Hi there!
We're gearing up for Loscon 32, and all systems are go. This year's theme is based on a slightly warped perspective. In Loscon 30, we navigated the worlds of science fiction. In Loscon 31, we came back to Los Angeles (sort of a voyage home, without all the whales and stuff.) But travel changes your perspective. You see all kinds of things you never thought of before. You encounter alien cultures and alien perspectives, and you carry these back with you. You never look at familiar things quite the same way after an experience like that.
This year, I invite you to look at the world thorugh alien eyes. This change in perspective can give you new insight into things you always took for granted. Come and look at the familiar from a new perspective, as a man from Mars might. Or, perhaps as the Imperial Japanese, or Pirates, or Olympian Gods might see things. In this century, science fiction and fantasy allow us to explore ideas no one else thinks to question. A little over a century ago, two gentlemen used the operetta to accomplish the same task. Moving the usual and customary to an alien setting gives us distance and perspective. We can safely think about how strange our normal ways really are. We can have fun with ideas, with less fear of offending popular sensibilities. After all, we all know Martians are a bit funny in the head. (With any luck this will be the last decade in which I can get away with a throw-away line like that!)
For the most part, I've drawn on the talents of people who worked in the same committee last year, or in years before. Therefore, more than ever, the credit for the convention's success goes to all the committee heads, and the blame accrues to the con chair.
Let's have a fun con!
Karl Lembke
Chairman, Loscon 32
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