Category: SF & Fandom

Eight Years Ago

Eight years ago, I was woken by a phone call saying “They nuked New York!”

I’ve been a science fiction fan all my life, and I pay attention to security issues (computer security professionally though not as my main responsibility, and other stuff from habit and interest). So the concept of actual nuclear terrorism was by no means inconceivable to me. However, in a short time we worked through that the situation was somewhat different from that, and I got on the computer and started watching videos and looking for individuals posting their own photos (I’ve still got a bunch of the photos I snagged off the net). But I am probably close to unique in remembering learning that airplanes had flown into the World Trade Center as a bit of an anti-climax.

For MultiLogic, where I worked from 1996 to 2000 when they shut down, I’d made a number of trips to New York, and worked with major financial clients there (though none of the groups I worked with had their offices in the WTC complex). On a trip in October 2000 I’d taken a number of pictures including the WTC. I’d also decided to go to the top of the Empire State building rather than the WTC (there were more other buildings of interest nearby; and indeed I’m quite pleased with some of the photos I got from up there). I haven’t been back to New York since then.

I have watched the constant erosion of civil rights, with one small but important exception (RKBA for self-defense), and our blundering around the world smiting right and left at random, since then, with great sadness.

Not A Reinconation (1997) Gallery

I’ve just added a snapshot gallery for Not-A-Reinconation.

This is one of the sets of film I got scanned at Scan Cafe. There will be a lot of galleries of old photos popping up here for a while.

Thanks to Karen and Geri for useful comments and information as I tried to pin down exactly what event this was. People wore badges from various previous Reinconations at this event, so my easiest way of identifying convention photos was not helping me as much as usual.

(All the good pictures are pretty much portraits, and none of those seemed really right to represent the whole gallery and event, so I’m not reproducing a photo here.)

Wanted: Copy of Anticipation Souvenir Book

ETA: Thanks, I now have one!

(Anticipation being this year’s World Science Fiction Convention, in Montreal).

I’m looking to obtain a copy of the “souvenir book”, the fancy hardbound book with articles and pictures in it, given to members by the World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal this weekend.

Particularly, I’m wanting to see what the selection were from Kyle Cassidy’s Where I Write project, and how they printed in the book.

So, anybody not care to keep their copy?  I’ll give it a good home, or pay a modest amount.  Or if anybody knows a way to buy one from the convention directly, if they had any left over, I could do that.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Day

This appears to have been invented by Sharon Lee, here.

Apparently the traditional observance is to blog thanks to various authors.

I’d like to thank Doc Smith and Robert A. Heinlein, for teaching me that the government isn’t necessarily my friend.

I’d like to thank J.R.R. Tolkien for showing me some significantly alien cultures.

I’d like to thank Dorothy Sayers and Lois McMaster Bujold for giving me some positive mature views of romance.

I’d like to thank John M. Ford and Jo Walton for showing me that poetry as a category wasn’t actually inherently boring after all.

I’d like to thank Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, and Patrick O’Brian, and W.E.B. Griffin, and David Weber for giving me some understanding of how one works in the middle of a hierarchical command structure, and why one might want to.

I’d like to thank Peter O’Donnell for competent heros who still have complex emotional lives, and who work for their skills.

I’d like to thank a large number of authors who have provided me many hours of thoughtful, immersive entertainment.

And I’d like to thank a number of authors whose involvement in my life is personal in various degrees as well as professional.