2015 WSFA Small Press Award Voting

As a member of the Washington Science Fiction Association, I may vote on the WSFA Small Press Award. Voting closed on July 31^st, and my votes are locked in. Although the stories are identified by author here, they are presented to members of WSFA anonymously, so all of the members vote based solely on the text of the story, as uninfluenced by the identities of the authors as possible. Nine stories were nominated this year, and although I ranked them one through nine, I will note that every story here was better than every story in the short fiction categories in the 2015 Hugo Awards. If any one of these stories had appeared on the Hugo ballot this year, it would have been my first place vote.

1. Cookie Cutter Superhero by Tansy Rayner Roberts: At the outset, this story feels a little reminiscent of the movie Sky High, as the protagonist, an Australian high school girl named Joey, prepares to head off to become a super-hero. But as the story progresses, the story transforms into something much more unique, as it is revealed that the superheroes that populate the world are manufactured by mysterious machines of unknown provenance that allow each nation a set number of super-powered beings drawn from the populace by a lottery and transformed. Through much of the story Joey and her friends speculate about what her powers might be, going through the various precedents while also assuming that she will replace Astra, the current female member of the team, because the team has always only had one female member. Tiny notes like this poking fun at the tropes so common to super-hero stories are one set of elements that make Cookie Cutter Superhero such an interesting story. The other major point that sets the story above the typical is that Joey is disabled - born with just one hand, the other arm ending in a stump just above where her wrist would be. As she goes through the process that will lead to her super-hero status, Joey encounters the sexism that she expects, but also unexpected support from Astra, and finally finds herself in the machine, where she realizes that she has at least some control over the form she will take. It is in the brief span of space that Joey is encased in the super-hero machine that an amazing amount of character development takes place, and Joey doggedly refuses to allow the fundamental nature of her status as a disabled person to be altered and still becomes a full-fledged superhero, highlighting the falsity of the "cookie-cutter" portion of the title. Much of the story is about the compromises Joey refuses to make: In addition to refusing to be cured of the disability she has lived with her whole life, she refuses to be referred to by a superhero name that includes "Girl", "Woman", or even "Ms.", and, in a way, she refuses to be relegated to the position of being the sole female super-hero on the team, which although that wasn't entirely her decision, seems to have been at least partially driven the machine's acknowledgement of the selection of someone with her contrarian personality in the lottery. One mark of an excellent speculative fiction short story is that it tells a satisfying tale but at the same time leaves the reader wanting to know more about the universe the story is set in, and on that score Cookie Cutter Superhero reaches excellence with a comfortable margin to spare.

2. Jackalope Wives by Ursula Vernon (actual finish 1^st): Told in a way that feels like a story told by an old woman to a rapt audience sitting in the light of a campfire, Jackalope Wives is about the wild skin-changing part-rabbit, part-antelope women who dance in the desert and are lusted after by young men. The plot gets moving when Grandma Harken's foolish and smitten grandson tries to catch one of the titular jackalope wives, seizing her rabbit skin and throwing it into the fire, but her screams so unnerve him that he foolishly pulls it out of the fire, whereupon the jackalope wife does an even more foolish thing and tries to put the half burned pelt on. Desperate, her grandson turns to his grandmother, who takes the scorched half-woman half-jackalope in, and tries to heal her as best she can. After much consternation, Grandma Harken reluctantly decides she must seek more powerful help, and sets out with her clumsy half-rabbit charge in tow. As the pair travel, the story throws in tiny touches, deepening the mythic underpinnings of the story as Grandma Harken steers away from help from coyote, javelina, and raven, pinning her hopes on one of the "patterned people". She also encounters the Father of Rabbits, who serves up a tempting offer to the old woman that makes the story take on an almost entirely different meaning. One interesting element is that other than the Father of Rabbits, none of the male figures mentioned in the story are referred to by their names: Not Grandma Harken's grandson, nor either her first or second husbands, and not even the patterned man who bargains to help the unfortunate jackalope wife. Only Grandma Harken and her daughter Eva have real identities, and Eva only barely does. This, combined with the mythic nature of the storytelling gives Jackalope Wives an almost dreamlike quality, allowing it to sit on the edge of possibility, such that it feels not so much like a story that was made up, but like a story that actually happened in one of the wild corners of the desert where everyday reality breaks down.

3. Careful Magic by Karen Healey: With a hint of Moorcock, a hint of Modesitt, and more than a hint of Rowling, Careful Magic tells the story of a misfit teenager named Helen who happens to be the only Order worker in her high school. With a life bound by rituals and routines that seem pointedly OCD-like, Helen maneuvers through her days tapping doorknobs, twirling pens, and apologizing to each of her classmates when she is late. She also has to walk widdershins around the building and bless a particular tree before she can enter her school. This makes her an oddball in a society that is made up almost entirely of Chaos magic practitioners, but things begin to look up when Gilbert Hill asks her to help out his pretty and popular sister Rosalind who has had a love spell cast upon her by fellow classmate Kinai Hayashi. Things aren't what they seem, and the best laid plans go awry, helped along by some rather chaotic and impulsive juvenile delinquency, but in the end Helen solves the problem and saves the day. The story creates an interesting magical world for the characters to inhabit and populates it with believable teens - most notably Helen, whose status as a neuro-atypical individual is what provides her with her power, but also serves as a source of embarrassment that she must come to terms with. A subtle touch in the story is that every character of note is dark-skinned, and everyone inhabiting the story finds this mostly unremarkable. Despite being a story about teenagers dealing with what starts out as a teenager-sized problem, it contains excellent writing, engaging characters, and a plot that has just enough twists and turns to keep things interesting.

4. The Magician and Laplace's Demon by Tom Crosshill: This story is built around a big and weird idea - what if magic does exist, but it only exists in ways that cannot be proven. Told from the story of an emergent and hidden A.I. that benevolently seeks to control humanity, the story also imagines that there are secretive magicians who live in the seams in the fabric of what is known, manipulating probabilities to make the improbable a certainty. Disturbed by the implications, the A.I. sets about hunting down and either killing the magicians or getting them to "spike", that is use up their entire affinity for magic in one big life-saving event. This sets up a confrontation between the last remaining magician and a tiny sliver of the A.I. as they face one another on a spacecraft in the far reaches of human occupied space. The story has something of a disturbing tone, as the A.I. holds all of the beliefs that one would normally expect a typical science fiction reader to have: That science always follows the same rules, no matter where one is, and no matter who one is. But it is presented as an inhuman perspective here, and contrasted with the human magician's view of how the universe works, and with how one might hope that the universe works. The story ends on a slightly ambiguous note, with the reader not completely sure if the A.I. has emerged victorious - as it believes it has - or if the magician has fooled its opponent, which the story gives hints that she might have. In an odd way, this story covers much the same ground that The Three-Body Problem does, but in a much truncated and as a result, more perfunctory manner. Further, while the characters in the story are reasonably well written, they aren't particularly fleshed out, serving mostly as expository props for the author to outline and contrast the opposing viewpoints. As a result, while this is an interesting and enjoyable story, it is just short of being a great one.

5. Vanilla by Dirk Flinthart: This story deals with alien assimilation and xenophobia from two angles. The tale is told from the perspective of Kylie Howard, a Somali teen whose family emigrated to Australia, and is about her friendship with the !gontok students from another planet who have taken up residence on Earth. Kylie occupies an odd position in the book - she's not quite regarded as an Australian by her classmates, despite her father's hope that she will blend in with their adopted homeland both her skin color and her father's conservative restrictions upon her behavior mark her as separate. But she is at least human, which makes her different from her !gontok classmates, who are hairy and purple, with joints that don't work the same way human joints work, eat live food, need vitamin supplements to live on Earth, and identify each other mostly by smell. The story moves along mostly predictably, with Kylie, who doesn't fit in with her Australian classmates, making friends with the !gontok students, who also don't fit in with their Australian classmates. There are a few hints of xenophobia from the other students, but the story mostly focuses on the displacement felt by the immigrant children, and how they find common ground in the fact that they are regarded as oddballs by their peers. There is something of a unexpected and biologically improbable twist at the end that changes the nature of the story somewhat, but doesn't alter its fundamental nature. Overall, this is a good story about teenagers who don't fit in with their peers, and the unlikely relationships that can result, but it isn't substantially more than that.

6. N Is for Nanomachine by C.S. MacCath: A story about the death of a people, N Is for Nanomachine confronts the question of what happens when a civilization knows it is going to die and there is simply nothing they can do about it. Set on the planet Vardigen, originally a prison colony populated by humans altered to live on its harsh, volcanic surface, the story details the last days of its inhabitants as nanomachines inexorably change the landscape they depend upon to live into a terraformed Earth-like world suitable for settlement by "organics". Unfortunately, this terraforming will inevitably kill those currently living on Vardigen, condemning them to slow, painful deaths from what amounts to poison and starvation. The Vardigen response is to preserve their art and culture: Opera, sculpture, poetry, and painting and store it so that those who come later will know exactly who they destroyed. Told in the form of a series of voice mails, e-mail messages, and news broadcasts, the story follows one of the hundred couriers sent across the planet to collect artwork from masters of their craft, giving a brief window into how each one reacts to the looming disaster: One with despair, another with anger, another with defiance, and finally, one with love. As the populace faces their extinction, they also react with inchoate rage, with resigned acceptance, with doomed but heroic schemes. The role reversal in the story, with terraforming the planet to make it habitable for normal humans being the harbinger of death, makes it all the more interesting, as does the fact that the rest of humanity seems entirely indifferent to the suffering of the Vardigen denizens, placing the reader into the ranks of the silent villains of the piece. N Is for Nanomachine could have been nihilistic and depressing, but it is instead stirring and almost lovely, as a dying people find meaning amidst the wreckage of their world.

7. The Lesser Evil by Day Al-Mohamed: A horror tale about a Mexican of Indian descent named Arturo and his obsession with saving a young girl named Jenny from her miserable life, this story starts off creepy and then moves from there to being very slightly creepier. This isn't the only problem the story has, but it is the most severe - starting off with a creepy thin man sitting and watching a small child play from afar serves to make the reader uneasy right off the bat, and leave the story without much of anywhere to go from there emotionally. In any event, Jenny's life is beset with problems the foremost of which is a foster mother who is interested in drugs, men, and the money that caring for Jenny brings her, in that order, but also include a drug dealer who supplies Jenny's foster mother with narcotics, and a vaguely defined life-threatening ailment that is only kept at bay by regular treatment. As the story progresses, Arturo worms his way into Jenny's life while stripping away the sources of Jenny's woes. As Arturo does so, it is made clear that living with Arturo is not a good solution for Jenny: Even a lesser evil is still evil, and Arturo is clearly only the lesser evil. Unfortunately, this story is not well-executed in several places. There are a couple of scenes that seem entirely extraneous to the story, and the oft-repeated mantra of "you can't save them all" is never really explained. One minor point that bothered me from a technical perspective is that human flesh is reckoned to taste like pork, but the story continually references it as "steaks". The central problem though, is that the story starts in such a creepy manner that there is no build up of tension, and no real climax. The Lesser Evil does paint a fairly compelling portrait of necessary evil, or at least rationalized evil, but it doesn't create a lot of tension because it starts and ends in mostly the same emotional place.

8. Qasida by Rosaleen Love: A quirky tale about an unlikely seeming Martian trip, Qasida is told from three distinct but interlocked perspectives - Del, a hoarder who figures out how to get stuff from and eventually go to Mars, Bronnie, the declutterer Del leaves behind on Earth, and finally Livia, the Edwardian-era British woman who had been a member of the Imperial expedition to Mars to try to communicate with the natives. In the opening paragraphs we are told that the Mars rover Curiosity has discovered something amazing, and Bronnie thinks she knows what it is. From there the story wanders between Bronnie, Del, and Livia, first showing how Bronnie deals with the junk and debris that has shown up at her house from Mars, then discussing Del's modest explorations, and interspersing both with Livia's account of her experiences trying to communicate with her Martian servant Ylle. The story is built on a moderately interesting idea, but feels oddly incomplete, as if the story was originally longer and then truncated to reduce it to short story length. Or possibly the story was too short, and sections were added to raise its word count - most of the sections told by Bronnie seem to be little more than exposition, and her portion of the plot is simply dropped in the middle of the story never to return. That said, the sections of the narrative that involve Del and Livia are interesting, and the Martians who are obsessed with dust turn out to have a story remarkably full of pathos. Despite the handful of problems it has, Qasida is an interesting story that could have been a really good one if it were either just a little longer or a little shorter.

9. All of Our Past Places by Kat Howard: Telling the story of two childhood friends who bonded over a shared love of maps now having grown to adulthood, All of Our Past Places examines what happens when someone wants to get away from their present life so badly that it becomes a almost dangerous obsession. Aoife is obsessed with maps. She loves them so much that she makes maps by slicing up other maps and creating new maps of nonexistent places. Miren is Aoife's best friend who accompanies her as she journeys to imaginary places via her maps, wandering their neighborhood using Miren's house as their starting point. And then Aoife becomes obsessed with St. Patrick's Purgatory, and one day, Miren discovers that her friend has gone missing and all of the maps she had collected showing St. Patrick's Purgatory as a location have a hole burned in them in the exact spot that it had been shown. Much of the story is told in flashback as Miren rummages through Aoife's map collection, trying to assemble the right combination of map pieces that will bring her friend back. The story is well-written, but a fairly short shrift seems to be given to the motivations of the primary character. Miren states that Aoife wants to escape her life because she comes from an abusive home, but there is no real reason given for her obsession with St. Patrick's Purgatory, and no inkling of what she expected to get out of going there. By the end, all is well, and the entire story is just ambiguous enough that all of the events in it might just be the fantasies of two young women, but they simply aren't fantasies that are engaging enough to compete with the best stories on the ballot.

Note: Ursula Vernon's story Jackalope Wives won the 2015 Nebula Award for Best Short Story.

2014 Nebula Award Winner for Best Short Story: If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love by Rachel Swirsky (reviewed in 2014 Hugo Voting - Best Short Story)

2016 Nebula Award Winner for Best Short Story: Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers by Alyssa Wong

2014 WSFA Small Press Award Winner: Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma by Alex Shvartsman

2016 WSFA Small Press Award Winner: Today I Am Paul by Martin L. Shoemaker (reviewed in 2016 WSFA Small Press Award Voting)

List of Nebula Award Winners for Best Short Story

2015 Locus Award Nominees
2015 Nebula Award Nominees
2015 World Fantasy Award Nominees

2015 WSFA Small Press Award Nominees     Book Award Reviews     Home

Author - Antonelli, Lou

Birth: January 6, 1957.

Death: October 6, 2021.

Note: Normally I bury the author pages by backdating them to 1970 to keep them out of the blog stream as a workaround for the Blogger platform's limitations. I'm shifting this one into the blog stream because it deals with some topical events concerning the 2015 Hugo Awards.

Also note, for obvious reasons, the comment-eating goblins are on the prowl. Comments may be deleted without warning or recourse.

Comments: Lou Antonelli was an American journalist and science fiction writer with an outsize ego and a short temper. Originally from Massachusetts, Antonelli was educated at Columbia University, ran unsuccessfully for Congress, found his way to Texas, and eventually became the managing editor of the Clarkesville Times. He got a late start as a fiction writer, with his first published story not appearing until 2003, but he has made up for lost time, churning out almost a hundred stories in the roughly decade long period following that. Oddly, despite being a former student at an Ivy League university, Antonelli likes to claim to being put upon by those who regard him as a "peasant", and seems to view negative or even indifferent reviews of his fairly mediocre short fiction as being "hatchet jobs". But this is only the beginning of Antonelli's distasteful personality traits.

My one personal brush with Antonelli took place after I opined on Twitter that the reason many people don't like the authors who form the core of the Sad Puppy¹ group is that they are assholes, including him in the bunch. (I might add that Antonelli was placed in this company after he responded to being banned from Deidre Saoirse Moen's blog by suggesting she was a Nazi). He reacted to my tweet by confirming that he is, in fact, an asshole. Despite my tweeting on my personal twitter account, Antonelli took it upon himself to track down my work e-mail and phone number, first e-mailing a poorly thought out threat to come down to my workplace and do something or other, and then telephoning my office to confirm I was employed there. The entire text of his e-mail was as follows:

“Geez, you're a LAWYER for the GOVERNMENT and you call me an ASSHOLE? I have a news bulletin for you, 98 percent of average Americans would say you're an asshole "prima facie".

My parents immigrated from Europe in the wake of the devastation of World War II. They didn't speak English. I was the first member of my family to be a U.S. citizen, complete a public school education, and attend college. I've had to work hard all my life, and I certainly never had a job with the government. I've been treated like trash by privileged Americans like you all my life.

I'll be in D.C. later this week, I have family members who live in Great Falls. I'll stop by the GSA and drop off copies of your Twitter insult. I think people need to know what kind of person you are. As a taxpayer, I resent having my pocket picked for your benefit.

I have no idea how most people feel about government lawyers, but I do suspect that the 98% figure Antonelli gives is probably a fairly high estimate of how many consider us to be "assholes". As I work in an office full of government lawyers, one can imagine how well his statement about us went over when I showed it to them. What I don't think he realizes is that I, like most government lawyers, make much less money than we could in the private sector. I'm not complaining about my situation - the law firm life is financially rewarding but has its own downsides - but calling working for the Federal government evidence of "privilege" is kind of silly. But the element that kind of makes Antonelli's whole diatribe completely mind-boggling is that this is a message sent from a man who not only attended an Ivy League university, but whose first action after finishing school was to run for Congress at the age of 25 (he lost, by a landslide). His whining about how he's been "treated like trash by privileged Americans" in the light of these facts seems like the height of hypocrisy.

Also, given the size of the Federal budget and Antonelli's likely tax contribution to it, I'd be glad to give him the couple of thousandths of a cent that he probably contributed to my salary, just so he won't feel like he is "having his pocket picked".

This didn't go anywhere, since no one I work for or with regarded his outrage as anything other than the ravings of a clearly unbalanced fool, but it does show that, like most of the Sad Puppy proponents, Antonelli is poorly regarded not for his politics, but rather for the fact that he is a jerk. I'll also note that this was his first communication to me following my single tweet. He escalated from "someone called me an asshole on social media" to "I'll try to get them into trouble at their workplace" right off the bat. Antonelli isn't someone who responded in a measured manner and slowly rose to this kind of threat. No, he's the sort of person who's first reaction is to threaten to do this sort of thing. Anyone who wants to see Antonelli admitting to doing this and issuing some rather inane self-serving justifications can read this comment thread from File770.

One might note that in the linked comment thread, Antonelli announces that far from dropping the matter because everyone other than him reacted like he had gone way overboard, he had decided to wait until closer to the 2016 political campaigns, because he wanted to get his representative to engage in a Congressional investigation into the matter. One might also note that for someone who claims to be libertarian in sentiment, he's pretty quick to run to the authorities over trivialities. Like most internet libertarians, he's a closet authoritarian at heart and a fan of jackbooted thugs so long as they are his jackbooted thugs. Just to be clear here: I called him an asshole on Twitter, he then confirmed my assessment with his behavior, and he thinks that this deserves to be investigated by Congress. Let that sink in before reading further.

More recently Antonelli escalated from merely trying to give people difficulties at their workplace for insulting him to endangering their lives and trying to get them arrested because he didn't like what they had posted on their Facebook pages, writing to the Spokane police department to "warn" them about author David Gerrold, the Sasquan Guest of Honor and emcee for the upcoming Hugo award ceremony, stating:

“I really didn’t know much about [Gerrold] before the Hugo nominations came out. Following his discourse and his level of discourse as a result, I personally wrote a letter addressed to the police chief in Spokane and said I thought the man was insane and a public danger and needs to be watched when the convention’s going on, and I mean it. I attached my business card. I said this guy’s inciting to violence. Somebody—a weak-minded might attack somebody because of his relentless strength of abuse. I think, honestly, I think he belongs in a secure psychiatric facility.”

This quote was transcribed by Jim C. Hines from a YouTube video Antonelli appeared on titled Superversive SF Roundtable - The Hugo's Again. To be clear, Gerrold has never written anything that any reasonable person would even remotely consider to be an "incitement to violence". This is simply Antonelli trying to strike back at someone because they had the temerity to say that Lou and his buddies were in the wrong, were rude to have gamed the Hugo nominating process, and would probably find it harder to find friends and professional opportunities in the publishing world in the future. The fact that Gerrold is openly gay and a supporter of LGBT rights probably also factored into Antonelli's decision to try to bring the Spokane police force down onto the WorldCon Guest of Honor.

After the internet dropped on his head, Antonelli apologized, and Gerrold accepted. However, there is still the matter of Antonelli's letter, which is still sitting on the desk of someone at the Spokane police department. Has Antonelli retracted the letter? There is no indication that he has done so, so there is still every reason to believe that the Spokane police still have a letter in front of them telling them that Gerrold is a dangerous person. Then there is also the self-pitying tone of Antonelli's apology:

It’s become public that on July 1^st I wrote a letter to the chief of the Spokane Police Department expressing some concerns over potential security issues at the upcoming Sasquan.

I’m sorry for what I did. Without looking at the big picture I reacted in a manner that I thought I was being treated. It was stupid and wrong. My subsequent participation on a podcast was also a mistake because the environment further fueled my fear and I lashed out again.

I’m sorry I bothered the Spokane PD. They probably are ready to throw the butterfly net over ME when I enter the city. And I’m sorry and apologize to David Gerrold. He probably understands why I did what I did better than I do.

I need to ponder the hurt I have caused. To give me time to think, after Sasquan I am taking a half-year hiatus from attending any conventions and/or submitting any fiction.

I think I’ve become my own crazy uncle . . .

Let's unpack this a bit. First off, it only because public because Antonelli saw fit to boast about writing the letter on a YouTube video while surrounded by sympathetic ears such as John C. Wright and L. Jagi Lamplighter who all seem to have nodded along, and even engaged in joking banter over the matter. It was only when Antonelli's action got noticed by people who don't have their head stuck deep inside the Sad Puppy colon that he belatedly realized that what he had done might not be regarded as justified. But what if this had never come to light? What if Antonelli hadn't blundered about on the internet talking about how much of a complete jackass he had been? Would he have apologized for writing a letter to the Spokane police department? Would he have thought his actions to be beyond the pale? I really don't think he would have.

But then Antonelli goes on and says "I reacted in a manner I thought I was being treated". This is an evasion - an attempt to shift responsibility away from himself and back onto Gerrold. Except that it doesn't make any sense at all. Gerrold never wrote to the police. Gerrold never said that Antonelli should be placed in a secure mental facility. Gerrold never incited anyone to violence, no matter how much one squints at what he wrote. As in the linked File 770 comment thread, Antonelli seems to be trying to claim that even if his actions weren't correct, they were justifiable, or at least explainable. The problem is that this pattern of behavior on Antonelli's part shows extremely poor impulse control, and more than a little paranoia, traits that many of the core Puppy proponents seem to share. They, like Antonelli, say or do things that normal people look at with shock and dismay, and only after the fact do the Puppies seem to realize that they are well outside the bounds of normal civilized behavior. Some never do realize this, but instead retrench into their ridiculous and reprehensible positions and claim to be persecuted for their views.

Then Antonelli's self-pity takes front and center in the rest of his apology. The Spokane police will be ready to throw the butterfly net over him! He is going to take a half year off from conventions and publishing after WorldCon to reflect! He's become his own crazy uncle! Everything about the last couple of paragraphs of his apology is all about Antonelli and how this is so hard for him. Even when he mentions Gerrold he goes on to say that Gerrold probably understands why Antonelli did what he did, once again turning the discourse back to himself and how difficult this has made his life. He called the police on Gerrold, but when one reads his apology, it is clear that the person who Antonelli thinks has been really wounded here is Antonelli.

Antonelli's wallow in self-pity took an even bigger turn following his public mea culpa. Gerrold, myself, and many others have pointed out that the authors who form the core Puppy proponents had not been doing themselves any professional favors by attacking pretty much everyone outside of their insular little group, which the Puppies interpreted as threats to their livelihoods (which, given that they have spent time actually threatening the livelihoods of others, seems somewhat ironic) rather than merely an observation that people don't like to work with dangerous and paranoid assholes. This came to fruition in stark terms following Antonelli's ill-advised announcement of his letter to the Spokane police department when Carrie Cuinn, the editor-in-chief of Lakeside Circus, a quarterly speculative fiction publication, wrote him an e-mail in which she decided that the magazine would not publish a previously accepted story of Antonelli's. Antonelli then turned around and published the following version of Ms. Cuinn's e-mail:

Mr. Antonelli,

I have just become aware of comments you made regarding contacting the police about David Gerrold, over his comments about the Hugo Awards.

While your stance on, and involvement in, the Hugo voting slates is, we feel, a personal choice, and outside of our interests, taking this action moves away from protected speech, and into a concrete effort to threaten someone's safety and livelihood.

Because of this, we will not be publishing your story in our next issue, and would suggest that we are unlikely to be a good fit for your work in the future.

Thank you.
Carrie Cuinn
Editor-in-Chief

One should note that Cuinn sent her message to Antonelli after it became public that he had written to the Spokane police department, but before he issued his self-serving apology. That means she was responding to a man who, to that point, was unrepentant about having potentially endangered David Gerrold and any number of other WorldCon attendees by sending the local police force after them. In a complementary e-mail, Cuinn also made sure to follow-up to honor the terms of her contract, inquiring where to send the "kill fee" for declining to publish Antonelli's story. In a "woe is me" post, Antonelli made this version of the e-mail from Cuinn public after he had issued his apology, talking about how this turn of events showed that actions have consequences. Antonelli didn't bother to mention that his contract had been rescinded before he issued his apology, and also failed to mention that Cuinn had followed the terms of the contract she had signed with him.

Unfortunately, by publishing this version of the e-mail Cuinn had sent to him, Antonelli either didn't consider or didn't care about the consequences to her. Within hours the editor who had decided she didn't want to deal with Antonelli because he was too dangerous and unpredictable found herself targeted by an internet hate mob that Antonelli had riled up. Soon, Cuinn tweeted:

Less than 12 hours before today's publishing decision led to getting emailed rape and death threats, because evil SJWs something something.

Antonelli's action was either hateful and callous if he realized that his post would bring out the internet wolves to attack Cuinn, or merely thoughtless and careless if he didn't. And if he didn't, that's a lapse in judgment that is simply staggering. There are, however, a couple of points that indicate to me that this was not merely a lapse in judgment by Antonelli, because the e-mail he posted was not, in fact, the same as the e-mail he was sent by Cuinn. He edited the e-mail before posting it to leave out an important detail and add some information that made it easier for people to track down and harass Cuinn. The actual first paragraph of Cuinn's letter said:

I have just become aware of comments you made regarding contacting the police about David Gerrold, over his comments about the Hugo Awards. Specifically, the video linked in Jim Hines’s post, here.

Note that the last sentence in this paragraph, which specifically references the misconduct that Antonelli had engaged in, was deleted from the version that Antonelli posted. Further, in the original letter, Cuinn merely signed her name. The detail that Cuinn is "editor-in-chief" and the specification that he had received the message from "Lakeside Circus" were both gratuitously added by Antonelli. Had he merely wanted to show that actions have consequences, he could have simply left those details and Cuinn's name out of the post. He didn't. He not only kept her name on the letter, he made sure to delete a link to his own wrongdoing and add further identifying data that would be certain to send a harassment mob after her. To be clear on this point: Antonelli deceptively edited the e-mail he was sent before he made it public in order to make it more inflammatory. He lied in public with the effect of causing harm to Cuinn.

Carrie has reported on some of the private conversations between her and Antonelli related to this issue in a blog post titled A Statement about Lou Antonelli, Lakeside Circus, Harassment and Safety. In her post, Cuinn states that she had to contact Antonelli for him to decide to tell his fans to stop attacking her. And his public message on the subject was tepid at best:

OK, if anyone out there is contacting Carrie Cuinn and castigating her for her decision not to publish my story, knock it off.

He didn't tell his fans that rape and death threats are unacceptable. He merely told them to stop criticizing her decision. As she has noted, Cuinn found the threats to be disturbing enough that she actually contacted her local police department about them (and unlike Antonelli's letter about Gerrold, she appears to have good justification for doing so), but Antonelli dismisses the concern by merely saying, "[I]f you're reprimanding her, knock it off". Knowing that he edited Cuinn's letter to him before he made it public, the mealy-mouthed nature of the message to his fans is quite telling.

Given his clear disregard for the safety and well-being of anyone else and his poor impulse control, I don't think a half-year hiatus from conventions and publishing is enough for Antonelli. His constant refrain of "I'm Italian so I'm hot-headed" is an excuse that a twelve year old would be embarrassed to use. This is not an isolated incident from Antonelli - as documented by Natalie Luhrs he has engaged in similar behavior multiple times. This is a pattern of behavior that makes one wonder how many times he has done similar things that simply have not become public. Some people have praised Antonelli for apologizing to Gerrold, but he has never apologized to me, and he didn't even bother to respond directly to Cuinn when she alerted him to the rape and death threats against her that his actions had sparked. How many other people out there are owed apologies by Antonelli? My own opinion is that Antonelli should never publish again, anywhere. I think any convention should think long and hard before allowing him to show up at their venue, let alone invite him to participate in their programming. He's clearly not grown-up enough to operate in the public sphere without endangering other people's livelihoods and lives when he loses his temper over trivial slights and imagined offenses.

The larger point is that Antonelli is only one example of the dangerous and vicious behavior displayed by the various Sad Puppy authors and proponents. Tom Kratman turns up in comment threads and demands the right to challenge others to a physical altercation often enough that the use of his name triggers the spam filter on File 770. He also seems to like calling others "pussy" a lot, which would by considered fairly childish for anyone older than ten. (Further documentation of his shenanigans can be found here). In response to having his Facebook page reported and suspended for some of his racist comments, Michael Z. Williamson issued a tirade in which he claimed that once he found out who did the reporting, he would fly to their home and kick them in the teeth. (Once again, further documentation of more vile behavior here). John C. Wright has written about how the "natural reaction" of straight men to seeing two gay men together is to want to beat the gay men to death with ax handles and tire irons. (And again, further documentation of his jerkishness here). Theodore Beale has posted, among his many other hateful and vile musings, that one day the people of Norway will view the mass-murderer Anders Brevik as a hero for taking a stand against evil leftists². (And yet again, further documentation of misbehavior here). On a lesser scale, Brad Torgersen can't seem to write anything about the Hugo Awards without coming up with a new insulting acronym to call fans such as CHORF (Cliquish Holier-than-thou Obnoxious Reactionary Fanatics) or HPPC (Hyper-Progressive Pissypants Club). (Dare I say it, further documentation of assholery to be found here). Finally, Larry Correia seems unable to blog about the Hugos without raging about how he is engaged in a culture war against SJWs (Social Justice Warriors) who are destroying science fiction by doing something or other. And so on and so forth.

Antonelli fits right in with the reactionary and violent crowd he has chosen to run with. Don't think for a second that the effect of Antonelli's actions is unintentional: He is a bully who has repeatedly attempted to intimidate and threaten others because they did things he did not like. He only backed off his threats against me when it became clear they were not going to work. He only apologized to Gerrold when it became clear that he was facing widespread criticism for his actions. He only told his fans to stop harassing Cuinn when it became clear that their attacks on her would harm his image. There's nothing surprising about his behavior: Antonelli threatens and blusters until it becomes clear it isn't going to work, then he moves on to a different target to start again. And the larger point is that Antonelli is just acting in the same manner as most of the other Sad Puppy authors, flying off the handle in vicious outrage at imagined provocations. Antonelli's lying, his underhanded tactics, and his attempts to smear others are all simply par for the course for the Sad Puppy leaders. He's not a terrible author - his work is merely mediocre - but like so many of the authors connected with the Sad Puppies, his actions over the course of 2015 have proved that he is someone that is probably too dangerous to try to work with.

Update: On November 15, 2015, Antonelli took to his blog to launch some rather interesting accusations about, and make a bold, albeit entirely baseless prediction under the title You Heard It Here First:

George R.R. Martin will be the next recipient of the Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master Award (The Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award).

No, I do not have inside information, nor do I have a crystal ball. It’s simply a logical conclusion, especially if you know how the literary leaders of the science fiction community think.

Regardless of the merit of Martin’s literary output, he will get the award as a reward for helping trounce the dissident nominees for the Hugo awards this year (the so-called Sad Puppies). It’s not really any more complicated than that.

What evidence does Antonelli have to back up this wild assertion that Martin will be named an SFWA Grand Master as payback for being outspoken about the ill manners of the core of Puppy authors? Why, he tells you in his own words: None. Zero. Nothing. He's engaging in rank speculation based upon nothing more than conspiracy theory thinking. He apparently thinks awards are determined by a secret cabal who hand out awards as political favors rather than because the recipients have accomplished something notable with their writing. I suppose it is a comfort to him to think this way, as his own writing is mediocre enough that he would never receive an award nod for it, but to cast these sorts of aspersions about concerning others is pretty bush league on Antonelli's part.

What is interesting here is how Antonelli tries to obscure the facts. He calls the "dissident nominees" the "so-called Sad Puppies". One has to wonder exactly what the "so-called" is intended to mean. The "dissident nominees" were, in fact, called Sad Puppies. That is what Larry Correia called them when he started the whole affair back in 2013, and it is what Brad Torgersen called them when he took up the torch in 2015 and put Antonelli's name on the Sad Puppy slate. The term "Sad Puppies" wasn't coined by anyone outside the pathetic little clique of mediocrities that formed its core: They came up with the name themselves. Even the title of his post is a bit of deception, as "You heard It here First" makes it sound like Antonelli is reporting news, rather than making up a bizarre conspiracy theory.

In any event, I would normally not bother to update this sort of silliness from a Puppy. For the most part, Antonelli's actions surrounding the Hugos had already destroyed what little reputation he had before the awards were presented in Sasquan this past August, and as a result there's no real need to bother with reporting on an irrelevant nonentity like he is. But Mike Glyer included his fact-free commentary in his November 15 roundup titled Pixel Scroll 11/15 Scrolled Acquaintance, much to the amusement of many of the people who read that website, both because Martin has more than enough accomplishments to be named an SFWA Grand Master on his own merits with no conspiracy theory needed to explain it, and because there are so many other accomplished authors who are likely to get the nod ahead of Martin, mostly because it is very rare for an author to be named a Grand Master before they turn seventy (Martin is sixty-seven).

In a comment that was mostly about other things, I opined that Antonelli's speculation was "A train of thought worthy of a dim-witted conspiracy theory loving drunkard". And that is where Antonelli decided to show he is exactly that. He created a meme which he posted on his Facebook page, taking a picture of me and reporting my quote as:

Lou Antonelli is "a dim-witted conspiracy theory loving drunkard" - Aaron Pound, Obama admin attorney

So, while purporting to relate what I said, Antonelli sliced my quote and made it say something different than what I actually said. It is only a slight change, so that's not that big of a deal, but it is somewhat curious that a man like Antonelli, who prides himself on being a newspaperman, would be so cavalier with a quote. But the truly hilarious thing about this "meme" is that at no point does Antonelli actually attempt to refute what was said about his speculation about Martin. In short, at no point does he try to argue that my assessment is incorrect. I suspect that he didn't try because he knows he can't. His theory concerning Martin's supposedly impending Grand Master status is a dim-witted conspiracy theory that one would have to be drunk to come up with. Further, had he simply left it alone, the comment would have been a single sentence on the comments section of a blog post that would have soon faded into obscurity. Instead, it will now live on forever as a meme that associates Antonelli with being a dim-witted conspiracy theory loving drunkard.

The other thing about this "meme" is that he claims I am an "Obama admin attorney", which is false, and he almost certainly knows it to be false. I am employed by the Federal government. I do not work for this administration, or any other. I am not a political appointee, but rather I am a civil servant. When Obama leaves office in January of 2017, I will still be working for the Federal government, just as I continued working for the Federal government when Bush left office in January of 2009. The U.S. government relies upon a nonpolitical civil service to function. We are not beholden to a particular Presidential administration. Instead, our job is to ensure the continued operation of the government no matter who is elected. I have helped to implement Republican policies. I have helped to implement Democratic policies. I have worked on projects that I thought were good ideas, and I have worked on projects that I thought were terrible ideas. Either way, I did my job and will continue to do my job. Labeling me as an "Obama admin attorney" is so fundamentally wrong that either Antonelli is clueless as to the nature of how the government works, or he does know, and is lying. Given the volume of dishonesty that Antonelli has displayed in so many other instances, I'm leaning towards the "he's lying" explanation.

Voltaire once said, "I always made one prayer to God, a very short one. Here it is: 'O Lord, make our enemies quite ridiculous!' God granted it." It seems that if there is a God, he granted my version of Voltaire's prayer and sent me Antonelli as an enemy.

My reviews of Lou Antonelli's books:
None

Other books by Lou Antonelli I have read but not reviewed:
Letters from Gardner

Short fiction by Lou Antonelli appearing in works that I have reviewed:

On a Spiritual Plain found in 2015 Hugo Voting - Best Short Story

¹ For anyone who does not know, the Sad Puppy campaign is the brain child of Larry Correia, a mediocre author of fantasy-themed adventure fiction who felt slighted at being nominated for and losing one of the highest awards that science fiction fandom can bestow upon a new author, and decided to try to leverage his fan base into a Hugo nomination for some decidedly ordinary works of fiction he had written. This mutated over the next few years to a full-blown slate in which a collection of aggrieved authors with nothing to actually be aggrieved about exploited a known loophole (that everyone had been too polite to use over the sixty year history of the award) in the Hugo nominating process to game themselves and their friends onto the Hugo ballot, effectively packing the Hugo ballot with their choices even though their supporters only made up about 20% of the voters. Although the Puppy slate was not against the rules, it is widely seen as unethical and against the spirit of the awards. The nominated works from the slate are also very poor in quality, ranging from mediocre down to unreadably bad.

² Some of the Sad Puppy organizers such as Brad Torgersen and Larry Correia have tried to claim that Theodore Beale is not a Sad Puppy and they are not responsible for his participation in the Hugo Awards this year, as Beale created his own "Rabid Puppy" slate and none of Beale's writing appears on the Sad Puppy slate. However, numerous works and individuals from the small press publishing company Castalia House that Beale owns and runs were on the Sad Puppy slate. Beale is part of the Sad Puppies, no matter how much people Like Torgersen and Correia want to claim he is not.

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Musical Monday - Balance of Terror by Five Year Mission

Continuing my Five Year Mission Dream Set, the second song up is Balance of Terror, featuring the tragic love story of Robert Tomlinson and Angela Martine, two characters basically put into the original episode so they could be torn apart by the plot. The band doesn't play this song very often - I would guess that it has been close to two years since they last played it, and they only did so because they were performing at a friends' wedding. According to Andy Fark, it was more than two years before that that they had performed the song live, so they had to rehearse the number quite a bit for the occasion. On the other hand, I don't see the band perform more than two to three times a year, and they might have performed this song more recently. If I was making the decisions about what they should perform, they'd play it every time they took the stage.

One might ask why I think they should perform this song. The first reason is simple: Balance of Terror is my father's favorite episode of the Star Trek series, and by osmosis, it has become one of mine. The second reason is even simpler: This is a really catchy song, with great lyrics about a doomed romance that serve as a counterpoint to its upbeat music. There is something slightly humorous about focusing the song for an episode that is essentially a space-borne version of The Enemy Below upon a disrupted marriage ceremony. But the song is ultimately a bitter paean to love lost to Romulan aggression. I love it. I love the off-kilter approach to the song. I love the contrast between the music and the subject matter. I love the episode it relates to. I just wish that the band would play it live more often, so it is part of my dream set for them.

Previous Musical Monday: The Cage by Five Year Mission

Subsequent Musical Monday: City on the Edge of Forever by Five Year Mission

Dream Five Year Mission Set

Musical Monday Playlists     Five Year Mission     Musical Monday     Home

2015 WSFA Small Press Award Nominees

Location: CapClave in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Comments: As far as the WSFA Small Press Award is concerned, 2015 was a great year for Twelfth Planet Press, which had four stories it published nominated. As the stories are all judged and voted upon anonymously, this is quite an achievement. The other notable thing about this collection of stories is how much better it is than the Hugo nominated collection of sort fiction works. While the Hugo nominated stories ranged from mediocre down to absolutely miserable, the stories on this ballot started at pretty good and went up in quality from there.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Ursula Vernon won the award with her beautiful story Jackalope Wives, which had already won the Nebula Award and had been nominated for a World Fantasy Award.

WSFA Small Press Award
(My Votes)

Winner:

Jackalope Wives by Ursula Vernon (reviewed in 2015 WSFA Small Press Award Voting)

Other Nominees:

All of Our Past Places by Kat Howard (reviewed in 2015 WSFA Small Press Award Voting)

Careful Magic by Karen Healey (reviewed in 2015 WSFA Small Press Award Voting)

Cookie Cutter Superhero by Tansy Rayner Roberts (reviewed in 2015 WSFA Small Press Award Voting)

The Lesser Evil by Day Al-Mohamed (reviewed in 2015 WSFA Small Press Award Voting)

The Magician and Laplace’s Demon by Tom Crosshill (reviewed in 2015 WSFA Small Press Award Voting)

N is for Nanomachine by C.S. MacCath (reviewed in 2015 WSFA Small Press Award Voting)

Qasida by Rosaleen Love (reviewed in 2015 WSFA Small Press Award Voting)

Vanilla by Dirk Flinthart (reviewed in 2015 WSFA Small Press Award Voting)

Go to previous year's nominees: 2014
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 2016

Book Award Reviews     Home

Book Blogger Hop August 7th - August 13th: Limit 115 Is Also Called the Blue Flu and the New Plague in Fallout

Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.

This week Billy asks: Do you ever do a review post based on a holiday? For example review Christmas theme books in December.

I don't really like holiday themed posts, but I reviewed one seasonally themed book during the appropriate season. I reviewed Zanna's Gift, which is a treacly Christmas themed story, in December 2010. Usually, though, if I review a holiday themed book, I do it out of season, like I did when I reviewed Letters from Father Christmas in late January, 2014. Other than the review for Zanna's Gift, the only holiday-themed thing I have done is bend my Musical Monday posts towards holiday related music as a holiday approaches. The rest of the time, I usually just ignore the existence of holidays when I am posting material.

Previous Book Blogger Hop: The CRM114 Discriminator Is in "Dr. Strangelove", Pod CRM114 Is in "2001: A Space Odyssey", and Serum 114 Is in "A Clockwork Orange"

Subsequent Book Blogger Hop: Susannah Mushatt Jones Lived to 116 Years Old

Book Blogger Hop     Home

Follow Friday - Sherlock Holmes Lives at 221B Baker Street

It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow the Featured Blogger of the week - Big Books & Grande Lattes.
3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: If you could have 3 wishes granted, what would they be?

1. More time with my kids. I don't get to see either of them often enough. My relationship with them is strained at best these days, but I keep hoping that things will turn around.

2. Enough money. I'm not going to put a figure on this. I don't need ridiculous amounts of money. I would just want enough that the redhead and I would be able to get out of debt, buy a house that would be sufficient to our needs, and have enough left over to do things like go to the conventions we want to go to. Having enough money to do those things plus enough that we could both work less and the redhead could go to graduate school would be nice.

3. Enough time to do all the things I want to do, especially more time to do things with the redhead and enough time to read all of the books in my mountainous to-be-read pile.

Previous Follow Friday: "Yeah, 220, 221. Whatever it takes." Jack Butler from Mr. Mom

Subsequent Follow Friday: "Room 222" Aired on ABC from 1969 to 1974

Follow Friday     Home

Event - Gen Con, July 30th - August 2nd, 2015

The booty we returned with from Gen Con 2015

As we have for the previous two years, the redhead and I made the pilgrimage to Indianapolis in the middle of summer to attend Gen Con, also known as the best four days in gaming. As I've said before, Gen Con isn't really one convention. Rather, it is dozens of conventions, many of them only very loosely connected to one another, all happening at the same time. I've been to the convention three years running now, and I am still finding all kinds of new things out about the event, and haven't been to many of the rooms in the convention hall. I didn't even go into at least two of the hotels where Con events were held. Consequently, it is impossible to describe a "typical" Gen Con experience. One can only outline one's own Gen Con experience. With that said, what follows is the account of my Gen Con:

Five Year Mission

Wednesday: The redhead and I arrived in Indianapolis mid-afternoon on Wednesday. Though the convention doesn't technically begin until Thursday, the festivities start up a day early on Georgia Street right outside of the convention hall. Sun King Brewery has taken it upon themselves to sponsor performances the day before Gen Con gets started, to coincide with their unveiling of their new genre themed beer for the event. This year, Sun King brought in (among others) The Doubleclicks and Sarah Donner to perform. Unfortunately, our favorite Gen Con band - Five Year Mission - was not playing on Georgia Street, and was instead booked at Scotty's, a nearby bar that also gets into the spirit of Gen Con every year, where the band performed on the outside patio. Despite the sweltering heat typical of late July in central Indiana, Five Year Mission turned out a great set of music that included several selections from their new album Spock's Brain as well as a number of the crowd-pleasing favorites such as The Cage, I, Mudd, and The Naked Time.

The other benefit of arriving on Wednesday is that we were able to go to will-call and pick up our convention badges and tickets without consuming valuable time during Gen Con proper. The con organizers open up registration in the afternoon on Wednesday, and based upon my experiences over the last couple of years, I highly recommend picking up your convention materials before Thursday. On later days of the con, I always end up walking past the registration line on my way to or from some function or another, and the people standing in it always look so forlorn as the fun goes on around them. Fortunately, the line seems to always move reasonably quickly, so even if it looks really long, it probably isn't an onerous task to wait through it. Still, it is better to wait in line for fifteen minutes on Wednesday afternoon rather than for half an hour on Thursday morning.

Thursday: The redhead and I went for a light schedule for this Gen Con, a radical shift from our previous strategy of filling our days with as many events as possible. As a result, on Thursday we had nothing specific to do and nowhere specific to go. We started the day by heading to the dealer hall to make a beeline for the Gale Force Games booth in order to acquire the latest expansions for the Firefly game: The Jetwash and Esmerelda ships, and the as yet unreleased Kalidasa expansion. Unfortunately, despite the fact that Gale Force has come out with a play mat one can purchase, it was not the excellent style of play mat that they had for use with demo games at the 2014 Gen Con, and was instead a very disappointing mat that had nothing on it but what was already in the based game and expansion sets. While there, we set about collecting the giveaways that were listed in the coupon book given to all Gen Con attendees - the Gen Con 2015 die and a miniature from GreenBrier Games. We also acquired a leather utility belt from Crimson Chain Leather Works to go with my Star Trek themed kilt that I was planning on wearing on Saturday.

After wandering the dealer hall for a bit, we found ourselves at the Asmodee pavilion, where we sat down to demo their game Five Tribes. Because Asmodee was rolling it out, we played the game using the expansion The Artisans of Naqala, but this didn't seem to make the game substantially more complicated than it would have been without it. I had seen the game played on the Tabletop show, and had felt somewhat lukewarm towards it, but the redhead was very interested in trying it, so we sat down with a couple of other people (both of whom had played the game before) and gave it a try. The game turned out to be considerably more enjoyable than I had thought it would be, and when the scores were tallied, the redhead had won and I came in second. Five Tribes is definitely on our "to buy" list now, so we'll be paying a visit to our local game store soon to pick up a copy.

After lunch, we wandered over to the Games on Demand area looking for an RPG session to play. Games on Demand is an organization that, as the name suggests, runs RPG sessions with whoever shows up on a first-come first-served basis. We got ourselves into a game of Dungeon World set in the Eberron campaign setting. I found myself playing a warforged cleric, while the redhead took on the role of a human barbarian with a very large greatsword. Neither of us had played a game using the Dungeon World system, but the system was intuitive enough that we both picked up on it fairly quickly. The adventure itself involved an airship attack on the adventuring group as we rode the lightning rail, after which we were more or less consensually abducted and taken to the villains' headquarters, where we made our escape at the last minute. The highlights of the adventure included accidentally wrecking the lightning rail, destroying three airships in two different encounters, and flooding the entire city where the villains made their home. Oh, and the wizard in the party had magic missiles that looked like bees. Overall it was good, silly fun, and I can recommend Games on Demand as a good option for anyone who doesn't have prescheduled events at Gen Con.

Friday: We arrived bright and early on Friday morning for one of the few scheduled events that we had on our calendar: A huge game of Werewolf with a couple dozen players. Our friend Savannah tagged along, hoping to use some generic tickets to get into the game. Unfortunately, the game moderator never showed up, and after waiting for forty-five minutes, we gave up and went to find other things to do. While this was not the first time we had had a disappointing RPG session at Gen Con, it was the first time we had had one go entirely bust. Once in three years seems like a pretty good track record, and since it is pretty easy to find other game options at the convention, this was at most a minor setback.

Once again the redhead and I headed to the dealer hall, this time with Savannah in tow, and soon found ourselves playing a demo of the game Kingdom Builder. This was a game that I wanted to try out, and everyone had a great time playing a slightly truncated version of it. By the end of our session of Kingdom Builder, this was another game that we definitely put on our "to buy" list, and will be visiting our friendly local game shop to pick up once our finances have recovered from our trip.

After the demo, we wandered over to the free Games Library to play some more board games. The Games Library is a great service run by the convention where, for a handful of generic tickets, you can check out and play one of the hundreds of games they have available for use. We also discovered that we could use the tickets we had not used for the Werewolf game to get access to the games library, which made the day just that much better. I introduced the redhead and Savannah to Kill Doctor Lucky, a game in which the redhead proved to be remarkably adept at murder, and then the redhead and Savannah faced off in a game of Da Vinci's Challenge, with Savannah pulling out the victory. We started up a game of Puerto Rico, but ran out of time before we were able to finish it. Since I was in the lead in victory points when we cut off the game, I claim that as a win.

Aubrey, Sarah, and Angela

Gen Con has, oddly, turned into a musical event for us, and with three concerts on Friday and three more on Saturday, this year was no exception. First up was Sarah Donner, who is an adorably brilliant performer with an absolutely angelic voice. She played a set that included several songs from her new CD about cats (including a hilarious song about hairballs), her song about Settlers of Catan in which she reveals that she is obsessed with getting the Longest Road achievement (and with two sheep in the background to get annoyed with her when she sang that she didn't want any "fucking sheep" in the game), and her scandalously amazing song The Motherfucking Pterodactyl. Sarah's performance was followed up by The Doubleclicks, a nerd folk sister duo that the redhead and I have been in love with since the band's very earliest days. Angela and Aubrey mixed in some of their classic material with songs from their soon-to-be released CD President Snakes, performing Nothing to Prove, Cats and Netflix, A Lullaby for Mr. Bear, This Is My Jam, Cats at Parties, Wonder, Ennui (On We Go), and Will They or Won't They. As usual, they absolutely owned the stage with wit, humor, and their undeniable talent. Most amusing was Aubrey telling an "original" story about a farmer boy living in the desert who was befriended by a pair of robots before they ran off and got attacked by the hill people who were then driven off by an elderly man. At the end of their set, they brought Sarah Donner on stage to play the keyboard cat and help out on Love You Like a Burrito. As long as Gen Con keeps bringing performers like Sarah Donner and The Doubleclicks back, we will keep attending and going to their shows every year.

After a mad dash to get dinner and pick up Savannah's husband P.J., we went to the one non-Gen Con event of the weekend: The Concert Against Humanity, hosted by the team behind the game Cards Against Humanity and Paul & Storm. While this was not officially an event put on by Gen Con, the vast majority of the attendees were congoers, and several of the acts who appeared as part of the show also appeared on the convention schedule in one capacity or another. First up was the Cards Against Humanity team, who answered e-mail on stage, responding to inane messages with responses loaded with snark and sass. Molly Lewis then took the stage and sang what she said was her performance about "beards, vaginas, and dicks" singing The Year of the Beard, a song about the Hawaiian goddess Kapo's flying vagina, and An Open Letter to Stephen Fry. She was followed up by The Doubleclicks, who performed their usual brilliant set, including another performance of their geek girl anthem Nothing to Prove, which got all of the nerdy girls (and most of the nerdy guys) in the audience singing along. The first half of the show was closed out by Kumail Nanjani, who got slightly derailed by the signs from the ASL interpreter who was making some very interesting hand gestures while Kumail talked about urinals, masturbation, and zipping his penis into his fly.

After intermission, Cameron Esposito took the stage and delivered a monologue about growing up both Catholic and a lesbian that was remarkably funny. I went into the show knowing nothing about either of the scheduled comedians, and they both exceeded my expectations by a considerable amount. Following Esposito, Patrick Rothfuss and John Scalzi did a duo act in which they read some scripts they had written and put into mothballs - Rothfuss' script was about a children's science show gone somewhat awry, while Scalzi's offering was an interview with a insurance risk analyst specializing in assessing the threats posed by supervillain activity. Both plays were quite enjoyable. Finally, Paul & Storm came on as the closing act, which made their performance of the song Opening Band somewhat ironic. They also performed a few of their Randy Newman theme songs, Write Like the Wind, their encouragement to George R.R. Martin to write faster, and Nun Fight, which nearly caused Savannah to fall out of her seat laughing. After showing the audience the funniest video on the internet (which involved animals, music, and falling down), they ended the night, not with The Captain's Wife's Lament as they usually do, but rather with a version of American Pie in which all of the lyrics were about how every character in Westeros is going to die. The show was a rousing success, and in addition to the great collection of performances, everyone walked away with a swag bag filled with goodies and a poster which the redhead and I are likely to proudly display in our home once we can find some wall space to accommodate it.

Saturday: The third day of Gen Con was a day dominated by authors and music. The first order of the day was to get to Wesley Chu's signing event in Author Alley. We almost missed his appearance, but while looking for one of his books at the Indie Reads Books pavilion, Wes walked up to sign some of their stock, whereupon I immediately bought a copy of Time Salvager and had it signed and was able to have a nice conversation with the author to boot.

After wandering the dealer hall for a bit during which we found and acquired the Mouse Guard themed game Swords & Strongholds and spent far more money than we should have at the GreenBrier Games booth when we acquired Heavy Steam and a collection of very attractive miniatures, it was time to head back to Author Alley, as I wanted to say hello to Kameron Hurley and get a book signed by Elizabeth Bear. I didn't have anything for Kameron to sign, as her next book - Empire Ascendant - isn't due out until October 6^th of this year, and I already have signed copies of all of her previously published books. However, Hurley is a great person who is always worth going out of one's way to talk to. Despite the fact that she has no new books currently available, she is set to have several published in the next year, so there is that to look forward to.

While I was at the Angry Robot booth talking to Kameron, I picked up copies of Wesley Chu's other three novels The Lives of Tao, The Death of Tao, and The Rebirths of Tao, and he was kind enough to sign them for me. I also got Elizabeth Bear to sign my copy of Karen Memory, and just for good measure I got copies of Jay Posey's Legends of the Duskwalker trilogy and had him sign them as well. The only problem is that while I was getting all of these books signed, I forgot to get pictures taken with the authors. I suppose this means that I will just have to find all of them again at another convention in the future and remedy this oversight.

Just like had happened on Friday, Saturday afternoon turned into a parade of excellent nerdy music. Leading off was Molly Lewis, fresh from the previous night's performance as part of the Concert Against Humanity, who came on stage and performed all of her best songs. Actually, she had a set list that was too short for the time allotted and ended up taking requests from the audience, which pretty much ensured that she played all of the crowd favorites, capping off the hour with an even funnier than normal rendition of An Open Letter to Stephen Fry.

After Molly's show, it was time to set up for The Shake-Ups, a My Little Pony themed band that has, among its members, our friends P.J. and Savannah. Neither the redhead nor I are actually My Little Pony fans. I have never even seen an episode of any version the show, but the Shake-Ups have a lot of very catchy and fun songs, and seeing all of the pony fans (both young and old) with all of their enthusiasm and joy makes going to see the band in concert incredibly enjoyable. Gen Con is fundamentally a love fest for games, genre fiction, anime, and pretty much anything else nerdy, and no one gets into their fandom and shows their love more than My Little Pony fans at a Shake-Ups concert. It is beautiful to see.

The last stop of the night for the redhead and me was the Five Year Mission concert. If we do nothing else at Gen Con, we both make a point to see Five Year Mission play, because they are simply the best Star Trek themed band I have ever heard. The quintet took the stage, and turned in a fantastic performance loaded with songs from their just-released CD Spock's Brain. In addition to older songs like I, Mudd, and The Naked Time, the band played For His Head Is Hollow (and I Have Touched Spock's Brain), Remote Control Spock, Hey Kara, and Spock's Dog. As something of a bonus, Sarah Donner attended the concert, and it was quite a bit of fun to watch her happily dance to songs about Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and unicorn dogs (although it was pretty clear that the lyrics to Spock's Dog mystified her). As usual, Five Year Mission provided loads of nerdy rock music, and were, along with the other musical acts that performed on Friday and Saturday, a highlight of the convention.

Sunday: The final day of Gen Con is always something of an anticlimax. But it is also a day that I never want to end, because that means that there will be no more Gen Con for another year, and the redhead and I will have to pack up the car and make the long and sad drive home. As we did last year, the redhead and I started the day volunteering at the ENnies booth for most of the morning. For those who do not know, the ENnies are awards given out every year at Gen Con to honor excellence in game design and related efforts such as game-related writing. The organization that put on the ENnies hosts a booth to raise awareness about the award, and by Sunday, hand out lists of that year's winners (the awards had been bestowed on the previous Friday). We always try to volunteer on Sunday morning, because that ensures that we will get up and get moving. Otherwise, the temptation to sleep most of the day away after three days of running around Gen Con would probably be too strong to resist.

The redhead as Chell

The redhead has long been a practitioner of what she calls "lazy cosplay", in which she makes and wears nerdy themed clothing such as dresses covered with dinosaurs or monsters, or skirts with a TARDIS pattern. She even made me a red kilt with an Star Trek engineering insignia to go with her blue skirt with a science insignia that she wore to the Five Year Mission concert with a pair of Spock ears. On Sunday she took things a step further and did her first full cosplay, dressing up as Chell from the games Portal and Portal 2. She did a really fantastic job, with orange coveralls, a hand-lettered Aperture Science shirt, and, most impressively, a home made portal gun that looked incredible. She completed the ensemble with her companion cube lunch box, and drew lots of compliments from the other con-goers. She had put a lot of hard work into the ensemble, and it was great to see it all come together and see it get appreciated by the other attendees.

Unless one is looking for something specific, Sunday is a a great time to go through the dealer hall looking for deals. Most of the exhibitors have stock left over that they simply don't want to have to pack up or pay to ship home. So many of them discount their remaining stock, meaning that one can get some really good deals on games, miniatures, and books. We found a heavily discounted copy of the game Puerto Rico, and I picked up three RPG books for half price, taking home Champions of Ruin, Serpent Kingdoms, and the Eberron Explorer's Handbook. We did make one full-price purchase on Sunday, stopping by Exile Game Studios to get their recently released Barsoom-like Revelations of Mars setting book for their Hollow Earth Expeditions game.

Sadly, after combing through the exhibitors hall, our Gen Con came to an end. To be honest, the redhead and I were both exhausted, and probably could not have continued any longer. The end of a convention like Gen Con is still always a sorrowful event. But we left with happy memories, a pile of new games, and the knowledge that we'll be going back in 2016.

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Musical Monday - The Cage by Five Year Mission

As we have every year that we have gone to Gen Con, the redhead and I went to a lot of musical performances this go around. We saw the Doubleclicks (twice), Molly Lewis (also twice), Sarah Donner, Paul & Storm, the Shake-ups, and, of course, Five Year Mission (twice). They played two sets that were heavy on songs from their most recent Spock's Brain album, which was great because the album is quite good. However, neither were my dream Five Year Mission set. So I decided that over the next several weeks worth of Musical Monday posts, I'm going to map out what my dream Five Year Mission set would be, starting this week with The Cage.

Why The Cage? Simply put, this is the song that I think every Five Year Mission performance should open with. Not only is it about the original unaired pilot episode of the original Star Trek series, it opens with a set of notes that just sound like Star Trek, immediately putting the listener into the right frame of mind for a whole bunch of music about Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty and the rest of the crew of the starship Enterprise. I know, this song isn't actually about any of those characters - well, except Spock, who was the only character to transition from this pilot episode into the series itself - but the song, like the episode itself, is the foundation upon which the rest of the edifice is built. As a result, I think this song should be front and center, and in my dream Five Year Mission set, it is.

Previous Musical Monday: Everything Is Awesome!

Subsequent Musical Monday: Balance of Terror by Five Year Mission

Dream Five Year Mission Set

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