The 2nd Quadrennial HRSFANS reunion will be occurring March 16-18, 2012, at Harvard, alongside the 12th annual Vericon. This is an occasion to reconnect with old friends and make new ones, to reminiscent about the past and to plan for the future–and to attend a convention featuring open gaming and open anime, alumni-written LARPs and a HRSFA-written MST3K, a masquerade ball, a charity auction, and guests including Lev Grossman, R.L. Stein, and Guest of Honor Vernor Vinge. We’ll be adding information as it comes in on the HRSFANS wiki–you can check there to stay up-to-date on all the details.

Who’s Invited?

Members of HRSFANS and former members of HRSFA are invited. Guests are also welcome, provided a member assumes responsibility for their conduct and their enjoyment of the event.

All attendees are requested to register for the reunion. Anyone attending the Saturday dinner must indicate so on their registration and pay the additional cost.

Current members of HRSFA are welcome to stop by and say hi! Since we expect members of HRSFA will want to spend very little time at the reunion instead of Vericon, current student members of HRSFA are not required to register for the reunion unless they plan on seriously raiding our snack stash. So as not to draw people away from Vericon, we’d like to discourage undergraduates from attending the Saturday dinner.

Reunion Schedule

The reunion will host “Alumni Central”, a space in Boylston Hall where Alumni can meet up throughout the weekend. Alumni Central will be stocked with snacks and low-key reunion activities. In addition, we’re planning the following events:

• Friday night late: relax and hang out after the con in the Quincy Qube
• Breakfast with the Board on Saturday morning: Let us know what’s on your mind, and brainstorm with us about plans for the future!
• Saturday night Dinner: a sit-down dinner in Kirkland House
• Saturday night “Classy Soiree” after the masquerade ball: party in the Lowell Senior Common Room–snacks, booze, and the alumni edition of non-constitutional elections.
• Activity for alumni and their children TBA: If you’d like to be part of that discussion, contact Rose Martin, or email contact at hrsfans dot org.

Registration

You can register for the Reunion here.

You can register for Vericon here.

Accommodations

There are, of course, a variety of accommodations options in Harvard Square. Some of these are described below. We’ll add information as we continue researching options, and if you know of a good option we’ve missed, feel free to let us know and we’ll add that.

Short-Term Apartment Rental

We believe that the most cost-effective (though not necessarily the least labor intensive) commercial accommodation strategy is to pool with a small group of people and rent an apartment for the weekend. There are a variety of such listings here, which can often offer accommodations for 4 people at $50/person/night (give or take), in addition to common space and kitchens (for people who like that sort of thing). In order to get the best search results, I recommend the search terms “Harvard Square Cambridge MA” and guests “1″.

Some Examples

• http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/281552
• http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/96788
• http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/143117
• http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/269845
• http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/218557
• http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/286472
• http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/318369

Considerations

• In most of these cases, the budget-conscious strategy is to sleep two people in each bedroom and also some people on living room couches. Since living room couches are less private, it’s recommended that people sleeping on couches pay less per night than people with private rooms.
• In some cases, the price of the accommodation is fixed, regardless of how many people are staying there. In other cases, the owner will specify an additional charge per person over some number. You can get an idea about this from the page, but it’s always worth checking with the landlord explicitly, since the answer will often be different. In either case, you can make a calculation about privacy vs. cost-cutting when you decide how many people you’d like to recruit to share a space.
• Some of the spaces advertised on airbnb.com are actually private rooms in the landlord’s apartment or house. This may require less coordination with other reunion goers, and it may again be less expensive, in exchange for less privacy and less social common space available.
• Keep an eye on cleaning fees. Note that these rentals usually require security deposits.
• Questions or concerns about this approach to accommodations? Contact Elisabeth Cohen, or email us at contact at hrsfans dot org.

Hotels and B&Bs

For those who find the “rent an apartment” plan daunting, renting a hotel is of course easier. The Harvard Square Hotel is unfortunately closed for repairs during Vericon this year. Other options include:

• The Sheraton Commander
• The Inn at Harvard
• A Friendly Inn
• Irving House
• Harding House

Coordinating Roommates

Looking for someone to fill out your room in an apartment or hotel? You can post what you’re looking for here (this will involve signing onto the HRSFANS wiki, which takes about 30 seconds if you’ve never done it before).

Other Local Information

Vericon maintains information about parking, local eateries, game stores, and hotels here

Reunion Costs

The full reunion registration (including the Saturday night sit-down dinner in Kirkland) costs $60. Registration without the dinner costs $20, and registration by-the-day costs $10/day.

Financial Assistance

If you’d like to attend the reunion, we’d like you to be able to attend without cost as an impediment. The registration form includes the option to request financial assistance. If you would like to contribute to financial assistance in order to help other HRSFANs attend the reunion, that option is also available during registration. In either case, you’ll be contacted by a member of the reunion staff to discuss specifics. We will treat both financial aid requests and offers as confidential (“double-blind”)

Are you going to any of these events? Got anything coming up that you’d like HRSFANS to know about? Like to see other HRSFANs? Great! Just drop a note and let people know!

February

• 2/9-12: Capricon: Wheeling, IL. Nicely sized general SF convention. Mystery Spatula Theater 11 and Gozer Games will be there.
• 2/12-17: Boskone: Boston, MA. Put on by NESFA, a major Science Fiction/Fantasy convention.
• 2/19-20: Boston SF Film Marathon: Somerville, MA. 24 hour SF film marathon, noon Sunday-Monday. Drew G will be attending.
• 2/24-27: Dreamation: Morristown, NJ. Weiyi G, Jason B., Alden S. and Kay S. and Dev P. and Laura S. will be leading a New York HRSFANS contingent

March

• 3/2-3/4: Intercon L: Chelmsford, MA. The much larger sibling of Intercon Mid-Atlantic. Matt E and Mindy K are going.
• 3/16-3/18:
  

  Vericon XII/HRSFANS 2012 Reunion

  : Cambridge, MA

• 3/21-3/25 IAFA: Orlando, FL. HRSFANS author Marie Brennan will be attending.
• 3/30-4/1 [ FOGcon: San Francisco, CA. HRSFANS author Marie Brennan will be attending
• 3/30 – 3/31 Emerald City Comicon: Seattle, WA. Tony V is interested in attending.

April

• 4/6-4/8 PAX East: Boston, MA. Like PAX, but in Boston. Kevin G is interested in attending.
• 4/6-4/8: Anime BostonBoston, MA. Ada P and Alessandro will be running cosplay events
• 4/6-4/8 Sakuracon: Seattle, WA. Tony V is interested in attending.
• 4/27 WACcon : Seattle, WA. Diplomacy tournament. Tony V will stab you.

This is the latest installment of the Bimonthly Roundup, an attempt to list and discuss events (like sci-fi or gaming conventions) which HRSFANS are going to. It is also announced on hrsfans-discuss, and the updated list is kept on the HRSFANS wiki.

Are you going to any of these events? Got anything coming up that you’d like HRSFANS to know about? Like to see other HRSFANs? Great! Just drop a note and let people know!

November

11/18-20, Anime USA: Arlington, VA. Seems to have something to do with anime, which is perhaps Japanese animation? More seriously, it’s a fan-based, fan-run anime convention. Also, their website’s mouse-following multilayer css backdrop is pretty slick.

December

12/2-4, Anonycon: Stamford CT. Small con with heavy focus on RPGs and some LARPs. Jason B and Weiyi G will be running The Dance and the Dawn LARP (by Warren T).

January

1/13-1/16: Arisia: Boston, MA. Arisia is a massive sci-fi fantasy convention, and many HRSFANS are perennial attendees.
1/13-1/15: MIT Mystery Hunt: Cambridge, MA. The Olympics of puzzle competitions, an annual adventure and tremendous challenge. On this year’s writing/organizing team: Emily M, Andrew L, Kevin C, Kartik V, Novalis. Many other HRSFANS expected to participate.

To get put on future announcements, just add yourself (or your event) to the wiki list, or email me to let me know!

An extract:

On one hand, we have big, painful books we feel compelled to see through to the end. On the other, the books we’ve sort of read and glibly lie about having finished. Both of these seem tied to some sort of reading scorecard, one in which the readers are measured and judged by—perhaps even more than—the books that they’ve read. …

But is the reading scorecard internal or external? Or are the two so entwined that it’s impossible to answer that question?

Ms. Minkel could mean the “we” impersonally: “On one hand, we have [here an example of] big, painful books we feel compelled to see through to the end,” but the rest of her post seems to indicate that she does speak as “we” for herself and her assuredly well-read readers (the comments posted seem to presume this, too).

Yet to me this entire concept of a compulsion to finish a book (painful or not) is foreign, bizarre, and surely detrimental to reading health. Does it ring a bell for anyone? Can you explain how this compulsion could make sense inside one’s own head (or how it can compel regardless of sense)?

People who’ve read my posts before may have noticed that I, if anything, tend to brag about my willingness to drop a book at any point, as if it’s macho, or stoic, to leave the story ever unfinished in my own mind. Come to think, in some cases it does feel internally macho, in that I’m deliberately holding myself back from the experience because I do care and yet don’t feel it would be advantageous to continue (Big Love after “Pilot”, new Battlestar Galactica after “Bastille Day”, A Reliable Wife more than 2/3 through, and to a lesser extent The Pillars of the Earth after 300p); in other cases it does feel internally stoic in that I’m accepting that I don’t care a whit about the next phase of the story and would rather turn to more enjoyable pursuits, without necessarily faulting the author(s) for being unable to keep my interest (Potter V 70p in without a single page free of people yelling at each other, Angel after “Reprise”, Farscape after “Season of Death”). When I discovered Ms. Minkel’s post, I immediately opened a chat to a friend whom I’ve mentioned earlier as a counterpoint to my reading style: he once devoured half of War and Peace in two days as escape reading. I opened the conversation (minor typos & grammatical quirks corrected):

me: you’ll have a COMPLETELY different reaction to this than I will …

you won’t think this whole concept of “we have big, painful books we feel compelled to see through to the end” is foreign, bizarre, counter-to-one’s-reading-health

he:i think that reading is just less painful for me

because i read so fast

… i mean, i am a bit compulsive about finishing books, but that’s more my obsessive nature than it is powering through

what would take willpower is putting them down

it’s not that i feel compelled to finish a book because i started it. it’s because i like reading and don’t like putting books down.

me: Usually a reading struggle for me just means my psyche isn’t keeping pace

I still don’t see how liking reading is a reason to keep reading a story you’re not liking—there’s hundreds of others available just as easily (in your case, without even putting down the device if you’re reading on the iPhone)

he: well, but you want to know how it ends

as i said, i don’t task switch well

if i’m in the middle of a video game

i find myself playing it for several more hours

me: no, I only want to know how it ends if I’m interested in the story

and even then, that’s not the important part

If I wanted to know how every story ends, I’d be even more of a basket case about keeping contact with everybody than I already am—and I never would have cancelled my FB account due to lack of interest

Read for your self, not for your private morals or for their public display. Reading is between you, the story, its characters and/or its world, and the author. Everything and everyone outside is just details—and if they aren’t, read something else.

For anyone attending the Harvard 2011 reunion, there will be a HRSFANS event on Saturday, May 28th, from 3-5 pm in the Lowell Senior Common Room. Come join us for refreshments, good company, and the possibility of going mad if you stay too long.

This Hong Kong architect has packed twenty four rooms into his tiny but very versatile apartment, through the magic of movable walls and fold-out facilities.  Apparently, this is environmentally friendly in addition to being awesomely futuristic.

But despite the evidence, political forces are lined up against a sane drug policy. As Hari explains:

In 1998, the Office of National Drug Control Policy was ordered by Congress to stop funding any scientific research that might give the impression that we should redirect funding from anti-trafficking busts into medical treatment of addicts, or that there is any argument to legalise, regulate or medicalise drug use. … So, to give a small example, the ONDCP spent $14bn on anti-cannabis adverts aimed at teenagers, and $43m to find out if the ads worked. They discovered that kids who saw the ads were more likely afterwards to get stoned, so the evidence was suppressed, and the ad campaign marched on.

Ouch. And while the US might be doing particularly poorly on this front, we’re not alone: In the UK, the chair of the Advisory Committe on the Misuse of Drugs (ie. the country’s top advisor on drug policy) was just fired for speaking out in favor of evidence-based drug policy. There’s an article about it in this weekend’s Boston Globe Ideas section, which is also worth a read. Among other things, it mentions that the Obama administration is taking baby steps in the direction of a more evidence-based policy. Still no Portuguese-scale decriminalization on the horizon for the US, but we can at least be supportive of any move to shift resources into addiction prevention and treatment.