World Fantasy con report: Day 4 by Alan DeNiro – costumes and departures
There has seemed in the past to be some tension between two philosophies, if you will, with costumes at World Fantasy. One: costumes are highly unprofessional at a highly professional con, and are to be strongly discouraged. The other: It’s Halloween, damn it, and there’s such a thing as bending over backwards in order to seem proper. The latter view (thankfully, in my view) was on display enough last night to show perhaps a bit of a sea change.
Read more after the jump!
World Fantasy con report: Day 3 by Alan DeNiro: the books
World Fantasy is a bibliophile’s dream, and a wallet’s nightmare. It starts out in bountiful excess: as soon as one checks in at the con, one receives a giant bag o’ books. Each bag is a little different–though there are similarities–and this year’s crop has many nifty surprises: an audiobook of Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels, The Hollow Earth by Rudy Rucker, the superb Eclipse One anthology…there is always the chance for reproduction of what’s already on one’s shelf. For example, between my wife and I we now officially have four copies of John Shirley’s Living Shadows (great book, btw! I reviewed it for Rain Taxi a few years ago). Luckily there is a swap table for good books to find the right homes.
More after the jump…
World Fantasy con report: Day 2 by Alan DeNiro
Alan DeNiro is back with more from San Jose and the World Fantasy Convention. As he put it, there will be some space-time discontinuum in this post, because it will include a few pictures from a distant time known as…yesterday…as he reflects on a couple different panels and sundry other items.
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World Fantasy con report: Day 1 by Alan DeNiro
So. The novel that I’m working on now, the “new” one, has had in the past a working title of World Fantasy. I go back and forth on its ability to provide any kind of “shelf context,” and I’ll likely change some parameters with the novel itself (its structure, characters, etc., etc.). But what drew me to that potential title in the first place, in a novel of near-future virtual realities, is whether (and if so, how) the world we see around us is constructed by certain phantasias. How we pretend that the world isn’t, in fact, interconnected to a large degree and that we let ourselves dwell on localisms at the expense of the underlying realities (political, social, whatever) that shape our interactions with each other and even our thoughts.
Read on for how these reflections illuminate Alan’s experience at the World Fantasy Convention…
World Fantasy Convention report: Day 0 by Alan DeNiro
Greetings all. This is Alan DeNiro. Thanks to this site for the opportunity to post miscellany and musings throughout the World Fantasy Convention, which is taking place in San Jose, California, this year. In, oh, about 8 hours, I’ll be on a plane from the Twin Cities, and we’ll see what happens.
More after the jump…
