foto by Beth GwinnMore pictures of me (Frank Wu) and assorted important and upcoming sci-fi and fantasy writers, editors and artists, whom I have had the pleasure of consorting with.
CONJOSE: WORLDCON, 2002
These photos were taken at the pre-Hugo awards party. One of the cool things about being a Hugo nominee was that I got to go to this small, exclusive party, which meant that I got to hang with all the other nominees. I had the ends of my hair dyed especially for this WorldCon - normally it's black, but I had the ends bleached and then the tips dyed blue (a color called Blue Mayhem!) with an intermediate band of lavender. And I wore a tux with a matching blue vest (this was Campbell Award nominee Ken Wharton's idea - he said, If I wore a tuxedo, he would, too).
At this party, Bob Eggleton came up to me - this was the first time he'd ever been the one to start a conversation with me. I'd seen him at cons for years. And he might have known whom I was because he was a judge when I won the Illustrators of the Future contest. I think I also pissed him off once by mistakenly sitting next to him at a panel at Boskone. But this was the first time the mighty Bob Eggleton had ever wanted to speak to me. He wanted to know about my blue hair, which is now longer (!!!) than his, since he got 8 inches cut off recently (though it's still long), and mine was definitely bluer. He said he was thinking of doing something like what I did, but I beat him to the punch. This instigated a huge HAIR WAR, with much hair flipping back and forth at each other between Bob and me, while flash bulbs went off. Then Warren Lapine of DNA pubs joined us, and he had actually been in a big-hair rock band, so that's when the pandemonium really started. Hair, hair, everywhere. People had to tell us to stop. Here is a foto of this monumental hair-toss published in the Nov. 2002 issue of Locus magazine (foto by Beth Gwinn and used with permission):Warren Lapine (mostly obscuring Angela Kessler), me and Bob Eggleton (back to us).
Some other fotos and stories from this party (with the same goofy, over-amped expression on my face in every foto):
With Bjo Trimble and John Trimble. At this party, I finally met Bjo Trimble, whose book "The Star Trek Concordance" changed my life. And I told her so. Trek was my intro to science fiction, and that book helped me understand that it wasn't just a bunch of episodes, but a whole universe. The book taught me about history, about storytelling, about science, about spaceships and costumes and art and alien worlds... As I sit here at work, I use skills I picked up from Bjo in collecting and organizing huge amounts of information. (The book, she says, was originally written on hundreds and thousands of index cards stacked in her living room - and she lived in perpetual fear that someone would open the front door and let in a Big Wind.) When I was growing up, I wanted to be Spock, to know everything about everything. And that was one of the things that led me into getting a Ph.D. in bacterial genetics. This Bjo found to be the most gratifying thing to hear - because, she said, she didn't receive much real schooling as a kid. She was given a sack lunch and then told, Go stand around unsupervised with those other kids for a few hours. And that was school. So to hear that her book written with so much care so long ago changed my life and led me into science really was a big thrill for her, I think.
With Hal Clement. Mr. Clement was the first big-name sci-fi author I'd ever met in person, and that was at URCON, the University of Rochester con. I had recently read Clement's Cycle of Fire and Mission of Gravity. I loved the idea of a planet that spins so fast that it's flattened... and thus the gravity at the equator is much greater than that at the poles. Hal - always known for impeccable physics and astronomy in his stories - was wearing a button that said, "The shape, size, mass and motion of the Earth are "only" theories, too!"
With Ellen Datlow, just hours before she usurped Gardner Dozois and walked away with the Hugo for best editor.
Jim Terman and Gregory Benford. The highlight of ConJose for Jim was being on a panel with Vernor Vinge and Benford. However, Benford was late and Vinge was shy, so Jim and Ken Wharton did most of the talking early on. Jim was pontificating about how perceptions of time depending on an individual's frame of reference. What time it was, he said, might depend on where you were and how fast you were going. Just at that moment, Benford walked in, as if on cue, and Jim blurted out, "And in Gregory Benford's own frame of reference, he's on time."
With Jim and Vernor Vinge.
1 
2
1. With Mark R. Kelly, editor of Locus magazine online, which I check probably five times a day to see what's up. Mark later won the first Hugo (congrats!) ever given for best website. 2. Again, with the ubiquitous Ken Wharton.
With Connie Willis. At Chicon - Worldcon 2000 - the guy who won the Hugo for best novelette (or best novella, whatever) got up on stage, all excited and everything, and shouted out, "Most of all, I'd like to thank Connie Willis, for not writing a novelette this year!" I for one am glad that Connie is sticking with writing. I asked her if she had any plans to move into art, fan, semi-pro or pro. She said she couldn't draw way out of a paper bag. That gives me at least a little hope!
Also at WorldCon, I went to a party thrown by Author Services, which administers the Writers and Illustrators of the Future contests. A nice lady there had a couple iguanas, and was kind enough to let us hold them. She said that the iguanas were actually smarter than cats or dogs. I look a little weird in this picture, but wouldn't you, if you had an iguana on your arm?
(foto by Alan F.
Beck)
The pickie of me and the iguana was taken at the Writers & Illustrators of the Future party, where we also celebrated Frank Kelly Freas' 80th birthday! Here we are around the cake:
Jae
Brim, Gary Shockley, me, Laura Brodian Freas, Frank Kelly Freas
Jae was a quarterly Writers of the Future winner; Gary was a WOTF grand prize winner, I was an Illustrators of the Future grand prize winner; Laura and Kelly are judges. (This foto was also by Alan F. Beck.)
One last random (composited) WorldCon foto. From a panel of all the nominees for the John W. Campbell award for best new writer:
Tobias Buckell (writer of many cool stories); Alex Irvine (of the newly minted novel A Scattering of Jades); John Hertz (moderator); Ken Wharton (Divine Intervention); and Wen Spencer (Alien Taste). The one nominee not in attendance - Jo Walton - was the one who won.
And just when you thought all the WorldCon pictures were done... Well, there were thousands of people there, and every single one had a camera...
Anyway, here are some photos I got from author Lindsey Johnson, who's shopping around her fantasy novel. Here's Lindsey:
And here is another foto of the lovely Lindsey modeling the dragon T-shirt I did for the Speculations.com website. This shirt (shameless self-promotion alert!) is available for not very much money at Cafepress.com. The third image is from the cover art I did for Jennifer Barlow's novel Hamlet Dreams, using Linz as a model:
And Lindsey's friend Lara Wells, who had sewn this incredible gown that she wore around the convention:
One of the cool things I get to do at cons is go have lunch with my sci-fi friends whom I basically only see a couple times a year... at cons. Here we are all off to go get food:
Ken Wharton, Bill Pierce, Jim Terman, Gary Shockley, me (with my blue hair held up by Lori), Lara, Lori Ann White, Rebecca Inch-Partridge, and Rebekah Jensen. If you've read the previous pages, you've already heard about all these friends of mine, except Bill Pierce. Seen here at his first WorldCon. He's a writer in the making, with a story that got a rewrite request, that I keep kicking Bill to finish re-writing. It's a publication - his first - waiting to happen! Get with the program, Bill! :o)
And, another group shot, which by chance, is almost in exactly the reverse order:
Rebekah Jensen, Rebecca Inch-Partridge, Jim Terman, Lori Ann White, me, Lara, Gary Shockley, Lindsey Johnson, Ken Wharton.
Here we are, again posing for a group foto, but looking particularly goofy:
(Jim Terman,
Rebecca Inch-Partridge, me, artist Rob Hole, Jr., and Gary Shockley looking on
in slight bemusement.)
Sometimes the group is so big that we can't all sit together in the same restaurant. We had this problem a couple times, as we added unto what Rob Hole, Jr., called our "food amoeba."
Here (below) are: Charlie Petit aka Jaws aka John Savage; Lori's kung-fu friend Tiffanie McCoy, whom Law describes as a "devoted SF fan and budding writer, and kick-ass martial artist, who went to China with me"; Raechel Henderson aka "Roach" and her husband Matt Moon (both of Eggplant Productions, publishers of Jintsu e-texts and Jackhammer ezine), Lori Ann White, Gary Shockley, and Lindsey Johnson.
And of course at lunch I torture my friends with questions like, "What are your creative goals between now and next year's WorldCon?" That is, when we're not talking about Harlan Ellison. However, in the lulls in conversation, people will occasionally do party tricks. Here Lori has shown us how to make a chicken out of a napkin - but it only works with cloth napkins, not paper.
Yes, this is what sci-fi authors and artists and editors do when they're not writing or drawing or rejecting manuscripts - they're eating or making chickens out of napkins.
Another couple fotos from the November, 2002, issue of Locus magazine (both fotos by Beth Gwinn and used with permission). The one below features the still-ubiquitous Ken Wharton, David Marusek, Cory Doctorow, and Lori Ann White.
And this one (below) is Jae Brim, Susan Yi, Daniel Abraham and Susan Fry:
Daniel has had half a dozen stories in Asimov's, plus a few others in other mags. Susan Fry is an editor at Speculations.
Writer Sean Klein (who has had/will have stories in Strange Horizons and Talebones) told me that Susan Yi is a "Clarion West 2001 graduate and all around great person." How sweet.
Indexed list of fotos of me and luminaries (number indicates the page they're on):
Forrest J. Ackerman 1, Daniel Abraham 5, Carlo Arellano 2, Art car artists 3, Kage Baker 3, Greg Bear 10, Gregory Benford 5, Terry Bisson 9, Diana Blackmom 8, Ken Brady 8, Kent Brewster 2, (I'm Just a) Bill 3, Jae Brim 2 5 12, David Brin 7, Charles N. Brown 9, William Brown 1, Tobias Buckell 5, Jim Burns 8, John Burridge 8, Erwin Bush 2, Chris Butler 3, Jason Carter 11, Ted Chiang 6, Eric Choi 7, Andy Clarkson 2, Hal Clement 5, Rick and Bridget Coila 12, Julie Czerneda 1 (big head Julie) 4 7 12, Ellen Datlow 5, John DeChancie 3, Kim DeMulder 7, Vincent DiFate 1, Cory Doctorow 5, James S. Dorr 6, Denise Duff 2, Bob Eggleton's hair 5 10, Harlan Ellison 7, Charles Coleman Finlay 12, Marina Fitch 2, Frank Kelly Freas 1 3 5, Esther Friesner 7, Susan Fry 5, Chris Garcia 10, Michelle Garrison 8, Gil Gerard 11, Lisa Goldstein 9, Kirsten Gong-Wong 9, Erin Gray 11, Kelly Green 10, Joe Haldeman 6, Jennifer Hall 9, Anthony Head 11, Russ Heath 4, Barb and JC Hendee 8, Alea Henle 6, Jay Arr Henderson 1, Raechel "Roach" Henderson and Matt Moon 5, Howard Hendrix 10, Nina Kiriki Hoffman 1 8, Rob Hole Jr. 10, iguana 5, Rebecca Inch-Partridge 1 5 10, Alex Irvine 5, Jaws 5 10, Rebekah Jensen 1 5 10, Lindsey Johnson 1 4 5 8 10, Tim Johnston 2, Mark R. Kelly 5, Simran Khalsa 12, David Kile 7, James Killus 3, Klingon Survivor 11, Greg Koster 10, Jay Lake 4 8, Geoffrey Landis 8 12, Warren Lapine's hair 5, Deb Layne 8, Lenora Rose 6 12, Aurora Lemieux 8, Natasha Levitan 10, Val Lakey Lindahn and Ron Lindahn 1, Samantha Ling 9, David Marusek 5, Fiona McAuliffe 4, Tiffanie McCoy 5, Terry McGarry 8, Jessie McKenna 4, Besty Mitchell 8, Syne Mitchell 8, Mary Anne Mohanraj 2, Mike Moscoe 8, Derryl Murphy 2, G. David Nordley 9, Jerry Oltion 4, Kathy Oltion 4, Diana Paxson 10, Karen Perry 2 12, Bill Pierce 5 10, Tim Powers 1 2, Sergey Poyarkov 2, Ken Rand 8, Jonathan Richman 6, Kim Stanley Robinson 9, Dianna Rodgers 8, Rhea Rose 8, Jamie Rosen 12, Deborah J. Ross 10, Rowena 7, Robert J. Sawyer 7, Ken Scholes 8, Liz Shannon 8, Heather Shaw 9, Robert Sheckley 6, Diana Sherman 12, Gary Shockley 5 9, Felix Silla 11, Robert Silverberg 7, S.N.Arly 6, Wen Spencer 5, Ted Stetson 8, Carel Struyken 7, Patrick and Honna Swenson 2 8, Isaac Szpindel 7, Jason Taniguchi 7, Bruce Taylor 8, Jim Terman 1 5 9 10 12, Helen Thompson 6, Mark Tiedeman 4, Bjo Trimble 5, Jeffrey Turner 8, Mary Turzillo 12, Carol Ullman 6, James Van Pelt 6, Carrie Vaughn 10, Vernor Vinge 5, Nana Visitor 11, Ray Vukcevich 1 4, Garrett Wang 11, Lara Wells 5, Michelle West 12, Ken Wharton 1 3 4 5 12, Leslie What 8, Michael Whelan 8, Lori Ann White 1 2 3 5 6 8 10 12, Connie Willis 5 9, Eric Witchey 2 4, Jason Wittman 6, Gary K. Wolfe 9, William F. Wu 3, Susan Yi 5, Melissa Yuan-Innes 1.
If you are looking for more fotos from various conventions, check out Mid-American Fan Foto Archive.
