Where else would it be natural for one lingerie-clad redhead to hold her sword up as an impromptu mirror for another winged beauty to check her make-up? Why the Dawn Look-Alike Contest, of course!

Backstage was a wondrous array of beauty, grace, and camaraderie.  Rose red, leaf green, deep purple, shiny black, and shimmering silver cloth adorned the back room; wings a-flutter, roses a-bloom, fiery red …

Thirty-five years of rock & roll hit the stage of the Centennial ballroom on Sunday night.  The only band to be nominated for a Science Fiction Hugo award, Jefferson Starship demonstrated that SciFi influence as well as their trademark San Francisco sound.   But the band wasn’t interested in demonstrating anything, or performing …

The only catch to my enjoyment of the Jefferson Starship concert was knowing that I was probably going to miss the Crüxshadows, scheduled in the Regency Ballroom the same night.  But, in typical Dragon*Con fashion, everything was late, so I clung to a wisp of hope.

When I arrived, the darkened Regency room was clustered body-to-body, standing room only.  A throbbing …

Klingon warriors growled; Federation officers grumbled, all impatient for the beauteous and fearsome Klingon lovelies to take the stage for the 2002 Miss Klingon Empire Beauty Pageant. Something had to be done. A valiant Klingon warrior sprang to action. Harassing and terrorizing the audience, he grabbed random people and dragged them …

It’s such a good idea, such an obvious one, that it’s hard to believe that somebody hasn’t done it already.  A television program covering science fiction and science fact, SFN (Science Fiction News) is the brainchild of Don Black, who started the video news magazine on basic cable in 1990.  Since then, he has conducted hundreds of celebrity interviews with …

Some of you were foolish enough to wait till Friday to show up at Dragon*Con, but us clever folks knew to get here early and take in the pre-con activities.  As a good reporter, I knew it was my job to hit every concert …

Edward Scissorhands resembled a statue as he prepared for his walk across the stage. Optimus Prime climbed into his multi-piece 9-foot costume. Pan danced around in merriment.

The audience was riveted as Daffy proclaimed “I am Duck Dodgers in the Twenty-Fourth-and-a-Half-Century!” But the Masquerade was not fully launched until a brigade of imperial storm troopers and a battalion of rebels marched through the ballroom. C3PO threw off his Jedi cloak in a tantalizing strip tease, and voila, …

Dawn?  Ha!  Real beauty was on parade at the 2001 Miss Klingon Empire Beauty Pageant.

As a human, I scampered to my seat to avoid the wrath of any of the many mighty Klingon warriors that filled the hall.  Other Terrans surrounded me, but off several isles to my left, the ridges far outnumbered us smooth-heads.

The three judges, Cherelyn Lambeth (Paramount Production supervisor), Autumn Sky Port (Miss Virginia Galaxy, a mere human pageant winner), and Bill Peltier (who was chosen from …

Take two major artists, Don Bluth and Larry Elmore, add two raucous writers, Peter David and Harlan Ellison, and trick them into an hour-long performance, and you have a wild ride for everyone.

Iron Artist, a Dragon*Con variation on Iron Chef, pitted Bluth and Elmore in a bizarre competition: 60 minutes to create a work of art with a mystery material.  The surprise material?  Cubism.  Early Norman Rockwell pastel cubism, to be exact.  OK, that isn’t a material, but let’s not …

There are people out there who don’t know who James Doohan is, who know nothing about Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott of the starship Enterprise.  Luckily, those people are not spending four days at Dragon*Con.

For the rest of us, we rushed, four-hundred strong to see this star of the classic Trek series early on Friday.  The good people in charge of rooms, seeing this horde, moved the panel into the Regency ballroom where we sat patiently as everything was setup.

Then we …