SwanCon 21 – Souvenir book – summary

The SwanCon 21–Festival of the Imagination souvenir book is an understated ~A4 perfect bound book with black cover and dark grey stripe down the middle of the front cover. A lighter grey copy of the somewhat mosquito-esque logo is towards the top of this strip, and the words “Festival of the Imagination 1996” at the bottom.

The frontispiece is approximately the same as the front cover, except that the logo and text are black on white paper, and the logo is more clearly some kind of fantastical aeronautical vehicle. The copyright page has a long list of people being thanked for “.. their extraordinary support and cooperation in the preparation of this programme book. …”

Page 4 contains an advert for Australia in ’99, “The bid for the 1999 World Science Fiction Convention”. Pages 5 through 7, 19 through 21, 37 through 39, 62, and 66 through are the kind of content that will show up in later posts: “Welcome to the Festival”; a bio of Neil Gaiman followed by “An Appreciation” of same written by Steven Brust; bio of Storm Constantine with “An Appreciation” by Graham Joyce; an advert for Robin Pen’s “The Secret Life of Rubber-Suit Monsters”; bio of Jack Dann, with “An Appreciation” by Joe Haldeman; bio of Janeen Webb, with “An Appreciation” by Pamela Sargent; bio of Robin Pen, with “An Appreciation” by Jonathan Strahan; and short bios of the invited guests.

Bibliographies for Gaiman (pp 8-9), Constantine (p22), Dann (pp 39-41), Webb (pp 55-56) and stories/essays by same (Gaiman’s “Only the End of the World Again”, pp 10-18; Constantine’s “An Old Passion”, pp 24-36; Dann’s “Vapors”, pp 42-52; Webb’s “Posthuman SF: Lost in Cyberspace”, pp 57-61; Pen’s “The Rationalist’s One-Stop Guide to Sc-fi[sic]/Action/Horror Movie Traits”, pp 63-65), plus information on Awards (The Ditmars & The ASMA’s) and the constitutions of the Australian Science Fiction Convention and the Australian Science Fiction Media Socity make up the rest of the volume.

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