Angry Robot

AD-ASTRA 2008 Con Report-ish Thing!

I went, I saw, I so tired!

Toku and I checked out this year’s Ad-Astra in Toronto this weekend and it was so much fun, but so tiring! I’d never been to a Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction Con before and wow, eyes are opened to a whole new sparkling world!

I chatted with so many writer peoples! It was crazy awesome! It definitely made me want to dive into the Toronto book scene and support that community way more than I have been. So bye-bye Chapters, hello Bakka Phonenix. I know that I should have been buying books there since the dawn of my being in Toronto, and I have been once or twice, but I’ve been tremendously silly. No longer! Well, I’ll always be silly but not when it comes to purchasing books of my favourite genre!

We tagged along with friends Lesley Livingston and Adrienne Kress who are two amazing women and also awesome authors. Check them out! I was also at the con with my good friend Jonathan Llyr, who will be popping up in Robot related news very soon (check back here May 1st for all the wild and crazy details).

Anyway, I was mostly talking written word on paper stuffs, but I did have a great conversation on gaming with Brett Alexander Savory. He’s an author, editor, musician, and a hell of a nice guy. He does like dark fantasy, horror fantasy, horror comedy and I guess general horror, but not in the typical “buckets of blood” way. And you can guess what I couldn’t help but ask him about…Yes, Manhunt 2 and censorship! Check out Robot Sounds this week for a bit of that interview and some music from his band (he’s, like, so multi-talented and energetic!) Diablo Red.

Back to the con experience…

I feel so at home with science fiction/fantasy fans! I mean, I don’t dress up or anything (I would possibly under the right conditions though) but the first thing I saw when I walked in the hotel lobby was a group of Klingons and it felt so natural to me. I had to call my sister and leave a message squeaking my delight. I love this stuff! I love that people do this stuff! Just because I don’t (have no courage…) doesn’t mean I don’t think highly of it. And I do, dear gods I do, because it takes bawls and grit to dress up in homage to a show or character you adore and walk around boldly even when in a fandom environment.

Though this con wasn’t so much dressy upy as it was super smarty pants awesome. Everyone was so intelligent and had such wonderful insights on writing, reading, and the sincere loving of both. It just feels good when you are surrounded by people who adore reading the same kind of thing you do. Who understand the love of adventure (and have gone on the same ones) and simply want to talk about how great they are. I mean to be able to say I was madly in love with the Malazan Empire books and see not confusion in the eyes of those speaking to me, but a twinkling understanding and a knowing grin. It was almost like by saying what you read people instantly understood a part of your personality. They could see a glimpse of the colour of your spark and appreciate it. Heady stuff, my friends, supremely heady stuff.

Well, I’m totally knackered from all the interviews, chatting, and general staying up late and getting up early convention styles so I’m off to bed. After this amazingly tiring and fun weekend I can tell that this summer Toronto Conventions + Me = Super Fun Times With No Prisoners Taken.

And I can’t wait!