25th Anniversary WOTF/IOTF Event

As You Know, Bob

My story "A Man in the Moon" was the sole Published Finalist in the Writers of the Future Volume XXIV anthology. As a result, I got to go to the WOTF Workshop with K.D. Wentworth and Tim Powers -- and a whole cast of guest speakers -- and also to the WOTF XXIV Event in August 2008.

Alas

Despite still having some eligibility, none of my WOTF XXV entries won anything, so I wasn't going to be sent to the big 25th anniversary bash that WOTF had planned for August 2009 (and the 19th year for the Illustrators of the Future). But... the other day they announced that they were doing streaming video live -- the 8:30pm PDT start translated to 11:30pm EDT.

A Lovely Event


So I just spent about two hours watching my laptop. Frankly, it's not the greatest way to watch video, but it's far better than nothing. (grin) Sound quality was excellent, but the video was running at less than full speed. I ended up refreshing the page for every speaker and every award, to keep them more in sync and to see the illustrations, etc. Don't know how much of that was my DSL/WiFi connection. Firefox worked better than Safari in Windows XP Pro.

There are twelve stories in this volume, meaning no published finalists. This year they presented the awards in author-illustrator pairs, in the order they appear in the volume. It was really nice to see the illustrations in context with the story titles.

In Case You're Dying To Know

Gold Prize Illustrator Award went to Oleksandra Barysheva.

Gold Prize Writer Award went to Emery Huang.

There were many nice stories, but I particularly liked the twelfth and final pair. The author told of submitting stories when he was a kid twenty years ago. When he got serious about writing, he looked up WOTF and found it was still around. The illustrator told of putting a drawing on the shelf fifteen years ago, rather than send it in. That was one of the drawings he submitted which won his award. Hear this out there? It's never too late.

But I Know These People

Between Clarion in 2004, WOTF in 2008, cons, LJ, etc., I knew a whole lot of the judges and people who run the contest. That's fun. And fellow 2004 Clarionite Amelia Beamer, now an editor at Locus, was there to present an award to the contest for being there for new writers for 25 years.

One Tiny Omit

At the end they played credits which listed all the WOTF and IOTF winners, starting with Volume XXV. Of course, my name didn't appear with Volume XXIV, because I was a Published Finalist and technically not a winner. Okay.

What? They listed the Published Finalists for Volume XXI and other volumes? And NOT Volume XXIV?

Aw, gee. I got gypped. (frown) The story of my life. (grin) I'll show 'em! (double-grin)

Anyway

I'm glad they ran the streaming video this year and hope they do it again in the future. Not the same as being there, but still -- it was nice.

Dr. Phil

Zeppelins R Us!

At Last Night's WOTF XXV Event

I didn't include this in my comments on the 25th Anniversary Writers of the Future event because I wanted to look stuff up first. But one of the things at the events are speakers who work in visionary industries. In 2008, they had the president of one of the civilian space launch firms. This year, when steampunk abounds in spec fic, they had the guy who dreamed up the World Sky Race. A race around the world in airships, over all the major cities and wonders of the world you can think of.

And how cool is this? The guy announced that the Gold Award winners for the WOTF (Emery Huang) and IOTF (Oleksandra Barysheva) contests would be given VIP passes to fly on the competition airships. One of the writers I met at WOTF last year posted this on Facebook early this morning:

Steven Savile They had a montage up of all 500 book covers from previous winners at wotf, familiar faces zipping by, a dance troop and Emery Huang just won a trip on the Cairo leg of the World Airship Race 2010 - how steampunk is that? Racing to the Pyramids in a blimp!

This Makes Me Smile

If you go to the race's homepage, you can see the computer generated video they showed at the event.

The other year somebody did a TV commercial which had whales swimming through the sky. This reminds me of that, which is why I say this makes me smile.

Absurd, you say? Sure. Aren't most races? Can they pull this off? Some of the web comments I saw listed in Google talk about World Sky Race 2010, and the emblem in the video has MMX (2010). But the header on the homepage now says World Sky Race 2011 -- and given that this is the first time I've heard of it, I'm sure an extra year will pay off.

The thing is, the visionary was saying they've got UNESCO support -- and permission from the President of Egypt to make landing just south of the Great Pyramids. "Is that a great parking space or what?" he joked. The other point they make is the visibility. You can't miss big colorful airships gliding over major cities -- they expect more people will see this competition live and in person in one day over, say, L.A., than saw the Beijing Olympics live in person last year. Something to think about.

You know, I was skeptical of the Red Bull Air Races the other year. Air racing in high performance propeller planes was huge in the 1930s, see The Aviator for example, but it has toiled in somewhat obscurity for decades. Yet this past year I saw the Red Bull Air Races showing live on TVs in sports bars, and my aviation students talk about how big it has gotten. But most people don't understand competitive air races over courses -- this airship race around the world is much more grokkable. And it will showcase tourist destinations everywhere, so I think countries really could get behind this. It could be huge.

If nothing else, it will be beautiful. Should the races really happen, I may have to make a trip to where I can see them. Live, and in person.

Dr. Phil