Imaginarium 2025

I went to Imaginarium 2025, it was quite good. I went last year as well. After going for the second year I think it is the creative con. of the year. I feel obligated to use the con. contraction since while it is billed as a convention, I treat it more like a conference.

In my mind a convention celebrates and highlights the topic, meaning a tabletop convention is filled with table top games, a comic convention is filled with comics and the associated. It is true that The Imaginarium Convention is filled with creativity the structure reminds me more of a conference. As steel sharpens steel, creative fuels creative meaning the programming is less about celebrating the creative things people can do, and more about improving the craft one is funning their creativity into. Meaning if you are someone who is creative, and you want to improve the output for your creativity you will likely find at least one panel, workshop, or expert that can teach you something along that output. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a degree of celebration, as there is a film festival within The Imaginarium Convention, and there are dozens of people willing to go over what it is they’ve done.

All in all I was slightly disappointed in the mix of programming this year, there were a lot of romance authors in attendance and thus a lot of romance panels. I am not particularly interested in romance stories. Also an uptick in A.I. based panels, which is understandable yet the positions and comprehension of some of the panelists frankly annoyed me. Not much to be done on that front other than wait and see which of the doomsayers turns out to be correct. I did find the anthology panels rather interesting.

Yet there’s something else that came with this year’s convention.

This is the anthology that is connected to the convention. I participated last year and it’s out. If you’re interested it is on Goodreads which has the links to where you can get the book. It is available in EBook and paperback. I have it in paperback since paper doesn’t run out of battery on long flights.

Now I don’t know if it’s long enough to make a return flight, as there are 17 stories totaling 428 pages. All in all I will say it’s a good collection of stories. My story Space Junk is roughly in the middle of both the Marathonarium and in what could be called a mini-anthology within Marathonarium. Last year when we sat down to write I and a few of my author friends (the overlap with this and In the Midst of a River)decided to use a common character. I don’t think I didn’t use him the best of us four; I think the horror makes up for it.

If you pick up a copy let me know what you think.