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The population of geeks, nerds and lovers of science fiction, fantasy and video games continues to grow. The fifth annual Sci-Fi Valley Con will be held June 10 to 12 at the
Blair County Convention Center in Altoona and will be bigger than ever, said founder and promoter Casey Bassett.
And better, he promised.
Previously, he featured local and regional celebrities in attendance, but this year, he is bringing in celebrities “from the other side of the planet,” including actors John Rhys-Davies from Britain’s Isle of Man and Alaina Huffman from Los Angeles.
Rhys-Davies played the Arab excavator Sallah in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” as well as Gimli in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and other movie roles. Huffman was First Lt. Tamara Johansen in the SyFy television series”Stargate Universe” and Abaddon in the CW television series “Supernatural.” Other TV credits include “Smallville” and “Painkiller Jane.”
Other featured guests include Zach Galligan of “Gremlins,” Alex Vincent of “Child’s Play,” Fred Williamson “From Dusk ‘Til Dawn” and John Morton of “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.” In all, 11 human guests and four vehicles – “Jurassic Park’s” Staff Jeep, ’67 Chevrolet Impala from “Supernatural,” Ecto-1 from “Ghostbusters” and the Tardis of “Doctor Who” fame – are scheduled to appear.
“It’s been a game changer for me, now that I’m focusing on more celebrity guests,” Bassett said.
Booking agents have warned him that this year’s lineup could double his attendance from last year, when about 4,000 people visited.
“I’d be ecstactic to have 7,000 or 8,000,” he said.
Bassett of Johnstown founded the con and hosted the first event in 2012 at the North Central Recreational Center in Ebensburg with fewer than 100 vendors. The next year, he topped 100 when he moved it to the Jaffa Shrine Center. After two years there, he moved it to the Blair County Convention Center, where last year he sold out all 210 vendor tables in the downstairs portion alone.
This year, he rented the entire convention center and has sold out of all 322 vendor slots.
“Every available space and room at the convention center will be filled, from a film festival to panel rooms for guest speakers” and more, he said.
One area will feature Dungeons and Dragons table-top, role-playing games; another will house video game systems dating back to the 1970s, including Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console – “That one was hard to track down,” he said.
Activities will include a costume contest, charity auction and trivia tournaments. A cafe will offer chicken, barbecue pork and more, and vendors will be selling clothes, jewelry and other items.
Fantasy artist Jessi Bencloski has booked a vendor table for her second year at Sci-Fi Valley Con to sell prints, her originals and commissioned artist trading cards. She draws dragons, unicorns “and often stranger creatures,” she said.
“Part of the reason I’m going back is because it is a very well-priced convention for artists and well within a reasonable travel distance from home,” which is just outside Pittsburgh, she said. “But even more so than that it was just a really fun convention. … The atmosphere was very relaxed and friendly, it was definitely one of the most pleasant convention experiences I’ve had.”
Gearbox Union of Altoona will be selling its card game and T-shirts, primarily to cover its costs of being at the convention, but that won’t be its primary mission, said member Lee DePiro.
“We do a weekly podcast, YouTube videos, go to events and conventions,” he said. “But this is our hometown convention and the big thing we do there is called ConQuest,” a charity event that has raised $10,000 for children’s hospitals, he said.
About a third of the vendors have agreed to participate in the fundraiser by donating items to be raffled. Participants can buy chances or win them at vendors’ tables by completing “quests,” such as sing, pretend to be a zombie or answer a trivia question, DePiro said.
He said the proceeds go to Child’s Play Charity of Seattle that provides toys, games and the like for patients in children’s hospitals, and Extra Life that makes direct donations to children’s hospitals.
This is the fourth year for Gearbox to participate and members also will conduct live podcasts from the convention, Depiro said.
He said conventions like Sci-Fi Valley are growing in popularity for several reasons.
“I think it’s that being a geek or nerd is cool nowadays,” he said. “It’s gone mainstream. It’s OK to show your fandom and be into a video game or a movie or comics.
“Look how big Marvel has gotten with their movies lately.”
He said that while conventions have “cool sights, celebrities and stuff,” they’re mostly “about making new friends and meeting new people who share your passion.
“Everybody I’ve met at a convention is super nice and friendly, and they just like to hang out and talk about their passion. I think that’s the main thing why these have gotten so big.”
Bencloski agreed.
“It’s just a place for people who really love their comics, movies, books and games to just let their geek flags fly and meet other like-minded people to share their passions with,” she said. “It’s not really unlike serious sports fans, only instead of wearing a player jersey and watching celebrities play a game, people dress up like super heroes and attend Q&A panels about speculative fiction. For me, although my participation in conventions started as a hobby, it has become more of a professional endeavor.”
She credited Bassett and his staff for putting a lot of “passion into it” and filling “a void that was left when some beloved and fan-focused Western Pennsylvania comicons were taken over by larger, more profit-driven conventions.”
Bassett said that even as he has physically outgrown the convention center already, he doesn’t plan to move Sci-Fi Valley anytime soon.
“I love the Blair County Convention Center, and having this in Altoona is less expensive than having one in Pittsburgh,” home to about a dozen such conventions a year, he said. “Blair County is more scenic and Altoona has a lot of amenities that big cities have but it’s just more convenient to get around. Altoona has plenty of hotels that are reasonably priced. “
But rooms are booking fast for the weekend of his convention, he said, with his vendor list alone bringing in 500 people from Johnstown, Cresson, Dubois and across the state and neighboring states.
As far as visitors, most usually come from Central Pennsylvania, he said. But that could change this year.
“Maybe with our big-name guests … I can see thousands traveling to town to visit,” he added.
Mirror Life Writer Cherie Hicks is at 949-7030.