All right! Buckle up for your North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC) after action report.
What is NASFiC? “A NASFiC is held in North America in any year where the Worldcon is outside of North America.” This year, Worldcon was in Glasgow, so NASFiC was held in Buffalo, NY.
Which is entirely why I went. It was close. I live in Pittsburgh, and the con was being held in Buffalo, NY, which is just a few hours away. Practically in my back yard. I figured I might never have this chance again, so I might as well grab it.
Based on the attendees, it felt like this was an older demographic. I’m not used to feeling like one of the younger guys in the room. Though that might be because the younger folks went to Glasgow this year, and the older folks stayed home.
If there was a recurring theme this convention, it was “What works for me might not work for you”. That wasn’t the official theme, but it kept coming up.
Some highlights of the panels I participated in, and other events…
Intersection of Religion & SF/Fantasy - I was the only “live” person on the panel, and there were technical difficulties. So I ended up doing this alone for the first ten minutes or so. After that, we slowly had other panelists joining us. At which point there were volume problems, and what seemed like an audio delay that caused continuing minor confusions. It wasn’t horrible, but it could have been so much better. Brenda Clough was fascinating, and I wish I’d had the opportunity to panel with her again.
The Rise of AI in Writing panel was particularly interesting - especially with Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld Magazine on the panel, given the problems that publication has had with AI-generated submissions in the past. Pauline Chow did a wonderful job as the moderator. We also had D. G. Valdron, who brought both a writer’s and a lawyer’s perspective to the panel. We all agreed generative AI and analytical AI were two different things, and confined our discussion to generative AI. I don’t think any of us there were in favor of the current AI writing at all. Interestingly, Neil mentioned that even with new LLMs, there was barely a change in generative AI output. Which follow my own statement: it’s all statistics, and without significant changes, you just have very good random word generators.
I ended Friday with an Author’s Reading from “Harrold of the Gods”, my story in ZNB Presents: Year Two. Better than my reading at LibertyCon, I think. Practice makes perfect.
Saturday started with my Autograph Session. I knew I wasn’t going to get anyone there, so why bother? Ah! Nobody came around, but I got to sit with Richard Sparks for my session. Richard was an absolutely charming gentleman. Then I got to sit with Alan Dean Foster for a while because he was the next fellow in line, and he told me it would be OK if I sat around for a bit. I did, long enough to see that he was going to be very busy talking to fans. Before I left, though, I got to tell him that I was writing in the Car Wars universe - inspired by his story, “Why Johnny Can’t Speed” - and gave him a copy of One October Night.
Small Press is Alive and Well was interesting. I was the smallest small press represented - Alpha Mercs Press, two total publications to date! There was lots of good back and forth among is all. J.F. Holmes from Cannon Publishing, Joshua Palmatier of Zombies Need Brains, and Neil Clarke were all there and talking about their experiences. It was particularly interested to hear about the very different magazine experiences between Clarkesworld (quite successful) and ZNB Presents, which shut down due to lack of funding.
How to Make Writing Work was next. This was all about what you need to do to work as a writer - the art of getting words on the page. Hint: it’s not an art, even though it may be different for everybody. It’s a job, and in some cases, “sheer psychotic determination” as I think Matthew S. Rotundo put it. Michael Green Jr. was on the panel as well; a wonderful fellow, I ran into him a number of times throughout the con.
Saturday started with the Care and Feeding of Critique Groups. Got to sit on that one with Alex Shvartsman and Joshua Palmatier. More discussion the differences between in-person and online support groups, and about how what works for you may not work for everybody. Alex and the other panelists got a copy of One October Night, because I wasn’t about to haul all of them home, and why not?
The Flavors of AI panel was more about what kind of AIs we might run into, both near future, and far future. One of the interesting things is that we had a couple of fellows in the audience who kept on saying things like, “Oh, yeah, the DOD did that back in 1998.” Lesson learned: if you’re going to do hard SF, or even relatively firm SF, you’ve got to do your research and make sure your idea isn’t already two decades old!
My last panel of the con was on Ghost Stories, and it was awesome! It was indeed terrifying from the start. Pauline Chow was supposed to moderate, but was feeling under the weather, so I got catapulted into that spot. Christine Cohen and B.A. Chepaitis did a fantastic job of making me look like I knew what I was doing, though, and we had a great time talking about all sorts of stuff both eerie, bone-chiling, and musical (there are more ghost songs than you would think). Christine got a copy of the 2024 High Caliber Awards anthology for her troubles, while B.A. got a copy of One October Night.
Other highlights: Seeing Ben Yalow. Hanging out with the Steel City Writer, Zane Voss. Hitting up Alex Shvartsman at his kaffekalatch for info on how to run a Kickstarter, and how to invite headliners to an anthology. Sitting in on an improv storytelling session with J. F. Holmes, B.A. Chepaitis, and Michael Green Jr. where they came up with the catellephant. Dinner with Zane and Bryan Maes, the marketing director for Cannon.
All in all, a decent weekend. Would I do it again? Honestly, probably not. I didn’t sell any books - it wasn’t that kind of convention. With very few exceptions, the connections I made here were ones I just as well could have made at other cons. A full WorldCon might be different, though. It will be interesting to see how this stacks up against the World Fantasy Convention in October.
Thank you for sharing. The time spent with other creatives is well worth the trip even if you don't attend this convention in the future. Sounds like you had a blast.