Hey all
This Memorial Day Weekend, the 51st annual Balticon was held by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. And were finally able to attend. And yes, yes, we hear your cries now, how is it that being the science fiction fans that we are, we have never been to Balticon before? The answer is simple-best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry. Despite multiple attempts and plans to go to Balticon, something has always interfered, most typically family events. But this year nothing could stop up us-even works 😉 So while we did not make it all 4 days, we did get to go this year. And we had a blast.
For this of you who follow, you may know that this is not our first science-fiction specific convention, although we more often attend anime conventions-just due to frequency and the fact that anime is an open fandom. However, we love science fiction and were delighted to attend this convention. They had some very fun panels, particularly the influence of Baltimore on Science Fiction/speculative fiction. It was really great and featured some really great authors like John L French, Stephanie Burke, Jamaila Brinkley and T.C. Weber. It was really interesting to hear their perspectives.
We of course spoke to many authors with new or established books, such as Ben Anderson with The McGunnegal Chronicles which Yoseijira is particularly intrigued by as she is fascinated with fantasy based on Irish Folklore. Doommecha picked up Rune of the Apprentice by Jamison Stone-who was a really awesome guy and cosplayed the main character from his own series which was pretty fun. So look for some mention of those two works on our media in the near future.
And, as is becoming a Doomtastic tradition, we wound up sitting on a panel Friday night due to a need for additional panelists. Anime 101. It was really fun, and included Devin Jackson Randall and Stephanie Burke as well as Doommecha and Yoseijira. We had a lot of fun and think that we will probably be very involved in the anime programming track for Balticon in the future.
