Karen Burnham To wrap up this series on conventions and con-going (See Parts I, II, III, and IV), Jeff Ford reminds us that sometimes weird s–t happens at cons. Read his tale of a stranger dressed in black, and commentary from Stefan Dziemianowicz, myself, Cecelia Holland, Karen Joy Fowler, Gardner Dozois, and Gary K. Wolfe. [...]

Karen Burnham Last time we talked about the fact that cons aren’t always welcoming. (You can also see Part I and Part II.) However, some folks walk into their very first cons and simply find that they’re at home. Today we hear from Ellen Klages, Theodora Goss, Tim Pratt, Liz Hand, Paul Graham Raven, and [...]

Coming to us from last week’s WorldCon in Reno, NV, we were able to sit down and record a conversation with Kathy Goonan, Eileen Gunn, and Gary Wolfe. Of course we talk about the con itself for a bit, and then we use Kathy’s new book, This Shared Dream, as a lens to discuss utopias [...]

Jonathan McCalmont uses the Dunning-Kruger effect and the Dreyfus Model to discuss How to Write a Good Review. Niall Harrison has a four part in-depth review of Karen Traviss’ City of Pearl, the first novel in her Wess’har series. The World SF Travel Fund has reached its $6000 goal, so Charles Tan will definitely be [...]

Karen Burnham In today’s installment of discussions about conventions (Part I, Part II), we face up to the fact that sometimes cons aren’t terribly welcoming spaces for the uninitiated. Several of us were quite put off by our early experiences. Today’s participants include N. K. Jemisin, James Patrick Kelly, Maureen Kincaid Speller, myself, Stefan Dziemianowicz, [...]

Today’s Roundtable podcast ties in with the recent theme of con-going. Locus editor Francesca Myman and author Gail Carriger have between them covered almost every aspect of the con-going experience: going as a fan, as an up-and-comer, a pro, and a dealer. They’ve got recommendations for conventions you may not have heard of, volunteering, con [...]

Karen Burnham Continuing our discussion of conventions and convention-going (Part I is here), in this installment we look at those of us who started out as fans. Today’s stories and commentary come from F. Brett Cox, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Russell Letson, Marie Brennan, Jonathan Strahan, Gardner Dozois, Cecelia Holland, and Paul Graham Raven. As always, this [...]

Karen Burnham I asked our venerable Roundtable panel about conventions and the con-going experience. I got a huge number of responses that cover a wide range of practical and subjective aspects of this part of the sf/f culture. I decided to break up the responses to cover separate themes, and spread them out over two [...]

N. K. Jemisin discusses the anthology So Long Been Dreaming, and how its take on post-colonialism changed her worldbuilding for the Inheritence Trilogy. The World SF Travel Fund is a Peerbacker project to help international genre pros and fans get to otherwise too-expensive conventions. The first recipient will be Charles Tan, World Fantasy Award nominee [...]

For this episode of the Locus Roundtable podcast, I talk with Karen Lord–recent winner of the Mythopoeic award and World Fantasy Award nominee for her debut novel Redemption in Indigo. She also has a background in physics as well as public policy, giving her a unique perspective on science and literature. We talk (and laugh) [...]