(note that the link has not yet been updated with the new inductees). They are Clif Flynt, Tom Smith and Judith & Dave Hayman. Congrats!
will still be held Oct. 21-23 in north surburban Columbus; the scheduling conflicts with the hotel have been sorted out. Some of the events at the con will be moved to different rooms than usual, however.
. I'm contemplating starting a Texas Filk LJ community to supplement this page and the Texas Filk mailing list. So: Who all here is on LiveJournal?
April 6, 2005:
Hugo nominees
The
shortlist (you can tell this year's Worldcon is in Britain, since they're calling it that) of nominees for the fan-voted Hugo Awards has been released. Of note: Austin writer Bradley Denton's "Sergeant Chip" is up for best novella; he'll be at Apollocon in June in Houston and Armadillocon in August in Austin, and will be toastmaster at
Conestoga in Tulsa in July. (The 'Dillocon website says he's up for two awards, but darned if I can find the second one.) San Antonio artist John Picacio is up for best pro artist; he'll be at 'Dillo, as will Austin writer Chris Roberson, who's up for the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer (not technically a Hugo, but voted on and given out with them), and Dallas artist Brad Foster, up for best fan artist (he'll also be artist Guest of Honor at Conestoga).
As for visiting nominees:
Apollocon writer GoH Robert J. Sawyer's "Shed Skin" is up for best short story.
Armadillocon will actually be held after Worldcon this year (Worldcon's being held on Britain's August bank holiday weekend), so you'll already know by then if GoH Charles Stross won for his novel "Iron Sunrise" or either of his novellas "The Concrete Jungle" and "Elector." And finally,
FenCon special guest Mike Resnick has two short stories nominated, "A Princess of Earth" and "Travels With My Cats."
Information on the Hugos and how to vote on them is
available here.
OVFF glitch
The
Ohio Valley Filk Festival had what they describe as a "communications snafu" with their hotel and may have to change dates. I'll keep you posted.
March 17, 2005:
Andre Norton, 1912-2005
Andre Norton, whose
Witch World books were among more than 130 novels and nearly 100 short stories published over a seven-decade career, died this morning of congestive heart failure at her home in Murfreesboro, Tenn. She was 93.
Obituary on Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America site
3rd space pioneer song contest
Passed on from rec.music.filk:
The Mars Society is proud to announce that it will hold its Third Rouget de Lisle Award contest for songs celebrating the cause of the human exploration and settlement of space.
We are asking for a tape or CD of songs, to be submitted together with a hardcopy of the lyrics by no later than April 30, 2005 to Mars Society, Box 273, Indian Hills, CO 80454. Songs can be any style; classical, folk, country, pop, jazz, rock and roll, etc. A committee of judges will then down select to ten finalists, who will be invited to play at the 8th International Mars Society Convention, University of Colorado, Boulder, Agust 11, 14, 2005. The audience will then vote for the winning songs. All finalists, however, will submitted to Prometheus Music for consideration for its next CD, and will also be forwarded to NASA for possible use as wakeup songs for crews of the International Space Station, the Mars Rovers, and the Cassini spacecraft which is now orbiting Saturn!
Further info is available at
the Mars Society website; past winners can be heard at
this website.
March 8, 2005:
Getting it right
I goofed on the
calendar page entry for FenCon: Randy Farran is the Fan Guest of Honor, not the Toastmaster. It's fixed now.
March 2, 2005:
Tidbits
- ConDFW was fun. Particular highlights were the Laura Gallagher-led Filk Wassail, in which the filk room went to the various room parties en masse and serenaded them (we may need to make a Tradition out of this); Dan Burgess' lovely rant song about the "High 5" interchange under construction just south of the hotel ("instead of a clover leaf we have a Celtic knot"); J-Mag Guthrie's pitching shanty; and Jack Estes' song "Orphans of the Void," which he played at the afternoon filk session.
- Some sad news at the convention: the artist Jean Elizabeth Martin (aka JEM) died the week before the con.
- Further announcements from Armadillocon: Charles de Lint will be the toastmaster and Sean McMullen the special guest. Both are known to be musicians; I've personally heard de Lint and his wife MaryAnn playing at Bubonicon, and it was wonderful. Steven Brust and Patrick Nielsen Hayden's set at ConDFW was cool stuff; let's hope we get to hear some music from the guests in Austin...
Feb. 22, 2005:
Website revamp completed
(3:24 a.m.)
...except for the links page, which I need to go through and see what still links. That will have to be after ConDFW, though....
Feb. 21, 2005:
Website revamp in progress
4:33 p.m.: I'm reworking the website to try to make it a bit cleaner and more informative. It's not finished yet, so not all of the links will work right now. Please bear with me... (I have to go to work now.).
Feb. 8, 2005:
AggieCon guests
The Brobdingnagian Bards will be the musical guests at
AggieCon April
21-24 at Texas A&M University in College Station. Author guest of honor is Elizabeth Moon, the media guests of
honor are the makers of the cult-favorite Halo takeoff "Red vs. Blue," and the special GoH is the
Elric
series author Michael Moorcock.
Jan. 30, 2005:
NASFiC filk update
I'm not sure yet whether I'll be able to make it up Labor Day weekend to Seattle for
CascadiaCon, the North American Science Fiction Convention or NASFiC (held
in years when the Worldcon is outside North America), but I've got new reason to want to: the filk guest will be
Uffington Horse, the new band fronted by the wonderful
Heather Alexander.
Also at CascadiaCon is voting for the site of the 2007 NASFiC. As reported here back in September, the folks in
St. Louis are looking to make
that year's Archon the NASFiC; they
now have competition from a group in
Ocean City, Md. For the sake of
journalistic impartiality, I suppose, I should leave it at that and not point out that St. Louis is a lot
closer...
Though as far as journalistic impartiality goes I see looking back down this page that I've already been unfair
in not mentioning Kansas City's competition for the 2009 Worldcon, Montreal (although they don't seem to have a
website up yet). That will be voted on at the 2007 Worldcon in Japan. In a related bid update,
the Chicago bid for the 2008 Worldcon now has competition from a
group in
Denver (that site vote is at LACon next year in Los
Angeles).
Jan. 13, 2005:
Apollocon's filk guest...
...is the godmother of filk herself, Juanita Coulson. Her songs include "Chess" (aka "Ad Astra"), "The Mummy
Shuffle" (aka "Kharis"), and "No Quarter" (aka "The Alamo"), but she may be best known simply for being a filker
and writer for over half a century now, watching filk bloom and fade and bloom again, and doing what she could
and can - a considerable amount - to encourage the blooming.
Here's an interview she did a year and a
half ago. Folks, this is really something to look forward to.
Apollocon
will be held June 24-26 in Houston.
MidSouthCon
It's a bit further afield than I usually go (or mention here) for a non-filk-dedicated con, but
MidSouthCon, April 1-3 in Memphis, Tenn., comes fairly well recommended,
and this year it doesn't conflict with AggieCon since Easter falls on the traditional weekend for both and they
got bumped to different weekends (Aggie is April 21-24 this year). The filk GoH is the filk rapper (I kid you
not) The Great Luke Ski.
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