#BayCon 2017

[bayconnews-blog]

Party Goers! Celebrate The Expanse written by our Guest of Honor and Toastmaster, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck at Ceres Station’s most popular hangout!! All three nights of the convention weekend on the party floor! www.jamessacorey.com

[the-expanse-rp-blog]

Support Paine X MacTane for the Expanse Belter Bar at Worldcon 76!

Background and Story

We are Maeve Athanasiadis and Dionys "Dio" Gallagher, a pair of rock-hoppers from

the Belt

. Born to a life of hardship, we were never very good at mining. Or engineering, really - when our ship broke down, it broke hard, and the towing fees to

Tycho Station

nearly wiped us out. We couldn't afford to repair our ship, the Black Moon, or

Mung Belék

, so we decided to follow our secret passion and converted it into a bar. Now we're parked at Dock 73Y, slinging drinks out of our cargo hold.

It turns out we're way better at bartending than we ever were at mining, and we love it. Our creative drinks, true Belter hospitality, and novel (if cramped) location have earned us the admiration of dockworkers, engineers, and visiting customers alike. As one of the hottest

bars

on Tycho, we're expanding, but we need your help to keep things running and the drinks flowing.

What We're Doing

This will be a suite party at WorldCon 76 in San Jose this August, themed around the Belter culture from the award-winning book and TV series

The Expanse.

The party will run on August 17th and 18th (Friday and Saturday nights). This is an expanded and improved version of the Belter Bar that some of us ran at BayCon 2017, when Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, the authors of

The Expanse

were guests of honor at the con, and spent quite a while attending our bar, enjoying the decor and drinks, and generally having a good time.

When you walk in, you'll be entering the most immersive

Expanse

experience we can create, with great drinks made on the spot as well as Belter language and culture. We invite everyone - Belters, Martians, Earthers, and those who haven't chosen a faction - to join us in space for an evening!

Donations will go toward:

Supplies of alcohol, mixers, and food;

Decorations that provide an immersive, atmospheric experience ("Those look like the same string lights we had on our set," observed Ty Franck, co-author of The Expanse, at the last party)

Safety measures and equipment for the hotel suite

Transporting all this to and from the site

All our staff will be donating their time and energy.

Who We Are and Our Experience

In real life, we're Hanne Paine and Kagan "Kai" MacTane, who work together as

Paine × MacTane

. Hanne is an Expanse superfan who has been a focal point for NYC Expanse fan meetups, was instrumental in the

Save the Expanse

effort, organized the epic 200-person Season 3 Finale party this year, and has taught an immersive

Lang Belta

class at sci-fi cons in from Baltimore to Rome, Montréal, and Worldcon 75 in Helsinki. Kai hosts Lang Belta meetups in the San Francisco Bay Area, created the

Lang Belta phrasebook on Memrise

, and has taught a Lang Belta class at last year's BayCon, as well as being a co-host of that con's Belter Bar.

Together, we've merged our two courses and taught at this year's BayCon, co-moderate the

/r/LangBelta

community on Reddit , and we're best known as the duo behind the

#ExpanseCocktails

series of recipes honoring various characters in the series. Between our cocktail knowledge, our party hosting experience, and our deep love and knowledge of Belter culture, we're uniquely suited to make this party a success.

Risks & Challenges

These are our risks and challenges.

If we don't raise enough money, we won't be able to make this event as good as it should be. We have great plans for set dressing and for food and drinks, and we'd hate to turn away thirsty people.

Other Ways You Can Help

If you can't help us out, please spread the word to other Screaming Firehawks attending Worldcon and around the world!

[sumikosaulson]

CW: Cancer, End Stage Cancer, Realities of Multiple Myeloma, Depression, Misogynoir, Racism.

I wrote this blog but never published it, back when my mother was still fighting for her life. She passed away January 14, 2019 after a nine and a half year long battle with cancer. I was frustrated with all of the misogynoir my mother and I had to deal with, as in America, a strong black woman stereotype attaches to black women and keeps perpetuating itself even when we are dying, or those close to us are dying. My mom had to be a strong black woman until her dying breath. I had to be a strong black woman as she lay dying.

What follows below the break is what I wrote and how I felt in late September 2018, edited to update it to reflect that she has passed on. Please don’t read it if you feel you might personalize my feelings of frustration over my mom’s death.

Mom and I at Windsor Care in Vallejo

So, in May, at BayCon 2018, my mother gave me the bad news: her cancer was no longer responding well to chemo. Her doctor was going to try an older chemo med she’d been on previously, Revlimid. Sadly, it didn’t work either.

In June, she went into the hospital with respiratory issues. Some of you may know that she had a close brush with death around my birthday in March of 2017. That was due to a cardiac issue, as she is seventy years old now and has comorbid conditions along with her cancer. The heart disease and a-fibrillation is related to high blood pressure. So last year she almost died of heart disease. They were able to stabilize her. She always was a fighter.

Since she is a fighter – and she has miraculously pulled through any number of times – when I first became concerned about her latest battle with cancer back in May 2018, I got a lot of “your mother is strong” kind of comments. A lot of people are unaware of how culturally tone deaf it is to repeatedly refer to a black woman as strong when she is facing a major crisis. Yet this notion of me, and my mother, as “strong” persisted. It persists to until the day she died, and many people had no idea how serious my mom’s health problems were because they didn’t want to know or understand.

Fundraisers were going around for mom’s end of life expenses and her burial and people still thought she was “getting better”… she made some recovery from the seizure, stroke and heart attack but she was never going to recover from cancer because they were refusing to give her chemo. They said the chemo wasn’t working anymore.

Mom was not getting better. She was running out of treatment options. Her cancer was in its final stages. Whenever the family got excited or happy about some sort of improvement it was because she just bought a little time with us – not because she was going to pull through. All we could do was buy her time, but every time we did we had to face the reality that her quality of life had declined considerably over the past grip of months.

When I tried to talk about that, people either issued still more platitudes about how I need to “let her go” or, unfathomably, acted like my mom’s cancer wasn’t that serious and gossiped that I was being a “drama queen” or exaggerating mom’s terminal condition. Others were so in denial that she was dying that they said I was being negative and babbled about homeopathic medicine, medicinal marijuana, prayer, and cayenne pepper.

This all boiled down to ways in which my mother’s death was taxing and inconvenient for other people and they just needed me to shut up about it because was depressing them. And please don’t read ANOTHER WORD if you are going to come out of reading this with any sort of need for me to help YOU deal with MY mom’s death or YOUR feelings, because this is me talking about me. I need to.

Mom, aunt Yvonne and me in 1993

  It has gotten to the point where I no longer reach out for any moral or emotional support. I just post prettied up photos of mom with Snapchat filters and journal about what movie was am watching with her or song was am singing to her, so I could keep up some sort of benign dialog with people in order to have some sort of social contact with people outside of my mom. I had to figure out how I could communicate with others without feeling like my pain, my family’s pain, and my emotional needs were tedious and draining for them. At first, a few people thought the pictures were morbid but after a while, some people got what I was doing.

I had a partner dump me because my need for emotional support during my mother’s death was apparently “manipulative.” Gossipy idiots who decided that my mother’s failure to die in a timely manner meant I am being “dramatic.”  Another partner got drunk the night mom had a heart attack and ran down the street acting crazy and wound up in jail. It seemed like everyone was more upset about Mom dying than I was.

Except my brother, and nieces, who were in the trenches along with me.

Minimizing death isn’t “positivity” it’s just your own personal fragility and entitlement kicking in, telling you that people who have real life crises are “problematic”… if you are someone who makes your personal relationship drama more important than someone dying , yes, this is about you. Constantly calling black women “strong” to get out of offering us any real moral support isn’t just toxic, it’s racist. Ignoring black suffering in order to shield the dominant culture’s fragility is the cornerstone of misogynoir, something a bunch of people who think they are liberal sometimes have an excess of.

My mom was my mom, not someone else’s inspiration porn – not a “strong black” woman who could inspire people by stoically clinging to life. I should have nor should I now be required to be likewise stoic, unemotional, positive, and more concerned with the feelings of others than my own. Even as my mother lay dying, I was to assume the caretaker, nanny, “mammy” role assigned to all black women in relationship to others.

Is this the way white women are treated when they are dying or grieving?

Cancer, “Positivity” and Misogynoir CW: Cancer, End Stage Cancer, Realities of Multiple Myeloma, Depression, Misogynoir, Racism. I wrote this blog but never published it, back when my mother was still fighting for her life.

[misanthropemom]

Oh, and, that reminds me:  Come to BayCon this Memorial Day weekend!  The authors of The Expanse will be there, and it’s the kind of environment where you can actually interact with the guests!  Dooo Eeeeet.

BayCon 2017 - Check the Programming tab and twitter for news about guests!

And, yeah, it’s in direct competition with the monster-huge cosplay/anime convention, Fanime.  That’s where my kid goes.  And his dad goes to the gaming con.  It’s a busy weekend.

But BayCon is super-welcoming to cosplay, too, and it’s much less insane, so more repectful appreciation.

[tachyonpub]

Meet Peter S. Beagle, Tad Williams, and Kathleen Bartholomew

Peter S. Beagle (IN CALABRIA), Tad Williams (THE VERY BEST OF TAD WILLIAMS), and Kathleen Bartholomew (ANCIENT ROCKETS: TREASURES AND TRAINWRECKS OF THE SILENT SCREEN) are attending BayCon 2017 in San Mateo, CA, May 26-29.

Peter S. Beagle (photo: Rina Weisman), Tad Williams, and Kathleen Bartholomew (MidAmericaCon)

The trio will be participating in several events.

Friday, May 26

1:30 PM Longevity Of The Craft

Our panelists look back over writing careers that span decades and discuss what keeps them writing in the long term. 

Heather Rose Jones | Peter Beagle | Diana L. Paxson | Tad Williams | Katharine Kerr

4:30 PM Including animals as main figures in your work

Doing it right versus just writing another human in animal form

ElizaBeth Gilligan | Tad Williams | Kevin Andrew Murphy | Jacquelyn Bartel 

8 PM Peter Beagle and Friends Jam Session

And by friends, we mean YOU! Join Peter Beagle to kick off our music track. Sing, play and make merry as we celebrate our filk community.

Saturday, May 27

10 AM Building Utopia

A group panel looking at the different ways a society tries to build utopias after an apocalypse.

Prof. David McGaffey | Kathleen Bartholomew | Bradford Lyau | Gregg Castro

10 AM Peter Beagle reading

10:45 AM Tad Williams reading

11:30 AM Autism and Asperger's In Fandom 

Panelists on the spectrum discuss their experiences in fandom.

Thaddeus Howze | Fr John Blaker | Jonathan Fortin | Kathleen Bartholomew | ElizaBeth Gilligan

1 PM High Fantasy

Big, beautiful and bold. What is compelling about high fantasy and why is it formative for so many in our community? Authors of high fantasy discuss why this genre moves them to create and what their favorite stories are to read and to write.

Peter Beagle | Tad Williams | Diana L. Paxson | Daniel Abraham

3 PM Signing: Peter Beagle

4 PM Signing: Tad Williams

4 PM Writing in Someone Else's World

How to be true to the creator's vision while still telling your own story.

Deborah J. Ross | Alex Westmore | Kathleen Bartholomew | A.E. Marling | R. L. King 

Sunday, May 28

10 AM Collaborations

Are two heads better than one or do too many writers spoil the plot?

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff | Mark Gelineau | Sheryl Hayes | Kathleen Bartholomew 

4 PM Historical Writing

Knowing Your Character's Cultural Priorities and Personal Rebellions

Lillian Csernica | Kathleen Bartholomew | Heather Rose Jones | Jay Hartlove | Gregg Castro 

5:30 PM The Truth About Stuff

Come ask our panelists for the truth about various topics and learn the secrets of the dark conspiracies behind each! If you ever wanted to know why stoplights are red, clockwise is to the left or the real story behind the moon landing, now is your chance to ask.

*BayCon regrets that we cannot be responsible for the veracity of the answers given. Please use this information at your own risk.

Christopher Garcia | Lillian Csernica | Ms. Leigh Ann Hildebrand | Eric "In the Elevator" Zuckerman | Kathleen Bartholomew | Tyler Hayes

Monday, May 29

11:30 AM The Eternal Importance of Research

SO, what would have happened if the Brits won the War of 1812? Well, actually - they kind of did. Research before you write alternatives to the wrong history. What's Greek Fire? Or fusion vs fission? The Schwarzschild radius? The Great Californian Mulberry Collapse? Find out before you write your foot into your mouth. Research matters - Also, someone may have thought of your idea before you.

Kathleen Bartholomew | Karen Brenchley | Bradford Lyau | Laurel Anne Hill | Gregg Castro 

For more info on THE VERY BEST OF TAD WILLIAMS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Kerem Beyit.

Design by Elizabeth Story

For more info about IN CALABRIA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more info about ANCIENT ROCKETS: TREASURES AND TRAINWRECKS OF THE SILENT SCREEN, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Elizabeth Story

[trekspertise]

Trekspertise Discovery Review Bibliography

Writers - Kyle Sullivan

Narration & Editing - Kyle Sullivan

Title Graphics & Logo - Dan King

Special Thanks - This episode was made possible by the support of Romain,  Joshua Kifer, Paul Laker, Alex Zheng, Troy Bernier, Jay Yan, Alex Blocker, Patteroast, Ryan Kindahl, Orevelos, Martin Bohm, Nathan Lucero, and the other generous supporters of Patreon. Thank you very much, everyone!

Additional thanks to the Daystrom Institute subreddit, a place dedicated to Star Trek discussion, and to Thiago Fragoso, the greatest star of film, TV, and stage that Brazil has ever seen!

Support Trekspertise on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/trekspertise

Check out footage from my Antarctica Trip here: http://bit.ly/2hyeXbo

Footage

Battle At The Binary Stars, DSC, 2017

The Vulcan Hello, DSC, 2017

The Cage, TOS, 1964-65

Encounter At Farpoint, TNG, 1987

Emissary, DS9, 1993

Caretaker, VOY, 1995

Broken Bow, ENT, 2001

E2, ENT, 2004

Blood Money, Breaking Bad, 2013

Mother’s Mercy, Game Of Thrones, 2015

The Monolith, Mad Men, 2014

Opie's Hobo Friend, The Andy Griffith Show, 1961

The Vanishing Of Will Byers, Stranger Things, 2016

33, Battlestar Galactica, 2004

Conspiracy, TNG, 1988

Space Seed, TOS, 1967

Rightful Heir, TNG, 1993

That Which Survives, TOS, 1969

Images

Star Trek Protest, uploaded by Mrs. Potato Head, 2011

New York Comic Con, taken & uploaded by by Jeffrey O. Gustafson, 2007

Trekkies At Baycon 2003, uploaded by Ubcule, 2013

Music

Last Dream Before Sleep by Fingers In The Noise CC BY 3.0

[alisonfloresus]

Silicon Valley Life

Silicon Valley is in the southern portion of the San Francisco Bay Area. The Silicon Valley is located in part of the U.S. state of California known as Northern California. Many of the world’s largest high-tech corporations run through the Valley’s past and present. Silicon Valley is a community which is known for its beauty, diverse culture, and of course its people to the US. The City of Silicon Valley is with a long list of popular features for live including (NASA Ames Exploration Center, Arizona Cactus Garden, Stanford University, Ballet San Jose, Avaya Stadium, BayCon, Eastridge Center, Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad). Sunny Valley real estate market is always considered to be the best real estate markets in the United States. January 11, 2015 marks the 44th day to remember of the first known range of vision in capture of the love “Silicon Valley.” There are multiple opinions on at which point the former, bucolic christmas tree farm region at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, better known before as the “Valley of Heart’s Delight,” gained its special new moniker. Observers from manufacturing bloggers to the New York Times credit person who writes the check Ralph Vaerst, founder of Ion Equipment Corp. They claim he indicated the cast to Electronic News reporter Don Hoefler, who by the time mentioned titled a column on local silicon computer-chip companies “Silicon Valley USA.” Published on January 11, 1971, the cast stuck. The name Silicon Valley was popularized by newspaperman Don Hoefler in 1971. Don was a journalist for Electronic News (EN), a weekly tabloid that covered the electronics industry. EN landed on the desks of electronics manufacturing executives and managers on Monday mornings. These household did not fly their field week lately reading EN. They infamous to visualize what was being said approximately the people, the products, and the companies in the industry. EN was the Bible. If a specific didn’t fall in to place in EN, it didn’t happen. Even with Silicon Valley billionaires’ impressive track record of invention, apparently they’ve made a decision to throw in the towel upon advanced schooling. Annually, several offer large numbers in order to old-line U . s . universites and colleges that will, together, graduate student a similar number of technical engineers once we do twenty-five years back.

from JournalsLINE http://journalsline.com/2017/06/18/silicon-valley-life/ from Journals LINE https://journalsline.tumblr.com/post/161966006410

[nerdandtie]

Jon Del Arroz Blames Not Getting Invited to BayCon 2017 on Politics, Despite Being Invited for 2018

[bayconnews-blog]

GUEST SPOTLIGHT:  Vanessa MacLaren-Wray is an engineer, a writer, a science fan, a school science project designer, a photographer, and a robotics nut.  She's been a fantasy and SF reader since before the internet was invented. No, yes, really.  She loves rocket launches and NASA Socials, where anyone can get access like the mainstream media.   As a writer, she's had poetry published (and paid for!), and thanks to joining a writer's group now has an SF novella in final editing and a more-ambitious fantasy YA novel in the works.  Lately, she's been depressed by the upsurge in Fake Science and Alternative Factitis, but working for the Women's March helped, and she hopes for another boost from the March for Science. Doc MacWray hangs out online way too much, at cometarytales.com, cometarytales (flickr), PixelGravityAstronomy (Facebook), and PixelGravity or CometaryTales on Twitter, because everyone needs two Twitter accounts, right?

[bayconnews-blog]

GUEST SPOTLIGHT: Dr. Bradford Lyau has been a life-long reader of science fiction, part of fandom for over forty years, and a panelist for over twenty-five years.  He is a historian by training (BA, UC-Berkeley; MA, PhD, University of Chicago) and once taught at several universities in California and Europe.  He presently works for a start-up company and is a political activist/consultant.  One of his recent articles analyzed Cixin Liu’s recently translated novels, his first attempt to analyze science fiction from a non-Western culture. His book analyzing French science fiction, The Anticipation Novelists of 1950s French Science Fiction:  Stepchildren of Voltaire, received very positive reviews from leading academic SF journals and is listed as a reference for further reading in the ‘France’ entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Presently he is editing an anthology about SF from non-English language countries; a British university press has shown positive interest.

[bayconnews-blog]

Guest Spotlight: Wanda Kurtcu says her 15 minutes of fame comes from the Star Trek Next Gen episode: 'A Matter of Honor'. She had the pleasure of writing this script and having it produced by Paramount Pictures. She works for San Lorenzo Unified School District as an educator. She is married, the mom of four young adults and owned by three cats. She will hopefully be done with her dissertation in Educational Leadership, Social Justice, by the time people read this and will be Dr. Wanda. She performs with Wadaiko Newark, a Taiko (Japanese drumming) group and enjoys this hobby very much. Science fiction and fantasy are her genres of choice and considers herself a SF/F snob. Please say hello when you see her around the Con!

[bayconnews-blog]

GUEST SPOTLIGHT:  Carrie Sessarego is the resident 'geek reviewer' for Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, where she wrangles science fiction, fantasy romance, comics, movies, and non-fiction. Carrie’s first book, Pride, Prejudice, and Popcorn: TV and Film Adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre, was released in 2014. Her work has been published in SEARCH Magazine, Interfictions Online, After the Avengers, The WisCon Chronicles Vol. 9, Genius Loci, and Speculative Fiction 2013: The Year’s Best Online Reviews, Essays And Commentary. When not reading and writing, you can find Carrie speaking at conventions, volunteering for the Sacramento Public Library, and getting into trouble with her mad scientist husband, Potterhead daughter, mysterious cats, and neurotic dog.

[bayconnews-blog]

ATTENTION DISNEY FANATICS!!! Four Park Hoppers to Disneyland and  California Adventure will be up for bidding at the BayCon Charity Auctions  benefiting Variety, the Children’s Charity of Northern California.

www.disneyland.com

[bayconnews-blog]

GUEST SPOTLIGHT: C. Sanford Lowe is a science fiction writer who co-authored the novel, The Black Hole Project,  with G. David Nordley. Formerly a newspaper reporter in Boston, a deputy sheriff in Arizona, and an airline pilot in New Mexico, Lowe currently works in Technology Training at Stanford University. She is a winner of the best short story for the New England Science Fiction Association. When not writing, she collaborates on experimental music with her husband, and tutors students studying English as a second language.

[bayconnews-blog]

GUEST SPOTLIGHT:  John has been reading SF/F since he could read. His first series was the Tom Swift, moving on to Andre Norton, then the golden age four (Issac, Robert, Arthur and Ray) and expanding from there during the explosion of SF in the 70s and 80s. TV shows and Movies galore. D&D and other gaming. He has been working on and with computers for 30 years. He has been online & active on BBSs, FIDO echos, Usenet, GEnie, Internet, Worldwide Web and Social networks, for nearly as long.  In 2013 he and his wife Chris were honored to BayCon's Fan Guests of Honor.

[bayconnews-blog]

Need to book a flight through the solar system? Looking to colonize another planet? WorldCon has you covered as they are turning into an Intergalactic Travel Agency on the party floor Friday and Sunday night!