We’ll be rolling our website over to Norwescon 37 information over the coming weeks. In the meantime, here’s a taste of what’s to come next year!

We’ll be back for another year of fannish fun and frivolity April 17–20, 2014, once again at the Doubletree by Hilton Seattle Airport.

Our theme will be Elegance and Entropy!

Our Guest of Honor lineup so far includes:

• Writer Guest of Honor Michael Moorcock. “Michael John Moorcock (born 18 December 1939, in London) is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published literary novels.” —Wikipedia
• Artist Guest of Honor Robert Gould. “Robert Gould has designed and illustrated the covers of numerous US and UK publications and published a wide variety of prints of his own and other artists’ work. He is best known for his cover designs and illustrations for Michael Moorcock’s works, particularly Elric of Melnibone. Robert specializes in the design and illustration of book series including the Indigo series for Tor Books, The Dungeon for Bantam and the Dragonflight series for Athenaeum.” —The Robert Gould Art Page
• Special Guest of Honor Seanan McGuire. “Seanan McGuire (born January 5, 1978, in Martinez, California) is an American author and filker. In 2010 she was awarded the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer by the 2010 World Science Fiction Convention, largely because of her urban fantasy/detective story Rosemary and Rue and has published a number of other novels since then also featuring October Daye. Writing under the pseudonym Mira Grant, she published the political thriller/zombie trilogy Newsflesh including the books Feed, Deadline and Blackout. Blackout received a 2013 Hugo Award nomination for Best Novel. That year McGuire received a record five Hugo nominations in total, two for works as Grant and the other three under her own name.” —Wikipedia

We’ll have more announcements to come over the coming year, so be sure to keep track of us here, on Twitter, and on Facebook!

• Leave a comment on this post,
• leave a comment on our Facebook page,
• send comments via Twitter by including the #nwconion (for improvements) or #nwcrose (for kudos) hashtags,
• use the “Feedback” link that we just added to our Guidebook app with the latest update,
• or email us directly at info@norwescon.org.

We’re on the lookout for your blog posts and write-ups about your experiences at con. We’ll be posting a selection of links in a week or so, and while we’ll do our best to find as many as we can, please feel free to get in touch with us through any of the above mentioned methods with any links you might find.

We’re also looking forward to seeing this year’s convention through your eyes! Upload your photos to Flickr and add them to this year’s Norwescon 36 photo group! Our official photographs will start to appear on our Flickr and Facebook accounts in the next few weeks, after our photography crew has had time to sort through the thousands of photos they took over the course of the weekend (not to mention catch up on sleep)!

Thanks from all of us on the Norwescon 36 ConCom to all of you who attended, our volunteers, the pros and panelists, dealers and artists, the hotel, and of course, our wonderful Guests of Honor. We’ll see you again next year for Norwescon 37!

LOST EVERYTHING by Brian Francis Slattery (Tor Books)

Special citation was given to:

LOVESTAR by Andri Snær Magnason (Seven Stories Press)

The Philip K. Dick Award is presented annually with the support of the Philip K. Dick Trust for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. The award is sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and the Philip K. Dick Trust and the award ceremony is sponsored by the NorthWest Science Fiction Society. The 2012 judges were Bruce Bethke, Sydney Duncan, Daryl Gregory, Bridget McKenna, and Paul Witcover (chair).

This year’s judges are Elizabeth Bear (chair), Siobhan Carroll, Michael Kandel, Jamil Nasir, and Tim Sullivan.

For more information, contact the award administration:

Gordon Van Gelder (201) 876-2551
John Silbersack (212) 333-1513
Pat Lo Brutto (845) 516-4412

For more information about the Philip K. Dick Trust: http://www.philipkdick.com
For more information about the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society: Contact Gary Feldbaum (215) 665-5752
For more information about Norwescon: Contact NorthWest SF Society: (425) 686-9737

Elizabeth Bear
10 COMMON ST
BROOKFIELD MA 01506-1618

Siobhan Carroll
116 CONGRESSIONAL DR APT B
WILMINGTON DE 19807-2760

Michael Kandel
240 NORWOOD AVE
PORT JEFFERSON STATION NY 11776-2561

Jamil Nasir
9956 LAKE LANDING RD
MONTGOMERY VILLAGE MD 20886-0604

Tim Sullivan
7720 SW 62ND AVE
SOUTH MIAMI FL 33143-4909

Publishers who issue eligible titles during the calendar year 2013 are encouraged to provide copies to each of the judges as the books are published during the year. (All works of science fiction published originally in the United States as paperbacks during the year 2013 are eligible.) The nominees will be announced in January 2014.

The Philip K. Dick Award is presented annually with the support of the Philip K. Dick Trust for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. The award is sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and the award ceremony is sponsored by the NorthWest Science Fiction Society. The 2011 award was given to THE SAMUIL PETROVICH TRILOGY by Simon Morden (Orbit) with a special citation to THE COMPANY MAN by Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit). The 2012 awards will be announced at Norwescon 36 on March 29, 2013.

For more information, contact the award administration:

Gordon Van Gelder (201) 876-2551
John Silbersack (212) 333-1513
Pat Lo Brutto (845) 516-4412

For more information about the Philip K. Dick Trust: http://www.philipkdick.com

For more information about the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, http://www.psfs.org/: Contact Gary Feldbaum (215) 665-5752

For more information about Norwescon: https://www.norwescon.org/: Contact NorthWest SF Society: (425) 686-9737

Tickets are $40.00 per person and always sell fast. You can purchase tickets by PayPal or mail on this page. Purchase your tickets early and you will be entered into a drawing to sit with one of our Guests of Honor—so act quickly and reserve your place now!

This is a popular event, and we expect to sell out before the convention begins, so be sure to get your tickets before they’re gone!

Norwescon is a proud sponsor of the 2013 Locus Awards Banquet being held here in Seattle. The Locus Awards are an annual set of literary awards presented by Locus: The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field. The award winners are selected from a poll of the magazine’s readers. These awards were first presented in 1971 and Norwescon is proud to be part of this long standing tradition.

The awards are presented at an annual banquet currently held in Seattle. This event draws not only many local professionals but also some of the most prestigious writers and editors in the fields of science fiction and fantasy. This year’s awards will be hosted by Hugo and Nebula award winning author Connie Willis. In honor of Locus founder Charles N. Brown, Hawaiian shirts are worn by all attendees–those brave enough not to do so may find themselves being roasted upon the fires of wit and witticism, as Mr. Neil Gaiman and others have discovered!

The Locus Awards welcome all fans of the science fiction community. For information on how to attend this exciting, lively event and show Northwest community support, please visit the 2013 Locus Awards webpage.

We are pleased to announce that our Special Guest of Honor for Norwescon 36 will be editor Gardner Dozois!

Gardner Raymond Dozois (born July 23, 1947) is an American science fiction author and editor. He was editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine from 1984 to 2004. He has won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, both as an editor and a writer of short fiction.

Dozois is perhaps best known as an editor, winning a record 15 Hugo Awards for Best Professional Editor (having won nearly every year between 1988 and his retirement from Asimov’s in 2004). In addition to his work with Asimov’s (which he also co-founded in 1976), he also worked in the 1970s with magazines such as Galaxy Science Fiction, If, Worlds of Fantasy, and Worlds of Tomorrow.

Dozois is a well-known short fiction anthologist. After resigning from his Asimov’s position, he remained the editor of the anthology series The Year’s Best Science Fiction, published annually since 1984. And, with Jack Dann, he has edited a long series of themed anthologies, each with a self-explanatory title such as Cats, Dinosaurs, Seaserpents, or Hackers.

–Wikipedia

Photo of Gardner Dozois ©2011 Ed Gaillard (edgaillard.net), used by permission.

We are pleased to announce that our Science Guest of Honor for Norwescon 36 will be Dr. Edward Tenner!

Edward Tenner was originally a specialist in modern German history, earning a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and being chosen for membership in the Harvard Society of Fellows. After a research associate position at the University of Chicago helping his former teacher William H. McNeill with the bibliography of the future bestseller Plagues and Peoples on disease in history, he chose scientific publishing instead of teaching. He was a science editor and an executive editor at Princeton University Press from 1975 to 1991, where he published everything from mathematical monographs to bird field guides, and best selling popular science books including Richard Feynman’s QED.

When he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1991 he decided to become a full-time writer, and the resulting book, Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences has been one of the most widely discussed and translated books in the history of technology, going beyond cornucopianism and neo-Luddism to consider innovation’s real paradoxes, from invasive species to the disappointing results of productivity gains, which remain with us today. In Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity, he showed how invention changes human behavior and vice versa, looking at everyday objects from running shoes to keyboards and eyeglasses in a new way. Professor Howard Segal, reviewing the book in Nature, called the author “a worthy successor to such luminaries as business philosopher Peter Drucker, social critic Lewis Mumford and historian Lynn White in connecting technology’s past, present and future.”

Edward Tenner has spoken at leading colleges and professional, corporate, and government meetings, including Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Caltech, USNA Annapolis (Highlands Forum), the Air Force Research Laboratory, Microsoft and Intel Research, IDEO, Design for User Experience (DUX), AAAS, the American Physical Society, the American Society of Safety Engineers, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, Warburg Pincus, In-Q-Tel, and TED. He has been a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers. He is now a senior research associate of the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center and an affiliated scholar of Princeton’s Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies.

His current research is on the paradoxically positive consequences of negative events, technological and otherwise.

We are pleased to announce that our Norwescon Grand Master for Norwescon 36 will be author Terry Brooks!

A writer since the age of ten, Terry Brooks published his first novel, The Sword of Shannara, in 1977. It became the first work of fiction ever to appear on the New York Times Trade Paperback Bestseller List, where it remained for over five months. He has written twenty-six bestselling novels, movie adaptations of Hook and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and a memoir on his writing life, Sometimes the Magic Works. He has sold over thirty million copies of his books domestically and is published worldwide. His Magic Kingdom series is currently under option at Warner Brothers. His Shannara series is being adapted by Sonar Entertainment. His latest novel, Wards of Faerie, was published in August 2012. His next book, Bloodfire Quest, will be published in mid-March 2013. The author lives with his wife Judine in the Pacific Northwest.

If you have anything to share, please email the SAFE committee at safe@norwescon.org. Your identity will remain confidential, and the committee will respect any other privacy constraints that you request. You may also contact any of the committee members individually: Kevin Black, Pat Booze, Alan Bond, Sika Holman, Michael Hanscom, and Kate Mulligan Wolfe.

Thank you,

The Norwescon SAFE Committee