Philcon 2025

      Friday, November 21, 2025: As luck would have it, I lost my voice a few days ago, just in time for Philcon! Anyway, I did attend, and I set up a table promoting the local space club that I belonged to: Philadelphia Space Interest Group (PSIG) via flyers. I also put on the table older issues of Ad Astra—the magazine for the National Space Society (NSS). Even though our local space club was no longer a chapter for the NSS, I have remained a member of the main NSS organization. Like I’ve said in other Philcon reports, Philcon or the Philadelphia Science Fiction (SF) Conference (con) has been a yearly SF con that included several different tracks of programs: science, media SF, and literary SF, as well as gaming, filk music (putting new lyrics to popular songs), SF fandom, costuming, art, etc. This has been presented by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society (PSFS). They also included a writing workshop, exhibits and other fixed functions: art show, con suite, dealers’ room, fan tables, and a gaming gallery. Then, this all took place at the DoubleTree by Hilton, Cherry Hill, New Jersey. For 2025, I mostly stayed at our PSIG fan table, except for going to two events that day. First, I visited 1) The Con Suite. As in other years, the con committee offered plenty of snack foods, soft drinks, and chances to converse with other SF fans near windows over looking Route 70. Next, I attended an event, 2) the Opening Ceremonies and the PSFS Meeting. Here I saw on stage the con chairmen, Todd Dashoff, introduce the president of the PSFS, Hector Cruz. In addition, I noticed other people on stage: the Principal Speaker and guest of honor (GOH), author Charles E. Gannon; Art GOH, Sara Felix; Musical GOH, Adam Stemple, and others. Somebody mentioned that it was the 89th anniversary for Philcon and the 90th anniversary for the PSFS, before Todd Dashoff gave awards to others: the Frank R. Paul Awards for the best cover art in a magazine and another award for the best book cover. (Frank R. Paul was the first GOH at the first World Science Fiction Convention [Worldcon] in 1939 in New York City.) Then the winners of the Young Writers Contest received their awards. (The two categories included middle school, grades 5 through 8, and high school, grades 9 through 12.) Finally, Charles E. Gannon read a portion from a book that he wrote called This Broken World. 

     Saturday, November, 22, 2025: On Philcon’s busiest day, I started that day attending the 3) Art Show. As in other years, around 2/3rds of the art displayed fantasy themes, including some abstract art, and the rest presented SF and space art, especially astronomy. About 2/3rds of the art showed paintings & drawings, and the others exhibited different mediums: jewelry, sculptures, and crochet & knit items, as well as quilted items, pottery, and so on. The displayed art also included including many tiaras and other artwork, both fine and decorative, that Sara Felix made. After this, I went to the following panel: 4) Analytical AIs’ Value to Science. At this panel, Ed the Engineer (Bishop), Catherine Asaro, Anna Kishina, and Zach Be said that although in the arts of writing & drawing, AI has been soulless, nevertheless, for the different sciences, AI has proven to be useful. If a computer did in minutes what it took humans hours to do, AI could do it faster. Would it take over for humans in science? Most of the panel doubted it. 

     Saturday Night: After I changed for the evening, I went to another panel: 5) Space Colony Design and Development where Catherine Asaro, Dr. Jim Prego, Earl Bennett (the president of PSIG), Ed the Engineer, and John Ashmead made us realize that a lot of thought had to go into a space colony. A colony in space would have more control in its environment compared to a colony on a planet, and they mentioned past space stations in fact & fiction, as well as past space colonies in SF. For the most part, the best way to start would be in Lower Earth Orbit (LEO) and the moon before heading out farther past LEO and Mars. Of course, sending out robots first would be the safest way before sending humans. Afterward, the big event for the night became 6) the Masquerade. All I could say was for the good news, about 50% of the costumers presented SF costumes, and the rest wore fantasy costumes. Meanwhile, the bad news was that there were only six entrees in the masquerade. I still think that if there isn’t at least 10 entrees, instead of having a masquerade contest, then have a casual “roving” masquerade. Why bother setting up all that technical equipment for so few costumes? Turn it into a masquerade party.

     Sunday, November 23, 2025: I made a beeline for the 7) Dealers’ Room. As in other years, about half of the dealers sold reading materials of books, magazines, and comic books. The rest sold other merchandise: artworks, jewelry, and games, as well as toys, bookmarks, etc. A final event for me was going to this panel: 8) Colonizing Mars. There have been many SF stories about setting up colonies on the Red Planet, but how practical would it be? Therefore, Inge Heyer, Earl Bennett, Dr. Jim Prego, and Frank Wu mentioned the hurdles involved in living there: shielding the ship and the habitats against radiation., microbes that could absorb radiation, what humans have to do for their bodies when they travel on the way to Mars in no gravity, and adjusting to 1/3 gravity on Mars. Mars could be more of a challenge because communications with Earth would take longer compared to the moon and LEO. Somebody mentioned sending robots first to set up the habitats and grow crops for humans. Then on the way to Mars, rotate the ships for humans to have from 1/3 G to one G in gravity. The biggest problem to getting this started was MONEY! Overall, building and living in a colony on Mars would be a lot more complex than people years ago thought it would be.