Around Seattle: Eastside Trains
A railfan’s paradise with the largest selection of model trains west of the Mississippi
Month: July 2025
Con-Verse: The Volta: Embracing Verse At Worldcon, and In The Everyday
I am grateful that you have allowed me to share this moment with you all—this historic moment in genre fandom overall—as the first poet laureate in the history of the World Science Fiction Convention.
The World Is Everything: Hothouse by Brian Aldiss
Published in 1962, Hothouse by Brian Aldiss has elicited some pretty strong opinions in its time. Love it or hate it, the book presents a fascinating (although highly improbable) future Earth in which humanity is a trivial lifeform among many (and certainly less interesting than most) and where everything is food!
Local Flavor: Pike Place Market
When you want to get out of the convention center and find a reasonably priced meal, your best bet is the Pike Place Market.
Newsletter July 2025: The Schedule is Live!
Our schedule is live and still being added to; our merchandise store is open; Hugo Award voting closes soon; announcing our film festival winners; our Fringe calendar has been expanded and is looking for volunteers; race kinetic sculptures in a Sunday workshop; there are two remaining business meeting sessions; and childcare services are available through KiddieCorp.
Fantastic Fiction: Return of the Body-Hopping Supervillain: The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, West Germany experienced a boom of crime movies featuring mysterious masterminds, outlandish plots, and bizarre murder methods, shot in atmospheric black and white and frequently harkening back to the expressionist cinema of the silent era. The most interesting of these were the Dr. Mabuse films, based on a supervillain introduced during Germany’s Weimar Republic.
Around Seattle: Leavenworth
Leavenworth is a Bavarian-style town about two hours from downtown Seattle and is perfect for outdoor and indoor activities—especially great food and drink.
Fantastic Fiction: The Strugatsky Brothers in 1962
Prolific and clever at getting by the Soviet censors, the Strugatsky brothers brought us fascinating tales of alien intelligences guiding Earth’s evolution, time travel, space exploration, and much more. Arkady Strugatsky, a technical translator and editor, and his brother Boris, a computer mathematician at Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory, are often regarded as the greatest Russian science fiction authors of the 20th century.
Local Flavor: Pho
After the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, it wasn’t long until Vietnamese restaurants started popping up to serve food from back home to a region that just couldn’t get enough of their hot noodle soups.
Fantastic Fiction: Resistance
In my teens I was profoundly affected by a small number of books that I read. As a result of reading them I became intensely interested in the politics of pacifism and the strategies of conflict resolution and resistance.