That’s right, banned book week. I only found out about this about a month ago, but I wish I had learned about it years ago.
Banned Book Week is an annual event that was first started back in 1982. This year it runs from September 22-28. According to the official Banned Books Week website, since the start of Banned Book Week in ’82 more than 11,300 books have been banned or challenged within schools, libraries, and bookstores, and in 2012 alone around 464 were reported. These numbers don’t include incidents that are unreported, and I can’t even imagine how many of those happen each year.
I realize that I’m beginning at the end of the con–which does seem like an odd direction to go–but this is seriously one of my favorite Dragoncon events. It makes the ever depressing con Monday a little better; partially because of its sheer awesomeness, partially because when you’re not walking the hallways you cant be sad about how empty they’re getting and all the tired looking people walking around with their suitcases.
Robot Battles are a little different than the Robot Wars/Battlebots/etc. you may have seen on TV. These battles(no they’re not really robots, but lets not get technical now, thanks) are a little more restricted by the fact that they take place at a convention and have to use the hotel’s resources without doing injury to the audience or setting the hotel on fire. So, instead of trying to destroy one another(they’d need some sort of protective glass or a cage or something to be able to safely pull that off), they fight sumo wrestler style on a raised platform trying to knock each other off. For the very last battle they bring all of the robots of the weight class up to the platform and have a wonderful little free for all (see the youtube video below, and maybe fast forward to 2:08 because that’s where all the action is).
