Boskone Code of Conduct

Be respectful and courteous towards others. We expect you to understand that you need to ask before you touch and that no means no. Harassment of any kind, from intimidation to illegal behavior will not be tolerated. This policy applies to your interactions with everybody. We also expect you to refrain from illegal, destructive, and hazardous conduct.

Violation of this policy can result in action by the con committee ranging from warnings, to having your badge yanked with no refund, to permanent banning. Action by the convention in no way precludes the injured individual or the hotel from pursuing whatever remedies, civil or criminal, as they see fit.

If you feel you are being harassed, please let the Con Chair or a NESFA Officer know. If necessary please ask a Committee member to find one of those people for you. You will be treated with respect and your concerns will be taken seriously. All names involved will be kept confidential to the extent possible, but any accused has the right to know enough detail to be able to defend him or herself.

Please note that other behaviors, including but not limited to destruction of hotel property, can also result in the actions described above.

Boskone is a members’ only event and the con committee reserves the right to determine who may be a member.

Parties in a hotel room are considered the responsibility of the person who rented the room. Thus, a person throwing a party in his or her hotel room has the right to eject any person from his or her party if he or she deems that the person is behaving inappropriately.

(Also posted online at: https://b58.boskone.org/about/policies/)

Boskone is less than 2 weeks away! See what people are saying on Twitter:

When tweeting about Boskone, use #boskone. You can also follow us at @boskonenews.

In an age where many science fiction conventions focus on the pop culture aspects of science fiction, it’s refreshing to find a con that also emphasizes and celebrates actual science and technological detail.

Boskone’s Hal Clement Science Speaker brings together both a passion for science and science fiction to honor the man for which the award was named.

Hal Clement (Harry Clement Stubbs) combined a love of science, teaching it for over 40 years, with a love for science fiction and writing. He published over 15 books and numerous stories and articles over his career. He attended the first Boskone and became a Boskone fixture, attending 40 consecutive conventions.

This year’s Hal Clement Science Speaker is Jordin Kare.

Dr. Jordin Kare is a lapsed astrophysicist and a former freelance rocket scientist. He’s a senior inventor at Intellectual Ventures, where he designed the first (real) laser mosquito killer. He’s an expert on laser power beaming and laser propulsion, and co-founder and chief scientist of LaserMotive,Inc.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STEi_plwa6o]

He’s also a long-time fan and filker, who has been attending Boskones for 38 years and was the Featured Filker for Boskone 37.  His filking skills inspired this fun cover by Andrew Ross.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNaXMAdAemI]

At Boskone 50, Jordin Kare will give several talks Laser Launch, 50 Ways to Leave Your Planet, and It Came from the USPTO (weird & silly patents) and appear on a panel on Beaming Power from Space. He will also perform in a filk concert.

One of the popular events at Boskone are the many sword fighting demos held in the Galleria.

This year, we are happy to have the participation of both the Higgins Armory Sword Guild from Worcester, MA and Kunstbruder from Medford, MA.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94MObU2dWP4]

One of the panels at Boskone 50 will be a discussion of the short story “Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu, originally published in the March/April 2011 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. If you’d like to read the story in preparation for the panel discussion, IO9 is hosting a digital version of the story on their site. Click on this link to access “Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu.

Panel Description:

Ken Liu’s 2011 short story “Paper Menagerie” is the first fiction to win all three of SF’s major honors: the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. Let’s all read it beforehand, then talk. How does it do what it does? What makes a story so popular? What makes a story great?

Please note that the date and time for the panel discussion has not yet been released, but we’ll update this blog post with that information soon.

By now, you’ve probably seen the second progress report for Boskone 50. However, we thought it would be helpful to include a link on the Boskone Blog so that you have it here just in case you need a quick look at the key con events or you want to check out the floor plan for the hotel or something else. All you have to do to access Progress Report 2 is to click on the image below.

Boskone is known for it’s Filking program by music lovers and musicians alike. This year we’ve got one of the best schedules yet, featuring a wonderful host of musicians. The list of events will be published soon. In the meantime, keep your eye on the Program Page on the Boskone website.

For those of you new to the filking world, The Phoenix published a terrific piece of Boskone 45’s filking program. The Phoenix writes, “Filk is commonly defined as the music of science-fiction fandom, but there’s more to it than that…Filk, the story goes, emerged from the first science-fiction conventions of the 1950s, when attendees would huddle in stairwells until the wee hours, singing folk-style songs about their favorite books, space travel, silly monsters, or anything at all, really. A misspelling of “folk” in an early write-up about this phenomenon spawned the term “filk,” and it stuck — like a Tribble on a Trekkie.”

Music-related items at Boskone 50 will include several concerts, theme circles, NESFA Hymnal singing, and evening “open filking.” The last three items mentioned are all participatory for singing, playing instruments, and listening. Open filking includes anything and everything from original song debuts to sing-along songs. Concerts include a performance by Jordin Kare, in addition to two performances by Boskone 50’s Featured Musician Heather Dale and her friends as part of the Saturday night festivities.

If you’d like to read more about Boskone’s filk program, we encourage you to read The Phoenix’s article “What is Filk?”, originally published on March 20, 2008.

Each year at Boskone, a special guest is honored by NESFA Press, the publishing component of the New England Science Fiction Association. NESFA Press focuses on publishing the following types of books:

• Books honoring the guest(s) of honor at our annual convention, Boskone, and at some Worldcons and other conventions.
• Books in the NESFA’s Choice series, which bring back into print the works of deserving classic SF writers
• Reference books of science fiction and science fiction fandom

This year’s NESFA Press Guest is renowned fiction writer and tech commentator, Jerry Pournelle.

According to his bio on the Information Week website,  Jerry Pournelle is known “for his groundbreaking column in the original BYTE, Computing at Chaos Manor, Jerry is back in the house. He is, of course, BYTE’s senior technologist. Author of more than a dozen tech books and several more in science fiction with his collaborator, Larry Niven, Pournelle’s accolades include a Bronze Medal from the National Security Council, the Prometheus Award and the Heinlein Society Award for science fiction.” He is also a contributor to the NESFA Press book The Mathematics of Magic: The Enchanter Stories of de Camp and Pratt.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_69H-aoZOZ0]

On Saturday afternoon at 3pm in the Galleria, Jerry will be at the release party introducing the book launch of Door to Anywhere, a Poul Anderson collection

Additionally, he will be interviewed, and he will also be on panels about Space Colonization and Military Motifs in SF.

Pre-registration closes on 1/23/13 at 5pm EST. If you haven’t yet registered, register now and save $5 off the cost of the at-the-door adult membership price of $55.

Are you a student? Are you a family attending with your student children? Boskone offers two different student-level memberships:

• College (valid student ID required)
• K-12 (student ID may be required)

Note: The cost of DragonsLair, Boskone’s children’s program, is included in the con membership, so all children (ages 7-12) who use these services must be convention members. However, children under 10 who stay with their parents at all times are considered “kids-in-tow” who need not have memberships. (“Kids-in-tow” do not receive any convention materials.)

We are not able to offer babysitting through the convention.

Single day memberships are available online or at-the-door.

• Friday Only: $15
• Saturday Only: $40
• Sunday Only: $15

Click here to read the details about con memberships and registration details

Hungry? Looking for a good place to find food while your at Boskone this year? Well, we have just the thing for you! Announcing the Sci-Fi Dining Guide for Boston.

The organizers of Boskone and Arisia have collaborated on this  amazing new restaurant guide for the Boston-based conventions. You can either access it with this shiny new link: RestaurantGuide or by clicking on the picture.

With more and more new restaurants moving into the nearby area, you’ll definitely want to know your options this year. Some of them look pretty interesting.