ArmadilloCon 48 (Part 1): 1000 Words

 

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ArmadilloCon 39 Arm   lloCo 0 rt 2 A         Day  1 rma.      and Day 2 Armad       n 4 Part 2          Con 4.   Da  ArmadilloC n 5   ma       dilloCon 47 Part 3

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Because I get paid to write what other people want, I write whatever I want here. And I am cognizant of the fact that other people read this. I put the URL on business contact cards and in email signature blocks. Lately, more hiring applications ask for links to portfolios and other social presence. Now, I more carefully inspect my attire before I step out into public spaces. Some market decision-maker might not like my opinions but they would find out the truth eventually. So, we are better off not starting a relationship. 

And I do take pride in writing what other people need. I love the craft of writing. I understand technical writing—procedures, plans, policies—as stories because if a machine operator has to call their boss at 4:00 AM, then reading a meter can be socially impactful, and maybe the best way to make the story stop is to hit ctrl-z. 

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One common phrase used against AIs is they are “scraping the web” and not being truly creative. “Scraping” sounds bad. I prefer the word “gathering.” The word “harvesting” implies “planting” or “seeding” and for that, we have no evidence, but gather—not scrape—is what they do. It is likely that many of the million pages viewed were touched by non-sentient programs, gathering information. Some of those might have been malicious seekers of exploitable vulnerabilities. That is why NecessaryFacts is closed to comments. I also rely on Google’s Red Team/Blue Team because when we lived in Ann Arbor, some of our colleagues in user groups touted their reward payments from Google for finding those vulns.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Supplies and Demands 

Money as a Crusoe Concept 

Mutiny Aboard the San Antonio 

Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security 

Why I Served 

Books Read and Not

Heidi Kasa’s The Beginners is a collection of prose poems. The first, “A Grief That Shatters Oceans,” tells about the eponymous Beginners. “One day, without warning, we all woke up in black robes.” The Enders refuse to accept that this is a good thing though the Beginners embrace their new condition as their nature, eventually and literally true. 

I like Heidi Kasa’s style, her choice of words and their positionings. She reminds me of reading Toni Morrison and F. Scott Fitzgerald. She did not invent that kind of writing but she learned from it. She writes what she knows and she knows herself from the inside. She chose a medium that lets her paint with bold economical words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that deliver a gallery of introspections. 

From "Ghosts are Hungry" in The Beginners by Heidi Kasa
https://digging-press.myshopify.com/collections/chapbooks

I read about twenty pages of The Murderbot Diaries Volume 1: All Systems Red. Even though I checked out Volumes 2 and 3, I did not open them. Martha Wells has won Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards among many others. (See Wikipedia here.)

Lots of people like her work and find it masterful. I did not. 

Wells attended Texas A & M University and lives in College Station. TAMU is the home of the Texas Cadets, an ROTC corps that is historically recognized. Their former commander, Col. Jake Betty, was later my commanding general in the Texas State Guard. I mention that because Murderbot reflected no special understanding of the warrior guardian ethos of the military and the police.

Murderbot's getting wounded did not resonate with me: I did not feel it, even though I have been burned and punctured mostly from being a boy and not from being a soldier or a security guard. Wells did not write the words that I needed to read. 

Her style is easy to read. I understand how voracious readers consume her many books. You never stop to read a nice sentence twice.

Murderbot does not murder anyone, gratefully; he gets murdered time and again. 

Murderbot hacked his own software to give himself free will. Leaving aside that chicken-and-egg problem, not explaining how to hack an operating system is like not knowing how to hotwire a car. “I didn’t have the keys but I got the car started and drove off.” A robot who hacks his operating system is a story with ponderous consequences. Maybe Martha Wells got around to that later.

I did not get too far into Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton. Mickey is a protective services android or cyborg and before he gets killed in action, he is supposed to upload his most recent experiences in order allow a seamless download to the next Mickey. In our story, Mickey-7 does not get killed in the last split second and he returns to his station to find Mickey-8 waiting there. This is against the law and can get them both killed. One of them must go. 

They know that they must never be seen together or even allow happenstance encounters that challenge their rival and exclusive natures: they cannot be seen in two places at once. 

Then they meet at the garbage dump. This is an entropy pit into which refuse is thrown for the matter-t0-energy conversion that runs the ship. Jumping in or being thrown in would be fatal and Mickey-8 does not mind that Mickey-7 has considered this. The oubliette is easy to access, lacking any special barrier, to say nothing of an interlock or someone posted there. So, I just stopped reading. And I had at least one reason to continue, even though there are now only two people alive who still call me Mick: my brother and my ex. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

ArmadilloCon 40: Part 2 

Do You Know Your Military 

Why I Served 

Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security 

More on The Forever War 

ArmadilloCon 50: 2028 (My Proposals)

This was my cover letter to the FACT Board:

Dear Fen:

Attached as a PDF are some ideas that I have for the 50th Anniversary ArmadilloCon in 2028. What actually gets done will likely be much different from these points of discussion and that is the reason why the planning should be begin as soon as possible. Here in Texas we are often “fixin’ to start”—not actually doing the thing but knowing that we need to get ready to. 

I have been going through our archives by editing the show URLs (schedule, speakers, etc.).

Just for instance:

https://armadillocon.org/d16/

https://armadillocon.org/d27/

https://armadillocon.org/d32/guests.shtml

https://armadillocon.org/d36/writers.shtml

Then, I found the Con History on the FACT website: 

https://fact.org/con-history/

The array of past guests of honor, attending authors, presenters, speakers, and events is astounding and has analogs with every other long-lived SF/F gathering within the galaxy of science fiction, fantasy, and alternative fiction. That all comes with a burden of responsibility to the future.

LLP,

Mike M.

This was the proposal that I submitted.

ArmadilloCon 50 in the Year 2028

Submitted to the FACT Board October 11, 2025, 

by Michael E. Marotta (uszik11@gmail.com; books78640@gmail.com)

FACT should form now a convention committee for ArmadilloCon 50. It will of necessity change over the next three years, as people come and go. Open discussions should start now. A website, discussion board, Substack, or whatever should be launched now to facilitate interest and stimulate enthusiasm, by encouraging suggestions. Put out a call to FACT members to volunteer for the 50th Anniversary Committee, perhaps limited to eight (if that many are interested.)

Convention Theme: 

The Psychohistorians. What are our future histories? It is easy to imagine many paths of development given some selected assumptions. However, Isaac Asimov’s conception of psychohistory was a science of applied mathematics. To be a science, a body of knowledge must be falsifiable, which means that it must offer predictions from outside its own establishment.

Convention Theme:

Frankenstein. Arguably not science fiction, the story does carry the program of The Other, whether from another planet or a parallel universe, whether a robot or a dragon, to ask, “What is human nature?” Perhaps quintessential to science fiction, Frankenstein is the story of an invention gone wrong. 

Convention Theme:

Alternate sciences. Allowing that even magick has rules, what are the frontiers of science (or sorcery) that can provide the set and setting for a story? 

Attendance Goal: 1000 registered at $100 each.

Panels and Tracks

Artist Track — We talk a lot about the craft of writing and the markets for publications but we seem to pretty much leave artists on their own. We do have plenty of artists around. Perhaps a track for them or a couple of panels for media and markets would add a dimension to the convention.

Copyrights and Copy Wrongs

I heard that one of the publishers of anthologies failed to actually register their copyrights for their authors and many works were taken without compensation. The USA joined the Berne Convention in 1985 and that treaty gives authors and other creatives their primary rights but those are only the right to sue after the fact. In the USA we still should register with the US Copyright Office. Unfortunately, that office is now closed. What can an author or artist do to protect their intellectual property ?

Social Consequences of Life Extension.

As we all live longer and ever longer, do we push out to seek those famous new frontiers or do we become more conservative, less willing to take risks, more distrustful of change?

TV and Film Writers You Need to Know.

Laurel and I watched an episode of Castle, about a mystery writer who insinuates himself into police investigations, a known trope in crime fiction. In this story, the non-real writer, Rick Castle, is playing poker with Stephen J. Cannell and James Paterson. I knew Cannell from The A-Team and Riptide, etc., but not Paterson. Laurel knew Paterson but not Cannell.

Convention Publication

ArmadilloCon 100. Austin in the Year 2078. Ten flash fiction stories of 1000 words each by ten invited authors from our GoH roster (or others). Offer $100 each and see who is interested. 

Panel Moderators and Other Guests of Honor

Send out a Request for Proposals, asking writers and others to submit their bids to be at ArmadilloCon 50. 

Ahead of ArmadilloCon 50, we could engage some new practices and have the wrinkles ironed out for the big show.

A message board. At computer security conferences here in Austin, OWASP often puts up a flipchart on a tripod where people can leave messages for each other. At ArmadilloCon 47, I worked the Registration desk and on Saturday morning, someone wanted to leave a message for another attendee and I made note of that and kept that half-sized sheet until Sunday afternoon. Cleaning up, I threw it out. Then the recipient arrived looking for a message. 

A tech station for printing, etc. The hotel typically has its own workstation for guests, but those are notoriously insecure. This year, the hotel workstation was down for remodeling. Jonathan ran out and bought a tablet, but the team could not get it up and running properly. 

Convention T-Shirts. We have had Pegasus Publishing as a dealer for several years. They can handle our T-shirt production and sales. Moreover, they could have been selling prior year t-shirts for which, as I understand from a chance comment overheard in the last hours of the show this year, we have no interest and no market and just give them away so as not to be bothered with the extra inventory. 

Convention Coffee Cups. Reach out and see if LG Ceramics is interested. I believe that if they had five (and only five) Convention cups at the next show, those would sell out and create the market for the cups of the following year. Otherwise, these things can be ordered dishwasher safe and microwave safe from many places.

Having received the proposal but not having a motion to act on, the chair agreed to put ArmadilloCon 50 2028 in the Old Business section of the Minutes for the November meeting. 

I sent another email to the FACT Board, and cc:ed some of the past convention workers who might be interested, such as the FlashFiction coordinator.

Convention Publication

ArmadilloCon 100. Austin in the Year 2078. Ten flash fiction stories of 1000 words each by ten invited authors from our GoH roster (or others). Offer $100 each and see who is interested.

I brought my checkbook to the Board meeting and I was prepared to pay for the writers for this Festschrift but we never got that far into the discussion of the 50th Anniversary Convention because we ran out of time.

EDIT IN: November 9. Yesterday, I took this proposal to the FACT Board. 

Last month, I submitted a proposal for ArmadilloCon 50 in 2028. In that was this item:

Convention Publication

ArmadilloCon 100. Austin in the Year 2078. Ten flash fiction stories of 1000 words each

by ten invited authors from our GoH roster (or others). Offer $100 each and see who is

interested.

Once again, I will bring my checkbook and I will give FACT the $1000 required now

only on the condition that I be the publisher. I also request that the Board choose an

Editor. The editor will choose the writers. I will write a Preface for it. Whether it is print,

ebook, etc., can be developed as the production advances. If FACT cannot find an editor

by the February Board meeting, I will reach out and find someone from within the Texas

SF/F community.

If the Board does not want to do this, I can do it on my own. I cannot use the names

ArmadilloCon or DilloCon, etc., etc., and I do not need to. I can call it Austin 2078.

I started in 1963 with lead type on a Chandler Press (https://

necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2017/09/for-glory-of-old-lincoln-high.html). I last edited

"This Month in Astronomical History" for the American Astronomical Society for four

years (2020-2024)(https://had.aas.org/resources/astro-history).

This requires Board action and I am not a Board member. So, someone else must put

forward the item.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

LLP,

Mike M.

No motion was entered.  So, this morning, I started looking for writers. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Whitman Publishing: Fact and Value in Numismatics

Getting Published: Advice to a New Author

From Texas to the Moon with John Leonard Riddell

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