Information

• Beware of Parking Extortion
• A Peek into Georgia Aquarium
• Choices! We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Choices! (Or How the Information Booths Can Help You Navigate Through Dragon*Con)
• Pocket Program and Schedule Grid PDFs for Download
• Daily Dragon Tweets
• Getting Here, There, and Back Again to Here
• New for 2009: The Late Show

The Parsec Awards honor SF and fantasy within the new frontiers of Portable Media. Podcast shows are nominated by fans, and finalists are chosen by a yearly steering committee. Those finalists are then voted on by an independent panel of judges.

Awards are given in several categories ranging from content to audio quality and presented at Dragon*Con, hosted by the Podcast track.

The Dragon*Con Independent Short Film Festival awards ceremony took place on Monday, September 7st. Clips were shown from each of three finalists in 14 categories (Animated Comedy, Animated Fantasy, Animated Science Fiction, Animated Short-Short, Action, Comedy, Dark Comedy, Documentary, Fantasy, Horror, Horror Comedy, Magic Realism, Science Fiction, Thrillers.

Best Animated Short was chosen from the 1st place winners in the four animated categories. Best Short Film was chosen from the 1st place winners …

For the Dragon*Con 2009 blood drive, we registered 2,439 people and drew 2,012 donors—1,836 whole blood, 85 platelets donors, and 92 double red cell.

The drive resulted in a final tally of 2,623 units being put into inventory (140 platelets, 1,843 red cells, and 640 plasmas). That’s 2,623 chances to actively save a life!

Many, many thanks to everyone who donated, to all the wonderful LifeSouth staff who manned the convention for the weekend, and a special thank you to Dr. …

Wings and writers, that was what Dragon*Con meant to me. A few frazzled writers scurry through a crowd of winged—costumed individuals thrilled by anything with “star” in the title. I admit I was wary of this image. I was weird, but was I weird enough? Was Dragon*Con really an impenetrable group of eccentrics who have attended conventions forever?

I was nervous that if I went, I would find the blank faces of the crowd silently, instinctively closing their ranks to keep …

Cheers erupted in the Atrium Ballroom as fans got a second chance to see Star Trek legend Leonard Nimoy.  He began by discussing his early career, including his first film, Zombies of the Stratosphere.  “I thought it would rocket me to stardom,” he said with a wry smile.  After all, “I was the first zombie through the spaceship door.”  Strange that his job was to portray an alien outsider, a role that would eventually make him a science fiction icon.

Nimoy …

It’s the podcast edition of The Dragon*Con Late Show for September 7th, 2009. Brought to you by the Dragon*Con Videography Staff and The Daily Dragon.

The preliminary 2009 Charity Auction proceeds (including the Stargate auction)  total $25,000*! Thank you for your generosity!

[*This figure does not include the Art Auction.]

What makes a book a science fiction or fantasy “classic”? Moderator Van Plexico led his lit experts into inquiries about the ages of SF achievement and what characterizes a classic story. The thorny questions carried the panelist and lively audience from early masterpieces to novels written today. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan and John Carter of Mars series were noted as significant early works that left us with characters and situations which have defied the passage …

This year is Stargate Atlantis star Joe Flanigan’s first year at Dragon*Con.  I sat down with Joe to get his thoughts on his co-stars and the cancellation of Stargate Atlantis, as well as his views on a variety of matters.