SF: MisCon

Memorial Day weekend means a trip to Missoula, MT for MisCon.

I've never been to WorldCon, but I've been to a national-sized one that was held on a year WorldCon was out of the U.S.A. So far, I like the smaller, regional cons, like MisCon, the best. It's possible that I just get lost at the medium-sized and larger cons since I don't know enough people in the biz. Yet the uber-big WorldCon might have enough star power to make it the best, overpowering my lostness. I won't know til I go.

If you poke around the WorldCon site, you will find the Hugo Award finalists. Some good stuff in there. Here are a couple of links to PDFs of two of the stories I liked, which are both in the "Best Novella" category. Hugos are a "people's choice" kind of award. Most other awards in the SF and Fantasy genres are by boards or professional societies such as the Nebula.

James Patrick Kelly
"Burn"
A planet's inhabitants confront the new owners.

Robert J. Sawyer
"Identity Theft" — a hard-boiled detective story set on Mars — first appeared in Down These Dark Spaceways, edited by Mike Resnick and published by the Science Fiction Book Club.