October 3, 2003

The Emerald City on line magazine takes an extremely detailed look at Torcon 3, last month’s World Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention held in Toronto. Unfortunately it describes: Inaccurate schedules that were uncoordinated between individual program sub-committees Trailers and clips from anime films with explicit sex scenes being shown as part of the media programming  A poorly designed souvenir book with possible financial irregularities in its creation An opening ceremony that broke all fire safety rules, as over a thousand people were crammed in a small ballroom An odd choice for the area used for the Hugo Ceremony that resulted in people waiting to use the sole down escalator A poorly run Masquerade in the same one escalator room with the half time show taking part in the middle of the contest, instead of after the contest while the judging takes place and before the awards presentation There are also very detailed descriptions of many panels, the art show, the rather sparse dealers room, a mention of Rebecca Eckler’s hit piece in the National Post. In a second article there is also an in-depth examination of the Hugo voting including the discovery at Emerald City had the most first choice votes for best Ezine but lost the award due to the Hugo’s Preferential voting scheme. 11:32:43 PM