Cover by Rocky Kelley
Amazingly enough, the premiere of Rayguns Over Texas went off without a hitch at LoneStarCon 3.
Things started with two journalistic notices, pre-con.
My SA‘s René A. Guzman delivered “Sanford Allen rocks Worldcon, Central Library with ‘Rayguns’ and more science fiction/horror fun.”
Worldcon promises a galaxy of SF/F authors and artists. “Rayguns” highlights talent much closer to home. Contributors include Texas spec-fic writer Joe R. Lansdale, SF legend Michael Moorcock and SF/F scribe Stina Leicht, as well as Allen and his fellow Missions Unknown co-editor Scott Cupp.
“I’m honored to be part of the ‘Rayguns Over Texas’ anthology launching at LoneStarCon 3,” Allen said. “The book is chock-full of inspired fiction from some of Texas’ most vibrant genre voices. Several of the writers featured in the book — Joe R. Lansdale and Michael Moorcock, in particular — are among those who inspired me to write fiction in the first place.”
And then Robert Faires in The Austin Chronicle “LoneStarCon, Episode III: The Alamo Strikes Back.”
Indeed, Austin is all over the place at LoneStarCon 3. ArmadilloCon co-founder and Adventures in Crime and Space owner Willie Siros is a guest of honor, and Waldrop will be part of a small army of local writers present: Paul Benjamin, Chris N. Brown, Bradley Denton, Rick Klaw, Stina Leicht, Lawrence Person, Alan J. Porter, Jessica Reisman, Josh Rountree, and Don Webb, among them. They’ll hold forth on subjects from the legendary Turkey City writers’ group (Friday, noon) to gorillas in science fiction (Saturday, 7pm). And several are represented in Klaw’s new anthology, Rayguns Over Texas, which has its official release at LoneStarCon (readings: Thursday, 6:30pm; Saturday, 5pm).
Following Thursday’s library and Saturday’s con events, the twitter and Facebook -verses offered up several notices of the event, all positive and littered with images.
On flickr, Rowan Fairgrove made a mention of the library signing along with a pic of the book.
Easily, the most amusing mention of the Worldcon events came from Nicky Draden’s Diary of a Short Woman blog. She featured this photo with the caption:
My favorite picture from WorldCon, because 1. It looks like my head is coming out of a water jug, and 2. Well… First rule of Rayguns Panel: Don’t talk about Rayguns Panel.
More Rayguns news and notices to come…