Supanova, Australia, June 2017

[Darkness he/him]

Here is the website link on Supanova: http://www.supanova.com.au/guests/brandon-sanderson/

Here is the relevant updated info as of right now:

"Appearance Notes

Brandon looks forward to meeting all his fans in Sydney and Perth in June 2017.

Brandon will conduct a general admission Q&A, and participate in signing and photo sessions* throughout each Saturday (10.30am to 5.30pm) and Sunday (11am to 5pm) in both cities."

So that would be June 17 and 18 in Sydney (Sydney Showground, Olympic Park), and June 24 and 25 in Perth (Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre).

I'll be in attendance on June 17th, probably all day if I can get the wife's permission haha.

And I'll bring a recording device with me (my phone and charger)... anyone know if events like this allow recordings and/or have charging stations?

Edited May 14, 2017 by Darkness

[Agent34]

I haven't been to Supanova myself but posed the question to some who have and the answer I got back was:

"Panels they usually have someone recording it at most cons so you're probably not allowed to

Charging stations idk"

So potential no-go on the recording. I've seen videos of panels and q&as that have happened at Supanova on Youtube so recording could be allowed unless it's an official thing but I don't recall any kind of official Supanova channel so maybe not. However it seemed that things get pretty noisy so if you are able to record it might not be very clear.

 

Slightly off topic: of course he's not coming to Melb 

Edit/update: It seems recording is in fact not allowed so if you do go ahead then do so discreetly.

Edited May 14, 2017 by Agent34
Update in information.

[ParadoxicalZen he/him]

I have a question request if anyone's taking any!

[+Wax he/him]

Sigh... on not coming to Melbourne... but anyways, I am planning to be away on holidays anyway on those dates.

The organiser better have a good reason though... Melbourne is a much bigger city than Perth and would have generated more publicity than Perth.

[wlmkfi]

Just bought a ticket for me and my bro (for his birthday) for Sydney. This is a dream come true, me and my brother have been discussing Sanderson's works (particularly Stormlight Archive) for years. Got 2 weeks to study up, is there a place here that gives you a good idea of what Brandon has already been asked? dont want to waste the opportunity

*edit*

currently reading through Pagerunner's collection of WoB's but if there are more that you know of, please let me know 

Edited June 4, 2017 by wlmkfi

[Calderis he/him]

@wlmkfi there's also Theoryland. 

http://www.theoryland.com/wheel-of-time-interview-search.php

Search Sanderson and it should pull up everything that's not Robert Jordan. 

There's a lot of Cosmere stuff in there, but you'll have to wade through a lot of Wheel of Time questions too. 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

6 hours ago, wlmkfi said:

is there a place here that gives you a good idea of what Brandon has already been asked?

Counter-intuitively, you could go to the Ultimate List of Questions for Brandon topic. Ask your questions to us there, and if we've got answers for them, you'll know about it pretty soon.

Additionally, responses with no answer replies are ones we probably haven't asked him about yet. If any of the questions there strike your fancy, feel free to copy them down with any questions you've come up with.

[wlmkfi]

thanks for your responses guys, will definitely have a look. Pretty exciting to get to meet my favourite author and it is always great to have an excuse to re-read his books ^_^.

[Oversleep]

I keep my own list of questions I'd like to see answered but I'm gonna post it later.

For now, a question that you could ask:
how did the interplanetary mercantile system work? How did worldhoppers get in and out of the Pits of Hathsin? What goods were they trading and with whom?
How did Kelsier destroy the Pits (what damage was done to them)? He couldn't have destroyed the perpendicularity itself, right?

[Mestiv he/him]

Did Adonalsium create Cosmere or did Cosmere exist before Adonalsium? 

[wlmkfi]

these are some great questions, do you think they will let me ask 10? haha

 

[Argent he/him]

On 6/4/2017 at 7:58 AM, wlmkfi said:

Got 2 weeks to study up, is there a place here that gives you a good idea of what Brandon has already been asked? dont want to waste the opportunity

It's generally better to ask your questions here first. If you go straight to us, you'll just drowned by all the questions some of the more vocal community members have been stockpiling for ages.

[Pagerunner he/him]

5 hours ago, wlmkfi said:

these are some great questions, do you think they will let me ask 10? haha

 

Depends on the format. During signing lines, to keep things moving, Brandon will often limit people to three or four questions. But some of us have had luck waiting until the end of an event, once it's officially closed and everyone else has gone, and Brandon is willing to stick around and keep on talking. (Whether that's just staying late after the bookstore staff have locked the doors, relocating to the lobby after the university closed the lecture hall we were in, or even standing on the street outside the library and getting interrupted by a homeless person!) So, don't count on getting a ton of questions, but it never hurts to have plenty prepared.

As far as what to ask, this is the advice that I give. Brandon seems to be able to tell when someone is asking a question from a list, and when someone is asking about stuff they've come up with. Don't act like a 17th Shard footsoldier, asking what you think is best for the community. When Brandon can tell you're excited about a topic, he'll open up and really engage with you. But if you're carrying along a message from your internet overlords, he's more likely to just give a short answer and keep the line moving.

Even if you ask a question that's been answered before, it's not the end of the world. In one of the recent Facebook FAQ polls, the winning question was one about WoR that those of us on the Shard have known the answer to since, like, one day after it was released. But in Brandon's answer, he didn't just give the simple facts, he talked about why he had included that scene, and how it was influenced from the first draft of WoK. You can get some good information from old questions, even if it's just because Brandon can say more once Oathbringer is out.

Our priority for signings is often to get facts. Brandon's priority is not to give facts; if he wanted to, he could do that much more effectively by spending more time doing Reddit AMAs or that sort of thing. His priority, why he wants to keep doing signings, is to interact with his fans face-to-face and share the excitement and enjoyment that we all get from his works. So pick questions that will do both; stuff that you don't know the answer to, and that you can genuinely and earnestly converse with Brandon about. Yes-or-no questions can be good, but be prepared to follow up with either answer, so the conversation doesn't die.

[Kurkistan he/him]

10 minutes ago, Pagerunner said:

Our priority for signings is often to get facts. Brandon's priority is not to give facts; if he wanted to, he could do that much more effectively by spending more time doing Reddit AMAs or that sort of thing. His priority, why he wants to keep doing signings, is to interact with his fans face-to-face and share the excitement and enjoyment that we all get from his works. So pick questions that will do both; stuff that you don't know the answer to, and that you can genuinely and earnestly converse with Brandon about. Yes-or-no questions can be good, but be prepared to follow up with either answer, so the conversation doesn't die.

Well said, and a good insight.

[Oversleep]

4 hours ago, Pagerunner said:

As far as what to ask, this is the advice that I give. Brandon seems to be able to tell when someone is asking a question from a list, and when someone is asking about stuff they've come up with.

Now I can't help but wonder what did he think of me. On one hand, I had with me three pages of printed questions. On another hand, the day earlier in the interview I was the one firing Realmatical questions... hm...

[Kurkistan he/him]

1 hour ago, Oversleep said:

Now I can't help but wonder what did he think of me. On one hand, I had with me three pages of printed questions. On another hand, the day earlier in the interview I was the one firing Realmatical questions... hm...

Fear not! "Lists" and "stuff you've come up with" can be combined! That one time when Argent and I chased him out of the bookstore in Chicago he seemed impressed that our lists were our own, though in my case my own list also included some questions selectively stolen from the community at large.

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

Anyone one going who is into art and color theory? I have a question involving breaths and pointillism. For a less complicated one, is Demoux's cold the Scadrian version of rhinovirus or enterovirus? (One is potentially far more dangerous than the other, but BOTH can cause a cold...) Finally, can Atium, when burned allomanticly, be used to mimic the allomantic effect of its alloys? Those are three questions I really want answered... If anyone wants to ask these for me PLEASE let me know! I will be so grateful! (If Brandon asks they come from a fan who really wishes he'd come to the Big Apple. Since he usually doesn't I need other people to ask my questions for me...)

[wlmkfi]

Thanks everyone for the insight, especially Pagerunner. That is great advice, I think it is much better to have a 2-3 minute conversation (maybe longer, who knows) with Brandon about what you personally like and like to know (even if it's weird and random) than rattle off some really complex and clever question that you didn't come up with and get a yes/no answer to. I am reading some of the questions people are asking and they are on a completely different level to me. I am quite confident I wouldn't be able to ask them without looking down the whole time and I definitely would mispronounce something. At the end of the day I think I'm just going to thank the guy, ask one of my bad questions, get one of my books signed and then proceed to chase Steven Yeun around the Dome with a chain covered baseball bat screaming "I am Negan"

Edited June 7, 2017 by wlmkfi

[Oversleep]

18 hours ago, Kurkistan said:

That one time when Argent and I chased him out of the bookstore in Chicago

Sounds like fun times.

*remembers Brandon isn't probably going back to Poland anytime soon  *

Edited June 7, 2017 by Oversleep

[Blightsong he/him]

3 hours ago, wlmkfi said:

Thanks everyone for the insight, especially Pagerunner. That is great advice, I think it is much better to have a 2-3 minute conversation (maybe longer, who knows) with Brandon about what you personally like and like to know (even if it's weird and random) than rattle off some really complex and clever question that you didn't come up with and get a yes/no answer to. I am reading some of the questions people are asking and they are on a completely different level to me. I am quite confident I wouldn't be able to ask them without looking down the whole time and I definitely would mispronounce something. At the end of the day I think I'm just going to thank the guy, ask one of my bad questions, get one of my books signed and then proceed to chase Steven Yeun around the Dome with a chain covered baseball bat screaming "I am Negan"

Brandon does tend to cut question asking short if he suspects they are from obsessive sharders...

[Argent he/him]

1 hour ago, Blightsong said:

Brandon does tend to cut question asking short if he suspects they are from obsessive sharders...

The secret is to ignore him until he calls security on you.

[CaptainRyan he/him]

3 minutes ago, Argent said:

The secret is to ignore him until he calls security on you.

There is always another secret... like getting one of the 17th Shard onto said security detail. Muahahahahahahahaha!

[Blightsong he/him]

39 minutes ago, Argent said:

The secret is to ignore him until he calls security on you.

Me: "Can you give us a piece of dialogue from Honor to Cultivation"

Brandon: "How long does security take around here? Get this maniac off of me!"

 

Is Security a new shard? Let me know what you guys think. /s

[A Budgie she/her]

Okay, so I plan to go to the Perth one.
I'll have to go through the list of unasked questions, if I don't come up with any of my own before then.

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

I really wish Brandon would come to New York. I have two kids, so I can't just drive off to go to signing. And the one time he came close enough to New York was the week I gave birth. Maybe someone who goes could explain the situation and ask if he'd mind answering my questions?