Countdown to PhilCon! The nation's oldest continuous science fiction convention!
Several years ago, I was invited to be a panelist for PhilCon. This will be my 4th year paneling. I have expressed interest in several panels and they will be selected for me.
Paneling is not easy. It involves public speaking and also tolerating the barbs and insults of other panelists, particularly older, stuffy, pearl-clutching boomer nerds.
I tend to avoid the convention suite, which is where nerds argue politics (contrasting Trump with Hitler, etc) in a way that, I think, alienates minority guests and panelists (who also tend to avoid the convention suite). If I have time I plan to visit the gaming room, to participate in an RPG (with which I have relatively little experience, having played exactly one game of Dungeons and Dragons in my life). I will visit the merchandise room to shop for gifts for family. And I will, of course, bring a little marijuana with me to liven things up (dealing with nerds can be exhausting).
I sometimes feel a little alienated at PhilCon because, as a writer, I am highly critical of what I read and watch. I feel this puts me in conflict with "fans" who are less critical. For example, I have watched, so far, all the episodes of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" Season 4. It is awful. Unwatchable. Horrible. Nonstop gimmickry. A mockery of "Star Trek." But there will of course be (mostly younger) fans of the series and I will need to be careful to not alienate them. Similarly, I have unpopular opinions about properties like "Star Wars." Namely that the original trilogy is a black-and-white, intellectually insulting set of movies (although the property has redeemed itself with complex story-telling in recent years with movies like "Rogue One" and streaming shows like "Andor").
Regardless, it is a wonderful opportunity to network. Networking at PhilCon got "Rentkids" read by a publisher and resulted in my trilogy, the "Tantalus II Trilogy," being sold to Dragonbrae for publication.
Come November, I plan to give this blog a report about PhilCon. Whether I follow through with this promise will remain to be seen (being consistent about this blog is clearly not one of my strong suits) but according to my numbers here, I do have reads, so I will try not to disappoint.
