by Eric Flint | Jun 14, 2018 | Information | 3 comments June 14, 2018 I have the following titles that qualify for nomination for the Dragon Award to be handed out at DragonCon this year. (For more information on DragonCon, see: http://www.dragoncon.org/) BEST FANTASY NOVEL: The Demons of Paris, by Eric Flint, Paula Goodlett and Gorg Huff. BEST HORROR NOVEL: Iron Angels, by Eric Flint and Alistair Kimble. BEST ALTERNATE HISTORY NOVEL. I have several novels that qualify in this category: The Alexander Inheritance, by Eric Flint, Paula Goodlett and Gorg Huff. 1636: The Vatican Sanction, by Eric Flint and Charles E. Gannon. 1637: The Volga Rules, by Eric Flint, Paula Goodlett and Gorg Huff. If you’ve read any of these novels and liked them enough, please nominate them for their respective awards. Nominations will be closed on July 20, 2018. Voting will take place shortly thereafter. 3 Comments Jim on June 27, 2018 at 2:08 AMWhy would a socialist want to win awards so much? Is it because your a capitalist? Hypocrite. Drak Bibliophile on June 28, 2018 at 7:52 AMAh, but he is a capitalist and makes no bones about it. Mike on October 2, 2018 at 7:53 PMI’m confused by the whole idea that a socialist would not want to win awards. I think maybe you don’t understand what socialism is.
Awards
by Eric Flint | Dec 11, 2016 | Information | 8 comments The Dragon Award was launched this year at the 2016 DragonCon convention in Atlanta that took place over Labor Day weekend. It will be held every year hereafter. The award was given out in these categories: Best Science Fiction Novel Best Fantasy Novel Best Young Adult/Middle Grade Novel Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel Best Alternate History Novel Best Apocalyptic Novel Best Horror Novel Best Comic Book Best Graphic Novel Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie Best Science Fiction or Fantasy PC/Console Game Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Mobile Game Best Science Fiction of Fantasy Board Game Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Miniatures/Collectible Card/Role Playing Game As will be obvious to anyone familiar with the existing major awards in science fiction and fantasy, there are two features of the Dragon Award which are quite different: First, in the literary categories, no awards are given for short fiction. Only novels are eligible to be nominated. Second, much greater weight is given to non-literary forms of science fiction and fantasy. Of the fifteen awards presented, only seven of the awards—slightly less than half—are given to traditional literary forms. Two are given out for illustrated stories (comics and graphic novels), two are given out for dramatic presentations (TV series and movies), and four are given out in different gaming categories. There are a number of reasons for these differences, which I will discuss in this ongoing blog. For the moment, though, I just want to touch on what is perhaps the most basic point to be made: The Dragon Award was not set up to compete with any of the existing awards. We didn’t launch this new award because we were dissatisfied or disgruntled with the existing awards, such as the Hugo or the Nebula or the World Fantasy Award. Our attitude stems from a recognition of something that is…
by Eric Flint | Apr 27, 2016 | Hugo Controversy | 87 comments I’m under some fairly serious deadline pressure right now and will be for a couple of months. So I won’t be writing the sort of long essays I did last year on the subject of literary awards in general and the Hugo awards in particular. That said, since the nominations for this year’s Hugo awards have now been published and it’s obvious that the Rabid Puppies have been up to some mischief again, I figure I should say a few words. Let me start by quoting something that George R.R. Martin said in a recent post he made on his “Not a Blog” blog: Sad Puppies 4, this year headed by Kate Paulk, changed its approach and produced a recommended reading list, with anywhere from one to ten suggestions in each category, rather than slating four or five. The process was open and democratic, which Sad Puppies 3 often claimed to be but never was. Paulk also avoided the ugly excesses of the previous campaign, and never stooped to the sort of invective that her predecessor, Brad Torgersen, had been so fond of, with all his talk of CHORFs and Puppy-kickers. For all this she should be commended. I agree with George and I think that’s as much as needs to be said on the subject of the Sad Puppies. Whatever I think of any specific recommendation they made is neither here nor there. The Sad Puppies have as much right to make recommendations as does anyone else. Locus magazine does it routinely and no one objects—nor should they. The situation with the Rabid Puppies, however, is quite different. It’s obvious that they voted as a disciplined bloc again this year and they have enough supporters to make a difference in at least some of the categories. They also, this year, used the sleazy tactic of including in their slate a number of works by authors…
by Eric Flint | Aug 31, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 185 comments Several people, in their commentaries on my recent essay (“Do We Really Have to Keep Feeding Stupid and His Cousin Ignoramus?”), challenged or at least questioned the assertion I’ve made several times in my various essays on the Hugo ruckus that the Hugos (and other major F&SF awards) have drifted away over the past thirty years from the tastes and opinions of the mass audience. It’s a fair question, so I’ll address it in this essay as best I can. It’s not an easy issue to analyze, though. That’s for the simple reason that popularity is gauged by sales, and there are no publicly available records on the sales of various authors. That’s information which is privately held. When I published my first essay on the Hugo ruckus a few months ago (“Some comments on the Hugos and other SF awards,” posted here on April 16), a number of people privately expressed their astonishment, or bemusement, or admiration at the amount of work I’d put into it. Or in the case of my publisher, Toni Weisskopf—although she never said a word to me about it—probably exasperation. (“What the hell is he doing writing this stuff instead of novels, dammit?”) The essay does indeed represent a lot of work, since it’s 7,200 words long. (If word counts don’t mean much to you, that’s the length of two or three chapters in most novels.) But, in fact, I put very little work into it—this year. That’s because most of the essay had been written eight years earlier. Here’s the history: Back in 2007, I wound up—I can’t remember how it got started—engaging in a long email exchange with Greg Benford over the subject of SF awards. Both of use had gotten a little exasperated over the situation—which is closely tied to the issue of how often different authors get reviewed in major F&SF magazines. In the…
by Eric Flint | Aug 26, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 246 comments Wired magazine just ran an article on the recently-concluded Hugo awards, voted on at Sasquan, the world science fiction convention held in Spokane, Washington over the past weekend. There is much in the article that I have no objection to, but it does not begin well. Here is a passage from early in the article: “Though voted upon by fans, this year’s Hugo Awards were no mere popularity contest. After the Puppies released their slates in February, recommending finalists in 15 of the Hugos’ 16 categories (plus the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer), the balloting had become a referendum on the future of the genre. Would sci-fi focus, as it has for much of its history, largely on brave white male engineers with ray guns fighting either a) hideous aliens or b) hideous governments who don’t want them to mine asteroids in space? Or would it continue its embrace of a broader sci-fi: stories about non-traditionally gendered explorers and post-singularity, post-ethnic characters who are sometimes not men and often even have feelings?” As a description of the Sad Puppies and the sort of fiction they prefer, this sentence manages the singular feat of being simultaneously dishonest and laughable: Would sci-fi focus, as it has for much of its history, largely on brave white male engineers with ray guns fighting either a) hideous aliens or b) hideous governments who don’t want them to mine asteroids in space? I suppose it’s possible that one of the Sad Puppies or the authors they tend to like has at one time or another written a story whose central protagonist is a white male engineer with a ray gun, but I’ve never seen it. Is it really too much to ask people who take it upon themselves to criticize the Sad Puppies to FUCKING READ what they actually write? Instead of doing what the Puppies themselves are…
by Eric Flint | Jun 23, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 90 comments John Scalzi has raised some objections to and reservations about the proposal that will be coming out of Sasquan for making some changes in the structure of the Hugo awards. I thought his comments were worth taking up and I’ll be doing so here. I had a friendly private exchange with John on the subject, and I want to emphasize that I view this as a discussion more than a debate. You can find John’s remarks here: Note to WSFS Members: Killing the Best Novelette Hugo is a Terrible Idea Since he put up this post and he and I had our private exchange, John’s major objection seems to have become a moot point. It now seems that the proposed amendment to the Hugo rules that would have eliminated the category of “Best Novelette” has been withdrawn. But he also registered a disagreement, if not as strong a one, to the idea of adding a category for “Best Saga.” (I.e., a best series award.) And that’s what I want to address in this essay. I want to start indirectly, though, by taking up some comments that were made by other people in response to John’s post. I was particularly struck by comments that expressed either indifference or even hostility to a series award because it would mostly benefit male authors. A series award wouldn’t be helpful to female authors? Let’s consider some authors active today in fantasy and science fiction: Ilona Andrews Kelley Armstrong Elizabeth Bear Patricia Briggs Jacqueline Carey Julie Czerneda Kate Elliott Diana Gabaldon Barbara Hambly Laurell K. Hamilton Charlaine Harris Tanya Huff Kim Harrison Robin Hobb Sherrilyn Kenyon Mercedes Lackey Elizabeth Moon Naomi Novik Jody Lynn Nye Tamora Pierce Melanie Rawn Laura Resnick Kristine Kathryn Rusch Nalini Singh Judith Tarr Sherri Tepper Margaret Weis Janny Wurtz Jane Yolen Sarah Zettel Of the thirty authors listed above: All are popular and have published…
by Eric Flint | Jun 16, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 245 comments Having come up with that nifty albeit long-winded title, I’m tempted to just write “see above” and take a nap. Mission accomplished… Sadly, some people need to be convinced that “inevitable” means “not evitable.” You don’t think there’s such a word as “evitable”? Tch. Of course there is! If there weren’t, how could anything be in-evitable? “Evitable” derives from the Latin evitare (“to avoid). It’s an adjective that means capable of being avoided; avoidable. In essence, what the Sad Puppies are arguing is that if people follow their lead, the tendency of the Hugo Awards to be slanted in favor of what are generally called “literary” qualities can be avoided. No, sorry, it can’t. You have as much chance of eliminating the tendency of a literary award to be tilted in favor of literary factors as you have of doing any of the following: Getting a fashion competition to award first place to blue jeans and a sweatshirt. But they’re so comfortable! And people wear them all the time—including those God damned probably-a-bunch-of-pinkos (PABOPs) when they’re not putting on a public show. Getting a dog show to award “best dog of show” to an unpedigreed mutt. But he’s such a good dog! Friendly, great with kids, never growls at anybody except people trying to break into the house and then—hooweeeeee!—watch the bastards run for their lives. And they gave the award to that—that—look at the damn thing! Its skull is narrower than a high-heeled shoe! God damn pointy-headed effete asinine retards (PHEARs). Getting a gourmet cooking competition to award first place to a dish consisting of a cheeseburger and fries. But almost everybody eats cheeseburgers and fries! Try setting up a chain of escargots-and-tofu restaurants and see how fast you go bankrupt! This is pure snobbery, what it is. God damn highbrow elitist stuffed shirt icky abominable nabobs (HESSIANs). Shall I go on? And on… and on… What the Sad Puppies can’t seem to grasp is that any sort…
by Eric Flint | Jun 13, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 68 comments In this essay, I want to address the second of the two objective problems with the Hugo Awards that I referred to in my last essay. That problem is the ever-widening distance between the structure of the awards and the reality of the market for fantasy and science fiction. When the Hugo Award was first launched, in 1953, four awards were established. The distinction between them was based on word count, as follows: Best short story: Any story up to 7,500 words. Best novelette: Any story between 7,500 and 17,500 words. Best novella: Any story between 17,500 and 40,000 words. Best novel: any story longer than 40,000 words. A little more than a decade later, in 1966, the newly-founded Science Fiction Writers of America (which later became the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) launched the Nebula Award, which is considered the other major award in F&SF. The award structure they adopted for written fiction was identical with that of the Hugo; i.e., the same division between three short form and one long form stories, using the same word counts. At the time, it made perfect sense to structure the awards in this manner, that is to say, heavily in favor of short fiction and with the definition of novel set with a very low word count. The genre of F&SF was predominantly a short form genre, and what (relatively few) novels got published were generally in the word count range of 40,000 to 60,000 words. Today, that structure is hopelessly outdated. Short form fiction is now a very small part of fantasy and science fiction, whether you measure that in terms of money—where it’s now a tiny percentage of the income authors receive—or in terms of readership. It’s certainly a larger percentage of the readers than it is of income, but it’s not more than 10% and it’s probably closer to 5%.…
by Eric Flint | Jun 11, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 66 comments What I want to do in this essay is go back to where I started in my very first post on subject (“Some comments on the Hugos and other SF awards,” posted April 16), which is to discuss the problems the Hugo awards actually do have—which, as I’ve now spent a lot of time explaining, has nothing to do with the political issues that the Sad Puppies insist are central. I singled out three key problems, two of them objective and one which is of a more subjective nature. The first of the two objective problems is the subject of this essay. It’s not complicated. The genre of science fiction and fantasy with all its related sub-genres—some of which, like paranormal romance, are so popular they often get their own sections in bookstores—has become enormous. It is a far, far larger field than it was half a century ago. But even back then, there was always some disparity between the tastes and opinions of the people who voted for the Hugo awards and the F&SF readership as a whole. To name what is probably the most outstanding example, Andre Norton never received a Hugo award. She was only nominated twice. But she was hardly alone in being overlooked in the Hugo awards. Many other prominent and important authors of the time, whose stories filled the major magazines and the shelves in bookstores, also never received a Hugo award and in many cases were never even nominated. Christopher Anvil was never nominated. Not once. A Bertram Chandler was never nominated. Hal Clement was only nominated once. He didn’t win. L. Sprague de Camp did win one Hugo, but it was for his autobiography and came almost at the very end of his long life. He never received the award for his fiction, despite that fiction being an enormous body of work spanning more than half…
by Eric Flint | Jun 9, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 366 comments One of the comments that was put up on my web site while I was out of town was a long one by Brad Torgersen. Because of Brad’s prominence in the debate over the Hugo Awards, I think it’s incumbent on me to respond to him. My response is going to be long because I’m going to put it all up in one post today. I’m doing that because Brad will be deploying soon and is likely to lose access to the internet for a while. I don’t think it’s fair for me to criticize his arguments if he can no longer respond. Whether he chooses to respond or not will be his decision. If he does, I will make no further responses to him beyond this one. I think the argument we’re having about the Hugo awards is approaching its productive limits. I will make one more post in a day or so, but that one will deal purely with my own practical suggestions for ways I think the Hugo awards could be improved. The post by Brad that I’m responding to here is a long one—you can find it in the thread under “AND AGAIN ON THE HUGO AWARDS”—so I think this will work best if I begin by quoting all of it. My reply will come afterward: (the original comment can be found in context in the thread under “AND AGAIN ON THE HUGO AWARDS”— webmaster) “The following is general commentary, not directed at Eric Flint per se. But at the body of the thread and all the comments as a whole. “The thing about self-identifying progressives in 21st century America is that they don’t realize when they’ve won. Especially in the field of SF/F publishing. You cannot fight against The Man when you are The Man. In SF/F publishing, progressives make up the vast bulk of editors, authors, artists, and publishers. Oh,…
by Eric Flint | Jun 8, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 342 comments I’ve been traveling a lot for the past few weeks, so my ability to respond to comments made here is intermittent. One of the comments that was put up on my web site while I was gone lately was a long one by Brad Torgersen. Because of Brad’s prominence in the debate over the Hugo Awards, I think it’s incumbent on me to respond to him. Before I can do that, however, something else has to be dealt with first. One of the main points I’ve been trying to make, partly in the hope that I can persuade the Sad Puppies to change their minds, is that while scurrilous attacks have been made on them those attacks have come from people who have no real power or influence in the science fiction and fantasy community. Unfortunately, there’s a reliable old quip, variously attributed to Voltaire and Maréchal Villars: Lord, protect me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies. With the modification that I don’t consider the Sad Puppies to be “enemies” but simply opponents in the current wrangle over the Hugos, the quip has found a home again. While I was attending SFWA’s Nebula Awards weekend, the following statement was made on her Facebook page by Irene Gallo in response to a question. (The question was “what are the Sad Puppies”?) “There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are unrepentantly racist, sexist and homophobic. A noisy few but they’ve been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.” When it comes to sheer, breath-taking dishonesty and just plain silliness, this statement is far worse than any of the ones cited by James May which I dealt…
by Eric Flint | May 18, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 160 comments James May, who keeps posting here, is the gift that never stops giving. In one of his most recent posts, he insists once again that the SJW (social justice warrior) hordes are a menace to science fiction. So, in this essay, I will go through his points one at a time to show how ridiculous they are whether examined in part or (especially) as a whole. Let’s start with his first two paragraphs: “I don’t have to pretend anything. It’s not my imagination this crusading feminist movement exists nor that it’s baked into core SFF at every level as the new go-to ideological orthodoxy. In fact they do amount to squat. This is a very specific ideology that speaks a very specific faux-academic language and has very specific goals and issues. It is radical lesbian-centric racialized feminist to its core and its central bogey man is the straight white man. “As an example, just the 5 ideologically same-page winners of the Nebulas last year alone outnumber the entire imaginary racially and sexually supremacist culture supposedly bound by a similar opposite number ideology from Burroughs in 1912 to Niven/Pournelle in 1974. There is no semantic or thematic ideology that binds Burroughs, Heinlein, Van Vogt, Asimov, Herbert, Zelazny and Niven into such a club. That is a matter of record, as is the non-fiction writings of those 5 2014 Nebula winners.†The first thing to notice about this rant is that in the name of attacking a “crusading†movement which is an “ideological orthodoxy†that “speaks a very specific faux-academic language†James May immediately proceeds to… Use crusading terminology which is ideologically orthodox and speaks a very specific faux-academic language: “It is radical lesbian-centric racialized feminist to its core.†That phrase is practically dripping Rush Limbaugh-speak. He then informs us that all—yup, each and every one—of the 2014 Nebula winners were “ideologically same-page†which is a…
by Eric Flint | May 14, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 172 comments I swore to myself—again—that I was I was going to stay away from this ruckus after my first two essays (one long, one short) but some of the posts put up on my web site have worn down that resolve. A friend of mine once said “ignorance can be fixed; stupid is forever.” I suspect he’s right, but I will sally forth once again in the hopes that some of these seemingly-stupid statements and arguments are really just the product of ignorance. Let me start with this statement, from a recent poster named James May (and don’t complain, dammit; once you post on MY web site, you’re fair game): “The social justice warrior argument is not specious but right on point. When you have SF authors writing posts about white privilege and others saying straight out they won’t review white men then that represents a sea-change, and a very new one, only 3 years old or so. That sort of thing is not occasional but obsessive and daily and it is not the usual right vs. left, although it is often couched in those terms. That is why people make the mistake of stretching this conflict years and even decades back rather than the months back it deserves.” I have two points to make about this, one of which is: Who the hell are you talking about outside of your right-wing echo chamber where idiot acronyms like “SJW” mean something? But I’ll get back to that. My first point—picture me spluttering my coffee all over the place when I read it—has to do with this statement: “When you have SF authors writing posts about white privilege… that represents a sea-change… This is why people make the mistake of stretching this conflict years and even decades back rather than months it deserves.” Excuse me? SF authors have been writing about racism—AKA “white privilege”—for decades. And they came…
by Eric Flint | Apr 23, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 20 comments In light of the discussion that’s ensued here and elsewhere in response to my essay on the current situation with the Hugo awards (see below), I decided to make a few more comments. There are two points I want to make, the first in the way of a clarification. The following statement of mine in the initial essay has been somewhat misinterpreted, I think: “What’s involved here is essentially a literary analog to genetic drift. Biologists have long known that the role played by pure chance in evolution is greater in a small population than a larger one. The same thing happens in the arts, especially those arts which have a huge mass audience. The attitudes of the much smaller group or groups of in-crowds who hand out awards or do critical reviews are mostly influenced by other members of their in-crowd, not by the tastes of the mass audience. Over time, just by happenstance if nothing else, their views start drifting apart from those of the mass audience.” Some people have interpreted this as a sarcastic remark, in which they seem to think I am deriding the tastes of what I called the “much smaller group or groups of in-crowds.” But that wasn’t my point. What I was trying to explain, perhaps not clearly enough, was that once science fiction and fantasy became the enormously popular genre of fiction that it is today, the critical attitudes of any group of fans or aficionados will inevitably diverge over time from those of the mass audience as a whole. The problem, I think, lies in a misunderstanding of the term “popular” when it is used to refer to a “popular author.” What happens is that people start thinking that a “popular” author somehow represents or reflects the mass audience—as opposed to the oft-derided “literary author” who only appeals to a small subset of the mass audience. But…
by Eric Flint | Apr 22, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 4 comments I can see it’s time I need to establish some rules for the ongoing discussion/debate on my essay (see below) on the current ruckus over the Hugo Awards. Rule One. Do not come into my web site and call me a liar or stupid or dishonest or any other derogatory term. You’re welcome to disagree with me, but do so in a civil manner. There is no warning for this rule violation, because it’s so obvious it shouldn’t need one. So, whoever the jackass is who goes by the monicker of “rollory”, a pseudonym, naturally, you’re out of here. The technical term is banned, I believe. I’m willing to suffer fools up to a point, but I’m not willing to suffer assholes. Rule Two. This is not your private soapbox. I don’t mind people posting their opinions here, even when I sharply disagree with them. But once or twice is enough. After a while, it becomes obvious that someone isn’t going to let go of a bone and they keep chewing on it. Do so elsewhere. Specifically, I don’t have time to argue any longer over whether Theodore Beale’s pseudonym “Vox Day” is the vicious (not to mention stupid) racist and misogynist he so obviously is. You have the constitutional right to defend racism and misogyny. You do not, however, have the constitutional right to do it in my web site. So take a hike, at least on that subject. I’m not removing any of the existing posts, not even the ones by the shithead who calls himself “rollory.” But if anyone puts up any more posts defending Beale and/or his opinions, the post will be removed and you will be henceforth banned from the site. Eric 4 Comments Steve Bailey on May 6, 2015 at 10:39 AMMan, what a poor time for a first visit.It took the better part of an hour digging through other posts…
by Eric Flint | Apr 16, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 255 comments I’ve been doing my best to stay away from the current ruckus over the Hugo Awards, but it’s now spread widely enough that it’s spilled onto my Facebook page, and it’s bound to splatter on me elsewhere as well. It’s also been brought to my attention that Breitbart’s very well-trafficked web site—never famous for the accuracy of its so-called “reporting”—has me listed as one of the supposedly downtrodden conservative and/or libertarian authors oppressed by the SF establishment. Given my lifelong advocacy of socialism—and I was no armchair Marxist either, but committed twenty-five years of my life to being an activist in the industrial trade unions—I find that quite amusing. So I decided it was time to toss in my two cents worth. Well… if we calculate words as being worth eight cents apiece, my five hundred and eighty dollars worth. (Not quite, but I’m an author so I’m rounding the word count up. To do otherwise would get me drummed out of the Scribbler Corps.) So, here goes. First, on the Hugo and Nebula (and all other) awards given out in science fiction. Do they have problems? Yes, they all do. For a variety of reasons, the awards no longer have much connection to the Big Wide World of science fiction and fantasy readers. Thirty and forty years ago, they did. Today, they don’t. Is this because of political bias, as charged by at least some of the people associated with the Sad Puppies slate? No, it isn’t—or at least not in the way the charge is being leveled. I will discuss this issue later, but for the moment let me address some more general questions. What I’m going to be dealing with in this essay is a reality that is now at least tacitly recognized by most professional authors—and stated bluntly on occasion by editors and publishers. That’s the growing divergence between the…
by webmaster | Mar 15, 2006 | Information | 2 comments Travel plans announced to date: I-Con March 24-26 Stoney Brook University, NY Eric Flint and Ryk Spoor (Not a Baen’s Universe event probably; there is not time to set it up) Nebula Awards Weekend May 4 – 7, Tempe, AZ Eric Flint and David Weber will be presenting the first ever Andre Norton award. Sarah Hoyt (Eric’s co-author and a member of the Baen’s Universe editorial board) will be attending. Convergence July 7 – 9, Bloomington, MN Eric Flint and David Weber will be there.. David Weber GoH, Eric Flint “Past GoH” Conestoga July 28 – 30, Tulsa, OK David Drake GoH Rick Boatright & Paula Goodlett will be there. (No they’re not authors, No, Eric won’t be there, but there will be a “Universe” presense and we thought you might want to know.) 1632 Minicon IV – Aug 4-5-6, Mannington, WV Eric Flint, Virginia DeMarce, Paula Goodlett, Rick Boatright, and a host of others. WorldCon August 23 – 27, Los Angeles, CA Eric Flint and countless other authors. Con-Stellation October 20-22, Huntville, AL Eric will be attending, David Drake GoH, with Toni Weisskopf World Fantasy Con November 2 – 5, Austin, Texas. Eric Flint and David Drake and a host of others. Note that membership to WFC is strictly limited. 2 Comments Sea Wasp on March 15, 2006 at 3:23 PMHey, what about I-Con? Coming up the 24 – 26th of March? webmaster on March 15, 2006 at 6:25 PMOk, what about it? — I can only list the things I know about. 🙁 Even loyal minions have their limits you know.