Of Tragic Loss, SF Conventions, and Some Ridiculous Public Figures
I'm not going to get into my history with Nunzio. He was a problematic person in my childhood, a tough kid with a propensity for getting into trouble, sometimes of a serious nature. We did not consistently get along, but we also hung out at times. I lost track of him in high school and haven't seen him since the mid-1980s. I don't really know anything about who he became as an adult. He lost his older brother to cancer a dozen years ago, and now he has had to bury his son.
The obituary does not give a cause of death, but acknowledges thanks to various medical people and the local police. According to the person who gave me the link to the obituary, Nunzio Jr. died of an overdose. It's possible; my home town has been hit hard by opioids. However, I have that information from a friend who no longer lives in town who heard it from yet another former classmate. I don't know if the information is correct.
The cause at this point isn't all that relevant.
No one should have to bury a child, a person in their twenties.
The information came to me while I participated in the online version of Michigan's Penguicon. I was about to moderate a panel on current shows that carry on the legacy of Star Trek, shows about boldly going into space. The person who sent me that information introduced me to Trek by mentioning it in either kindergarten or Grade One, that there was this show set in space, in the future, and it was better than Lost in Space. The original series was already then in reruns, but it hadn't been in reruns for long.
Some technical and access issues aside, the convention went well. Given the scale of the event, the inevitability of technical issues, and that fact that most lie beyond the organizers' control, I'd say the con went very well indeed.
Other People's Events
I stopped by the lobby and some parties-- online parties are a bizarre concept, but discussions were often fascinating-- and attended some other panels that I was not on, relating to writing, creating cultures, and Dark Matter. A friend ran that one. He billed it as the best SF show we never saw. That needs must be at least half-true in my case; I have never seen it. My wife went to other panels related to cryptocurrency and making one's home more self-sufficient. Penguicon has always reached far outside the range of SF and Fantasy.
Events with which I was directly involved:
Building Better Aliens
Brian Aldiss once said the problem with American SF writers is that they want to write about Mars but know nothing about Indonesia. In short, a good deal of SF features fantastic and speculative concepts locked into the assumptions of the writer's culture. We had an interesting discussion of that concept, with reference to extra-terrestrials. Our cultural, special, and planetary biases show. After discussing that very fact, a panelist wondered about intelligent species that aren't mammals. A viable point and one worth discussing, sure-- we have models for other kinds of intelligences right here on earth-- but why need any Terran taxonomy apply?
Reading
I read for a small audience on Saturday. However, many people encountered problems figuring out how the reading channel worked, and my co-reader failed to make it on at all for his turn. It might be worth noting that a literal rocket scientist in attendance could not get the particular tech they'd set aside for the readings to function properly.
To Boldly Seek Discovery in the Expanse: The Voyage Continues... With Orville and Picard on the Lower Deck
As anticipated, this proved a very successful panel that discussed any number of current series, as well as what we would like to see in ones that might be launched in the future. We went overtime and the panel ended mid-comment.
Fandom as an Opera
Sunday afternoon represents a recognized dead-slot at a convention, kind of like being scheduled opposite the costume competition or the Hugos at Worldcon. However, our discussion of the depiction of SF fandom drew a decent-sized audience, and I think everyone mentioned at least one book, comic, or movie that I hadn't previously encountered. Depictions have increased and have grown more positive as fandom grows more mainstream. "Positive" for me means, accurate. The fans in any given work don't have to be role models, as one finds people in our midst who are great to be with, and others who exhibit decidedly bad behavior. Not all of my fannish characters are good people, but I hope they are credible and interesting human beings.
I had not realized that the events of The Jane Austen Book Club included some crossover with SF fandom. I suppose I'll have to read it.
Sub/Urban Folklore and Online Mythology
Although we ran short of time and could only scratch the surface of topics, the panel was well-attended by people with a lot of interesting questions. We addressed the dangerous side of contemporary folklore-- conspiracy bred of an airy word, for example-- but people were far more interested that night in cryptids and things that go bump in the night, and that panel, which I've given variants of before, tends to follow the audience's lead.
We can always find new, strange beliefs spreading online and elsewhere. Today, we hear that the Centner Academy, a private wellness-focused elementary school in Florida announced it would not allow teachers who have received a COVID vaccine near students, due to their belief that a vaccine can somehow transfer adverse effects to people who have not received it. Furthermore, staff who receive the vaccine might not be permitted back next year.
This is ridiculous in the extreme. How can a vaccine skip from one person to another and influence, for example, some unvaccinated person's menstrual cycle, as one of Centner's founders maintains? I have been told that a vaccine made from a live attenuated virus could, in theory, be transmitted to another person, possibly through sexual contact, but (1) none of the COVID vaccines contain a live virus and (2) if students at an elementary school are at risk of sexual transmission of anything from their teachers, the school has a much bigger problem than adverse reactions to a vaccine.
The web also exploded with claims that Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro believes that COVID vaccines might turn one into a crocodile. It's clear he was using hyperbole. While launching his country's vaccine program, he cautioned people, saying "In the Pfizer contract it's very clear: we're not responsible for any side effects. If you turn into a crocodile, it's your problem." Anyone with respect for context can understand what he means. At the same time, the Brazilian president has had a number of close shaves with reality and good sense, and the misunderstanding couldn't have happened to a better man.