HeliosphereNY 2023 Con Report

This blog isn't dead. I realize that I haven't had a lot of time to devote to it (or to any of my other blogs), but more updates will occur. In the meantime, here is the "after con" report from this past weekend.

HeliosphereNY
Piscataway, NJ

Yes, I get the irony. After the pandemic, the con and the previous hotel parted ways. We moved to Piscatawy for two years, and now it appears that the con will continue to exist here. Luckily I drive because it doesn't seem to be close to public transportation. I could be wrong on this -- I haven't checked.

From Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the trip took about two hours on a Friday afternoon. I had to choose between getting around Manhattan and into the Holland Tunnel, or down the BQE and make it to Staten Island before the expressway got nuts. I can't say I picked wrong, but I might not have picked the quicker of two evils. I made it there just before my first panel started.

I had a busy con this year. I always tell them to put me where they need me, and this year they did. I was on four panels plus I had a reading. So I was scheduled for five things even before I picked discussions that I wanted to sit in on. And then there were signings and launch parties, too. Let me take them all in order, staring with Friday afternoon.

What is Streaming Doing?" It was a "miracle" that I found the Miracle Room. I was the final panelist to arive, and we only had one audience member to start. More arrived after. It was a lively discussion on the problems with programming for streaming. There's a vicious cycle that people won't watch streaming series until a full series has been completed, or worse, people wait until the series is complete. No one wants to invest time in a show that gets cancelled prematurely. The downside to this is that shows don't get ratings right away, so they get cancelled before people even find them.

The Ice Cream Social is always fun because I like ice cream. I had plenty of toppings so I didn't need to go back for seconds. As it turned out, my Pandemic Book Club was meeting at the same time, so I found a quiet corner for my Zoom call.

After that, I missed the later panel because I honestly didn't realize that there were any after the Social. I had a nice time having cocktails and hors d'oeuvres, courtesy of Dr. James Prego, who was a panelist on my earlier panel. A number of peple joined us later, and we called it a night not long afer midnight.

Saturday morning, I had the pool to myself. It was heated. The pool house at the Holiday Inn isn't much to speak of. For one thing, there isn't any furniture to put your stuff down on.

This year, the breakfast buffet was included with the room, so I didn't have to leave to go to IHOP. Standard fare, but the place was a bit crowded because of a tour group which had stayed the night. (There was two buses outside waiting for people.)

Don’t Ruin the Moment! Paying Attention to the Little Things: This was a panel I suggested, but it wasn't the panel I suggested. I wanted to talk about suspension of disbelief, but the wording of the panel description made it sound more like a writing panel than a viewing panel. The writers and editors on the panel ran with this. I had no problem going along with this -- I had plenty of material. I'd been told that there had been a lot of interest in this panel. Given the folks I shared the dias with, I can believe this. It was like an all-star panel and me. (Imposter syndrome anyone?) It was fun and informative. Maybe next year, I'll suggest my panel again and stress the viewing angle. I could even plug my Bored Panda interview.

Jersey Pines Ink (Dina Leacock and Ann Stolinsky) Launch Party: I probably should've used this time to get lunch, but I was curious about the launch party. There were a couple of readings from the new anthology Trees, and there were prizes. Books were giving away, and I had the first choice. Since most of the books were dark fantasy or horror, I gravitated toward the Whodunit anthology. (I noticed that Gordon Litzner was included among the authors, but I didn't get a chance to have him sign it.) My lunch that day consisted of a bit of crudité and some jelly beans.

Making Our Monsters or Finding Them: I sat in this discussion about cryptids, which featured several authors of cryptid novellas, which were part of a line from Systema Paradoxa (from eSpec Books). I need to read a few of these so I can propose one of my own -- and I need to do this before they run out of cryptids. Not likely that they're run out, but the remaining ones aren't as well known.

Reading: I had a reading with two others, which should've mention 20-25 minutes per person. The first reader was ready to stop at 10-15 minutes because it was a good spot, but another author said, "No, you have a lot of time." These readings, at other cons, don't usually run this long. I had a bunch of stories on my iPad, ready to read in a ridiculously large font. I read "The Feast of Groggry the Cronaut" from In A Flash 2020, which is under 2000 words long. The third author was ready to jump in. I said I had a quickie I could read after, which was 1000 words long and had been published in Daily Science Fiction. (This impressed one of the other readers as DSF was a tough market to crack. Sadly, they ceased publishing in 2022.) Anyway, the last story seemed to last a lot longer than mine did, and in fact spanned several chapters. I sat there quietly steaming becasue as an author of flash, I could've easily have read one or two more quick stories. Last year, I read at least 5 stories in did it in under 20 minutes.

Books & Brews, with Charles Gannon: Again, I should've gotten something ot eat, but I discovered a sign-up list for a Books & Brews, which was not on the official schedule. The last time Chuck Gannon was at Heliosphere, a couple years before the pandemic, there were several B & B's going on, and I signed up in advance. After all, he was a Guest of Honor. The funny thing was that he asked more about us than we asked about him. He even remembered me (back then) when he saw me later that night, and recalled that I was trying to get published again after a long dry spell. This time, we had been on a panel together, and I had two books in front of me: my collection of flash stories, In A Flash 2020, and an anthology that I'm in, Devilish & Divine. He was impressed by this and wanted me to tell him about it. And then we got into what's coming in the Caine Riordan universe. He kept spoilers to a minimum because he didn't know how many books we'd each had read. I would've admitted to reading the first 3 if anyone asked, but that would've been slightly bending the truth. I am reading the books now, at least the first three because that's generally my pattern with series.

The eSpec Books Launch Party: I showed up prepared to read, but in the interest of time and because of the raffle to come, they only had readings from authors in books that were launching. (That is, books from the past year, since the last Heliosphere, but particularly the ones that just "Kickstartered".) And there should've been another reading, but one participant had to miss the con for medical reasons.

When that ended, I retrieved my books from my room because there was an autograph session for every author at the con. I don't know how many fans wandered in or if it was mostly authors buying from authors and signing books for other authors. (As it was, there was one person in the room who was in Devilish & Divine whose signature I didn't have yet, but I didn't realize it at the time.) I sold one book. That paid for dinner which I finally took instead of a later panel. A couple hours were spent in a room with a private party afterward.

Evening came and morning followed ...

Breakfast was not as good, but I learned that next year, I need to come back later because they bring out different stuff later. No crossiant, just bread. The toaster was way back at the start of the line along with a couple hard bagels that I could cut through. No pancakes, but waffles showed up later on, as did the bacon. Bacon, good, these waffles, meh. Even later, there was corn-beef hash. I didn't try any. Maybe next year.

Weirdest New Words I Learned in 2023: I didn't know what to expect from this panel, but it was fun. A lot of it dealt with Tik Tok driving words, and unlike in Mean Girls, "influencers" can make words happen. Fellow panelist Lancelot Schaubert has been deconstructing English and learning language in general, so he had a lot of interesting insights to contribute. Amusing aside: when I mentioned that "plumbago" was another word for graphite (courtesy of Jeopardy), he could pull out the etymology of it but wouldn't have realized that it was a word to begin with.) Our moderator, Sarena Strauss, had us (audience included) do a writing exercise with five words or phrases that popped up in the discussion, included "weirorange", coined by Jenifer Rosenberg, meaning the color you see weird you close your eyes tight and rub them.

This is what I wrote: The night sky was illuminated bright shades of weirorange as fireworks exploded in sync with the stridulations of the orchestra. My family was oblivious, kitlepitching their own snarky remarks about my mulkvisti brother who'd just crushed out.

a few definitions: stridulations are the sounds insects make rubbing body parts, kittlepitching is hogging the conversation, crushed out is slang for breaking out of prison (and had I more time, I might've used it figuratively instead of literally), and mulkvisti is a Scandinavian word from an audience member which means the one I don't hate as much as the rest of you.

As interesting as the Wednesday Addams panel might've been (and I was curious about the "audience participation" part), I went to readings from the upcoming book, The Four ______ of the Apocalypse. We got to hear Dany Ackley-McPhail's "Four Lunchladies", Hildy Silverman's "Four Batchelors", and Keith R. A. DeCandido's "Four Septagenarians". It promises to be a great book.

I missed the GoH Interview because I had ...

Fan Fiction as Practice: I dug out my old fanzines for this one, but sadly I shouldn't have bothered. This was the panel that got away, even more than the Disbelief panel. It went off the rails pretty quickly, and any and every attempt to right the train was immediately tipped over again. Basically, it turned into a very long discussion, or rather multiple discussions about the problems of Mary Sues in fan fiction, fiction in general, and original works, and what the actual definition of a Mary Sue actually is, and what the problems of Mary Sues in fan fiction, fiction in general, and original works, and what ... and what the hell happened to the time. It didn't stop until we were over time, so no one got any closing comments. I also didn't get to mention my fanzine, which I was told the first time I tried mentioning my fan writing background, I was told we'd get back to that. We did not. There was also very little talk about "practice" and more about "fixing" the source material, which seems rude when your in someone else's sandbox, but sometimes the sandbox owner took their shovel and went home. And others stopped writing fanfiction because they moved on to writing official licensed material. For my part, I mostly haven't written in the universe of a single show, but in the Car Wars universe, which doesn't have main characters. So I was an odd fit for the panel, even if fan fiction was my practice for writing.

Last panel I attended was Genre Blending ~ You Got Ghosts in My Steampunk!, which seems to be all the rage with anthologies these days, but goes back quite a ways. There was some history of blending genres (a little pendantic at times) and when the moderator was asked if he had any specific questions to discuss, he pulled out a couple of books and read examples. I exclused myself and walked out into the deluge in the parking lot and started home, hoping the lousy weather would keep people off the roads.

Not the greatest end to the weekend, but I did pick up a nice hero for the ride home. Next year, we'll be back in the same hotel, so it seems HeliosphereNY will be in NJ for the forseeable future. Hopefully, I'll have a new book to read from next time around, and I'll have them limit the number of panels I'm on so I can attend others that I might like. One member did apologize for keeping me so busy. But it was okay, I had fun. And I was fed.

HeliosphereNY: Beyond the Corona, Con Report, Part II

Note: Part I of this report appeared Monday, and can be found here.

One of the panels on Friday started off slowly for a few reasons: first, two of the panelists hadn't shown; second, no moderator had been chosen in advance and it didn't appear that either panelist was particularly interested in leading the discussion; and, third, it didn't seem like they had much to say. Basically, they seemed unprepared. Now I know this con was put together quickly, but people were only put on panels that they had shown interest in a month earlier when preparing for the full-scale, on-site convention.

However, this post isn't meant to gripe about any particular panel. What happened, happened, and it told me one thing. Specifically, I needed to be prepared for my panel.

To this end, on Saturday, I sat down with a notebook and mind dumped whatever came into my head about the topic of Serial Vs. Episodic.

I managed to fill an entire page. As luck would have it, I barely had reason to look at it. A few points were fresh in my mind, and the rest didn't matter because of the directions the hour moved.

On the other hand, I still had some thoughts and opinions on the matter. So I'm going to jot them down here. If it's not a topic of interest to you, you might want to back out now. There is no seconfary topics afterward.

Okay, then.

First and foremost, I miss episodic TV. Everything is going serial, and that's not necessarily a good thing. Don't get me wrong: there are good serials out there, and I even enjoy a few of them. But there are so many on cable. And if you don't know about them early enough, you're likely going to just skip it and wait for it on a streaming service.

Episodic TV will never go away, as long as we have sitcoms, and independent stations have schedules that need filling with syndicated programming. If it's evening and you want to relax, but you don't want to start something, what are you going to do? Scroll through the programming guide until you hit Friends or Frasier or Big Bang Theory or Golden Girls. Maybe your tastes from more toward drama and some variation of Law & Order or C.S.I.. You have a story with a start and a finish, and you can switch it off. (Or watch another if you're up for it!)

With serials, it's all or nothing. You're not going to tune into whichever episode is on tonight -- not even if it's a rerun of an episode you've already seen. Out of context, the show loses something. Generally speaking, for me, most of these shows lose something in the retelling. For me, it's one and done. I rarely rewatch them.

In fact, when some of these 10-12 episode series come back after 9 months off the air, my viewing schedule is probably to busy to binge the previous season, to refresh my memory of the characters and the plotlines. Especially if it's going to remind me that nothing of substance happened for nine episodes, so that everything could come to a head in the final episode -- AND THEN there was a cliffhanger anyway! And the "entire season is one story" went right out the window.

This happens in longer, network series as well, when they hire one villain for the season. You know that they will fail to catch them, week after week, until the finale. Some of the show needs to be about something else.

This isn't to say that a show can't have seasonal themes, multi-episode arcs, and character growth. It's not the 60s anymore, so the reset button doesn't need to be hit at the end of every single episode. But have some part of the story start on one show and finish on the same show. And don't undo it the following week.

I had a note in the margin about Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, which had a good season where they went through three story arcs, even doing a callback to the first (Ghost Rider) in the third. There was some good storytelling that year.

By contrast, you have shows like Marvel's Jessica Jones and The Runaways. I thought Jessica Jones was a great show, but the first season got a little formulaic in the middle episodes. Jessica wants to catch Kilgrave, but she won't kill him. Because of this, he continually manipulates her, putting her into situations where she has to let him go so she can save someone else. (Now, okay, a hero won't let the innocent person die in order to catch the villain, but she seems to put herself into that kind of situation, repeatedly.) This problem was compoundd by the person she saved being killed anyway in a later episode, so nothing she did actually mattered. (Then again, that might've been the point that they were trying to hit home. In which case, message received.)

The Runaways is a show I only recently encountered. I'd heard about it, and knew it was somehow comic-related, which knowing anything about the comic. Had it been on the CW or Fox, running for 20 episodes, the first season would've been better. For one thing, so much of the first season could have (and should have) been dealt with in THREE episodes, not ten. And without trying to spoil things, everything again builds up all-eggs-in-one-basket for the finale ... and it ends on a cliffhanger anyways, with the story unresolved.

(Side note: cf Arrow, season 1.)

One of the "probelms" people sight about 22-24 episode shows is that they run out of material, and there's always *that one* episode, every year. Funny thing is, "THAT" episode will be the one that everyone remembers, either because they love it, or they love to hate it. That said, I'll acknowledge that stretching The Prisoner from six to 17 episodes caused a clunker or two.

I'm rambling now, but I covered most of the points I was ready to make, should they come up.

But here's a final note: I grew up watching cartoons, rerun endlessly, and we had no problem watching them again and again. Speed Racer could be repeated viewing forever. On the other hand, when Star Blazers came out, it was something totally new. And then, the second season came on with the the Comet Empire. And then ... it started showing the first season again, and my friends were like, "we already saw this." Not that the handful of us affect the ratings much, but the show was taken off the air withing weeks of starting reruns. Fans didn't need to watch the entire serial again. But maybe another episode of Gilligan's Island ...

HeliosphereNY: Beyond the Corona, Con Report, Part I

Long-time readers and followers may know that I enjoy going to science fiction conventions, and they may also know that I tend to go to one of them per year as my weekend away. I'm not talking about Comic-Con, which is a bit "too much" for me -- all hype and promotion. No, I mean a smaller con, located a little (but not much) farther away, where I spend the weekend.

In the past, that was Lunacon, which has fallen into the annals (or "annuals"?) of sci-fi history. Now, there is it's pseudo-replacement, HeliosphereNY, held in the spring in Tarrytown, NY (a stone's throw from Sleepy Hollow). This past weekend was supposed to be my weekend away, but, like everything else in the country right now, it was cancelled.

However, you can't keep sci-fi fans down for long. They were like, Let's Go! It was On with the Con!

HeliosphereNY held a virtual convention online. I was impressed that it came together so quickly, and that it ran as smoothly as it did considering they didn't even know if they would have panelists.

A couple of things led to its success: first, much of the programming work had already been done. It was just a matter of finding panelists who were available and scheduling some of talks which they had expressed interest in.

Second, and this is the biggie, I have to send kudos to the Filk community. I'm not a filker, and I don't spend much time in the filk room, listening to their concerts or open singing. But they are a very organized group, a close-knit one, a society unto their own. And they had an entire slate of performers ready to fill one track of programming. I don't think there was a point during the weekend where there wasn't some concert or other going on, even when there were no discussion panels.

Side note, here: A number of years ago, at one of the last Lunacons, the filkers wanted to invite Leslie Fish, a well-known filker on the West Coast, to the con. However, they needed to raise money to bring her to NY. So they started an indiegogo campaign. I donated to that fundraiser, without asking for any reward, for the simple reason that I wanted it to succeed. Not because I wanted to hear the concert, but because if it did succeed (which it did), that meant it could be used as a viable route for other guests (or events) in the future. (Which didn't happen, alas.)

Back to the weekend: Friday night was a little touch and go. The participants had to accustom themselves to using zoom, and the moderators and administrators had to deal with "zoom boomers" who came in to disrupt. The convention was free, and word was put out online in places where people ho might attend generally congregate. This also brought out the wackos. Despite the waiting room feature, people slipped in and had their little fun. As a results, for many of the panels, the microphones had to be turned off for all participates but the panelists. There was a chat window for questions. Thankfully, I didn't encounter anything rude or lewd on video.

For me, Friday was a mixed bag. One panel had no moderator and it seemed to lack direction, like the panelists weren't sure what they would talk about even after it started. The Horror panel, which featured readings, was going well, but was getting "bombed". Unfortunately, I was a casualty of that, as the incorrect person who removed from the room. (I got sincere apologies from the admin and the panelist after that one. No hard feelings.)

The "big" panel for me on Saturday was "I Wrote a Thing, Now What?", with advice from writers/editors on what to do, and what not to do. And a reminder that I need to write another story for another shot at another anthology, even though it may not get funded. Sadly, given this downturn, people are watching more TV, but reading less. Book sales are down. Even audio books, but they mostly sold to people driving to work. Notable about this (for me) was that Alex Shvartsman and Ian Randal Strock were both panelists. I was on two panels at HeliosphereNY 2019, and I sat next to both of them, one at each panel.

I was on two panels this year as well, both on Sunday. The first was Episodic or Serial, and I seemed to be the lone voice of dissent. It was the opinion of the panel that serial is the way TV is going now. Actually, I didn't disagree with that, but I wasn't enthused that this is where we're heading. I miss episodic TV, and many people at home in the evening, will flip on a half-hour sitcom and just enjoy. I think the other panelists agreed with me here. I'll have more to say about this panel in Part II of this report.

The second panel was "Privacy in the Information Age". I volunteered for this one because I thought it an interesting topic. I used to work programming computers, and now I use them in education. I signed up before the teaching world was turned upside down. This panel came along at the right time. Speaking of time, it was probably the best-attended Sunday 3pm panel that I've ever been to. Shoutout to Joseph R. Kennedy for stepping up and leading the discussion with lots of information and stories at his disposal. Most of my contributions were anecdotal, but the three panelists had a good hour.

Not much to gripe about during the Gripe session, and I even stopped in for a while during the Dead Dog filk.

Overwhelming approval by the organizers, presenters, and participants. We thought it great, and would love to do it again. However ... we'd all rather just be there in person next year. So here's hoping for 2021!

In the Center of the Thunderstorm

(Click on the cartoon to see the full image.)
(C)Copyright 2012, C. Burke. All rights reserved.

Yes, that's "I" in the center of the storm.
I was going to use "Religion" to get a whole pantheon in there, but I still had "Thunder" left over from a couple weeks ago.

For the record, the picture was taken at New York ComicCon, and the dude next to me is made out of wax. And my T-shirt has the Iron Giant made up like Iron Man.

Lunacon 2009 Report

In brief: it was a good time. Saw some friends that I haven't seen since the last con, and got to talk to some people that I met briefly last year.

One of them was Laura Anne Gilman, who autographed my newly-purchased copy of THE SHADOWS BETWEEN, a Poltergeist: The Legacy novel, written under the name L.A. Liverakos. This was sometime after I mentioned the fact that I was trying to avoid buying more media tie-in novels. Sorry, but most of them are awful. However, I have hope for this one because I made a bit of a fool of myself when I discovered that she had co-written DEEP WATER, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel with Josepha Sherman, a book that I read within the past year. I remembered Sherman's connection to the book, but not Gilman's.

Okay, so I felt like an oxymoron minus the oxy. I was introduced by a mutual friend and stopped by one of her panels. Shame on me for spacing out on her name until this year. In my defense, she was introduced to me only as "Laura Anne" ... No, not much of a defense. Now I have to find my copy of Deep Water and ask them both to sign it next year.

In other news, I re-used my Joker costume from last Halloween. Not the Heath Ledger Joker, but the costume I had in 1989. It still fit 20 years later. (It was a little big on me back then.) One guy asked why I wasn't wearing a fake mustache covered in white face paint. Ah, maybe next year.

What Is This Thing Called 'Sleep'?

(Click on the cartoon to see the entire image.) (C)Copyright 2009, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


Sleep can be overrated. Then again, parties can be overrated, too.

Also, Hours of Sleep is inversely proportional to Number of Hours Late the Next Strip Will Be Posted.

Edit: Call it "irony" or whathaveyou, but I noticed that due to lack of sleep, I misspelled "convention" in the original posting. It's been fixed.

Lunacon 2008: Costumes and T-shirts

One of the things that I like about Lunacon are the costumes worn by fans and pros alike. The best costumes are saved for the Masquerade, but others, usually simpler costumes are worn throughout the day. For some, it's just a matter of wearing a cape or a hat or tail just for the chance to be a little different. And for the first time in a few years, I brought an outfit to wear Saturday evening while the masquerade was going on.

That said, the most attention I got was actually for two T-shirts that I wore. On Saturday, I had on the Speed Racer shirt that I picked up a year ago at Target. I must've been stopped about a dozen times to be asked about the movie, the trailer and the old series. On Sunday, I wore a "Thing 2" shirt and endured an hour of "Where's Thing 1?" and a couple of hours of "I just saw Thing 1 over there!" (My brother was wearing "Thing 1".)

None of this bothered me, mind you. In fact, the shirts served their purpose ever better than expected. They were great conversation starters even though I didn't really expect them to be. And even though I was surrounded by friendly people with similar interests, breaking into a conversation isn't always easy. Sure, I'm good at it once it starts moving, but that the trouble is getting it started.(*)

Funny thing was that this year no one started a conversation with "Nice cape."

(*)Obligatory math content for my students checking up on their teacher: This is true with math problems, especially the word problems. They are easy to solve once you can get them started. Knowing where and how to start is usually the hardest thing.
Also, you now know that once a year, your math teacher walks around a hotel wearing a cape.