Echoes

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Lloyd Penney
1706-24 Eva Rd.
Etobicoke, ON
CANADA M9C 2B2

December 15, 2010

Dear Petréa:

I know I left you a note on Facebook about Picofarad, and literally days later, I get issues 21, 22 and 23 in the mail, and just a couple of days ago, too Sorry I've fallen behind on this fine zine of yours, but I can remedy that right now.

21...The Convention Project you have in mind sounds very interesting, but I think you'd need to be independently wealthy to make a go of it. You might need to create a network of fans who'd cover convention in their area, and do the interviews and take the pictures you'd want in the reports.

I've read a little of the Schlock Mercenary webcomic, but it lost my interest fairly quickly. No offense to Howard Tayler; he was a guest at Ad Astra a couple of years ago. If you go to Phil Foglio's Girl Genius site, there are links to his older Myth Adventures comic. I've read a little of that comic, too. It didn't keep my attention the way Girl Genius has, and to be honest, Girl Genius is flagging a little, too.

22...If you ever did achieve your dream, to go a convention every weekend for a year, I think you'd find you'd be heartily sick of it at the end of the year. I'd also add up the costs of 52 cons, and see how much the good times cost you. I think my best year was 14 cons in one year, but now, I'm down to about 6 to 8 a year, and most of them are local. I've never been able to travel the way I've wanted to.

The house your grandmother and aunt lived sounds like there's about enough room there for the average fannish household. Our hobbies and collections need a place to display themselves, but then, there's be a lot of surface that would need dusting and cleaning. As for the ancient SF zines, the local club might appreciate such a gift, assuming there's someone old enough to appreciate them and keep them as the treasures they are. If the books can't be kept on a shelf, could they be scanned? The information should be preserved, if the paper books can't.

In "Trying out the Treadmill", I see you mention Len Moffatt...Len passed away not long ago, and if you check File770.com, there's notice of a LASFS memorial in the new year.

My loc...the Hugo nomination was a true ride, even with a few people tearing strips off me for accepting it and actually enjoying the status. With a change in management in the Ad Astra committee, we rejoined it, and will now be a part of the 30th Ad Astra, our 30 years of being on committee. I will be assisting with fan tables, and looks like Yvonne will be running the green room. The Whedon fest was cancelled due to lack of people wanting to pay the exorbitant prices being charged. Futurecon...wouldn't worry about it. I think this convention will be a one-shot. It started as a fancy New Year Eve's party, and eventually morphed into a two-day, and then a three-day con. It will be a little expensive, but a great way to celebrate the new year, and give yourself a holiday in the middle of a Toronto winter. We did get to SFContario in Toronto, a new literary convention with friendly nods to filk, gaming, movies, anime and most fannish interests, even fanzines. Lots of fun, next year's edition will be the CanVention, and we're looking forward to it.

23...Maybe one of these years, we can get the Foglios out here for a convention. Movies...we go to few of them, so they'd better be good. We have plans to go to see TRON and the newest Narnia movie, but the first movie we did see? The King's Speech. As I've said on Facebook, it's a great movie if you ever felt that you were the black sheep of the family, or you had a lot of medical problems when you were a kid, or if you were (or are) a struggling voice actor. I am glad we made it our first movie of this season.

I think anime conventions will continue, but as the committees age, and the fan-run conventions come to an end, business will pick it up and stage something like Comic-Con for the anime fans. I think Margaret Atwood is aware of the fuss over her squid in outer space remarks, and she might be settling into her secondary role of being an SF writer. (Being an icon in Canada's pantheon of literary writers, and her tertiary role of being a part-time actress are both assured.) Maybe I can suggest her to Ad Astra, seeing she lives here, and that would be quite the achievement, getting MA as a ProGoH.

I will fold it up here, and say I am done. Have to go to my evening job soon, so I should get ready to go. Thank you for sending me these three issues...I appreciate it, but that cost too much. If you can let me know when a new issue is available on your website, I can take the issue from there, and write up a loc for you. Take care, many thanks, see you next issue.

Yours, Lloyd Penney.

I think I'm nearly over Girl Genius myself. I was all for adding the Graphic Story category to the Hugos in 2009, but if Girl Genius wins again, I will have to admit that the Worldcon population doesn't have the breadth of reading necessary to do justice the category, and will vote against continuing it in 2012.

I guess it's too late at this point to talk you out of going to the Narnia movie. Voyage of the Dawn Treader is my favorite of the books, and I can tell from the plot summaries alone that practically nothing remains of it in that alleged adaptation.

I'm sorry to hear people don't think you should enjoy being a Hugo nominee. It's fine with me personally if you like it...

Some anime conventions look set to continue for the long haul. Right now I think the biggest problem is there are too many that are completely interchangeable. I think aging committees will take care of the not-friendly-to-older-folks problem, though.

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