Book oriented SF conventions in Canada

[james_davis_nicoll]

I am appallingly ignorant of conventions in my own nation. If I were looking for something roughly equivilent to Minicon or Boskone, preferably in the urban corridor, what cons should I be looking at?

Comments

[pameladean]

This sounds as if I didn't enjoy Keycon, which isn't the case. But Keycon always seemed to be a rather skin-of-the-teeth business, and you never knew quite what would be happening. Also I always wanted to copy-edit their flyers, although I am sure no scientific study has ever proven that ill-spelled and ill-written publicity material means a convention is no fun.

P.

PR material

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I must admit Ad Astra's current website is something of a turn-off for me.

Re: PR material

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

I would agree with that - even I could do better, and I'm a mainframe programmer by trade.

However, the con itself is a lot of fun. twiddler is one of the chairs, and he's working hard to run a good con this year.

Besides, how can you pass up a con that has a chocolate tasting, scotch tasting, wine tasting and a beefcake/cheescake charity event?

Re: PR material

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Presentation matters. I know, it makes me sound like an evil marketing person but someone who had no idea what Ad Astra was would look at that website and keep going.

I don't drink alcohol and as part of my "Let's at least try to keep my weight measured in three digits" I no longer eat any sweet I did not make from scratch myself.

Re: PR material

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

Presentation matters. I know, it makes me sound like an evil marketing person but someone who had no idea what Ad Astra was would look at that website and keep going.

I'm not disagreeing with you in the least. :)

I don't drink alcohol and as part of my "Let's at least try to keep my weight measured in three digits" I no longer eat any sweet I did not make from scratch myself.

Hmm... can't think of anything else offhand that distinguishes Ad Astra from any other literary con, then. It's still a good time, though.

(Though you don't actually have to eat the cheesecake at the beefcake/cheesecake event; you could just pay $5 to have some cute young thing sit on your lap for five minutes, and the money would go to Casey House. I don't think they care so long as it stays within the bounds of legality, decency, and comfort of the servers. And at Ad Astra, sometimes I think "decency" is a relative term. ;) )

Re: PR material

[papersky.livejournal.com]

"Decency" is a relative term ;)

I was planning to take my fourteen year old son to Ad Astra, would you say it was inappropriate for him?

I've never seen anything like what you describe at British or US cons.

Re: PR material

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say it was inappropriate at all. And perhaps you haven't seen it before because it goes on behind closed doors. If you don't want your son to see certain things, you shouldn't have anything to worry about.