Posts Tagged ‘San Antonio’

Photos from the 2013 San Antonio Worldcon

Monday, December 9th, 2013

I knew that dealing books at Worldcon would eat up a lot of time, but I had no idea just how much time it would take me to not only get all the books back on the shelf, but to catch up on everything I set aside while getting ready for, then recovering from, Worldcon.

Which explains why I’m just now putting up the pictures I took there. Here are the handful of pictures I took at Worldcon that came out decent.

Clotheshorse that she is, the lovely and talented Gail Carriger kicks off our review with the first of three outfits I managed to photograph.

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A second.

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And a third.

And here’s the same outfit she insisted I snap with her own camera. “You’ve got to include the shoes!”

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Stina Leicht, sitting next to me at the Rayguns Over Texas event at the San Antonio Library.

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Scott Cupp and Josh Rountree at the same event. The other photos I took there came out crappy.

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Bookseller and con chair Mike Walsh.

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Lou Antonelli channels Flavor-Flav.

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Howard Waldrop and Eileen Gunn, just before Howard went three rounds with a concrete step.

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And here’s Howard just after that bout.

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Andrew Porter, now free of the terrible burden of publishing a semi-prozine.

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Pat Murphy, back again.

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Ex-NASA employee Al Jackson.

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Ex-Austinite Maureen McHugh.

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Kim Stanley Robinson, back from whatever frozen locale he’s visiting this time. Possibly Iapetus.

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Gardner Dozois at full rant.

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Gardner Dozois at full rest. The two modes are deceptively similar.

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In 2012, Pat Cadigan asked me to take down one of her pictures. So this year I made sure that this picture with Robert Silverberg was 100% flattering.

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I think this is a very good picture of Dwight Brown.

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Rich Simental, who spent much of the con in his room working on a completely different con.

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Ben Yalow. Or possibly one of those hundreds of Ben Yalow impersonators you hear so much about.

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Max Merriwell, in a very clever diusguise.

David Kyle

David Kyle, who I think has passed the late Forrest J. Ackerman for Most Worldcons Attended.

I’m sorry that I didn’t get pictures of Alastair Reynolds, David Brin, Jack McDevitt, Joe and Joy Haldeman, and Lois McMaster Bujold (among others I missed), who were all kind enough to come by the Lame Excuse Books booth.

Library Additions: Stanley G. Weinbaum’s Dawn of Flame

Monday, September 16th, 2013

I’m still recovering from the 2013 Worldcon, LoneStarCon 3 in San Antonio.

Given how often I blog about additions to my science fiction library, you might be surprised at how parsimonious I am paying for those additions. From about 1985 (when I first started buying first edition hardbacks) to 1989, I never paid more than $35 (plus shipping) for a book, which was about what it cost you to buy a UK hardback from an SF book dealer like L. W. Currey, Mark Ziesing, Robert Weinberg, etc. at the time. (And you bought it from a catalog you received in the mail, called them up to hold the book, then sent them a check. No ordering from the Internet or paying via Paypal. Now get off my lawn!) Then I found a NF/VG+ copy of The Haunting of Hill House for $45 at the 1989 Boston Worldcon, and the dealer wouldn’t budge on the price, so I coughed it up.

As I made more money at my day job, I could afford to buy more expensive books, and the amount I was willing to pay for a single book slowly and surely crept up. Eventually I ended up spending $400 for a very clean, signed, ex-library edition of Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light. Since then I’ve spent around $400 for a few more books, but have only exceeded that amount thrice:

  • I ponied up $1,250 for the 44 volume Jack Vance Integral Edition (plus $350 or so in shipping). But that’s less than $30 a book…
  • I paid $675 for an ultra-limited edition of Stephen King’s The Colorado Kid (10% off cover price) because, while I’m not one of those fanatic King collectors, I do like his work and, well, I certainly wasn’t going to lose money on it.
  • I spent $500 on a first edition of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
  • But I’ve never spent more than $675 for a single book.

    Until now:

    Weinbaum, Stanley G. Dawn of Flame. Ruppert Printing Service (for The Milwaukee Fictioneers), 1936. One of only 245 copies of the Currey B state (with the Lawrence A. Keating introduction), a Near Fine+ copy with very faint spine creasing and either slight gray staining to bottom page block (or possibly where the red page block staining has worn away), sans dust jacket, as issued. Currey, page 510. Chalker/Owings, page 279. Bleiler, Checklist (1978), page 204. Locke, Spectrum of Fantasy (I), page 224.

    Bought at the San Antonio Worldcon for $1,200 (negotiated down from $1,500) from Erle Melvin Korshak. And if I’m remembering correctly, it was on consignment from Sam Moskowitz’s widow through Robert Weinberg to Korshak. (Korshak, of course, was the owner of Shasta Publishers, and is now back in publishing as Shasta/Phoenix Publishers.)

    This copy contains the ownership bookplate of Richard A. Frank, an early science fiction fan who was also an SF small press publisher in his own right, having published “The Bizarre Series” in the late 1930s, featuring works by A. A. Merritt, David H. Keller and Eando Binder.

    Frank also had one of the first legendary SF collections. “Richard Frank’s entire book collection was fantastic. He had it, originally, in the house, but the weight of the books had begun to pull the floors away from the the walls, so he moved it all down to his first floor garage and set it up like a real library. Most of us felt that if Richard didn’t have a copy—it hadn’t been printed.”

    That’s an awful damn lot of money to spend on a book, but I’ve long wanted a copy, both because I love Weinbaum’s work (a visionary and ground-breaking Sf writer in his day), and because this is the very first SF small press book. It’s often called “the bible of the field,” because it physically resembles a bible, right down to the flexible black binding, red-stained page block edges and rounded corners. Save for the one Ray Palmer introduction copy sold at the Jerry Weist Auction, this is the finest copy I’ve seen offered for sale recently, and I did well enough at Worldcon that I felt I could afford it.

    Hugo Congrats

    Sunday, September 1st, 2013

    Congrats to Pat Cadigan, John DeNardo, and John Picacio on their Hugo wins!

    On San Antonio: Some Clarifications

    Sunday, May 5th, 2013

    Many of you reading this blog will be attending LoneStarCon 3, the San Antonio Worldcon this year.

    Many of you reading this blog have also watched the SyFy Channel’s film Chupacabra Vs. The Alamo.

    I know it may come as a shock to some, given the painstaking technical accuracy evident in other SyFy films like Mansquito and Arachaquake, but Chupacabra Vs. The Alamo does, in fact, take certain liberties. As such, to avoid disappointment among those visiting San Antonio for the first time, and given that it’s Cinco de Mayo, which plays an important role in the film, I want to offer up some clarifications on errors made in the film.

  • The Mexican border is southwest of San Antonio, not southeast. Southeast is the Gulf of Mexico.
  • There are no green mountains near San Antonio. Unlike, say, Vancouver.
  • Many people in Texas ride motorcycles, but they do so on roads, not against badly-composited bluescreens.
  • DEA Agents in Texas do not typically ride motorcycles with unsecured shotguns.
  • DEA Agents generally drive to crime scenes in cars, not motorcycles.
  • Especially not riding on the back of another DEA agent’s motorcycle.
  • People do not typically need to wear jackets in San Antonio in May. Unlike, say, Vancouver. (Though this year may be an exception…)
  • Animals the size of a Scottish Terrier are not typically capable of dragging away 200 pound police officers in full SWAT gear.
  • As the seventh largest city in the United States, San Antonio has a large, modern police force. They would not need a random assortment of DEA agents and rogue gang members to take out a few hundred wild dogs.
  • While many San Antonians are bilingual in both English and Spanish, seldom do they pepper their English with the very most common Spanish words, as though to say “Look, ese, I speak Spanish!”
  • Police interrogation rooms do not generally look like small business conference rooms.
  • Most Hispanic gang members in San Antonio don’t look vaguely Asian, and don’t speak with a slight Brooklyn accent.
  • It is very doubtful that repeating long rifles can be found in display cases at the Alamo, as the Spencer Repeating Rifle was not invented until 1860.
  • Even if they were in said display cases, it is very unlikely that they would be stored with live ammunition, ready to be used by anyone who broke open the case.
  • Even if the gunpowder hadn’t gone bad after almost two centuries.
  • There is no basement in the Alamo. (A point that I think has already been definitively established.)
  • There is no secret escape tunnel underneath the Alamo. If there was, I’m pretty sure 177 years of urban infrastructure development would have found it.
  • Especially if it was wide enough for 10 people to walk abreast.
  • Especially if it lead to a giant metal hatch in a parking lot near the Alamo. (Or, more specifically, a stage in front of a bad bluescreen projection of a parking lot near the Alamo.)
  • Chupacabras or not, DEA agent or not, if you blow up the Alamo, expect to spend a lot of time in jail.
  • As the 7th largest city in the U.S., San Antonio also has a large, modern Fire Department, so if you did blow up the Alamo, it would not still be giving off a plume of digital smoke well into the next day.
  • I hope this has cleared up any confusion anyone might have about San Antonio or the Alamo. Happy con-going!

    Sold a Story to Rayguns Over Texas

    Saturday, December 29th, 2012

    My story “Novel Properties of Certain Complex Alkaloids” will be appearing in the Rayguns Over Texas anthology edited by Rick Klaw that’s to be published for LonestarCon 3, the 2013 San Antonio Worldcon. It’s sort of a Greg Egan story by way of Timothy Leary and H. P. Lovecraft…