Worldcon 74: Interview with BIll Fawcett and Eric Flint – Dragon Awards & 1632

I had the pleasure of interviewing Bill Fawcett and Eric Flint during our live coverage of Worldcon 74 and the Hugo Awards.

We spoke to Mr. Flint and Mr. Fawcett about the upcoming Dragon Awards, which are entering their first  year at Dragon*Con, this weekend. If you’re unfamiliar with the Dragon Awards let me fill you in on what they told me. Essentially, the Dragon Awards are a way for fans to nominate their favorite books, comics, shows, movies and games. To paraphrase Mr. Flint who paraphrases Mr. Fawcett in the video: Do you have a book you’d recommend to friends? Nominate it for a Dragon Award or vote for you favorite nominees at http://awards.dragoncon.org/.

Here is the website for registering  and casting your votes in the Dragon Awards. There’s also two helpful FAQ pages, for both fans and candidates. I registered to vote for the awards while I was farming those links and it appears that they will be sending me a ballot via email on Monday, so don’t wait, it honestly only takes a few seconds.

The categories are:

1. Best Science Fiction Novel
2. Best Fantasy Novel (Including Paranormal)
3. Best Young Adult/Middle Grade Novel
4. Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel
5. Best Alternate History Novel
6. Best Apocalyptic Novel
7. Best Horror Novel
8. Best Comic Book
9. Best Graphic Novel
10. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series
11. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie
12. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy PC / Console Game
13. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Mobile Game
14. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Board Game
15. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Miniatures / Collectible Card / Role-Playing Game

Voting for the Dragon Awards ends on 8/31/2016 so be sure to get your votes in now! 

Dragon-Con runs Sept 2-5 in Atlanta GA.

(Yeah, I did that in green. Dragon. I would have typed this in alternating yellow, orange and red but the thought of looking at that hurt my eyes, so I’m sure it’d bother you.)

 

I am curious what Mr. Flint’s possibly more colorful description of literary awards might have been. You’ll see what I mean at 1:39.

Speculation aside, based on the conversations I had with Flint and Fawcett it seems that focus of the Dragon Awards is to give readers, watchers and gamers the opportunity to have their favorite works recognized. It seems their goal is to get past the elitism, campaigning and lobbying that cuts the fans out of the process. By allowing a dynamic number of nominees in a category while at the same time opening the selection to the general public an opportunity exists for something great. I want to believe that with these two at the helm the integrity of the Dragon Awards will be maintained. After all, there won’t be any live coverage of Dragon Con this year…

Eric Flint’s 1632 Phenomenon

Personal Musings

On a side note, these gentlemen were great to talk to both on and off camera, to me, they epitomized the observations I made of my first Worldcon. This is a Con that is tailored to those hardcore fans of Science (or Speculative) Fiction and Fantasy and those writers, editors and publishers in attendance seemed to appreciate that.

Perhaps part of it may have been that we were live streaming the whole Con for the first time ever, and I was wearing a press pass, but it didn’t really feel that way. All of the guests and Hugo nominees I and those of us on the SciFi4Me team interacted with were cordially approachable. All of them spent time on the floor just like anyone else at a Con, even George R.R. Martin walked around with only a single handler. I will admit, being a fanboy of his written works, I never approached him. However, I never got the feeling that if I had braved those waters I would have been tackled by security and pepper sprayed like I did when I ran into Stan Lee’s entourage as I was exiting the restroom at Planet Comicon.

Most awards these days are filled with internal politics and struggling egos. I suspect, even those more popular awards who proport themselves’s as fan decided, suffer from bias and shell games. After all, most of the previously mentioned awards are televised events, which have to answer to their advertisers if the ratings are bad. The Academy, Grammy and Emmy Awards have all shown an exclusionary at one time or another.

As Mr. Flint mentions in the video, turning storytelling into the massive competition it has become is a bit absurd. You can argue that competitive story-telling has existed for the majority of human existence. Which would be correct; however, our entertainment has become something prepackaged for maximum profit with minimal risk. We are being sold The Monkees with different haircuts every few months.

 

For more coverage on Worldcon, check out this link for articles and interviews.