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I've never been before, but since Brandon is the guest of honor you can be certain that he will be featured throughout the program. Whether his appearances will include signings or Q&A in addition to the panels and speeches is still TBA, except for one announced event: there will be a Rithmatist-focused book club with a Q&A about that book. In the past, Brandon has often tried to do one local bookstore signing in addition to the con he attends. I emailed team Sanderson but haven't heard back yet about whether that will happen for Boskone.

This one sticks out to me: I thought we'd been told that Szeth was wrong and the idea of holding Stormlight perfectly was a myth. Guess not! The "permanently" makes me wonder if there are things like thunderclasts waiting in stasis somewhere since the last desolation. You can watch for and guard against the newly transforming voidbringers, maybe even keep arriving Odium spren away, but any safe zone you establish may already be compromised.

Thanks, I updated the OP yesterday to reflect that, but was having internet troubles so I guess the edit didn't go through after all. I'll fix that now. While no longer shocking and contradictory, the new info is still interesting.

I am expecting to only be able to go for part of the time, so I looked up the one day rates from last year. Basically, it is comparable to the early registration rate available now for the full weekend, so if your situation is similar it is probably better to get it now than to wait Boskone 53 January pricing: Full Weekend Rates Adult Full Convention: $65 College Student Full Convention: $40 * K-12 Full Convention: $25 * One Day Rates Friday One Day: $25 Saturday One Day: $45 Sunday One Day: $25

On the savant question: Here are the quotes from the audio (Outside Q&A) I guess we jumped the gun a little on the idea that "savantism is not power-specific," but there is definitely some overlap here that still raises questions.

We got an interesting WoB on savants from the Chicogo signing. The originally reported paraphrase sparked some discussion and speculation that sent me looking for all of the prior WoB on the topic. I've compiled them here. If I have missed a WoB, point me at it and I will update this post. New WoB: EDIT2: And Argent followed up with Brandon for an important clarification. That additional WoB has now been added to the list in this post; you can find the original forum topic here. Original post intro, for posterity: Annotations Theoryland Results (In chronological order, to track new insights. Brandon's clarification post-signing:

Those mundane hammers for Shardbearers also exist, but CaptainRyan is referring to the Kaladin-Szeth fight where Syl becomes a hammer.

The cremling references are compiled here (WoK) and here (WoR) in the Edgedancer spoiler board. I am guessing that discussion helped prompt the question, though Zmann966 may have come up with it in his own.

Yeah, and on reflection I'm still not sure I entirely believe it. I mean, look at Spook.... I guess I'll wait to discuss this until we have an actual transcript, but it sounds like some further clarification may be required. (I'm sure you asked follow-ups last night, so maybe he already explained it. We'll see.)

Whaaat?! That is not at all how I was thinking of it. Thanks for recording everything!

Thanks for the highlights, Argent. I always look forward to the Chicago signing reports. I'm sad you ran out of questions. I saw your list yesterday and thought it looked a little thin, but I know you have experience with how much to expect out of these things so I decided not to PM you a backup list. Too bad.

We'll have to see what the actual wording was, but I think you are over-interpreting this. Just because stormlight was once powered by Adonalsium pre-shattering, that doesn't mean it still is. I find it plausible or even probable that the Shards arriving in Roshar would incorporate any power already there into themselves, making it their own. We are told that Rayse has very intentionally not taken up any of the pieces of power from shattered Shards because he doesn't want his Intent corrupted. I have a hard time believing that a recently-Ascended Honor or Cultivation would be similarly reluctant to pick up extra power, especially if it were of a universal/unkeyed flavor as you postulate. The interesting part to me (and again, I'll have to wait until we get a verbatim quote) is that at one time the Herald's didn't need to draw Stormlight from gems. This means that either they came from another location where investiture took a different form, or that something about the Heralds has changed during the history of Roshar, requiring them to find a new power source in the gems. My personal speculation is that something in the nature of the Herald's relationship with Honor allowed them to draw power from him directly, in a never-running-out sort of supply. Then when they broke the Oathpact or when Honor died, they lost that conduit of power and had to follow the example of those poor mortal Radiants.

I noticed that today as well, and I have been trying to think of a worthwhile phrasing of the question. The best I've come up with so far is "According to Silence, the Forests of Hell have carried that name and been populated by shades since well before the Evil befell Homeland. Were the Deepest Ones also present prior to the Evil?"

I posted these in the gallery, but wanted to add some extra commentary here, with tips for anyone who wants to try making some themselves. My son and I were making snowflake decorations for Christmas, and I thought that the intricate swirls and symmetry would lend themselves to the glyphs from the Stormlight Archive. But if you are making a stormlight snowflake, you obviously need to have one with 10-fold symmetry, not the normal 6 (or heretical 8) of standard paper snowflakes. To get 10-fold rotational symmetry, start with a "fold, one cut" five pointed stars, for which there are many different instructions online. I started out following this diagram, then switched to an angle guide for increased speed/precision. Once you have a 5-fold symmetric starting point, you can fold it in half again (giving you results like the first photo below) or proceed directly to the cutting (giving you something like the other two). Hint #1 The paper will cut more cleanly if you fold it accordion style (like this /\/\/\/\ rather than this ///\\\). So, when your paper is folded in half and creased to demarcate 18 or 36 degree sections, alternate mountain and valley folds to get your starting wedge. At first I tried starting with an 10-fold symmetric wedge and cutting around the sword glyph to give 10 identical swords in one stormflake. Here you can see my attempts modeled on the symbols for Windrunner (top) and Skybreaker (bottom). I think they turned out remarkably well, despite being "practice" runs using old print jobs. Initially I had planned to flank the swords with their associated surge glyphs, but it quickly became apparent that it wouldn't work out that way. The stack of paper is 20 sheets thick, so it gets pretty difficult to cut detailed lines and to keep the shape entirely uniform from the top of the stack to the bottom. After making the sword, I just didn't have room to add the other symbols--at least, not with the thickness of the lines I was cutting. For the next one, I started with a 5-fold symmetric wedge and cut different glyphs out from each side, resulting in 10 swords of alternating order. This stormflake features Bondsmith and WIllshaper. I actually like it a bit better than the first two, partly because two shapes are more visually interesting than one, and partly because the minimalist lines of the swords turned out cleaner than the outlines had. Or maybe it's just because these ones more clearly resemble swords rather than spokes of a wheel. (Then again, those first ones definitely resemble snowflakes more, which was initially the point.) The thinner stacks did let me cut finer detail, but once again, adding surge glyphs was infeasible. Determined to include a sword and glyph together, I started with the order glyph with the simplest lines: Truthwatcher. Cutting a large Truthwatcher glyph into the 5-fold wedge, I interspersed them with a tiny Double Eye symbol. I then added an offset circle beside the hilt to put the surge glyph in. I chose Progression as the simpler of the two surge glyphs (Illumination has like 5 times as many lines, and they are twisty! No thank you.) I used an exacto knife to cut out the shape inside that circle. This step was more labor intensive than I expected because my knife only cut through ~4 sheets at once cleanly, so I had to recreate the glyph in several batches. It's not lying entirely flat, so the Truthwatcher glyph isn't quite as clear in the photo as on the real thing. The flower petal shape was a happy accident of the swordglyph shape and of trying to give some visual separation to the individual swords. Once I saw it, though, I knew it was perfect: the surge that powers growth and an order that uses it, on a shape symbolic of growth and beauty. Exactly the theme I would have tried for if I'd known to think of it. I had been a little disappointed while making this that it was losing some of the divine numerology, but If I'd tried too hard to get 10 I never would have gotten this beautiful result. I think it looks rather like a poinsettia, which is appropriate for the non-stormlight holiday as well. As an aside, I also thought to try to include the Alethi script. It's symmetric, so it ought to be easy to add along one of the creases, right? Not so much. To cut with the precision necessary to make it legible, I would need to use an exacto knife rather than scissors, and reduce the thickness of the paper stack. I still think it's a good idea and may try it, but as with the glyphs, it is much easier to model an overall shape than to reproduce lines exactly, and with an alphabet you have to be able to distinguish the letters from each other. If I do get it to work, I'll post the photos here. Hint #2 The glyphs in SA are made up of many disconnected lines, which is difficult to reproduce in this medium. Give yourself freedom to interpret the shapes and ideas rather than trying to copy the drawn versions. I hope this inspires your holiday crafting. I look forward to seeing any stormflakes (or other creations) you decide to share.

I had quite a bit of difficulty uploading photos to the gallery today. I'm doing this on my laptop, and the issues were browser-dependent. When I used chrome, the uploader closed out spontaneously, four consecutive times. Using Microsoft Edge got further, but after adding the image captions and descriptions, the "Finish Editing" button refused to do anything. When I started over a second time, the uploader blinked on the caption step and gave me a weird nested screen where instead of the description frame it had the whole thing starting over fro the beginning. I tried it in Internet Explorer next, and it worked fine. I think all my browsers are up-to-date, and I can't imagine this is a common problem or others would have mentioned it by now (this is my first time uploading to the gallery). There may be nothing to fix, but I wanted to let you know.

So, this is a tangent but I think this thread is probably the best place for it. People like to theorize about Nightblood's black smoke, and we have topics comparing it to Gavilar's sphere, to stormlight, to mist, etc. But I found an interesting quote in secret history today that (as far as I can tell from searching) hasn't made it into the forum discussions yet. SH spoilers (we're still tagging those, right? I haven't been in Cosmere Theories in a while): Now, this is viewed from the cognitive realm, so may not be directly comparable, but I think it is very suggestive that something similar may happening here.

Wow, a lot of great questions and answers from this signing. Good work, all! I had started this post by quoting half a dozen of the answers to comment on, but my comments were basically "Wow, that's cool!" every time, so I'll hold off on most of those until I have something useful to add. I am especially excited about those time bubble questions. @Herald,Thanks for asking the numerology questions! I'm surprised that the source of the number-centrism was a "Big RAFO", but the Greater Roshar answer was good to get. Looks like someone has already started a topic on it. This is actually really interesting to me. It suggests that there is a lot more visible in this future sight than simply "This place and time is important", which is how I'd been thinking of it before. It sounds like there is substantially more going on. I'm disappointed the question about Nazh's knife got RAFO'd. I was hoping for some confirmation one way or the other.

In light of this recent WoB: Do spren appear to Lift the same way they do to a listener? (I subscribe to the theory that listeners are closer to the cognitive in the same way that Lift is, and it would be nice to have confirmation or denial.)

Looks amazing, and I love what you did with the heartbeats. Looking forward to the full video!

It stuck out to me that the afterimage when he was standing still persisted longer then the one from when he was walking. So, it's not a simple time delay. If it is a synchronization problem (which I doubt), then there is some funny inertia stuff happening (i.e. the connection between his physical and out-of-sync-cognitive bits is made with a spring or bungee cord). My interpretation is that his presence is somehow imprinting on the cognitive realm; the longer he is in one place, the deeper the impression and the longer it will take to spring back to its original, unoccupied "shape". I'm not sure yet what this says about the cause.

EDIT 2: Here are the transcripts of each of the events. Big thanks to all who helped complete them! Friday Signing House War Q&A Rithmatist Q&A Sunday Interlude Reading Sunday Q&A Sunday Signing Sunday Post-signing Q&A ---- EDIT 1: The event report starts with this post near the bottom of page 2. ---- ORIGINAL POST: Thanks for posting this. It looks like a good convention. I doubt I'll be able to attend much of it, though--work is going to be very busy that month, and I may be traveling around that weekend too. Where did you see the info about the free Friday session? I couldn't find that part on the website.