The inaugural FIYAHCON took place online October 17-18, 2020, held via Zoom and Dacast, and hosted by FIYAH magazine. Guests of honor were Yasser Bahjatt, Cassie Hart, and Rebecca Roanhorse. Accord­ing to convention director L.D. Lewis, the event was conceived mid-year, in the midst of protests, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the trend of conventions switching to virtual events; it was “for­mally launched” July 7, 2020, and the Ignyte awards were ...Read More

The 2020 Sirens Conference, “Sirens at Home”, an “intersectional, in­terdisciplinary conference on gender, fantasy lit, and other speculative spaces,” was held October 22-25, 2020, online in lieu of the usual Denver CO event. Amy Tenbrink and Hallie Tibbetts are the Sirens co-founders. Tenbrink was con chair and Tibbetts served as programming director. Tenbrink said, “In a year in which we all feel such isolation, we need each other more than ...Read More

Originally scheduled to take place at Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City UT, the 46th World Fantasy Convention transitioned into an online event on June 1, 2020. Nonetheless, the event maintained their target run dates of October 28 – November 1, 2020. Guests of honor were David A. Cherry, Stephen Gallagher, and Anne Groell; special guests were C.J. Cherryh, Stephen Graham Jones, and Cindy Pon; and toastmasters were Tracy ...Read More

Estcon 2020 was special in a number of ways. The timing of COVID-19 in Esto­nia was close to perfect, as the pandemic retreated from the first wave and politely held off on a second wave long enough for allow for the gathering. The farm site meant that it was easy to put extra measures in place, for example encouraging attendees to bring their own tents, which meant that beds could ...Read More

The theme for ICon is usually announced around April, and that’s when the work on the festival kicks into high gear. For a while we held on to the hope that ICon could be held in the usual manner, in person. Around July, it became clear this wouldn’t happen, and the team running it faced a difficult choice. Aptly, “choices” was the theme of the festival this year. What they ...Read More

The Outer Dark Symposium on the Greater Weird was held online August 14-16, 2020 for 232 registered attendees, organized by Anya Martin, co-producer of The Outer Dark podcast hosted by This Is Horror.

Scheduled programming featured 12 reading sessions with Mike Allen, Gregory Norman Bossert, Gabriela Damián Miravete, and others. Panels included “From Yellow Wallpaper to Spectral Hues: Color in Weird Fiction” with Daniel Braum, Craig Laurance Gidney, Brian ...Read More

In July 2020 there was an SF/F festival. Live, not virtual. It ran from July 14-19, with inter­national guests and visitors, editors, artists, film-makers, translators, and fans. I’ve just come back from it, and I shall explain.

Celsius 232 is a festival in Avilés, in Asturias, in Northern Spain. It has run for nine years, over which it’s become a major Spanish festival, with the ability to attract international guests ...Read More

CoNZealand, the 78th World Science Fiction Convention, took place July 29 – Aug 2, 2020, making history as the first-ever virtual Worldcon. Guests of honour were authors Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon, artist Greg Broadmore, and fan Rose Mitchell. Reported membership was 2,556 attending, with over 1,800 members accessing through Grenadine and up to 1,700 accessing through Discord, compared to Dublin’s in-person 6,024 attending memberships, San Jose’s 5,440 attending members, ...Read More

The Locus Awards took place online on June 24-27, 2020 in their first virtual-only iteration; Connie Willis and Daryl Gregory co-emceed the ceremony. There were over 150 registrations, and paid members received a Locus t-shirt and a print program book.

Despite struggling with whether to go forward with the Locus Awards events (usually held on the ground in Seattle), and ignoring their total lack of technical experience with webinar platforms, ...Read More

It is universally acknowledged that life is para­lyzed due to pandemic spread of COVID-19. The effect encompassed every sector of soci­ety, and was not restricted any particular gender, class, age, region, race, religion and others. For the first time, a worldwide pan­demic has affected homo sapiens. Every government, voluntary organization, police, military, medical community, and essential service sector must be thanked for their timely, selfless services, which could speed up ...Read More

WisCon 44 was scheduled for May 22-25, 2020 at the Concourse Hotel in Madison WI, with Rebecca Roanhorse and Yoon Ha Lee as guests of honor. Because of the CO­VID-19 pandemic, the convention was converted to a virtual event, their first “all-online con,” held on the same dates, with additional events on the evening of the 21st. Roanhorse attended virtually, but Lee was unable to take part.

There were 1,084 ...Read More

The 2020 SFWA Nebula Conference morphed mid-COVID from an in-person conference into an impressive online event, held May 29-31, 2020. There were 808 members from 33 countries, a record, up from 2019’s record-breaking 475 registered members.

Online programming began before the event proper on May 23, with a Mentorship Meeting, pairing experienced congoers with newer attendees, and the Nebula Finalist Reception. Weekend programming focused on industry-relevant topics, such as “Too ...Read More