Boskone 54 is proud to announce our Guests for next year’s convention, which will take place on Presidents Day Weekend (February 17-19, 2017) in Boston, MA at the Westin Waterfront Hotel. We hope to see you there for a fantastic convention.

Full Weekend Rates:*

• Adult Full Convention: $55
• College Student Full Convention: $35 (school ID required)
• K-12 Full Convention: $25 (school ID may be required)

(*Membership rates increase in January 2017.)

Join us at Boskone in February 2017! All attendees need to purchase a Boskone 54 convention membership, which you can do by registering online. If you prefer not to use a credit card, you can also register via our our Mail-In Registration Form.

Guest of Honor: Brandon Sanderson

Brandon Sanderson was born in 1975 in Lincoln, Nebraska. By junior high he had lost interest in the novels suggested to him, and he never cracked a book if he could help it. Then an eighth grade teacher, Mrs. Reader, gave him Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly.

Brandon was finishing his thirteenth novel when Moshe Feder at Tor Books bought the sixth he had written. In 2005 Brandon held his first published novel, Elantris, in his hands. Tor also published six books in Brandon’s Mistborn series, the most recent being The Bands of Mourning, along with Warbreaker and then The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, the first two in the planned ten-volume series The Stormlight Archive. Brandon was chosen to complete Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series; the final book, A Memory of Light, was released in 2013—the year that his novella The Emperor’s Soul won a Hugo Award. That year also marked the releases of YA novels The Rithmatist from Tor Teen and Steelheart, the first book in the Reckoners trilogy from Delacorte, which concluded in 2016 with Calamity. The fifth book in his middle-grade Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians series is also a 2016 release from Starscape (Tom Doherty Associates).

Official Artist: Dave Seeley

Dave Seeley claims to be a victim of modern mass media and the one-second-MTV-vid-shot, hence the moniker “Image Junkie”. He is far more influenced by contemporary sci-fi film noir than by the legacy of science fiction illustration.

Dave came from an education in architecture and fine art. After 10 years as an award-winning architect, he was seduced by the glamour of illustration and derailed his career for the far more immediate gratification of image making. The inner-architect is flourishing in his work, where a sense of materials fetishism, and a love of spatial atmospherics are omnipresent.

Dave’s recent monograph, The Art of Dave Seeley, published by Insight Editions, has received top ranked reviews from ImagineFX magazine and io9.com. In addition, Dave is one of 10 artists profiled in Dick Jude’s Fantasy Art Masters by Harper Collins, and profiled in Karen Haber’s Masters of Science Fiction and Fantasy Art. He is a contributor to Jane Frank’s Pixel or Paint by NonStop Press. Dave is interviewed in issue 39 of ImagineFX Magazine, and is featured in the August ’06 Art Scene International. He is also featured in the documentary film by Michael MacDonald at Roadhouse films called Visions From the Edge: The Art of Science Fiction, and will be featured in the upcoming Bill Neimeyer film Art of the Fantastic. You can see more printed work in SPECTRUM: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art , Ballistic’s Exposé, and d-artist Concept Art.

Clients Include: Hasbro, Disney, Lucasfilm, Vivendi Universal, Microsoft Games Studios, FromSoft Games, Sideshow Collectibles, Sony, Baen Books, Tor Books, Randomhouse / Del Rey / Ballantine Books / Penguin, Harlequin Gold Eagle, Ace, St Martins, Kensington Books, PYR press, Simon and Schuster, Harper Collins, Scholastic, Harcourt School Publishers, Night Shade Books, Solaris Books, Midway Games, Fox Interactive, The Village Voice, Heavy Metal Magazine, Popular Science Magazine, Boy’s Life Magazine, Humanoids Publishing, White Wolf Publishing, FASA, Wizards of the Coast, TSR, Wild Planet Toys, DC Comics, and a host of advertising firms.

You can see, commission, learn about and buy work in multiple media at DaveSeeley.com.

Special Guest: Maryelizabeth Yturralde

Maryelizabeth Yturralde last attended Boskone in 1984, and spent the next decade working in chain bookstores. Maryelizabeth co-founded independent genre bookstore Mysterious Galaxy in Southern California in 1993; she is a regular contributor to programming at literary conventions all over the country, including Comic-Con International San Diego and New York Comic Con; and she is a regular writer of non-fiction, including critical and biographical essays, and reviews for Mysterious Galaxy, as well as Publishers Weekly. She is passionate about connecting readers and stories.

Visit Maryelizabeth on her website and follow her on Twitter.

Featured Filkers: The Fabulous Lorraine & Lojo Russo

The Fabulous Lorraine aka Quiche Me Deadly has been a musician for simply yonks now. Starting way back in the dawn of time with Emma Bull in the Flash Girls, where she performed songs from a variety of authors including Emma, Neil Gaiman, Jane Yolen, Dave McKean and many others she has no doubt forgotten. She’s currently playing with a guy named Paul in the excitedly named band “Paul and Lorraine” and has for the moment retired from Roller Derby but that could change at any time.

Fabulous-Lorraine-Quiche worked for 20 years as Neil Gaiman’s Assistant before deciding to go back to Skool and get AODA/Spanish/English/Librarian Assoc/BA/Masters degree thing. She and Neil remain best friends, Skool is wonderful fun except for the whole wearing pants thing and she’s still funny as hell.

Visit Lorraine on her website, friend her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter.

Lojo Russo has been orbiting the ‘Con biospheres since her first days in the awesomely, classic-jam-rock quintet known as, ‘Cats Laughing’.  Three of the original members of ‘Cats Laughing’ – Emma Bull, Steven Brust and Adam Stemple – are best known for their wonderfully crafted SF/F novels. A fourth member wrote ‘blue novels’ under the pseudonym, “Anonymous”. Russo retains the dubious distinction of being the only non-published author of that group.

Somewhere along this timeline she also fell in with the Fabulous Lorraine and has remained both friend and confidant as well as one part of the peculiarly remarkable twosome, Mogg. (aka; Moggenahf, Mogguffaw, the “other” Flashgirls)

From those humble beginnings Lojo Russo has continued to provide soulful, fanciful and farcical music to her enduring fan.  Her novelty album, Sweet Tooth, contains the ‘Con-inspired hits, ‘Orbital Groove’ and ‘Blame It On the Jello’.  She enjoys long walks on the beach, the smell of Hi-Karate and the way bandaid packets spark when you open them.

Visit Lojo on her website, friend her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter.

Hal Clement Science Speaker: Milton Davis

Milton Davis is currently a Research and Development Chemist for Chemtronics, a company specializing in chemicals and coating used for reworking and repairing circuit boards. Milton has been a research chemist for over thirty years specializing in polymer coatings. He is a 1983 cum laude graduate from Fort Valley State University with a B.S. Degree in Pure Chemistry with a Math Minor. Milton has utilized his skill to develop polymer compounds for the textile, janitorial, and computer industry. In 2004, Milton received a U.S. patent for his Cleaning Solvent and dispenser pen designed to remove conformal coatings and adhesives from circuit boards and other electrical equipment.

In addition to being a research chemist, Milton Davis is a speculative fiction writer and owner of MVmedia, LLC, a micro publishing company specializing in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Sword and Soul. MVmedia’s mission is to provide speculative fiction books that represent people of color in a positive manner. Milton is the author of Changa’s Safari Volumes One, Two and Three. His most recent releases are Woman of the Woods and Amber and the Hidden City. He is co-editor of four anthologies; Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology and Griot: Sisters of the Spear, with Charles R. Saunders; The Ki Khanga Anthology with Balogun Ojetade and the Steamfunk! Anthology, also with Balogun Ojetade. Milton Davis and Balogun Ojetade recently received the Best Screenplay Award for 2014 from the Urban Action Showcase for their African martial arts script, Ngolo. His current projects include The City, a cyberfunk anthology, Dark Universe, a space opera anthology based on a galactic empire ruled by people of African American descent, and From Here to Timbuktu, a steamfunk novel.

Milton resides in Metro Atlanta with his wife Vickie and his children Brandon and Alana.

Visit Milton on his website, friend him on Facebook, and follow him on Twitter.

NESFA Press: Ken MacLeod

Ken MacLeod was born in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland and lives in West Lothian. He has Honours and Masters degrees in biological subjects and worked for some years in the IT industry. Since 1997 he has been a full-time writer. He is the author of fifteen novels, from The Star Fraction (1995) to The Corporation Wars: Dissidence (Orbit, May 2016), and many articles and short stories. His novels and stories have received three BSFA awards and three Prometheus Awards, and several have been short-listed for the Clarke and Hugo Awards. He is currently working on a space opera trilogy, The Corporation Wars (forthcoming 2016-2017).

In 2009 he was Writer in Residence at the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum at Edinburgh University, and in 2013 and 2014 was Writer in Residence at the MA Creative Writing course at Edinburgh Napier University.

Visit Ken’s blog (The Early Days of a Better Nation) and follow him on Twitter.