Quality vs Slashiness

Tom does the math.

Make your own robot dalek pumpkin

Does exactly what it says on the tin. Video here, instructions here.

geeky t-shirts on parade

Via Preshrunk, the geeky t-shirts of SXSW.

I remember when geeky t-shirts were rare, sniff.

emergent phenomena of fandom pt. 3

Sing-a-long-a Buffy

I especially love the idea of having to watch a “normal” ep before the musical one to warm up.

Hugo Awards

Woke up this morning and the Hugo results weren’t yet online. But soon enough, they were at Locus:

NOVEL

Spin, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)

NOVELLA

“Inside Job”, Connie Willis (Asimov’s Jan 2005)

NOVELETTE

“Two Hearts”, Peter S. Beagle (F&SF Oct/Nov 2005)

SHORT STORY

“Tk’tk’tk”, David D. Levine (Asimov’s Mar 2005)

RELATED BOOK

Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, Kate Wilhelm (Small Beer Press)

DRAMATIC PRESENTATION: LONG FORM

Serenity (Universal Pictures/Mutant Enemy, Inc.; Written & Directed by Joss Whedon)

DRAMATIC PRESENTATION: SHORT FORM

Doctor Who: “The Empty Child” & “The Doctor Dances” (BBC Wales/BBC1; Directed by James Hawes; Written by Steven Moffat)

PROFESSIONAL EDITOR

David G. Hartwell

PROFESSIONAL ARTIST

Donato Giancola

SEMIPROZINE

Locus, Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong & Liza Groen Trombi, eds.

FANZINE

Plokta, Alison Scott, Steve Davies & Mike Scott, eds.

FAN WRITER

Dave Langford

FAN ARTIST

Frank Wu

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer [Not a Hugo]

John Scalzi

Congratulations to all; special huzzahs for the wins by Wilson, Whedon, Moffat, the Locus gang, and the Plokta cabal; a slight Awww that Gary Wolfe didn’t win; and huzzahs plus a huge cheer of About Bloody Time for David Hartwell’s win.

Mile-high sci-fi

Denver has won the right to host the 2008 Worldcon: GoHs Lois McMaster Bujold, Tom Whitmore, and others to be announced. (So they might invite, for instance, Tom Doherty? HINT HINT.) Cheryl Morgan has detailed voting figures from a very close race.

The Domain Of Thog

David Langford, multiple-Hugo-winner, Ansible editor, and national treasure has now created a site for the differently-good prose showcased in Thog’s Masterclass, including assembled collections of gems from convention talks and the Thog-O-Matic random selector. He also links to a thoroughly Thoggish book dissected by Jim McDonald.

Fans from hell

Exhibit A: Colleen Doran goes to the Creation-run LotR convention, ELF and meets the LotR fan from hell.

She stood behind Billy and would work herself up into a little dance of glee in her Billy zone. She would kind of giggle to herself, bob up and down, and then she would lift her hands and wiggle her fingers like she was about to play a piano.

This was a cue that at any moment, she would TOUCH the WONDER that is BILLY BOYD’S BACK! Most women wouldn’t be induced to orgasm by this, but she would tremble with glee each time. She would make these little claw hand shapes, and then she would rake her hands down Billy’s back to get his attention. She looked like a cat arranging sand in her litter box.

And the Observer sends a reporter to Lumos 2006, the Harry Potter convention. Apart from the usual boggling when the mainstream reporter meets a slash fic writer and can’t understand why anyone would want to sit and discuss the works of JK Rowling for a weekend, there’s some more interesting thoughts, and a pretty positive outcome:

And, well, actually, it is. It’s all amazing. And seeing anybody, let alone 1,200 people enthused with joy about anything is really quite uplifting. And not just anything. Books! It makes my girlish, swotty heart swell with pride.

(both via fandom_lounge)

Feral Fandom (and other terms)

In my opinion — worth the usual two cents with a discount from my never having been involved in Harry Potter fandom myself — one of the reasons that Harry Potter fandom produces such spectacular implosions is that it is a feral fandom, that is, it grew too big and too fast for the more experienced media fans to establish the fannish social norms followed by more traditional media fandoms.

And further geneaology here.

Postscript

It’s possible that the mainstreaming of the Internet means that all fandoms are feral fandoms.