Come join the fun at Boskone 55’s Book Party, and meet the presses and authors who have new books coming out at Boskone! This is your chance to see what’s new from authors you already love as well as those you have yet to discover.

Boskone is once again holding a book party on Saturday night during the convention to give our authors and publishers the opportunity to show off their newly released titles.

The Boskone 55 Book Party

Day: Saturday, February 17th
Time: 6:30-7:30 pm
Location: Con Suite, in the Galleria Level, Westin Waterfront Hotel

Authors & Publishers: If you have a new book that was (or will be) published within a few months of Boskone, we invite you to participate in the Boskone 55 Book Party. Bring your books and swag to share with readers who come to mix, mingle, and talk fiction with Boskone’s authors.

Authors and publishers (with a new book and a membership for Boskone 55) who would like to join the party, should email us at Program@boskone.org with your book’s information, including:

• Title:
• Author Name:
• Release Date:
• Publisher:
• Cover Image URL (if available):

Please note that space is limited. So, please be sure to contact us as soon as possible to let us know that you’re interested in joining the party. The more the merrier!

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Watch out Boskone! The Lego Robots are coming!!!

Okay, seriously, Boskone is safe. The Lego Robot of Doom is not really going to destroy the convention….we hope.

However, we are going to have some very cool Lego Robots for you to have fun with, courtesy of Hatch Makerspace on Sunday, February 18, 2018 when they bring their bots to Boskone.

Have you ever wanted to build a robotic arm? A remote controlled racer? A mechanical monster of doom? Here’s your chance!

The Boskone Robots need you!

Using Lego NXT kits, we will build the project of your dreams. Guaranteed to destroy Jupiter! (scale model of Jupiter not included). This event is designed for members from ages 10 to adult.

Hatch Makerspace operates out of the Watertown Free Public Library, where you can expand your robotics exploration.

Get your dancing shoes on!

Boskone’s Regency Dance with Guest of Honor Mary Robinette Kowal takes place on Friday, February 16, 2018 from 5:30-7:00 pm.

Join our Guest of Honor Mary Robinette Kowal as Boskone travels back in time to the Regency Period when dancing was all the craze. Antonia Pugliese from Commonwealth Vintage Dancers, a Boston area non-profit organization that reconstructs, performs, and teaches dances of the 19th and early 20th century, will lead us through Boskone’s special set of Regency dances.

So, put on your 19th Century duds or keep your modern wardrobe to represent your favorite era as we join together to dance Regency-style at Boskone!

ALL BOSKONE MEMBERS ARE WELCOME … even if you don’t know the steps for Regency Dancing. Never fear! Antonia is here, and she will spend a little time at the beginning of the event to show you what to do.

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We’re moving along nicely with the planning for Boskone 55! We’re very excited about the programming and events that we have in store for you this year. So, here’s a little update on a few things that you may enjoy. A more thorough update will be sent in our first pre-convention email newsletter which will be coming out at the end of October.

PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS
We have received a record number of requests from potential program participant this year, and while we can’t include everyone on the Boskone Program, we will include as many as possible. We have already confirmed a number of people, and we will continue confirming participants through early December. For those of you who have submitted a request to be on program, we will be getting back to you soon. In the meantime, click here to view our current list of participants. Again, more names will be added soon.

EVENTS
This year we will have two new events on Friday, which should be a lot of fun. If you have any questions about these two new events, please contact program@boskone.org.

• Regency Dance – Inspired by the interests and fiction of our Guest of Honor Mary Robinette Kowal, we are hosting a Regency Dance on Friday evening at 6:00 pm, which should be a lot of fun. We’ll have a short training on a couple of dances. So, please don’t worry about not knowing what to do since we will have experts in the room who are happy to help you learn the steps. It’s truly a wonderful and unique experience that we hope you will enjoy! If you have period appropriate regency dance clothing, you are encouraged to wear them. However, time travelers are also welcome to attend. So, you should feel comfortable wearing modern clothing as well. Regency Dancing is for everyone! 🙂
• Jordin Kare Memorial Concert – Boskone’s longtime friend and filker Jordin Kare recently passed away. To honor him, we are hosting a concert in his memory and inviting his friends and fans to play some of his favorite songs. We anticipate that the concert will be held on Friday night, but we have not yet confirmed the timing. More information will be coming soon.

SOUVENIR BOOK ADVERTISING
For those of you who have attended Boskone, I’m sure you have picked up a copy of our printed Souvenir Book from a past Boskone. The Souvenir Book is a lovely book that includes some very fun, warm, and engaging introductions of our guests that are written by people who know them best. It also includes some other fun tidbits for fans, including a spread of images from our Official Artist. The Souvenir Book is a high quality magazine that is meant to last and can be used to collect signatures from all of our guests and program participants. In order to help offset the cost of printing the Souvenir Book, we also include a few ads inside. Please note that the Souvenir Book is available in print at Boskone and will be available as a PDF online after the convention. If you are interested in purchasing an ad in the Boskone 55 Souvenir Book, click here to view the professional and fan ad rates.

MEMBERSHIPS
We will be having our Free Friday Afternoon again from 2:00-6:00 pm so that people can come check out the convention as well as to give you a little time to arrive and register at your leisure. Just be sure to pick up your badge by 6:00 pm on Friday in order to participate in the evening events. If you’d like to purchase your Full Weekend Membership now and save a little money, here are the pre-convention membership rates (good through January 16, 2018):

• Adult Full Convention: $55
• College Student Full Convention: $35 (school ID required)
• K-6 Full Convention: $25 (school ID may be required)
• 7-12 Full Convention: $25 (school ID may be required)
• Kids-in-Tow: See Below

ACCESSIBILITY AT BOSKONE
While Boskone has always striven to be as accessible as possible, we now have a page online that details all of our accessibility information in one place. If you have access needs, click here to review our new Access page. If you have any questions, please contact us at access@boskone.org.

BOOK YOUR HOTEL
This is your “hotel heads up,” as usual the Boskone rooms are going fast. If you are planning to stay at the Westin Waterfront, please be sure to book your hotel soon to ensure that you get the room you want at the price you need. Click here for Boskone’s hotel information.

Stay tuned we will have more updates soon as well as a fresh batch of Mini Interviews with all new questions and lots of new program participants to entertain you!

We look forward to seeing you in Boston from February 16-8, 2018 at Boskone 55!

Boskone 55 is still several months away, but it’s never too soon to book your hotel room!

Once again we are returning to the Westin Boston Waterfront located at 425 Summer Street, Boston, MA 02210. Be sure to make your reservation today so that you don’t miss a second of Boskone!

This year, Boskone takes place February 16-18, 2018 and our hotel team has expanded our block of rooms to include the shoulder dates, which means the block rate is available from February 12-21, 2018 to better fit your travel plans.

The Boskone block rooms at the Westin include in-room wifi and are available through January 16, 2018 or until the block is sold out…and the hotel block always sells out.

• Single/Double Rate: $172
• Triple Rate: $192
• Quad Rate: $212

Non-Party Block — https://aws.passkey.com/go/Boskonenonpartyblock

Party Block * — https://aws.passkey.com/go/Boskonepartyblock2018

*Party Block Notice: When making your reservation for a room in the “Party Block,” please note that this year we’re requiring people to book for both Friday and Saturday to avoid holes in the party block that could potentially be filled with non-Boskone attendees would could potentially complain about noise and cause parties to shut down early.

If you have any issues with your hotel reservation, contact hotel@boskone.org as soon as possible.

Hotel Reservation Logistics & Issues

• Browsers: IE and Opera have had reported problems with the hotel reservation pages.
• Handicapped Accessible Room: After you reserve a handicapped-accessible room, email hotel@boskone.org so we will make sure your room is correct.
• Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) Rewards: The last names of all people on the reservation need to match the last name associated with the SPG number. If people in your party have different last names, you can add them at check in or via email hotel@boskone.org.

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Rounding our our featured guest list is Nat Segaloff, our NESFA Press Guest. Nat will be joining us from February 16-18, 2018 at the Westin Waterfront Hotel. Join us for a terrific convention!

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Nat Segaloff is a writer-producer-journalist who was kidnapped into science fiction by John de Lancie, Leonard Nimoy, and Harlan Ellison (except in Harlan’s case it was speculative fiction). A former film industry journalist who wrote over the years for Boston After Dark, Time Out (New England), Moving Pictures magazine, The Real Paper, The Cambridge Express, The Real Paper, but mostly for The Boston Herald, Nat also appeared on WBZ-TV’s “Evening Magazine” and WSBK-TV’s “Movie Loft & Company” as well as on WEEI-FM, the CBS radio station, and independent broadcaster WITS-AM. Since none of them is around any more (except Nat and the Herald), it’s easy to understand why he fled to California when Boston dried up to make TV documentaries and write books. Among the former are A&E Biography episodes on John Belushi, Stan Lee, Larry King, and Shari Lewis & Lamb Chop; four Rock ‘n’ Roll Moments clip shows; and various other projects including an HBO documentary on the American parole system.

His books include biographies of William Friedkin (Hurricane Billy), Arthur Penn (Arthur Penn: American Director), Stirling Silliphant (The Fingers of God); a journal on the making of the last film that John Huston worked on (Mr. Huston/Mr. North); the best-selling swan song chronicle Final Cuts: The Last Films of 50 Great Directors; and two edgy memoirs, Screen Saver and Screen Saver Too.

It was John de Lancie and Leonard Nimoy who asked Nat to form Alien Voices with them in 1995 after a noteworthy NPR broadcast of Invasion from Mars. Together they produced five audiobooks for Simon & Schuster Audio. Dramatized by Nat and de Lancie and featuring all-Star Trek casts, the titles included The Time Machine, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Invisible Man, The Lost World, and The First Men in the Moon (the latter of which was also presented by the Si-Fi Channel (sic) as the first live TV/Internet simulcast.

Nat is the co-author (with NESFA member Daniel M.; Kimmel and Arnie Reisman) of The Waldorf Conference, a comedy-drama about the secret 1947 meeting of studio moguls that began the Hollywood Blacklist. The play had its all-star world premiere at L.A. Theatre Works and was acquired for production by Warner Bros. He produced a subsequent staging (in which Harlan Ellison acted a major role) to benefit the Hollywood ACLU and the Writers Guild Foundation. He was staff producer for The Africa Channel, wrote the stage comedy Closets (mounted by the Cape Ann Shakespeare Troupe at Massachusetts’ Gloucester Stage Company), and is writer for the popular public radio word/game show “Says You!” after having been a frequent guest panelist.

Nat’s appearance at Boskone 55 arises from a five-year project called A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison. Published by NESFA Press, it’s the first-ever biography of the controversial, prolific writer and the first to include substantial excerpts from his work.

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Harlan Ellison & Nat Segaloff

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Our Hal Clement Science Speaker for Boskone 55 is Catherine Asaro. She will be joining us to talk science and fiction from February 16-18, 2018 at the Westin Waterfront Hotel. Join us for a terrific convention!

Buy your Boskone 55 membership today.

Catherine Asaro is an author of science fiction, fantasy and thrillers, and has written over twenty-five novels, as well as short stories and non-fiction. Her acclaimed Ruby Dynasty series combines adventure, hard science, math, romance and fast-paced action. Among her numerous distinctions, she has won the Nebula® and Analog Reader’s Choice awards. Her most recent books are the anthology she edited, The Nebula Awards Showcase 2013 (Pyr), the novel Carnelians (Baen/ Simon & Schuster), and the anthology of her short fiction titled Aurora in Four Voices (ISFiC Press). All her novels are available in audio form and her most recent eBook releases are the award-winning works, Primary Inversion, “The City of Cries” and “The Spacetime Pool.” Her book Undercity is due out from Baen in 2014.

Catherine earned her doctorate in theoretical chemical physics from Harvard. She has coached numerous math teams, in particular the Howard Area Homeschoolers and Chesapeake ARML program. Her students have won top honors in many competitions, including the USA Mathematical Olympiad and the USA Mathematical Talent Search.

Catherine is a member of SIGMA, a think tank of speculative writers that advises the government on future trends affecting national security. She is also known for her advocacy in bringing girls and women into STEM fields. She has been an invited speaker at various institutions, including the National Academy of Sciences, Harvard, Georgetown, NASA, the New Zealand Context Writer’s program, and the US Naval Academy.

Catherine is also a dancer and musician. Her first CD, Diamond Star (Starflight Music 2009), is the soundtrack for her novel of the same name, cut with the band Point Valid. Her second CD, released with Donald Wolcott, is called Goodbye Note (Starflight Music 2010), and her single “Deep Snows” was released with the Peppercorn Band in 2012. The vide for “Deep Snows” was nominated in the Best R&B video category of the World Independent Music and Film Festival. Catherine appears as a vocalist at cons, clubs, and other venues in the US and abroad, including as the Guest of Honor at the Denmark and New Zealand National Science Fiction Conventions. She performs selections from her work in a multimedia project that mixes literature, dance, and music with Greg Adams as her accompanist and band leader. You can chat with her at www.facebook.com/Catherine.Asaro

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Boskone is honored to announce Craig Miller as our Special Guest. He will be joining us February 16-18, 2018 at the Westin Waterfront Hotel for a terrific convention!

Join us at Boskone by buying your membership today.

Craig Miller is a well-known and respected writer/producer with over 300 credits. He has worked in live-action and animation, written scripts, developed series, pitched to studios and networks, produced, cast, approved storyboards, character designs, and animation – the entire gamut of what goes into creating, selling, and producing a TV series.

Miller received degrees in Child Development and Social Psychology before becoming involved with the entertainment industry. For the next several years, he worked as an executive and consultant in publicity, marketing, and licensing for Lucasfilm, Warner Bros., Universal, Disney, Columbia, Henson Associates, and others. His work included the films Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Excalibur, Superman II, Altered States, The Dark Crystal, The Wicker Man, The Muppets Take Manhattan, Splash, My Science Project, Real Genius and many more.

But for most of his career, Miller has been writing, developing, and producing for television, films, and games. His career includes working directly with creative forces of nature such as George Lucas and Jim Henson and on every kind of project from a syndicated magic special to Sesame Street. This has provided him with broad-based experience including industrial films, movie trailers, stage productions, and the areas which have occupied most of his time and efforts: animation that ranges from Curious George and The Smurfs to Beast Wars and The Real Ghostbusters and live-action series such as Showtime’s horror series The Hunger and the science fiction adventure series Resistance.

The majority of Miller’s work has been for the children’s, tween, and teen/young adult market. His 104 episode TV series Pocket Dragon Adventures was a finalist for the Humanitas Prize and was seen seven days a week on the BBC and in over 125 countries around the world. His writing in this arena has run the gamut from action-adventure projects like G.I. Joe and Beast Wars to comedy-adventure series like The Real Ghostbusters to softer shows such as The Smurfs. He spent three years writing the multiple-Emmy-winning Curious George for PBS. For that series, the first several DVD releases are each titled and themed after his episodes and new Curious George books have been written based on his scripts.

Recent work includes developing and writing for: Resistance, a live-action science fiction adventure series; Fortune Teller, a live-action fantasy adventure that’s a mixture of Vampire Diaries and Game of Thrones; Playtime Buddies, an animated pre-school series; Basketeers, an animated sports-themed adventure series; Grandpa’s Robot, a new series for Latin America; Cheddar Man & the Mysteries of Food, an animated educational series developed for a food channel; Wingin’ It, an animated comedy-music series based on a country singer’s children’s book; two series – Majid and Karamella – created and produced for the Middle East, and Pet Parade, a series for the web.

Miller has worked on games as well, including consulting on the story, characters, and gameplay for a game created for the international charity WarChild to use in helping former child soldiers and child refuges traumatized by war in their home-countries acclimate back to a world where people work together and find non-violent solutions. He’s also written comics for DC, Disney, and others, including adapting the manga title Cobra for the US market.

His work is in demand outside the U.S. as well. For CCTV, the official Chinese television network, he co-developed and wrote episodes of the animated series Flute Master (soon to be released on DVD in the US). Flute Master has been a major hit in China, playing to over 265 million viewers. Additionally, he’s worked with production companies and channels in China, Australia, Latin America, Italy, France, Israel, Dubai, and elsewhere around the world, developing and writing both live-action and animated series.

Miller is also a popular speaker on writing and has done so in many different parts of the world. He has been a guest speaker on creating characters, crafting stories, writing dialog, and developing programming for animation and games at such international events as the Annecy Animation Festival in France, Cartoons on the Bay / The International Conference on Television Animation in Italy, and the Interactive Entertainment Festival in Scotland, and Orbit Live in Mumbai, India, as well as for events in the U.S. including NATPE; KidScreen Summit; and the World Animation Summit, as well as Comic Con in San Diego; the World Science Fiction Convention; and many other events.

He’s lectured at UCLA and Columbia College and taught classes for the Art Institute of California and Woodbury University. Comments from his students on anonymous surveys administered by the colleges ranged from the prosaic “He is very experienced and very good at explaining concepts to students” to the extravagant heights of “Craig kicked ass and this class was fucking awesome,” “This was the only class I actually attended every week,” and “Add more weeks to the semester! This class rocks!”

Miller was a consultant to the Washington D.C. Implementation Group on developing the rating system for children’s television in the United States and was the sole scriptwriter invited to take part in a multi-day seminar of academics, researchers, and top network & studio executives gathered to develop guidelines for creating television programming for children. He was also one of the creators and an active participant in the Writers Guild of America’s Literacy Project, putting professional writers into public schools to work with teachers and their classes on a recurring basis, to encourage reading and writing.

Miller is a member of the Writers Guild of America (for which he chairs the Animation Writers Caucus), the Writers Guild of Canada, and the Television Academy (where he has been an Emmy Judge for several years). He also leads Professional Development for the organization Women In Animation and has been a judge for ASIFA’s Annie Awards.

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Boskone’s Official Artist is the very talented Marianne Plumridge who will be joining us in February for our 55th convention! We are planning a fantastic selection of events and another wonderful art show!

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Marianne Plumridge is an Australian-born artist and writer who lives in Rhode Island, USA, with her husband, illustrator Bob Eggleton. They share their home with over 1,000 Godzilla monster toys, and just as many dinosaurs, dragons, and other odd beasties and creature figurines. The rest of the house is occupied by numerous books, paintings, art materials, and CDs. It really is a creative atmosphere, where inspiration is never lost for long.

In the last few years, Marianne has returned to her fine art roots by refining her oil painting techniques. As well as painting natural subjects, Marianne has combined birds and robots into an ongoing series of ‘technology lost in nature’ paintings that include quirky tin toy robot adventures, to great acclaim. Her other ongoing concurrent themes of cosmic whales and pointy rocket-ship paintings still enjoy success and popular favor. The results can be found online at: ‘Daub du Jour.’ Even more recently, Marianne has revived her interest in painting figurative works and portraits. Her experimental, ‘self-testing’ exploration of painting people again continues apace.

In connection with her long held writing ambitions, Marianne writes book reviews and notes on her second Blog, ‘Muse du Jour.’ Finished works of fiction have found their way into magazines and anthologies over the years, as well as articles and essays. Currently, Marianne continues to work on writing the nearly complete text for a book called “Bob Eggleton’s Ice Age America” for Impossible Dreams Press, in collaboration with her husband. It will feature essays and epic artwork and visions of prehistoric peoples, megafauna, and flora…and especially Mammoths and Mastodons. Marianne and Bob’s first collaboration as writer and artist, a children’s picture book called If Dinosaurs Lived in My Town was released in November 2013 from Sky Pony Press. Late this year, one of Marianne’s ‘more than doodle’ rocket paintings will grace the cover of Analog Magazine in the November/December 2017 Issue.

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We are thrilled to announce that Tamora Pierce will be joining us at Boskone this year as our Young Adult Fiction Guest. It should be a wonderful convention and we look forward to seeing you there!

Buy your membership to Boskone today and come meet young adult author Tamora Pierce.

Tamora Pierce is the winner of the 2013 Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement in Young Adult Literature, the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award, and the 2005 Skylark Edward E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction. She is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of more than 28 fantasy novels for teenagers, and has been Guest of Honor at numerous conventions, including Worldcon 2016.

She has written comic books, radio plays, articles, and short stories, and currently devotes her minimal free time to local feline rescue. Tortall: A Spy’s Guide, a collaborative effort with other experts on her Tortall universe, will be coming out in October of 2017, followed in February of 2018 by the first in a three-book Tortall series, Tempests and Slaughter.

Tammy lives in central New York with her husband Tim Liebe and their uncountable number of cats, two parakeets, and the various freeloading wildlife that reside in their back yard. You may find her at www.tamorapierce.com, on Facebook, and on Twitter.

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