A Couple Random Things

This past weekend was the Wizard World Boston comic convention, held at the Hynes Convention Center in downtown Boston, something that the New England Garrison has been planning for almost a year now. This has been quite the year for conventions for the group. We were at the Boston and Granite City Comic Cons earlier this year, then Celebration 5, and now this one, with SupermegaFest coming up.

Generally, I'm not a fan of conventions. I don't like standing around, waiting for people to take pictures of me with them. I never really feel that it's a good use of my time and so forth, but this one had a bunch of options to allow us to really interact with the general public: A Jabba the Hutt puppet that people could pose next to, and a shooting gallery, where we raised around $840 for Autism Speaks, a charity that the NEG works with closely.

The weekend was also Megan's first time at a con, along with the added bonus of getting to see some of the people from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I'm not a huge fan, but she and some of her friends enjoyed it – We inducted James Marsters into the 501^st as an honorary member.) Adam West and Burt Ward (Batman and Robin - at $60, they were too expensive to really talk to), Doug Jones' Manager (Jones himself was talking to someone else when I was around) and Christopher Golden, who wrote the book Baltimore, or, the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire, which I coincidentally picked up at the same con.

The opportunity to take part in the shooting gallery was definitely the highlight, because I could act out a bit and be really ridiculous with it. Kids, somewhat unsurprisingly, are really good shots with dart guns, and I was hit in the face and head a lot. Something about a Storm Trooper falling flat on his face seems to get people laughing, so that made it worth it. I've got a couple of pictures here.

I've been doing a bit more reading lately, and I've got a stack of really good books stacked up next to my bed. Paolo Bacigalupi's Pump Six and Other Stories is the book that I'm carrying around at the moment, which is a fantastic collection from a fantastic author, while I'm also reading the aforementioned Baltimore, which is proving to be a really cool read (and with some awesome illustrations from Mike Mignola), Cherie Priest's Dreadnought, which is proving to be fun (but not quite as much fun as her prior book Boneshaker, but better than Clementine), Masked, edited by Lou Anders, which is a fun, but somewhat dense anthology of superhero stories, and Nights of Villjamur, by Mark Charan Newton, which is proving to be a slow read, and unfortunately, not as good as I was led to believe. (It's interesting thus far though). I've got a couple of other books on the horizon that I really want to read before the end of the year: Ian McDonald's The Dervish House and China Mieville's Kraken.

I’m thrilled at this pile of books, and some of the other ones that I’ve read already this year - The City and the City (China Mieville), Pattern Recognition (William Gibson), Stories (edited by Neil Gaiman), Spellbound (Blake Charleton), How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (Charles Yu), Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (N.K. Jemisin, and the River of Gods (Ian McDonald, just to name a few, because I've fallen into company in person and online that have pointed me to some fantastic books and I feel that I've learned and grown as a reader and writer because of them. There's been some duds of reads this year, but overall? I've been pulled into fantastic world after fantastic world.

Still, reading is something that I enjoy, and I've been finding that I really don't enjoy the entire book-blogger environment that I discovered. Too much drama, complaints about how SF/F isn't perceived as a legitimate genre, sucking up to authors and so many reviews a week / month that I can't believe that people can read and retain the contents of dozens of books a year. It's not for me, and I've found that I've got little patience and interest in it. I'll stick with my moderate pace and go from there.

John Scalzi posted up a fascinating essay earlier today, Today I Don't Have To Think About..., which fully and utterly puts one into one's place. After being amongst and listening to a number of coworkers, family members and friends complain about how things are going in their lives and the drama that ensues, this is a really good thing to read, because there are people who are a helluva lot worse off than me in the world. It's hard to remember that sometimes, but it's worth remembering. I've taken the essay and printed it out. One copy went onto my desk’s wall. I’m not sure where the other nine will end up, but they should be read.

The Reading List

Over the past couple of weeks, I've received some new books. Here's what I've got coming up next:

Spellwright, Blake Charleton. I came upon Blake's book through an interview that he participated in with Geek's Guide to the Galaxy, where he talked a bit about his life, namely the problems that he faced with severe dyslexia, his education and becoming a full time writer and medical student. Since his book has been released, it's been getting a number of really, really good reviews, and I'm very excited to get through this one.

This book looks to be fascinating in how Charleton is using his own experiences and the value of the written word in with the magic that the characters wield. I believe in the power of words and prose, and for that reason alone, I'm really looking forward to this one.

The Gaslight Dogs, Karin Lowachee. Karin Lowachee wrote a trilogy of novels back in 2002-2005 (I think), Warchild, Burndive and Cagebird, then vanished for a couple of years. I almost wrote her off as having abandoned the writing profession, when I came across a posting that she had a new book coming out: The Gaslight Dogs. This time, she's going to fantasy/steampunk with a novel that looks really interesting. I've really liked her prose in the earlier books, so there are high hopes for this one.

The Mirrored Heavens, David J. Williams. A little while ago, I wrote an article for io9 called Your Military Science Fiction Isn't Military Science Fiction. I got a number of e-mails, good and bad, from people who read it, and one of them brought my attention to David William's book The Mirrored Heavens. This is gritty military science fiction, and I like how the book has started off, and it has a promising storyline, especially when you look into the Military SciFi field.

Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945, Barrett Tillman. This book is part of a research project that I'm embarking on, looking at Air Power theory following the Second World War. Based on the review in the Wall Street Journal, and it's kickass cover, I picked it up to read up on something that I don't know enough about: how the US bombed Japan and its major cities during WWII. It's a horrifying and terrible subject, but one that's incredible influential in American and international history. This book is already very interesting to read.

Ambassadors from Earth: Pioneering Explorations with Unmanned Spacecraft, Jay Gallentine. I've written extensively about the University of Nebraska Press's series The Outward Odyssey, and the latest installment, Ambassadors from Earth has just arrived. Where the prior books discuss the human element of space travel, this one is about the unmanned systems that have gone into space. Presumably, this will talk a lot about the planetary and solar system probes that have gone out, but I wouldn't be surprised to see something about satellites as well. The prior four books have been excellent, and I have high expectations for this one.