FOGcon time!

[metaphortunate]

It's that time again! The time to tell the FOGcon programming committee what you're interested in talking about at FOGcon next year on March 8-10!

As always, FOGcon runs its programming on the Wiscon model, where when you think "Man, I wonder if I'll ever get the chance to see a Q&A session with Honored Guest Terry Bisson on short stories as an art form and a financially viable fiction selling model, or play a game of Eat Poop You Cat with Susan R. Matthews and other Bay Area writers, or take part in a bitter, heated public argument about whether Duv Galeni's dad was merely prescient and Barrayaran society was evolving towards the glittering tinsel of neo-fascism?" instead of just sighing wistfully and getting on with your day, you tell the programming committee! That these are things you would be interested in! Without any commitment to be on the programming or even to show up to the con, because they know that life is hard to plan for! And then all the programming is things that people are interested in and we don't end up with a schedule full of sad, 9 am five person panels on identifying alien woods.

This year's theme is Law, Order, and Crime:

New times create new crimes.

As societies change, both law and crime evolve, and punishment changes as well. Advances in technology (or the workings of magic) make possible crimes that we could never have predicted, methods of crimefighting unforeseen, prisons unlike any we have now. If a dragon is a citizen, are they allowed to eat people? How do you imprison a telepath? How does a civilization of teleporters keep from descending into anarchy? What rights do aliens or androids have? How can vast empires covering many lightyears maintain some sort of order?

The implications are much broader than the basic question of whodunnit. We are currently seeing major shifts in the balance between the individual and the state, privacy and convenience, freedom and security.

Speculative fiction has always explored questions like these, and the results have been some of our finest fictions. At FOGcon 3, we’re going to be discussing those questions and possible answers for our own future.

And once again, I got to do the program cover illustration.


I'm pretty pleased with it.

Note also that this year FOGcon is running a student writing contest! It's open to anyone enrolled at a Bay Area high school or university. The prize is a free membership to the con and the opportunity to publicly read the story as part of programming.

ETA: WRT the illustration, I feel like I need to mention that in my original idea, the astronaut's background was a room, and the starfield was tritely reflected across the astronaut's visor. It was imnotandrei who had the insight that the astronaut should be imprisoned in space.

ETA 2: I of course wanted the astronaut to be gender neutral, but after that change he became Rocket Man to me. Now I get an earworm every time I see the drawing.

Comments

[rivkat]

Wow, that art looks great.

[metaphortunate]

Thank you!

[sara]

*blinks bemusedly* It would not even occur to me that that one would ask Susan R. Matthews to do such a thing when one could ask her how she got that much straight-up noncon into a novel and then got me to read it anyhow.

That said, one of the best panels I have been to in recent years was one on the history of plywood and how to estimate the manufacturing dates of different kinds of plywoods when one observes them in buildings. But I understand that my interests are not necessarily shared by attendees at speculative fiction conventions.

(No, I'm serious, it was fascinating stuff. The gluing technology alone, you have to have really effective waterproof glues before you ever get to a point where you can laminate wood veneers together and have them hold up outdoors. And that's actually chemically very complex! Part of the "peace dividend" from the second World War, actually, was glues that permitted the economical lamination of veneers into plywoods, which is why plywood home furnishings and siding really took off in the 1950s.)

It's a good illustration.

[metaphortunate]

Okay, yes, engineered wood really is fascinating. Bad example. :)

[sara]

I would read the bejeepers out of a story set in an alien lumber engineering operation. I mean, I have never read a story at all like that.

[metaphortunate]

Have you ever read Slow River by Nicola Griffith? It's not alien, and it's not lumber engineering, but it's sewage treatment in the future. It's really awesome, too.

[sara]

No, but I am a great fan of Bazalgette, I should check it out. Thanks!

[serene]

Wow! It's stunning.

I'm going to enter the contest. I didn't know about it last year (and my partner, who is ON the CONCOM, didn't even think about telling me about it. Harumph, I say, and again I say Harumph!)

[metaphortunate]

Huh...I dunno if there would be any issue precisely because your partner is on the concom, now that I think about it. :P Probably not. I mean, the prize isn't exactly riches so vast as to engender corruption, and it's probably trivial to pass the stories on to whoever's judging without names attached.

[serene]

Oh, see, now he should've just said "I didn't tell you because you're boinking someone on the concom!" That makes sense as an issue. Maybe I won't bother. I was mostly enjoying my mock offense. :-)

[laurashapiro]

That cover is NIFTY. Seriously one of the coolest things I've seen you do. I love all the detail, especially the reflection in the faceplate, and the whole concept is brilliant.

[metaphortunate]

Thank you!

[jrtom]

I also am definitely liking that illustration.

I kind of want to know what people inside the reflected scene see when they look in the spacesuited figure's direction. (Or if that's well-defined.)

Re: identifying alien woods: as a matter of principle, I assert that it's good no-ego wood.

[jrtom]

Also: "I think we've agreed that it was the boots that turned the trick."

[metaphortunate]

....boots? Huh?

[jrtom]

There was a conversation that Miles was having with Ekaterin on the subject of Duv (in _Komarr_). It's a reference to the conversation to which you alluded above.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/VorkosiganSaga (search for "boots")

[tablesaw]

I was all ready to start submitting panels and then there were too many! Need to rethink this . . .

[metaphortunate]

Wait, no! SUBMIT THEM ALL!

[kore]

Your art is really fantastic.

[metaphortunate]

Thank you so much!

[kalmn]

:( :( :(

[metaphortunate]

It is a bummer. I wish I had time to take on organizing it myself, but I just do not, at least not this year.