FOGcon

This year’s FOGcon theme is The Body in SF/F, and we have wonderful Honored Guests who have written on that topic. Nalo Hopkinson, Shelley Jackson, and the late Mary Shelley. I’ve posted their bibliographies to the site for members who want to read up before the con.

I’d love to post more suggestions of great books and stories on the subject. What comes to your mind as the most illuminating, powerful, or influential SF/F writing about the body? In addition to listing titles and authors, you could tell us a bit about your suggestions.

The first ones I think of are these:

Samuel Delany, “Aye, and Gomorrah”
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Matt Ruff, Set This House in order
Cordwainer Smith, “Scanners Live in Vain”
James Tiptree, Jr., “The Girl Who Was Plugged In”

What are your favorite fictional explorations of what it means to have or be a body? Of the ways a slight anatomical difference can change everything? Of health, illness, reproduction, death, body image?

If you’re looking for something to read between now and FOGcon, these works by our Honored Guests are a great place to start.

Nalo Hopkinson

• Brown Girl in the Ring (1998)
• Midnight Robber (2000)
• Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction (2000, ed.)
• Skin Folk (2001)
• Mojo: Conjure Stories (2003, ed.)
• The Salt Roads (2003)
• So Long Been Dreaming (2004, ed.)
• The New Moon’s Arms (2007)

Shelley Jackson

Hypertexts

• Patchwork Girl (1995)
• My Body (1997)
• The Doll Games (with Pamela Jackson, 2001)

Books

• The Melancholy of Anatomy (short story collection, 2002)
• Half Life (novel, 2006)

Mary Shelley

• Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)
• The Last Man (1826)

We’re glad to announce that a POC meetup is being arranged again this year. If you’re interested, go to Oyceter’s blog and take the poll.

FOGcon has some fascinatingly quirky videos on YouTube. Now we’re looking for a somewhat more straightforward video explaining what FOGcon is and giving something of the flavor.

Are you interested? Email us at vid@fogcon.org

We’ve had two years of this process so far, and now it’s time to ask for your suggestions and advice — what do you think would make a great theme for 2013? Who would be the perfect Honored Guests to fit that theme? Let us know by going to http://fogcon.org/ideas-for-2013-theme/, and giving us your suggestions.

On February 17 the doors to our mysterious data vault will clang shut, and the steampunk geniuses inside will begin the mammoth and complex task of scheduling all FOGcon programming. That’s less than two weeks away.

If you want a voice in FOGcon, vote for the panels you’re interested in attending. Volunteer to participate in the panels where you can make a contribution.

1. We few, we happy few, we band of siblings, share the simple pride of helping produce a wonderful literary SF/F convention.
2. “Hey, baby, I volunteered at FOGcon” is better than most pickup lines I’ve heard.
3. Fifty years from now, people in Mars spaceports will buy you a drink because you volunteered at FOGcon.
4. Volunteers have much more fun.
5. You’ll learn the innermost secrets of the way a convention is run. Well, OK, maybe one or two secrets. But they will be juicy ones, like the use and meaning of blue tape, or how to keep the flow of munchies running smoothly in the consuite.
6. There is no number 6.
7. It’s easier for volunteers to get to know new people and make sure they see their old friends.
8. Volunteering is the first step to becoming a SMOF (Secret Master/Mistress/Magus of Fandom). You’ll learn the volunteers’ secret handshake, eye signals, protocol, and rituals handed down from ancient European noble houses and preserved by a few dedicated souls in each generation.
9. Volunteers win an invisible propeller beanie and a virtual secret decoder ring.
10. We need you. A few hours of your time can help FOGcon run smoothly this year and keep happening in years to come.

Volunteer! And if you’ve emailed before but not been answered, try again — we had some technical issues.

Because this is Leap Year, you have one extra day to make your FOGcon arrangements. However, that also means that you must wait an extra day before the con starts. Our top consulting physicist advises us that nothing can be done about this chronological anomaly without resources thought to be beyond the reach of a typical con-goer. We do have a small TARDIS, but so far no Doctor has yet emerged or offered rides to our members.

Write these dates on your calendar, type them into your smartphone, or tattoo them on your boss’s forehead — whatever works best to remind you of the FOGcon schedule.

Sign up for Programming by February 17. Vote for your favorite panel ideas. If you want to share your expertise by being a panel member or moderator, sign up for that, too. (Same page.)

Make your hotel reservations to get our special $99 rate by February 24.

Register for membership by February 29. After that, rates go up to $85 for adults.

Order your genuine FOGcon T-shirt by March 1.

The con starts Friday, March 30, and ends Sunday, April 1.

For more information, email us at fogcon@fogcon.org

To discuss access issues, email us at access@fogcon.org

To volunteer, email us at volunteers@fogcon.org

To inquire about being a dealer, email us at dealers@fogcon.org

Want to get our newsletter? newsletter@fogcon.org

FOGCON ON THE WEB

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=266502209488
LiveJournal: http://community.livejournal.com/fogcon/
Dreamwidth: http://fogcon.dreamwidth.org/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Fogconvention

“Oh, wow, I’d love to have this on a T-shirt!”

Now you can buy a T-shirt featuring this year’s FOGcon cover art. Order a FOGcon 2012 T-shirt today (or by March 1) and pick it up at FOGcon. Wear it proudly to all your panels, games, lunch dates, and midnight ghost-story gatherings. They’re stylish, long-wearing, comfortable, and attractive. What more can you want in a garment? Oh yes. Affordable. At $20 each, they’re a steal.

FOGcon T-shirts come in a full range of adult sizes from Juniors Small to Unisex 6XL. Read the specs carefully; 2XL in Juniors is not the same size as 2XL in Ladies, which is different from 2XL in Unisex, and chest measurement is not the only difference in sizing. Fabrics are also slightly different. Order the sizes that make you comfortable. FOGcon is not responsible for the sexist naming of T-shirt styles and does not endorse gender conformity.

Juniors

A lighter fabric, shorter length, shorter sleeve, and more form-fitting cut.

• Color: Sports Grey
• 4.5-ounce, 90/10 cotton/poly
• Deluxe 30-singles Softstyle yarns
• Side seam construction with stylish tapered cut
• Feminine 1/2″ rib knit collar

Product Measurements

Chest measurements are across the shirt, not around your body. Double them to see the full circumference of the shirt. The 2XL, for example, is 20 inches across, 40 inches around.

Style

Junior $20.00 USD

Size

small medium large XL 2XL 3XL

Ladies

Heavier fabric, longer body and sleeve.

• Color: Sports Grey
• 6.1-ounce, 90/10 cotton/poly
• Seamless double-needle collar
• Double-needle sleeves and hem
• Taped neck and shoulders
• Feminine shoulder, arm and sleeve styling
• Classic fit

Product Measurements

Chest measurements are across the shirt, not around your body. Double them to see the full circumference of the shirt. The 2XL, for example, is 26 inches across, 52 inches around.

Style

Ladies $20.00 USD

Size

small medium large XL 2XL 3XL

Unisex

Heavier fabric, longer body, longest sleeve.

• Color: Ash
• Heavyweight 6.1-ounce, 99/1 cotton/poly
• Shoulder-to-shoulder taping
• Coverseamed neck
• Double-needle hem

Product Measurements

Chest measurements are across the shirt, not around your body. Double them to see the full circumference of the shirt. The 2XL, for example, is 26 inches across, 52 inches around.

Style

Unisex $20.00 USD

Size

small medium large XL 2XL 3XL 4XL 5XL 6XL

Our friend and official staff artist Metaphortunate wrote:
FOGcon is looking for programming suggestions.

I am not involved in organizing this year’s FOGcon: except that they asked me if I wanted to do the cover again, and I said YES. Because I knew immediately what I wanted to do. . . .

This year’s theme is The Body. And every single revision that I’ve made to my very first sketch back in September has only been trying to more clearly draw out the drawing’s themes of paranoia, alienation, fracturing, vulnerability, and early 70s science fiction.

Because that is apparently what I think of when I think of The Body.

The running figure in the drawing is fat for two reasons. First, fat people should be represented in visual depictions of the world, because we exist, and no one else is going to do it, so I guess I have to. But more importantly: a fat body seems more embodied to me. I mean, there is literally more body there. But also – Le Corbusier famously said that the house was a machine for living in, but it seems to me that that is also not a bad description of the current ideal of the body. It should be sleek, efficient, speedy, featuring the hardness and lickable curves – and endlessly duplicatable aesthetic – of an Apple product. And yet it’s not like that. It wobbles, it jiggles, it weighs, it sweats, it varies wildly from the spec. And fat bodies more than most. You can’t ignore that about a fat body. A fat body shouts that the nature of the body is something very different from that ideal and that the reality cannot be successfully ignored for long.

What do you think of when you think of the body in science fiction? Tell the programming committee, so that we can talk about it at the end of March! Oh, I should mention that this year’s Honored Guests are Nalo Hopkinson and Shelley Jackson – and Honored Ghost Mary Shelley – so there’s some great places to start!