ICON 38 Photos

Finally getting around to putting some photos up from last month, starting with ICON 38.

We threw a room party on Friday night, and a lot of fans came by to say hello.  This is Jeanette on the left and Ange on the right, both all dressed up and looking very chic.

From our room party again, on the left is Lauren, who came down with us from New Richmond to attend her very first SF convention!  Dean is standing behind to the right and I don't remember the name of the gentleman with the bowler and goggles, but we were all having a good time.

Some more party guests dressed up in fine steampunk style.

This is Adele, who was the Spider Lady.  Love the hat!

One of the most fascinating panels was a showing of some of the very first motion pictures ever shown in Iowa, starting back in 1896!  They were discovered by the gentleman standing next to the film projector in a basement of a house in a small Iowa town almost thirty years ago and he's been working to catalog and restore them ever since.  He had a wonderful show that he narrated vividly, including all kinds of facts he'd discovered about the films, including the fact that the highest paid actor in film back in 1901 was... a dog.  It wasn't all glitz and glamor back then.

He'd also found much other material, including records of where movies were shown and when, and how much money they made selling tickets.  Needless to say, this is really priceless information.  He'd also brought along a precursor to motion pictures called a Magic Lantern, and you can see one of the wooden slides in the photo.  They had multiply moving parts that would be turned to show a "moving" picture, and they dated back from the late 1860s.

Here's a shot of the Magic Lantern itself on the table at the left.  Initially they used a kerosene flame to light it, but this one had a light bulb that was cooled by the circa 1910 Sterling Electric Fan (made in Chicago) on the right.  Note the handy guard that allowed for spontaneous fingernail trimming on the fan...

One of the things Erin and a couple of the other artists in attendance did was to take some of their acrylic paints and use Lauren as a canvas for a work of art that she wore around the convention on Saturday.

Mike Miller laughing out loud while Dave Ingraham smiles on the right.  Good times.

Some of the floundering father and mother ships of Iowa science fiction fandom.  They still know who they are, even if they're getting grayer these days...

 Ange in another spiffy costume on Saturday night.

And this costume was good enough to eat, being on a chocolate cake.

On Sunday morning there was a panel on the process of creating steampunk objects, which was well attended and enlightening.  Erin was there too and got some ideas I'm sure.

Finally on Sunday afternoon, there was the panel on ICONs past, starting on the left with Mark Moore, Greg Frost, Bill Johnson (aka Billjon), Mike Miller, Steve Tait and Denny Lynch.  Thanks for helping to start it all!

ICON 38

For the first time in three years both Erin and I were able to go to a convention together thanks to a neighbor who was willing to mind our menagerie (as he put it) of canines and felines.  They all survived the ordeal just fine, I'm happy to say.  We also took a newcomer, Lauren, to SF/F conventions with us, who happened to be a roomer living in said neighbor's place, as she was really curious about what a science fiction convention was.  We were happy to give her the opportunity to find out.

So after the usual delay in our departure, thanks to the usual putting off of things until The Last Minute, we were on the road by 11am and heading for Cedar Rapids.  The drive down was uneventful and Erin and Lauren spent most of it talking with me getting a word in edgewise on occasion, if I was lucky.  I did try a shortcut south of Rochester on a county road that ended up not being much of a shortcut thanks to lots of tight corners, but it was a pretty route at least.  We made it to the hotel by 4pm, and while Erin checked her art into the art show, Lauren and I hauled up our stuff to the room.

We had quite a bit of stuff because I decided that we'd throw a party this year, so I had a case of wine and some food too, as well as my guitar, but we managed it all in two trips thanks to snagging a hotel baggage cart.  After we'd finished with that, we headed down to registration where we both found we didn't have badges waiting for us, but after a bit of checking we found we were indeed in the database as being pre-registered, so no problem.

Then as I was wondering what to do next, I ran into Mike Miller (aka "Spacey") who was heading to a panel demonstrating something called a "Raspberry Pi" at 5pm and said it would be fun.  So I went and heard about a $35 computer called a Raspberry Pi that was cheap, open source, and fun.  It's basically a board with a CPU that uses a SIM card for memory, runs on a version of Linux, has a couple of USB ports, an ethernet connection and a couple of video outs, one of them a venerable RCA plug.  One of the aspirations the R-Pi's makers have is for it to be used in teaching about computers in places where budget's a very low, as in third world low.  But it's sophisticated enough to be useful anywhere.  I likened it to using a ukulele to teach music, as a uke is also simple, cheap and fairly easy for young'uns to grasp.  One of the audience members brought his own R-Pi with him and showed us how he connected it to a cast-off Motorola cellular phone accessory that had a display and a keyboard.  Neat.  It was a nice way to start the convention.

Then after connecting back with Erin when she was finished in the art show, Lauren and I joined her at the opening ceremonies to hear about the fabulous guests, who were pretty fabulous, including pros like Ellen Datlow, Nancy Kress, and Joe Haldeman, who was the "artist guest of honor" because ICON has run out of other things to honor him as after 38 years and besides, he does some nice watercolors, one of which was the art for this year's con T-shirt, which I naturally got to wear myself.  I would have stayed for the Trans-Iowa Canal Company skit but had to go back to the room to do party prep, but I heard it was pretty funny, if you got most of the in-jokes.

It turned out to be a good thing I did head back to the room, because as soon as I started getting stuff out I realized I'd left the cheese, ALL of it, at home.  So I had to make a dash to a nearby Target where I picked up $30 worth of dairy products and was able, with help from Erin and Lauren, to get the spread out by 9pm when I'd said the party would be open.  Well, I was up against a band, Wylde Nept, that's very popular at ICON, so it took a little time for my first guests to show, but there were good ones, Mark Moore and his spouse Mickey Zucker Reichert.  So we had fun talking about the good old days - the theme of the party was S.F.L.I.S., aka the Science Fiction League of Iowa Students, which started ICON and there were a lot of us old-timers attending this year.  Gradually more folks came by and a convivial time was had by all until 1pm, when Erin and Lauren said they could use some sleep.

The next morning I headed for a panel called "1013: The Year Nothing Happened", which was the theme of the con this year, but it was actually a panel about research, which I guess relates to coming up empty looking for the events of 1013.  The panelists were Glen Cook, Bill Johnson (aka Billjon) and Mickey Zucker Reichert, who discussed how they did research when writing fiction, and it turned out to be enlightening as they all had their own way of digging things up.  Glen for example doesn't do actual research, but he reads all the time and has a pretty good store of knowledge to draw on.

Then it was time for the panel on the Rusty Hevelin Collection at the University of Iowa, featuring not just one, or two, but *three* research librarians presenting the progress on the collection so far.  One of the highlights was learning that since the condition of most of Rusty's pulp collection was so good, there was an opportunity to treat it in bulk to a process that would buffer the paper and prevent the acid from damaging the paper any further.  The fact that the pages are still flexible is an indication that it could be worth it, to better preserve and make the original pulps available to the public.  Some of the detective pulps have already been used in a class on hard-boiled detective fiction at the U. of Iowa, as part of learning about the roots of the genre.  I'm sure Rusty would be very pleased.

After that, I'd heard about an unusual panel featuring some old, really old, silent films that had been discovered in the basement of a home in Iowa.  I was not prepared to find out that they were the very first movies ever shown in Iowa, and practically anywhere.  There was also a precursor of film, a Magic Lantern, that was set up to show slides that had moving parts which would display a "moving" picture on the wall, that were shown starting in the late 1860s in the U.S.  The original lantern was powered by kerosene, but we settled for a safer electrical one that had a circa 1910 electric fan to cool it off.  Very nifty.  The films were all shorts, except for an "epic" several minute film of a bank robbery, featuring the antics of the last guy running the robbers down who kept falling over things for comic relief.  Oh, and there was footage of the highest paid actor in film back in 1901, who was a terrier that had the trick of grabbing onto the belt above the hind end of other actors.  It was still funny too!  The person who collected the films and was restoring them was there of course and kept up a nice running dialog, which given the films were silent was no problem.  He'd even brought some of the old programs, and financial books of the fellow who went around showing the films, which is great from a historical perspective.  A great, great show.

After all that, I took a break and then Erin and I went out for an early dinner with two friends, Dave and Marne, at a nearby Japanese restaurant that had wonderful and unique sushi.  I did a bento box myself as I was hungry, but Erin's eel roll tasted as good as it looked, which was pretty good.  Then we headed back to the hotel in time for me to make the reading by Joe Haldeman, which is an absolute must for me whenever I get the chance.  Joe read first from a novel that's coming out early next year, called Work Done For Hire.  The passage he read was practically horror, very well done and disturbing, which ostensibly is fiction in the novel but still creepy as hell.  Then he read from the novel he's currently writing, titled Phobos Is Fear, which takes place in part on the Martian moon Phobos, which was nicely hard SF and a welcome relief.

After that, I was in the mood to party, so I headed for the karaoke party run by John and Denise and proceeded, after being a bit hesitant, to pick out some songs and belt them out, which were enjoyed and I was told I have a nice singing voice, which is good for my confidence when it comes to singing on my own sans karaoke machine.  Erin also dropped by to listen to me sing and one of these days I need to get her to join me, maybe after we've both had a bit of Irish whiskey to loosen us up.  I also stopped by a Gamicon party (that the gaming convention held in Iowa City in February) a Demicon party and a party that I forget the theme of but they had absinthe to share, which was kind of like chartruse, which I like but not enough to pay for.  After both Erin and Lauren had gone off to bed after 2pm, I decided to get my guitar and go sit in the consuite to play and sing a tune or two, and was soon joined by Ange Anderson and Robert Uy, and Robert did some wonderful harmonies to what I was singing and Ange was glad to get a chance to hear me sing too.  So after about 45 minutes of that the consuite was closed down and I went off to bed after a very good day.

Sunday I was up too damn early, but thankfully the consuite was open and had coffee and bagels and cream cheese out for us early risers.  Soon afterwards Erin was up too and looking for coffee herself, and told me about a steampunk props panel she wanted to go to.  I thought about it and then came in a bit after it had started and was treated to some wonderful props and learned how they were made from a couple of very good costumers.  One of the bits of advice they gave Erin after she'd asked a question was "never throw anything away", to which I said: NOOOOOO! and Erin laughed.  (As if Erin needs that advice in the first place.)

At noon there was the old farts panel, aka ICON: A Historical Perspective, where stories old and older were recalled with much verve and wit.  Sigh, we were all so much younger then.  Mark Moore, Greg Frost and Billjon provided the tales, while Spacey and Denny Lynch did the fact checking.  At least, that's what I recall through a glass darkly, and Fan Guest of Honor Steve Tait had a few things to add too, even if he wasn't quite there at the moment of creation.  Or is that procreation?  Never mind...

Then finally it was time to go, and we packed up and cleaned up the room, mostly, leaving only a few empty wine bottles behind and a nice tip for the housekeeper.  Lauren said she'd had a good time and told us we had some 'interesting' friends, but that she was treated nicely even if she got more then her share of attention from geeky guys over the weekend.  Erin and Lauren think they'll go to another con, Capricon, in Chicago next February, so it must have been fun, mostly.

In short: one of the best ICONs ever, except for all the other ones.  Next year the guests of honor will be Elizabeth Bear and Scott Lynch, and I know it will again be a very good time so I was happy to pre-register for next year.  You should too.

Windycon 40

I hadn't been to a Windycon since 2009, and since I didn't have to work on Monday as I get Veteran's Day off I thought I should take advantage of the opportunity to stay around on Sunday and go this year.  I packed some of Erin's art and my guitar in the car and took off at 7am on Friday morning for Chicago.  Other than forgetting the Hawaiian shirts I wanted to take with me, the trip down went well.  Because there was a parlor guitar I was curious to check out in the Milwaukee area, I took I-94 instead of I-90 from Madison and while the guitar wasn't anything special the route was toll-free and took only twenty minutes or so of additional time to travel.  I made it to the Westin hotel in Lombard by 3:30pm and promptly checked in and took my personal stuff to the room.  Then I hung Erin's art in the art show and chatted with friends I ran into there until 5pm.  I then headed for registration and got my badge and program.  I later connected with my roommates John and Debi and took in some music later listening to two friends, Graham and Becca Leathers performing together and enjoyed their concert very much.

The two Fan GoHs were also friends of ours, Karen Cooper and Bruce Schneier, and I dropped by their room party after 10pm and took in more great music from the group of musicians that had gathered together there, many of them people I've camped with at Baggiecon during the Winnipeg Folk Festival, and it was wonderful.  (One of the fiddlers there, Amy McNally, was just amazing.)  I would have gone to more parties, but stayed at Bruce and Karen's room until midnight, helping myself to their spread of cheese, apples and wine, all delicious as you might expect.  Unfortunately around midnight I started nodding off thanks to being up so early in the day, so I went back to the room where my roomies were also about ready to turn in so my timing was good and I fell right to sleep after my head hit the pillow.

Saturday morning after downing some coffee I made in the room and chatting with Debi I went to check out the art show and talked with more friends before having lunch with John over at the food court in a mall next to the hotel.  Then I went to a reading by Mike Resnick which was fun even if the stories he read weren't particularly science-fictional, and then went to hear Bruce interview Karen and Karen interview Bruce in the Get-to-know the Fan GoH's panel, which was nicely done and fun.  I later dropped in on Bruce's talk about the latest on the NSA from the Snowden files and heard more code words than I could count on all my fingers and toes for the various ways the NSA was Hoovering (a very apt word for it, really) up data from the internet.  As usual, Bruce made it very intelligible for his fannish audience and there was some good Q&A at the end of his presentation.

I then met up for dinner at the hotel restaurant with John and Debi, and old friends Darlene Coltrain and her husband Steve Johnson (who also brought art to show himself) and Kathy Wappel, who we first met at the Bristol Renaissance Faire when Erin had a shop there.   We dined for almost two hours (it was busy but the service and food were both good, if pricey) and had a nice time catching up on things.  Then later I went to the filk room to hear a concert by Riverfolk, who were terrific, and then went out to party and eventually ended up back at Bruce and Karen's party (which was paired with a Minneapolis in 2073 party in the room next door) and pretty much spent the rest of the night there.  I did run into John McKana at the GT party and we had a nice conversation about his return to the U.P. from his job in California that he'd had for the past five+ years.

Sunday I got up early again and made it down in time to the consuite for a decent breakfast before the best of the spread was consumed and then went to hear yet another concert by Brenda Sutton, which was well worth it and fun.  She had a ballad about the Angry Birds that had all of us laughing which made me glad I finally had played the game on the iPhone Erin recently got so I could get the humor.  I then dropped by a panel on digital art that had Steve Johnson on it, but left early so I could catch the end of the panel on restaurants that Bruce and Karen were doing in the room next door.  Then it was time to check out of the art show, where Erin had made at least enough to make the effort of bringing and hanging it worth it and talked with Karen Hollingsworth (another friend and artist) while we were both packing out for about an hour.

Finally, I headed for the Dead Dog filk, and listened to some music before wandering off and playing a game of Zar in the hotel hallway for an hour with Matt and some other folks.  Then because Bonnie Somdahl said I should, I went back to the car to get my guitar and finally got into the filk circle and played along too.  My guitar playing wasn't good, but at least it wasn't bad and I spent about four hours there and got to sing 12-14 songs myself before finally leaving around 11pm and heading to John's home in Chicago for the night.  I'm glad Bonnie gave me the nudge to play.  I also heard another performer, Catherine, play some of her own songs and they were so nice (and she was a very good performer herself) I bought her CD before I left.  I'd also picked up Amy McNally's CD in the dealer's room earlier, so I have some more music I'm looking forward to hearing soon.

I was lucky enough to grab a parking spot on the street right in front of John's condo in north Chicago and went to bed after midnight.  The next morning we went to a nearby coffeehouse for coffee (tea for John, naturally) and a tasty bit of quiche before heading over to Kopi's Cafe for second breakfast and another cuppa before starting off back home around 11am.  I did run into some rain that turned to snow at the Illinois-Wisconsin border that lasted until I got to Milwaukee, which then turned to ice for a few minutes before clearing up, thankfully, and I stopped to pick up some tasty cheese for Erin just north of Madison and stopped to have a bite to eat at a place I used to like hanging out at in Eau Claire (The Acoustic Cafe) on the way as well.

It was a good trip, and I'm glad I went.  It was great to see a lot of people I hadn't seen for a few years and I hope I can make it back again next year to Windycon.

Droplets

by C. K. Williams

Even when the rain falls relatively hard,
only one leaf at a time of the little tree
you planted on the balcony last year,
then another leaf at its time, and one more,
is set trembling by the constant droplets,

but the rain, the clouds flocked over the city,
you at the piano inside, your hesitant music
mingling with the din of the downpour,
the gush of rivulets loosed from the eaves,
the iron railings and flowing gutters,

all of it fuses in me with such intensity
that I can't help wondering why my longing
to live forever has so abated that it hardly
comes to me anymore, and never as it did,
as regret for what I might not live to live,

but rather as a layering of instants like this,
transient as the mist drawn from the rooftops,
yet emphatic as any note of the nocturne
you practice, and, the storm faltering, fading
into its own radiant passing, you practice again.

Sonnet 73: That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold

by William Shakespeare


That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

How I became a fan

In particular, a science fiction fan.  I'd been a reader of science fiction and fantasy in my childhood, starting with the Scholastic Book Club paperbacks that I regularly bought in elementary school, including books by Robert Silverberg, Lester Del Rey, and Alexander Key.

Later on I discovered the Heinlein juveniles and the classics by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.  Then when I turned twelve or so I started reading Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories and then was passed Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy by my sister and I was hooked.  I also read Frank Herbert's Dune, Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, plus some Bradbury, and Harlan Ellison's stories and anthologies.  I also read and had every Tarzan novel, so by the time I left home and went off to college I'd pretty much graduated from the public library's SF&F section, with some skipped courses left unread on the shelves.  Not that they were required.

In the meantime I'd also seen some SF TV, but it had been drivel like Lost In Space, Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, etc.  I somehow missed the original run of Star Trek but when I was a young teenager some of my buddies and I started watching afternoon reruns in the early 1970s after we were out of school, and we saw them all and enjoyed the experience.  Media SF was to me fun, but not as deep as what I'd been reading.  One thing I did miss out on was the SF&F peridoicals of the day, so I never saw those ads in the back talking about conventions and fandom.

Then after I'd gone to the University of Iowa for a semester in 1977 (after being a semi-truck driver while I was trying to figure out what to do with my life - long story), Iowa Public TV in the spring of 1978 started running episodes of Dr. Who at 10pm, Monday-Thursdays and somehow I discovered it and since I had the best color TV on the dorm floor I was living on, there was a gang of several guys who gathered every night to watch a half-hour fun-filled episode.  One of the people there, Mike Miller (aka "Spacey"), was a member of a group called SFLIS (Science Fiction League of Iowa Students) and told me about them and that they met weekly at a downtown bar, The Mill, and if I'd be interested in attending one.  I was, and I did, and I had fun talking science fiction with them over the next few semesters and watching Dr. Who until it was taken off the air in March of 1979.

Then in the fall of 1979 I was involved enough with the club to help a little with putting on a convention, which was ICon 4, that November.  I wasn't responsible for much and as a result had a great time while all was not so well otherwise.  (It's known as DisasterCon in ICon lore for a good reason.)  But I still liked what I saw of what was called "fandom" and the next spring went to another convention, Minicon, in Minneapolis, and then went to the next ICon in Cedar Rapids in the fall of 1980 and to many other cons since.  It's been great fun, mostly.

So thanks Spacey for introducing me to fandom, and I'll see you at ICon 38 in November!

More folk fest speculation

Putting my Light Bulb Hat on (cue Lou and Peter Berryman for musical accompaniment), here's some further thoughts on ticket prices.

To better judge the cost of attending the Winnipeg Folk Festival, let's look at a couple of other folk fests I've been to so far this year.  Erin and I went to Red House Records' Barnfest a month ago where there were seven very good to fantastic (Dean Magraw is a guitar GOD) performances from 1pm to 8pm, and the cost per ticket was $27 each.  Now that's a bargain, no doubt about it.  Y'all should come join us at Barnfest next year, by the way.

Then last Labor Day weekend I went to Storyhill Fest up in Deerwood, MN where there was a two day festival with overnight camping for two nights, featuring eleven acts, two workshops, a group campfire and other activities, cost for two persons for the weekend: $250.  So for two persons and two nights, it worked out to a cost of $62.50 per day, with the cost for camping being $20 a day per person of that total cost.  (There was a bathhouse with hot showers and flush toilets available for those who were camping too.)

So for the Winnipeg folk fest, the total cost for five days of music and camping is about $325 (including taxes & fees), which divided by five is $65 Canadian.  So on a per day basis, the Winnipeg folk fest doesn't seem to cost more than you would expect.  Now I've never run a folk fest so I have no idea what costs scale and what costs don't, but perhaps the reason the Winnipeg fest was such a relative bargain for years was that they were still paying "festival scale" to performers who would accept that, but now they must pay more for acts (as CD sales have dried up as a revenue source), especially more for big name performers.  Also, and I don't know if this is anyone else's impression, but there does seem to have been an increase in the number of performers relative to the number of fest attendees, in particular performers at Big Blue at Night.  That might account for a significant part of the increase in ticket prices in the past several years, more so than the adding of a fifth night on Wednesday.

I was mentioning to Erin last night that while it was nice to have more acts, the fact is that you can't get to all of them and there's a law of diminishing returns that applies in general as a festival gets bigger.  (Not to mention all the "animations" in what I think of as the Winnipeg Folk Festival's Festival Camping Festival.)  At some point, maybe the possibility of having TWO festivals in Winnipeg at Bird's Hill Park would make sense, with one being a traditional folk festival and the other more like Bonnaroo/Coachella/Festapalooza/whatever.  I'm sure all the long-time fest volunteers right now are thinking: NOOOOOOOOOO!!!  Still, it's submitted for your approval Mr. Serling... (cue Wolfgang K's maniacal laughter...   ;-)