History
Ad Astra first ran in 1980, and has run every year since, excepting 1981 and 1999. The convention occasionally serves as host for other conventions; for example, Canvention 7 was held as part of Ad Astra 7, in 1987, and the convention hosted the Toronto games convention Orion for its last two years, 2003 and 2004.
In previous years, guests have included prominent Canadian writers including Robert J. Sawyer, Nalo Hopkinson, Tanya Huff, Guy Gavriel Kay, Robert Charles Wilson, Phyllis Gotlieb, etc., as well as internationally renowned authors including C. J. Cherryh, David Brin, Connie Willis, Larry Niven, Lois McMaster Bujold, Frederik Pohl, Katherine Kurtz, Orson Scott Card, James P. Hogan and others. Ad Astra has continued to evolve past its focus on literature to include programming dedicated to costuming, art, filking, and media. In some years, Jason Taniguchi has performed popular one-man parody shows at the convention. More recently, TV personalities Ed the Sock and Liana K have hosted various events during the convention.
Read more about this topic: Ad Astra (convention)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every member of the family of the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother ...”
—Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)