'Tis the Season for Science Fiction Conventions

'Tis the season for science fiction conventions in Virginia, North Carolina and elsewhere.

Dragon's Fire (Wikipedia)

Virginia Hey (Wikipedia)

In September, I posted two blogs -- one was a list of science fiction conventions in Virginia and the other was a list for North Carolina. The newly created MystiCon in Roanoke, Va., just was held this past weekend, and coming up this weekend will be two more conventions -- ShevaCon in Roanoke and StellarCon in High Point, N.C. I attended both last year, but this year, I must make the difficult choice of picking only one to attend since they will be held on the same days.

MystiCon took ShevaCon's usual end-of-February date and location as ShevaCon moved a week later to a location with larger accommodation. The larger space seems enticing, but the event doesn't have any guest writers attending who I'm hyped about. It does, however, have Virginia Hey, who played Zhaan in the TV series Farscape, as a guest. Last year, author Kevin J. Anderson (he is known for writing Star Wars and Dune books) attended, as well as Peter Mayhew (who played Chewbacca from Star Wars). I've been attending the convention since around the time Dresden Files author Jim Butcher was a guest years ago before he was well-known and had a SyFy channel series based on his books.

StellarCon this year will feature author Todd McCaffrey, who is known for writing on his mother's Dragonriders of Pern series. (His mother is Grand Master Anne McCaffrey in case you didn't know, but I'm not a big fan of her writing style, though.) There also will be Larry Correia, who wrote Monster Hunter International. Baen publisher Toni Weisskopf will return, which is nice.

Last year's StellarCon had Hugo winner Timothy Zahn (Cascade Point and Star Wars novels), bestseller Michael A. Stackpole (Star Wars novels), and Aaron Allston (Star Wars and Terminator novels) as guests.

Although the two conventions this weekend don't seem as exciting for me this year -- considering the guest writers -- they are always fun to attend, nonetheless. The question is: Which one will I choose to attend?

Here are the links to my blogs listing the science fiction conventions.

List of science fiction conventions in Virginia:
http://www.reidkemper.com/2010/09/list-of-science-fiction-conventions-in.html

List of science fiction conventions in North Carolina:
http://www.reidkemper.com/2010/09/list-of-science-fiction-conventions-in_18.html