07/08/07

The Heinlein Convention Was Disappointing (permalink)

kansas_city book scifi science_fiction centennial con convention heinlein

Last Saturday, I attended the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial held at the Westin Crown Center Hotel here in Kansas City, Mo -- Robert A Heinlein's hometown. I am sorry to say that the event was a disappointment. It felt as if it was planned to be a high profile convention with a few thousand attendees that would inspire some genuinely insightful looks into the author's life. Instead, the convention felt almost second rate, thrown together and lifeless.

To be fair, I only purchased the visitor's pass, which did not allow full access to the convention, and I only spent a couple hours wandering around taking it all in. However, the turnout was such that we were assured by the attendant at registration that we would not be turned away if we wanted to attend any panels we wished to, excepting the gala dinner. In fact, the panels we did see as we wandered the halls seemed to rarely have more than five or ten attendees, and looked to be very somber lifeless affairs.

The dealers room was filled with about 5-8 different merchants, and most of them were very loosely connected to Heinlein. The only memorable aspects of the dealers room were the Yard Dog Press booth, an offering by an indy publisher I am fond of, and my discovery of the Heinlein Prize scholarship program which was genuinely interesting. I also took the opportunity to sign up for KaCSFFS, The Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society in which Heinlein was a member when he was alive.

The most disappointing feature of the convention was the Heinlein "Life museum." This collection of scanned-in printouts of various documents provided less insight and history into Heinlein's life than a short trip to Wikipedia would. Most of the information on display was basic biographical fluff that anyone paying to go to a convention for the author likely already knew. I wondered as I wandered passed the sparse offering when I would come across the insight or revelations about Heinlein that I expected,

but it never came. The highlight and culmination of the "museum" was a bunch of scans from an old Starship Troopers board game and a few shots of storyboard art from the movie of that story.

In the end, I am glad I attended the parts of the con that I did, and I feel that it was at least minimally interesting. In fairness, organizing an event like this is a massive undertaking and takes hundreds if not thousands of man hours of work to complete. Adding to the problems, several guests canceled just before the convention and circumstances caused some of the more interesting events, like the bus tour, to be canceled as well. If the organizers had not tried for so much and instead concentrated on improving the quality of fewer offerings, I do feel the convention could have been a greater success.

07/05/07

This Weekend: Robert A. Heinlein Centennial (permalink)

scifi science_fiction book con convention robert heinlein centennial

This weekend I will be attending a convention celebrating what would have been Robert A. Heinlein's 100th Birthday. The event lasts three days: from this Friday through Sunday, and will be held here in Kansas City, Heinlein's hometown, at the Westin Hotel at Crown Center. There are a great deal of events and panels planned, but I will most likely be sticking with the visitors pass, which is significantly cheaper ($10 per day versus $60 a day or $120 for the weekend) but restricts access to just the dealer's room, Heinlein life museum and some panels.

Hopefully, it will be a fitting tribute to the life of one of my favorite authors, and a fun time as well.

Find out more at: http://www.heinleincentennial.com/

06/25/07

Star Wars Post Office Promotion (permalink)

star wars star_wars post office mailbox mail promotion advertising photo science_fiction scifi

The USPS has been promoting their new stamps commemorating the 30 year anniversary of the release of the original Star Wars movie. One of the more interesting and nerdy-cool gimmicks they are using is the transformation of many mailboxes around the country into models of R2D2 from the movies. One of those mailboxes is located in downtown Kansas City, my home town, and I got a few snapshots of it over the weekend.

05/31/07

Conquest: Story in a Bag (permalink)

conquest kansas_city convention con writing book scifi science_fiction fantasy competition

While attending the Conquest KC science fiction and fantasy convention this year, I participated in the Story in a Bag contest. For the contest, the conquest staff prepared a series of bags containing short sentences or words that had to be incorporated into a new, custom written story which the contestants had one hour to complete. The best stories in each of three categories (science fiction, fantasy and horror) were judged within three skill levels (youth, adult amateur, and adult professional/published).

For my entry, I chose to write within the Science Fiction category and qualified for the Adult Amateur level. My topics were as follows:

• Theme: A Trip Home.
• Character: A Crying Baby.
• Item: A Box of Chocolates
• Setting: A Run Down Apartment Building
• Starting Sentence: "Seven years ago today my life changed completely when..."

I ended up writing a story about a researcher who was indentured into service only to return to his home planet seven years later and try to pick up his old life. It turned out ok, considering it took me 20 minutes to decide on a plot which left me only 40 minutes to write and edit the 6 page story.

All of the stories were judged by convention attendees, and in the end out of the four stories that were submitted in my category and level, I won a close second place. I hope to compete again next year and try for first.

05/25/07

This Weekend: Conquest KC (permalink)

conquest books scifi science_fiction fantasy convention con kansas_city anime

This weekend, I will be spending some time at the Conquest science fiction convention here in Kansas City, MO at the airport Hilton hotel. This is the 38th year for the con, but will be the first time I attend. I met one of the con organizers at Naka-Kon a few months ago, and saw him again at Anime St. Louis/ShoMeCon last month. It seems to be a very well organized convention and they have a lot of interesting events, so it should be a good experience. I will be posting several updates and photos after the con, so check back for more next week.

04/26/07

Dragon’s Keep - ShowMeCon (permalink)

fantasy gaming larp st_louis anime showmecon con convention scifi science_fiction

While at Anime St. Louis and Show Me Con last weekend, I saw a production by the theatre/LARP troup "The Dragons Keep." From their website:

"TDK is a unique role-playing game and improv show that mixes improvisational theatre with a Dungeons & Dragons style LARP (Live Action Role Playing). Think Saturday Night Live meets Lord of the Rings with Audience Participation. The cast play all of the NPC's (Non-Player Characters, like monsters) and a few selected members of the audience are called up on stage to be the PC's (Player Characters). Only audience members that fill out a character card prior to the beginning of the show will be eligible to be called up on stage. These audience "party members" are given a quest. To assist them with this quest they are given a spell orb (with seven spell charges), weapons and armor. With the aid of a guide (one of our cast members), the party is lead through a somewhat perilous adventure that tests their wits, strength, and overall moral worth. Some party members successfully make it through the entire adventure, and others.well, let's just say they aren't as lucky. Every show is a chapter in our ongoing, two-year story arc, so every show is unique. "

While normally they use an on-going story arc, for the purposes of the convention the troupe chose a stand alone lighter story line so that people new to the experience could better appreciate it. The story they chose was based upon the premise that a new mega-dungeon named "SlayMart" had moved into town and was running all the smaller dungeons out of business. The heroes then had to travel into the SlayMart and attempt to shut it down for good. Overall the production was interesting if a bit clumsy, and the story was pretty funny. If they are performing at any future cons I attend, I will definiitely be in the audience.

04/25/07

Anime St. Louis / ShowMeCon 2007 (permalink)

gaming anime convention con science_fiction scfi st_louis missouri showmecon travel

During my trip last weekend, I attended the ShowMeCon and Anime St. Louis held at a Marriot hotel. It was a joint anime/science fiction convention and attracted over 1000 nerds, geeks, and other socially awkward types to come together and celebrate their nerdiness for a weekend.

Aside from the other anime convention I attended this year, Naka-Kon in late march, I hadn't attended a convention of this type in several years. Prior to this year the last one I attended was Otakon in 2000, at a time when the anime fandom was just starting to get huge and there were still only a handful of anime conventions. Now, even living in the midwest, there is one or more convention almost every month within driving distance of my home. Even more surprising is even the smaller cons are attracting upwards of 1000 people.

This year was Anime St. Louis' first year at a bigger venue, and the first (and probably last) time they partnered with SciFi con "Show Me Con." According to the numbers they gave at the closing ceremonies, last year's con attracted only 300 people and was located on the college campus. This year they were hosted at a Marriot Hotel (who treated the con horribly) and had upwards of 1000 people in attendance. At least 80% of those in attendance were there specifically for the anime portion of the con.

Overall my convention experience was awesome, though there were problems. The hotel, a Marriot located in south-west St. Louis, pretty much dicked the con over with some bad business practices. Originally the convention organizers had reserved many of the meeting rooms and salons as well as the grand ball room to host the activities in. The hotel, however, decided it would be a good idea to double book everything and also promised the grand ball room to a wedding, a fashion show and a bat mitzvah, and gave the anime convention several smaller rooms instead. This made the larger and more popular events uncomfortably crowded, and caused many con-goers to be left out.

The combination of Anime St. Louis and Show Me Con caused some problems as well. Though the two cons were supposed to be partnered for the weekend, the two had separate schedules, meaning people without both did not know the full extent of what was scheduled when. Additionally, from what I heard, the Show Me Con folks did not fully live up to their part of the obligations and left Anime St. Louis to do much of the running of the con. Finally, most of the con-goes were attending only for one con or the other, and the two groups of attendees mostly ignored each other. In the end, it would have been better if either the two cons were kept separate, or, if they spent more time truly integrating the conventions with crossover panels, joint events and a shared schedule.

Even with it's problems I had a blast at the convention, and only wish I had more time to see more of the panels. The ones I did make it to were: Dragon's Keep, a combination LARP and play, Piano Squall's Concert, the Masquerade, the Swimming party (and Mankini Con, which will only make sense to those who were there), a Filking concert with Gary Hanak, the strange Japanese fetishes panel, a panel on MMORPGs, a panel on single player RPG gaming and the closing ceremonies. I will make a more detailed post later on a couple of the bigger events. I was definitely glad I attended the events of the convention last weekend and hope that I can make it back next year.

04/23/07

Back From a Busy Weekend (permalink)

camping science_fiction scifi disc_golf personal convention con friends gaming anime

I just got back from a crazy busy weekend trip. I left Friday with my two roommates to go to another friend's wedding reception, which was very non-traditional and very fun. We left the wedding late Friday evening and drove 2/3 of the way to St. Louis where we stopped at Graham Cave State Park to camp for the night. We woke up at 7:45 in the morning and explored the park and the historic cave the park was named for, and then drove to St. Louis, stopping on the way at a trucker diner for an incredible breakfast. In St. Louis, we registered for Anime St. Louis/ShowMeCon, a combination anime and science fiction convention held at a Marriot hotel. The convention had over 1000 people in attendance and we spent the greater part of Saturday late into the night and sunday until about 3:00 at the convention. After leaving the convention, we traveled to a nearby park just outside St. Louis and played a round of Frisbee golf. On the trip back we stopped in Columbia, Mo. for dinner, and finally made it home.

Needless to say, I am exhausted, so I am about to get some much needed rest. I will be posting more in detail about the proceedings and loading an image gallery in the morning or when I have time.