will make an excellent GoH in lots of ways, but have a much harder way doing that from America.
The third is likely that there is no shortage of good GoH material within America. Why take a chance and pay more when you can get an equivalent writer at a lower price that’s a known quantity? So I imagine the “star power” is even more important for US cons that look abroad, and there aren’t that many within the British sf field. And outside British fandom you run into even more trouble due to language barriers.
Elanor MJ
June 2, 2014 @ 4:51 pm
Woohoo! See you there!
Tansy Rayner Roberts
June 3, 2014 @ 9:34 am
Very excited for the con, Jim, hope we’ll get a chance to chat while you’re there – looking at your schedule, there may not be much time for socialising!
Australian cons often bring out international guests – certainly every Natcon, and most of the bigger regional cons, endeavour to do so. We have lots of great, interesting writers right here in Aus, but there’s an element of excitement that comes from bringing someone from Out There who can add something new to our conversations, and lure in the members.
Nowhere in Australia is really close to anywhere else. So a con isn’t just appealing to locals, it’s always trying to tempt congoers from the other states to come and join the fun. The promise of meeting a writer who doesn’t come to Australia very often is a bit part of the appeal!
And, of course, it helps preserve the identity of each convention so they don’t all blur into one vague serialised memory. Continuum X will always be “the one with Jim Hines.”
Elizabeth Mancz
June 3, 2014 @ 11:11 am
Enjoy your trip. Get lots of pictures! I love pictures. And have a good time. If you can manage to annoy he who is now considering himself some sort of obscure martial arts weapon as well as N. K. Jemison did that would be good…
Jim C. Hines
June 3, 2014 @ 11:31 am
“…he who is now considering himself some sort of obscure martial arts weapon…”
Wait, he’s what now?
Actually, I’m probably happier not knowing, aren’t I.
Elizabeth Mancz
June 3, 2014 @ 5:23 pm
Probably. But you might find this funny… “Larry is the tetsubo, John is the rapier and I am the Ka-Bar, best suited for close combat gutting.” Larry Correia and John Wright, of course. This is in reference to his pink/blue F/SF division, which our boy persists in seeing as some sort of a war to the finish, which he and his are fated to win because god and who knows what are on their side. I have 5o say that when I am not finding it exasperating, it can be pretty amusing.