Parcon 2002
The 24th Eurocon was held from Wednesday 3 July[1] to Sunday 7 July, 2002 in wikipedia:Chotěboř, Czech Republic, a town of 9 thousand people just under two hours travel east from Prague. This was the second time when the local event, then in the middle of rebranding from the original Avalcon[2] to suposedly more mainstream-appealing Festival fantazie, was also the Czech natcon, Parcon, after 1998 and before 2003 and 2005.[3] The attendees numbered about 1300.
The GoHs were George R. R. Martin, Robert Holdstock, Jim Burns, Andrzej Sapkowski and Kir Bulychev/Bulyčov (1934–2003; Russian writer of humorous and children's SF, popular throughout Central/East Europe).
In keeping with the chairman Václav Pravda's megalomania focus on growth, "professionalism" and "multipack" approach (i. e. trying to absorb the emerging sub-fandoms like trekkies as distinct, somewhat autonomous program streams rather than have them organising events of their own) there were ten further, lower-tier "Eurocon guests" selected mainly on the basis of travel costs: Myra Cakan (German writer), Rafał Ziemkiewicz (Polish writer), Ernst Vlcek (Austrian writer mainly of Perry Rhodan), Isobelle Carmody (Australian writer, living in Prague with her Czech husband), William King (Scottish writer for Warhammer, living in Prague with his Czech wife), Jaroslav Velinský (1932–2012, Czech writer of SF and mystery/crime as well as folk/country musician – alas, he never filked), Phillipe Coriat (French artist who went on to provide posters to the Festival), Ondřej Neff (Czech writer, the most important since the 1980es), Klaus N. Frick (German writer and Perry Rhodan editor/producer) and Martina Pilcerova/Pilcerová (Slovak artist selling in the West; she made the convention's poster) – whew! There were also online chats with several US writers.
Eurocon/ESFS matters[edit]
There was a group of fans from Israel expressing tentative interest in European Science Fiction Society membership, but this was tabled indefinitely for geographical and other awkwardness.
European SF Awards Hall of Fame:
- Best Promoter: Yurii Ilkov (Bulgaria)
- Best Journal: Fantázia (Slovakia)
- Best Publisher: Leonardo – Jiří Pilch (Czechia; mainly of Sapkowski and a few other Polish writers)
- Best Artist: Jan Patrik (J. P.) Krásný (Czechia)
- Best Fanzine: Terra Fantastica (Bulgaria)
- Best Author: Valerio Evangelisti (Italy)
- Best Translator: Paulina Braiter-Ziemkiewicz (Poland)
Encouragement Awards: Alexander Karapanchev (Bulgaria), Vitali Kaplan (Russia), Alexandra Pavelková (writer, Slovakia), Miroslav Žamboch (writer, Czechia).
Links[edit]
- "Eurocon-Parcon Avalcon 2002" website (English version, in the Web Archive. There were also German and Polish)
- Conrep by Jim Walker in Concatenation
- Photos on the site of a Czech fannish photographer (tiny, but hey, it was 2002. Captions with broken diacritics encoding, but hey…)
- ↑ Some sources misleadingly list start on Monday 1st: the first two and half days of the week there was some sightseeing provided in and around Prague for about two dozens of interested foreign attendees. It took two more years before the convention expanded to a ten-day, two-weekend "fantastic vacation", as its advertising slogan goes, utilising the Czech national/banking holidays on 5 and 6 July.
- ↑ The local club and its clubzine had been called Zbraně Avalonu, i. e. The Guns of Avalon after Zelazny's novel, popular in Czech translation when it was founded in 1994.
- ↑ Afterward, there was a parting of ways between the organiser, who aimed for Dragon Con dimensions, and the Parcon-voting "dinosaurs", as the Czech equivalent for 80s-generation SMOFs was called, who preferred smaller, family-like format, and had enough clashing egoes.
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