The Norwescon 36 post-convention meeting will be held soon!

DATE

Saturday, April 20th, 2013

TIME

• 12:00 a.m.–12:00 noon: Executive Team Meeting
• 12:00 noon–1:00 p.m.: Lunch
• 1:00 p.m.–4:30 p.m.: Convention Committee (ConCom) Meeting

PLACE

Doubletree by Hilton Hotel Seattle Airport
18740 Pacific Highway South
SeaTac, WA 98188
206-246-8600

For directions and a map, please see the hotel’s website.

NOTE: There is a discounted charge of $8.00 for parking.

Please consult the hotel readerboard when you arrive for the location of the meeting room.

FUTURE EVENTS

• Volunteer Picnic: 7/20/2013

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.

The judges of the 2012 Philip K. Dick Award and the Philadelphia SF Society, along with the Philip K. Dick Trust, are pleased to announce seven nominated works that comprise the final ballot for the award:

• BLUEPRINTS OF THE AFTERLIFE by Ryan Boudinot (Black Cat)
• HARMONY by Keith Brooke (Solaris)
• HELIX WARS by Eric Brown (Solaris)
• THE NOT YET by Moira Crone (UNO Press)
• FOUNTAINS OF AGE by Nancy Kress (Small Beer Press)
• LOVESTAR by Andri Snær Magnason (Seven Stories Press)
• LOST EVERYTHING by Brian Francis Slattery (Tor Books)

First prize and any special citations will be announced on Friday, March 29, 2013 at Norwescon 36 at the Doubletree Seattle Airport Hotel, SeaTac, Washington.

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. Last year’s winner was THE SAMUIL PETROVICH TRILOGY by Simon Morden (Orbit) with a special citation to THE COMPANY MAN by Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit). The 2012 judges are Bruce Bethke, Sydney Duncan, Daryl Gregory, Bridget McKenna, and Paul Witcover (chair).

For more information, contact the award administration: Pat Lo Brutto (845) 516-4412, John Silbersack (212) 333-1513, or Gordon Van Gelder (201) 876-2551.

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

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

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

We are pleased to announce that our Author Guest of Honor for Norwescon 36 will be author, musician, and theoretical physicist Catherine Asaro!

Catherine Asaro is a bestselling novelist of more then twenty-five books, including near future thrillers, science fiction, and fantasy. She is also a dancer, a teacher, and a musician. Her novel The Quantum Rose and her novella “The Spacetime Pool” both won the coveted the Nebula® Award. Among her many other distinctions, she is a multiple winner of the Readers Choice Award from Analog magazine and a three time recipient of the RT BOOKClub Award for “Best Science Fiction Novel.” Her most recent books are the novel Carnelians (Baen/Simon & Schuster) and the anthology of her short fiction titled Aurora in Four Voices, which is available from ISFiC Press in hardcover. All of her titles are available in audio form and her multiple award-winning novellas “The City of Cries” and “The Spacetime Pool” are available as eBooks. Her most recent eBooks are the Lightning Strike duology, based on the novel Catch the Lightning and available on Kindle, Nook, and ePub.

Catherine has two music CDs out and she is currently working on her third. Her first CD, Diamond Star, is the soundtrack for her novel of the same name, performed with the rock band Point Valid. She appears as a vocalist at cons, clubs, and other venues in the US and abroad, including as the Guest of Honor at the Denmark and New Zealand National Science Fiction Conventions. She performs selections from her work in a multimedia project that mixes literature, dance, and music, with Greg Adams as her accompanist. She is also a theoretical physicist with a PhD in Chemical Physics from Harvard, and teaches part time in the physics department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Visit her at www.facebook.com/Catherine.Asaro

We are pleased to announce that our Artist Guest of Honor for Norwescon 36 will be painter, illustrator, graphic designer, Web designer, and comic book painter and designer Lee Moyer!

Lee Moyer is a Chesley Award winning Illustrator, Designer and Art Director from Portland, Oregon whose curious penchant for bizarre Kickstarter projects has, of late, been much remarked upon (and indeed featured in Forbes and elsewhere).

His work has been featured in many Spectrum annuals, A Lovecraft Retrospective – Artists inspired by H.P.L., D’Artiste – Digital Painting, Communication Arts and Design Graphics magazines, and at the Society of Illustrators, the National Zoo and the Smithsonian Institution’s Natural History Museum.

Covers: Iain M. Banks, Mary Robinette Kowal, M. K. Hobson, Philip Jose Farmer, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Michael Bishop, Mark Hodder, Edgar Pangborn, Jack McDevitt, Alan Moore, HP Lovecraft, Joe Haldeman, Tad Williams and Raymond Chandler.

Posters: The Call of Cthulhu, Tori Amos, Alfred Hitchcock, J.R.R. Tolkien, David Sedaris, Mo Willems, Athol Fugard, Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Andre 3000, John Mellencamp and Stephen King.

Known Associates: Inveterate cattle-rustler, Keith Baker (Eberron, Gloom, The Doom That Came to Atlantic City, The Ebon Mirror, At Your Service, En Route, Space Pirates, Power Brokers, et al.); that auteur of the unlikely, Michael Swanwick (A Geography of Unknown Lands, The Best of Michael Swanwick, Dismembrance); Annotator Horribilis, Kim Newman (Diogenes Club series); mad, bad and dangerous to know Caitlín R. Kiernan (Two Worlds and In Between, Confessions of a Five Chambered Heart, et al.); surprising little spitfire, Elaine Lee (Starstruck, Honey West Series, et al.); mentor and dementor, Michael Wm. Kaluta (Starstruck, Tom Strong’s Terrific Tales, The Abyss, et al.), Sardonic and Ironic Rob Heinsoo (Dungeons & Dragons, 13th Age, et al.); and moonstruck playwright Jeff Goode (Dracula Rides Again, Love Loves a Pornographer, and Marley’s Ghost).

Lee collaborated with Peter S. Beagle, Ray Bradbury, Patricia Briggs, Jim Butcher, Jacqueline Carey, Neil Gaiman, Charlaine Harris, Robin Hobb, N.K. Jemisin, George R. R. Martin, Terry Pratchett, and Patrick Rothfuss for Check These Out, his 2013 Literary Pin-up Calendar.

He plays a mean game of Anagrams.

Web: www.leemoyer.com
Blog: leemoyer.wordpress.com
Twitter: @LccMoyer
Facebook: facebook.com/leemoyer

Back in April of 2011 – my husband Ivan and I decided we wanted to attend our very first Sci Fi convention, so he got to work on creating our costumes for the event. Ivan decided he wanted to make functional Mechanical hands and after studying how the human fingers work and taking a few lessons from a crab leg..he figured it out.

His hand was a hit at NORWESCON and within weeks, the silly little Youtube video he had created to share his awesomeness was getting thousands of views a day.

Little did we know that this would not only lead him to getting numerous orders for pairs of these mechanical hands from fellow goofballs that love to dress up and be a little crazy too, for a director of a play, a plastic version for a team of scientists at UCLA and a major Robotics company…but that one day he would get an email from a man named Rich in South Africa who was curious to see if Ivan could help him find a way to figure out the design he had been working on to restore two of the 4 fingers he had recently lost on his right hand due to a woodworking accident…after looking into a few prosthetics and researching the Xfinger design and being told it would cost him up to $10,000 (US Dollars) per finger…he knew he would never be able to afford this and wanted to design something on his own.

This was no longer a “Silly project” Ivan had been doing for a few extra bucks once in awhile…this now had purpose. It had possibilities. It could…change lives.

You can read more about this incredible project at coming up short handed, and Norwescon is proud to have such dedicated people in our membership. Congratulations and best wishes to Ivan Owen and Richard Van As!

Thank you for your patience,

Felice Nightengale, Publications and Promotions Director, Norwescon 36

We’ll be rolling our website over to Norwescon 36 information over the coming weeks. In the meantime, here’s a taste of what’s to come next year!

Easter weekend comes a little earlier next year, so Norwescon 36 is already less than a year away! We’ll be back for another year of fannish fun and frivolity March 28–31, 2013, once again at the Doubletree by Hilton Seattle Airport.

Our theme will be Save the World! Ecologically friendly science, superheroes fending off the dastardly schemes of some villain, wizards and heroes defending the downtrodden against the forces of evil, how future technologies will keep our habitats safe for us all (both here on Earth and beyond these blue skies), how alien invasions have been defeated by everything from everyday microbes to warriors standing firm…there’s a lot to play with, and we’re sure you’ll have plenty of ideas to keep you busy over the next year!

Our Guest of Honor lineup so far includes:

• Writer Guest of Honor Catherine Asaro. “Catherine Asaro is an American science fiction and fantasy author. She is best known for her books about the Ruby Dynasty, called the Saga of the Skolian Empire.” —Wikipedia
• Artist Guest of Honor Lee Moyer. “Lee Moyer is an American painter, illustrator, graphic designer, Web designer, and comic book painter and designer.” —Wikipedia
  (Stephan Martinière sends his regrets; unfortunately, he will not be able to join us for Norwescon 36 due to a work conflict.)
• Science Guest of Honor Edward Tenner. “Edward Tenner is a historian of technology and culture. He was a founding advisor of Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center and holds a Ph.D in European history.” —The Atlantic
• Special Guest of Honor 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.” —Wikipedia
• Norwescon Grand Master Terry Brooks. “Terence Dean ‘Terry’ Brooks is an American writer of fantasy fiction. He writes mainly epic fantasy, and has also written two movie novelizations. He has written 23 New York Times bestsellers during his writing career, and has over 21 million copies of his books in print. He is one of the biggest-selling living fantasy writers.” —Wikipedia
• Spotlight Publisher Baen Books, represented by Tony Daniel. “Baen Books is an American publishing company established in 1983 by long time science fiction publisher and editor Jim Baen. It is a science fiction and fantasy publishing house that emphasizes space opera, hard science fiction, military science fiction, and fantasy.” —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!