I went to Capclave last weekend, my first time at the convention in several years. It was much as I remembered it: smaller than what I’m used to in New England, with a focus on written sf, and a really good time.
The hotel is under reconstruction, so, though it looks like a huge, gorgeous space, it wasn’t accessible this year. Next year it should be. The convention was spread out over several rooms in the meeting area, and intermingled with a 55th high school reunion and some other event, but that wasn’t really a difficulty. The panels (in two rooms) were interesting and well attended; the dealers’ room was small but packed with lots of good stuff; the con suite was comfortable, well stocked, and always people with fans and pros mingling, talking, playing games, and hanging out; and the room parties were reminiscent of much larger conventions. So congratulations all around; Capclave was a great time.
My own attendance was a last-minute decision, but the committee graciously squeezed me onto three panels (and there were several more I attended as an audience member, which is something I don’t normally do). The panels I saw (or participated on) were:
“Small Press Publishing” with Roger MacBride Allen, John Betancourt, Neil Clarke, Lawrence M. Schoen, George Scithers, and Sean Wallace. As with all panels on “how do I become a publishing professional,” the main advice was “don’t.” But if you’re dead-set on going into small press publishing, the panelists had lots of good advice, both for those looking at the traditional paper publishing route as well as those following the newer call of electronic publishing.
“Don’t go there. Unless you really want to” with George Scithers, Steve Stiles, Lawrence Watt-Evans, and me. George didn’t make it, but there was a last-minute replacement whose name I’ve forgotten (if you’re out there, please tell me). We discussed the question “Are there any taboos in science fiction, fantasy, or horror?” And came to the conclusion that, other than killing kittens, there doesn’t seem to be anything that we can’t write about (either that, or we weren’t creative enough to imagine what those taboo subjects might be).
“So you want to put together an anthology?” with Davey Beauchamp, Kathryn Cramer, Ellen Datlow, Lawrence M. Schoen, and Darrell Schweitzer. I only caught the last few minutes of the panel, but what I got was a good discussion of how you put together an anthology by a panel full of people who have done just that.
“Heinlein Centennial” with Roger MacBride Allen, Michael Dirda, David Hartwell, John G. Hemry, Yoji Kondo, and George Scithers. They discussed Robert A. Heinlein’s impact on science fiction and his legacy in the field. Hartwell is editing what may be the definitive biography of Heinlein, and had some interesting bits of information to share from it.
“Why is ‘Genre’ a Dirty Word?” with Kathryn Cramer, Dennis Danvers, Scott Edelman, Mary Jo Putney, and me. We discussed just that, and decided that, by and large, it isn’t a dirty word so much as a marketing tool; perhaps one which has run its course. There was mention of the fact that, before Hugo Gernsback, science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories appeared in magazines alongside stories from every other genre, but when Gernsback decided to separate them out into a sf-specific magazine, the genres became ghettoized.
The “60th Birthday Party for the Washington Science Fiction Association” was a gathering celebrating a lot of years of Capclave’s organizing society. At the party, the winner of the first WSFA Small Press Award was announced (see this article for more coverage of the award).
The Saturday night parties kept me up far later than I should have been, but social mingling like this is one of the great things about attending conventions.
“LibraryThing and other bibliophilic sites” with Colleen Cahill, David Louis Edelman, Barbara Krasnoff, and Lawrence M. Schoen told us some of the fun things they do with these sites, but I’m left with the question of why I would want or need to post the contents of my library on this site.
“First Sentence, First Paragraph: What Does It Take To Grab You?” with Brenda Clough, Ellen Datlow, Allen Wold, and me. We talked about this topic more from the purchasing editor’s point of view, on the assumption that, once a story or novel has been accepted and published, it’s probably got what it takes to grab the reader’s attention. And we decided that, while stories do require excellent opening lines, they also need to have excellent second lines, and third lines, and so on, all the way to the end. Also, some stories suffer from having an incredibly polished, excellent opening line, and then following it up with merely good following lines.
In short, it was a good convention, both from the professional and the personal points of view, and I’ll make the effort to get back next year.
Ellen Datlow, one of the guests of honor, has posted her pictures of the convention on this page.
Scott Edelman, the editor of Sci Fi Magazine, has his photos on this page.
If you’ve got photos of Capclave available, let me know, and I’ll add a link to your page, too.