Category: Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Posted on
by

Next year’s WonderCon tickets are available now, and SDCC goes on sale next week. I noticed something interesting about the WonderCon price, because ten years ago, I compared a lot of convention prices.

How do they stack up a decade later?

  • WonderCon 2018 costs the same as Comic-Con 2008 did: $75. (WonderCon in 2008 was $30 in advance, or $40 onsite.)
  • Comic-Con International has gone waaaay up. They don’t sell full-weekend badges anymore, but if you’re super-lucky you could theoretically buy one-day badges for all 4 1/2 days in 2018 (if you’re really lucky), in which case you’d be spending $45+$63×3+$42 = $276!
  • Wizard World shows in general have gone from $45 in 2008 to $80 for 2018.
  • Flagship Wizard World Chicago has gone from $50 in 2008 to $95 in 2018.

There are some other conventions that need to be on this list today, but weren’t on the 2008 list. Some of them are new, like C2E2. Emerald City and New York Comic Con were around, but hadn’t gotten big enough for me to include on a list that was mostly California conventions plus the big names – which at the time were SDCC and Chicago.

  • C2E2 2018 costs $76.
  • I can’t find the prices for New York Comic Con.
  • Emerald City Comicon 2018 costs $120 for the full event.
  • Long Beach Comic Con started out around the same price as a Wizard World show in 2009, and is currently $60, so a little cheaper than a Wizard World show.
  • Stan Lee’s LA Comic Con launched with super-cheap tickets at something like $11/day to get people to show up (before Stan Lee’s name was attached to it), but by 2016 it was in line with other shows at $35/day. (I can’t find any prices on their website anymore, so I don’t know the full weekend price.)

So over all: comic convention prices have roughly doubled over the last 10 years, except for SDCC, which shows what happens when the demand for tickets goes up and the supply stays static. They can’t add more badges, so raising the prices encourages people to buy tickets for fewer days, freeing up space for other people on those other days. It sucks for those of us who want to buy tickets, but it’s textbook Adam Smith.

But wait! I looked at other fan conventions at the time as well!

  1. GenCon 2017 cost $90 for pre-reg/$120 standard, up from $60/$75 in 2008
  2. DragonCon 2018 cost $105, up from $90 in 2008
  3. WorldCon 2018 (San Jose) has only gone up to $210, compared to $200 for Denver in 2008
  4. WesterCon 2018 (Denver) is $60, same as in 2008!
  5. Loscon 2018 is $35, again, same as in 2008

These have climbed a lot less. GenCon jumped 1.5x instead of 2x, and the more traditional sci-fi/fantasy cons have only increased a little bit, if at all.

It reminds me of a discussion at Chicon 7, the last WorldCon I attended in 2012, about the changing face of fandom. Fan culture has exploded in my lifetime, but traditional sci-fi/fantasy con attendance has stayed static. Fans are interacting online, or going to anime/comic conventions instead. And that lines up very neatly with the prices of the comic conventions vs. the more traditional cons.

In any case, it’s worth noting: WorldCon is now cheaper than SDCC. And you get to vote for the Hugos!

Posted on
by

The Verge ponders: Has the internet been overtaken by the eldritch horror of Yog-Sothoth?

We’ve got this dimension right next to ours, that extends across the entire planet, and it is just brimming with nightmares. We have spambots, viruses, ransomware, this endless legion of malevolent entities that are blindly probing us for weaknesses, seeking only to corrupt, to thieve, to destroy.
—Astercrash

It’s a joke, of course. And it would make for an interesting story. But it’s scarier that we’ve created the awfulness ourselves.

Update Feb 2023: With some of the AI-generated art and writing going around these days, the cosmic horror comparison seems even more apt.

Posted on
by

Last night, I did something I haven’t done in ages: I read a bunch of this week’s new comics.

Over the last two years I’ve gotten behind on just about every comic book I read, and the further behind I get, the harder it is for me to catch up. (Making things worse: I stopped organizing comics as I got them, so I had to find a solid run in order to catch up on it.) After a couple of colds kept me on the couch earlier this year, I started finally making some headway, and I’ve reached the point where I’m current on six — count them: six ongoing comics:

Saga: The sci-fi drama about family is also the book I’ve kept up with the best, despite the fact that I absolutely must wait until the inquisitive six-and-a-half year old is in bed before I open the book. I did fall four months behind at one point, after Isabel’s disappearance. I just couldn’t bring myself to pick it up for a while. I didn’t want to know who was next.

Astro City: This one was “easy” to fall behind on because it’s isolated from other series and the stories tend to be short by modern standards. This also made it really easy to catch up on ~15 issues because I could read one or two at a time and still get a full story. The sequels to classics were fun, and I’m fascinated by what’s been revealed about the Broken Man.

Flash: This book really goes by fast. Seriously, with double-shipping, I keep picking up an issue and discovering that I’m already two or three behind.

Titans: I missed an issue of the crossover earlier this year, and my local shop sold out of it, and I finally decided to just buy the missing issue digitally and plow through. I really want to like this book more than I do, but I’m beginning to think it may be time to drop it after the current story ends. (It’s still better than the DEO kids era)

Jessica Jones: I was a fan of Alias back in the day, and while this is a little more plugged into the mainstream Marvel Universe than I remember that book being, it’s still got the same snarky sensibility. Just reading her complaining to Maria Hill about LMDs was hilarious.

Lady Mechanika: The first series of this steampunk adventure was delayed so long I decided to wait until it was done before reading any further. And then the gap hit. I felt so bad at last year’s Long Beach Comic Con when I talked to the writer and had to admit to her that I hadn’t read it in over a year. I finally caught up, so if I run into her or the artist this year, I can actually talk about the comic! My favorite has been “Tablet of Destinies,” both in terms of story and for the way it reframed alchemy as the misunderstood remnants of ancient nuclear physics.

I’m still behind on I Hate Fairyland and Saucer State (and Shutter, but that’s finished), but I’m at the point where I’m able to re-evaluate my pull list and take another stab at paring down my collection. Which has led to some interesting decisions (but that’s for another post).

I also finally got around to: Continue reading →

Posted on
by

I’ve been thinking a lot about Robert J. Sawyer’s Quantum Night the last few months. It links human cruelty, psychopathy, and mob behavior to the nature of consciousness, mostly focusing on the main characters but playing out against a global crisis brought on by a rising tide of xenophobia.

More recently, I’ve been thinking about Frameshift. His 1997 novel deals with (among other things) eugenics, Neanderthals, Nazis, and health insurance companies doing everything they can to avoid covering people with pre-existing conditions.

I can’t imagine why that keeps coming to mind….

Posted on
by

Went with the family to see Space Shuttle Endeavour and a Pixar-themed exhibit on computer animation at the California Science Center.

The 6YO loved the Pixar exhibit, which broke down all the steps to creating a computer-animated movie into separate hands-on centers where you could do things like…

  • Apply different textures and bump maps to an object.
  • Rig a character for movement.
  • Change the lighting of a scene (real or virtual).
  • Define a shape in a 3D grid and watching the computer rotate it (way too much time on this one).
  • Create your own stop-motion animation by moving an actual desk lamp.

The only way we got him out was to point out that the museum was closing, and we only had 10 minutes left to get to the touch pools he’d said he wanted to visit. As it turned out, the pools shut down about two minutes before we got there, but staff was willing to let him look at the starfish. And we did catch the last desert flash flood simulation of the day.

As for the shuttle…he wasn’t impressed. He insisted on taking the simulator ride, but the real thing? I guess it’s old news when the whole fleet’s already been shut down by the time you start hanging onto long-term memories. 🤷

Admittedly, a big aluminum hut isn’t as suitable a viewing area for Endeavour as open space in broad daylight, surrounded by an enthusiastic crowd. Though that might have been the fact that it was my first time getting up close. On the other hand, this time I could see both sides. Heck, I could walk under it!

There is a new building in the works, where they’ll be displaying it with one of the external tanks in launch position. I’m sure it will lead to plenty of cartoons and movies where someone goes to the museum, breaks into the shuttle and blasts off.

I couldn’t make the building line up with my memories of visits when I was younger, back when it was the Museum of Science and Industry. The only thing I could match up at all were the wall facing the Exposition Park rose garden, and some of the buildings by the parking lot (a sunken structure now, but I remember it being flat).

Then again, what I remember are specific exhibits more than the layout: a big math/physics exhibit, a chicken incubator, and a multi-screen cartoon about energy sources and engine types called “The Water Engine.” (Each screen has a character talking up internal combustion, flywheels, mag-lev, electric, etc. I still quote the Peter Lorre-inspired fuel-cell scientist saying “And then…we burn the hydrogen!”)

It turns out there’s a good reason nothing fit my memory: They tore down the whole building in the late 1990s, preserving only that one wall!