{"id":535,"date":"2015-02-20T17:20:49","date_gmt":"2015-02-20T17:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/?p=535"},"modified":"2015-02-20T17:22:10","modified_gmt":"2015-02-20T17:22:10","slug":"hal-con-2015-a-guest-post-by-preston-grassmann","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/2015\/02\/20\/hal-con-2015-a-guest-post-by-preston-grassmann\/","title":{"rendered":"Hal-Con 2015: a guest post by Preston Grassmann"},"content":{"rendered":"

Futures author Preston Grassmann gives a preview of\u00a0 Hal-Con 2015<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

My first experience with Hal-Con Japan was back in 2012, when I interviewed Alastair Reynolds and covered the convention for the June issue of Locus Magazine<\/em>. If you\u2019ve read my articles on this event in various venues, you might remember that the stated goal of the convention was to encourage dialogue between international and Japanese fans. In the past few years, with the help of guests such as Joe Haldeman and Peter Watts, I\u2019m glad to announce that Hal-Con has begun to achieve its stated goal.<\/p>\n

On April 11th and 12th of 2015, internationally acclaimed writer Hannu Rajaniemi and comic artist Noriko Nagano will be the guests of honour. I\u2019ll be reprising my role as one of the interviewers, along with Andrew Adams and Regina Glei. A variety of panel discussions are being planned, with topics ranging from surveillance in fact and fiction to writing fiction in a non-native tongue. As in previous years, there will be parallel programming for fantasy and young adult fiction (a track increasingly marked out with glitter and sighs \u2013 see Meyer), which should appeal to a broad range of readers. For those who have never attended a science-fiction convention in Japan, the only thing you can expect is a veritable cornucopia of subjects and ideas. There are no maps for the territory of fandom in Japan and Hal-Con is certainly no exception. But for those who yearn for a more bibliophilic approach, with a more intimate gathering, this is a convention you won\u2019t want to miss.<\/p>\n

More information on Hal-Con can be found at www.hal-con.net<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Futures author Preston Grassmann gives a preview of\u00a0 Hal-Con 2015  … Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/281"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}