Wrap up the First

Aaaaand the last few days have all gone blurry. On Friday it felt like I'd been at the Con for a week; on Sunday I couldn't believe I only had one day left. This post is going to be a bit scattershot in covering impressions of the actual Con activities. On the 6 hour drive from Montreal to Portland, Maine on Monday I had lots of lovely time to think about lots of things that I learned at the Con, and I think a number of blog posts will result. But first - the Con!

Curtis got 4 attendees for his engineering Kaffeeklatch, which was very nice. They had questions about the Space Station, and he got to tell stories (engineering campfire stories, I call them). He definitely enjoyed both that and the panels he was on. We got a very nice crowd for the fencing demonstration, despite it being at 9am on Sat. We gave all comers a chance to wail away at each other with Nerf sabres, which was received enthusiastically. More and more people trickled in as the hour went on, and we must have had more than 40 people by the end. Yay, fencing!

The Blogger Reading with Teresa Nielsen Hayden and Pablo Defendi of Tor also had a good audience, about 12. They had no idea who I was, but On Charm seemed to go over well. Teresa read Slush Killer, which I'd read before, but it was awesome to hear her doing it live. We wrapped up early (even long blog posts tend to be shorter than short stories) and had a nice conversation with the audience. At the very end we could have gotten into a great discussion in response to a question on blogging as performative writing, but then we were out of time. I'm hoping another blog post will come out of that one.

Saturday wrapped up by having dinner with some Locus folks and authors, then fireworks (gorgeous!), repaired to the bar with Niall Harrison, Nic Clarke and Abigail Nussbaum (also got to get all fangirl at Gord Sellar), then waylaid by Locus folks again before actually getting back to my room. A longer night than intended, but lovely whichever way you slice it.

On Sunday I joined the British contingent (Niall, Nic, Abigail & Paul Kincaid) tracking down the elusive "SF Theory Without Tears" panel, which had changed both room and time. I don't think it's quite what we hoped for; the moderator Ann Crimmins focused on pedagogy and using theory in the classroom instead of a discussion of theory & its uses -- a bit unfortunate since I could listen to Dr. Veronica Hollinger go on about the latter all day. Still, the panel was well attended despite the confusion, and a goodly number of folks in the crowd were teachers, so that was probably quite useful.

I ran the Q&A session with David Hartwell, and that went well. I just wish there had been more people. Still, David can be eloquent on just about any topic, as he was here. I led off with a question about his support for sf scholarship (such as IAFA), and he mentioned how much sf happens in places away from the community: stories in local newspapers in the 1830's that have steam-driven mechanical men, that sort of thing -- very interesting. Two other points he made that I'd like to highlight:

• In response to a question about trends in sf, he thinks that sf writers who are dealing with cutting edge research on consciousness (like Peter Watts and a previous con panel) may well radically change the notion of character in literature, and that it is exciting thing to watch.
• In response to a question on what typically goes wrong in written sf even from very good writers, he focused on setting. Too often writers get lazy on setting and end up setting stories in the generic FantasyLand (TM). He says that he often asks writers to go back and make the world come alive and make it their own. Very good advice for aspiring writers!

The rest of Sunday was spent in a haze of Hugo stuff - getting ready for the pre-Hugo reception (where everyone was too nervous or busy to make much conversation - but I got to see this year's Hugo base up close; it is really gorgeous in a way that doesn't come across fully in the pictures I've seen); attending the Hugos; being very close to passing out because I'd skipped dinner; getting dinner at the hotel; getting within ~20 yards of the Delta party hotel before once again falling into a group of Locus folks headed the other way on a mission; helping with a data recovery crisis; and then drinking & talking. Whew! That's an amazing sequence of events that led to me having my very first WorldCon where I never hit any of the parties. Still, I had my share of time talking with editors, critics, and the occasional author in the Intercontinental bar, so I don't feel deprived.

Monday was also chaotic. Niall Harrison moderated a panel on Non-fiction that might interest SF fans, which inevitably became a bit of a list-making panel, but there were some fine suggestions there (I'll post my jotted list tomorrow). I made a last trip through the dealer's room, then headed up to my last panel, where I had to moderate "Mundane SF vs Science." In the meantime, Geoff Ryman had just lived through what he described as his "worst panel ever" which involved Patrick Nielsen Hayden walking out and also people filking. So I made sure the Mundane SF panel went more smoothly. Luckily the other panelists (Mark Olson and Henry Spencer) were sympathetic to the fact that the panel title was stupid: Mundane SF is an aesthetic movement that is no more in opposition to science than Modernism was. Still, I tried to balance the time for people who wanted to talk about science and those who wanted to talk about writing; I think it went well. Of the panels I was on, it was the best attended. Afterwards I finally got to meet someone I'd been looking for the whole Con: Sissy Pantelis, an editor of the French sf magazine Galaxies and a Mind Meld participant. I'm so glad I didn't miss her altogether; it's important to get faces to go with the names, and so rare that you can meet up with people who live in Greece!

Then there was some chaos as we offered Geoff a lift to the airport; he needed to get there early as he hadn't been able to confirm his flight reservation. After a bit of logistical wrangling, we got him there in (we hope) plenty of time. Then we headed back to the states by way of Vermont, which was perfect and much needed decompression time. Got into Portland ~11:30 pm, then headed off to the airport around 5:30 the next morning, so if this post is less than totally coherent, lack of sleep is my excuse. But we're home now safe & sound - that's the important part. And while I'm processing a whole ton of things that I heard and thought throughout the Con... I'm also already starting to plan for 2010 in Melbourne. Woohoo!

PS: This is my favorite picture from the Con; I've met all the gentleman individually, but seeing them in all their 6' 5"-or-greater stature en masse was quite something. After that photo was taken, they all went zombie-walking off to the post-Hugo party.

A More Moderate Evening

My last panel got out at ten, and very few people are in the hotel bar (many more Delta parties tonight). After thorough deliberation and a glass of wine, sanity won out (given that Curtis & I have a 9am thing tomorrow--a fencing demonstration!) and we're back in our room. Our Con has been such that we haven't even been inside the Delta (party hotel) yet--we'll probably get there tomorrow.

Today was largely spent working the Locus table--awesome because of all the interesting people who come by to chat.

I hit a 3:30 panel titled "Are We Conscious and Does it Matter?" with Kathryn Cramer, Peter Watts, Daryl Gregory and James Morrow. They were surprisingly sanguine about the possibility that consciousness is nothing more than an epiphenomenon of our complex brain system that doesn't really add much value; the primary identified evolutionary value seemed to be imagination and the ability to model possible futures. I'm still a bit confused: while research shows that your arm is getting nerve impulses to go for a glass of water before you're consciously aware that you're hungry, what about the fact that a lynch mob of people who have already decided to kill someone can be talked out of it? i.e. isn't consciousness more complex than that, and if we only rationalize unconsciously made decisions, why can our minds be changed by argument? However, I didn't get to ask that question, because the audience was quite keen on having its say, whether called upon or not. Kathryn really had her hands full with that crowd. And of course, most of the folks stood up to lecture or ramble on rather than ask specific questions. Times like that make me sympathetic to those who'd like to ban audience participation at panels, but I didn't feel that way by the end of the night (about which more later).

5 pm saw my first panel of the Con, and the only one I felt really qualified for: the Hugo Short fiction handicapping panel. Between Ann VanderMeer, Jonathan Strahan, Niall Harrison, and Bill Fawcett, we talked about all the Hugo short fiction nominees and some that didn't make the ballot. There was quite a bit of unanimity: Ted Chiang for short story, toss up for Novelette but we're rooting for Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Gambler," and while Novella wasn't terribly strong this year, Ian McDonald's "The Tear" is probably a leading contender. However, other factors may influence the "will win" as opposed to "should win," so we'll have to see.

Ran out for Greek food, and made it back in time for a panel on Post-Modernism and Post-Humanism with Geoff Ryman, Daryl Gregory, Nancy Kress and Geza Reilly. The panel was a little fuzzy on post-modernism, but could hold forth on post-humanism--which was fine because that's what the (packed) audience really wanted to hear about.

Then I had to run for my last (9 pm!) panel of the night: Mainstreaming the Geek Dream. It focused on how the Internet has changed things since it became really popularly useful in ~1995. There was a healthy age range on the panel (Duncan McGregor, older comp sci guy; Sandra Manning, older physics/math teacher; myself; and straight from the Chesley awards, Neil Clarke, middle-age online person). However, we weren't exactly sure where to take the panel after some general comments on how we use the Net and how things have changed (and some of the dangers associated with putting yourself out on the Net), but the audience, sparse though it was, led us on a discussion of many and varied topics: the generational divide, search engine algorithms and search engine optimization, the Pirate Parties in Europe and some associated copyright issues, the arms race between students and school admins, mobile phone technology, etc. It turned into a fun discussion, for which I give all credit to an enthusiastic crowd, and made me feel good about audience participation again.

Off to bed now! Tomorrow is my really busy day, so probably not much blogging for me. And I haven't been having much luck with Twitter (I live tweeted the entire Stross/Krugman panel on Thursday night, but even though I used the #worldcon09 hash-tag, I don't think it showed up anywhere), so I may be dark until Sunday.

OMG, is it Only Friday?

The great part? There's 3 1/2 more days of solid Con to go! The bad part? My brain and stomach are already partly fried! I always forget how overwhelming WorldCon can be, and I also forget that travel + odd food + odd eating hours + liquor = stomach troubles. I shall endeavour to moderation, but no guarantees.

It's already been a great Con. Dinner with Niall, Nic and Abigail on Wed. was wonderful, and we started but didn't finish a very interesting conversation on voice and style in reviewing. Soundbite from Gary Wolfe: "Voice is attitude and style is the presentation of that attitude." I'm still meditating on that one. Farah Mendlesohn also suggested some good books, including (I think I heard this right) Reading like a Writer. Is stayed up rather too late and drank rather too much, but all my favorite people were right there in one bar room! Such are the trials and tribulations of WorldCon.

Needless to say it was not an early morning on Thursday, but that's OK because the con didn't really start until the early afternoon. I (and most other critics in attendance) went to a panel on "One Genre or Many" featuring Farah, Gary, Ellen Klages, Patrick Rothfuss and Michael Swanwick. It was a very entertaining panel, although it didn't come close to answering the prompt. Highlights:

• There's a spectrum of classification, from calling every aisle in the grocery store "Food" to getting in to sub-sub-sub-sub genres -- probably neither extreme is very useful.
• Michael Swanwick mentioned that he views genre as reading strategies.
• Farah likes thinking of theoretical approaches as filters one lays over a book, some of which may be more or less appropriate to the book at hand.
• Also from Farah, the fact that sf lacks a consistent (?) critical language in which to have these discussions. I thought this was the most interesting point, but it didn't get a lot of follow-up at the time. More things to think about.

I missed the first bit of the panel as I went to track down someone to fix a microphone problem. The ConOps folks were extremely helpful and got the tech guy over immediately. It took him awhile to track down the issue, but by the end of the panel all the mics were working. He left before we had a chance to thank him, but I want to give a shout-out to the great folks who make conventions run and fix problems when they arise!

After that I headed to the dealer room, which is a bit small. However, it's harder for me to actually get through a dealer room now: instead of making a simple sweep through, I keep running in to people I know and stopping to talk. Takes much longer that way!

I caught part of the "Putting the World in WorldCon" panel, ably (although a bit tyrannically) managed by Jetse de Vries--I appreciated it though, because he kept a laser focus on how the lit of the panel's members differed from US/UK sf/f. The panelists were Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (Spain), Tore A. Hoie (Germany and Norway) and Kyoko Ogushi (Japan).

I'm in the dealer room at the Locus table now, and running out of charge on my netbook. More to come later. One last note, though: Anticipation is running Kaffeeklatches for scientists as well as authors. So Curtis will be doing a Kaffeeklatch tomorrow morning at 11 in his role as a Systems Engineer for Boeing and NASA -- spread the word, or come on down yourself! It's experimental, but I think it's an excellent idea.

More to come when I get back online. That's the problem with WorldCon -- so much stuff & so little time!

WorldCon Day -1

Got in to Montreal last night, and we're already having a lovely time. Over the course of the con I'll be twittering more than blogging (I'm Spiralgalaxy on twitter, see link on sidebar), but I figured I'd get a blog post out before things got crazy.

The drive from Maine to Montreal was absolutely gorgeous: straight through the White Mountains of New Hampshire and lovely farmland in Canada. No wait at the border, and the agent there even smiled when we said we worked for NASA. The drive (about 5 1/2 hours) was also a nice transition time between the family-oriented vacation time and the sf-oriented vacation period.

Checked into the hotel with no problems, and we really like our room at the Intercontinental. And the convention center is just across the street. Went down to the bar and met up with editor-folks and Locus folks. Also ran into Farah Mendlesohn, Edward James, and was introduced to Kari Spelling. Thus did WorldCon officially begin as far as I was concerned.

Today we slept in, then followed Farah's directions to a bank to hit an ATM for Canadian dollars. Then an easy walk to a lovely place called Muffins Plus for lunch/brunch. Very nice food and perfect portions--I finished my entire chicken cesar salad wrap, a rarity for me!

We went in and registered for the convention. Good side: great badge holders & no snags at registration. Down side: no programming grid or pocket program. With any luck something of the sort will show up later? Will do my program participant sign in tomorrow.

The afternoon was taken up walking around the city, especially down by the river, where we saw lovely things like the Chapelle-Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours pictured above. The walk down by the river has gardens & museums and is just lovely (although Curtis managed to turn his ankle on the path there early on--but he bravely soldiered on to see more!). We went back via a pedestrian boulevard named Place Jacques-Cartier with tons of cafes, restaurants, street vendors, mimes, etc. Found a good liqour store for some wine and brandy and made our way home for Curtis to put his foot up before heading out for dinner--should be meeting up with Niall Harrison and Abigail Nussbaum soon here.

Programming looks good, as always. Too many good panels; I've already identified at least three time slots with two panels each that I'd like to catch. C'est la vie. And it doesn't look like there will be any drastic changes to the schedule I posted last week.

Off to dinner! Looking forward to seeing many of you soon.

I Already Miss ICFA...

... and I already can't wait for WorldCon. The good news is, barring any unforeseen developments of the next week and a half, it looks like I'll be going to WorldCon. Amen!

But ICFA always feels something like home, and I had a great time there this year. I've finally gotten to know enough people (and some folks have gotten to know me) that I don't feel like a stranger there at all anymore.

Highlights!

Meeting up with fellow Masterclass alumni Sarah Herbe, Stefan Ekman, Graham Sleight and Stacie Hanes (as well as one of our distinguished faculty last year, Gary K. Wolfe). Sarah and Stefan gave particularly interesting papers--I didn't get to see Stacie's and she was presenting as the same time I was (and the same time Gary was--bummer). I'm hoping to snag a copy of hers.

Sarah presented a paper showing how the existence of genetic modification in various authors' futures meant a completely different way of presenting character. When the body is no longer fixed, what you look like says as much about you as our clothes do today. She focused on British writers from the last decade or so, such as Justine Robson, Charlie Stross, Ken MacLeod, etc. It was the sort of excellent paper where you'd note a question to yourself, and then she'd answer it.

Stefan's paper hewed closer to the conference theme (Time and the Fantastic), and he dealt with how time flows in polders in fantasy lit. Polder in this context is a Clute-ism, and generally means a niche in the fantasy world with boundaries against the outside world, sometimes a safe place for the heroes, often maintained by one central figure. Lothlorien rather exemplifies the concept. One thing I thought Stefan did remarkably well was realize that the term 'time' had gotten rather overloaded in these discussions. Thus he defined 'tempo' to mean the pace at which time flows in the polder, 'moment' to mean a moment in time, and 'historical time' to distinguish the passage of time outside the polder. He proceeded to apply the polder concept to Lothlorien from Tolkein, Djelibeybi from Discworld, and the Mythago Wood cycle of Robert Holdstock. Also, his delivery is first-rate--I've rarely met a drier sense of humor than Stefan's.

My paper this year was completely unimportant except inasmuch as it lays the groundwork for something *incredibly cool* that I'm going to do *next* year--however, I'm afraid it's all sekrit and I can't talk about it currently. But come to ICFA next year and see! This year I was telling people not to come to my session, but to go see Gary & Amelia Beamer or Stacie instead (although bless them, Curtis, Ted Chiang, Robert Sawyer and Fiona Kelleghan came anyway). NEXT year I shall be dragging people bodily into my paper session--at least, if it turns out as cool as I hope it will.

Other than that, it was getting to know folks better and getting to know new folks. Shameless name dropping time! I spent time with (aside from those already mentioned): Marie Brennan, Chris Barzak and his partner Tony, Daryl Gregory + wife Kathy and son Ian (whose names I hope I'm spelling correctly), Crystal Black, John Kessel, James Patrick Kelley, Russell Leston, Peter Straub, F. Brett Cox, Andy Duncan, Patrick O'Leary, and more whom I'm afraid I've blurred out after rather a lot of wine.

Oh, and Gary used a quote from a review of mine to introduce Crawford award winner Daryl Gregory! As Jim Kelley put it, I got a shout out from the podium! W00t! But that is minor compared to the fact that the Crawford award goes to awesome writers like Daryl and Chris Barzak (last year). Check out Daryl's award speech, the video (or at least the audio) is on his blog--very well done, I thought.

So, this ICFA was great, and next ICFA stands to be even better. I'd say life doesn't get any better than this, but I've got a midterm tomorrow, a presentation on bionocular rivalry worth 20% of my grade on Thus night, and for some odd reason, I didn't get much studying done over my spring break. I can't imagine why. So I'll slog through the remaining 50 more days of my semester, and then life will be truly be excellent.

Oh, and pictures to come after Curtis and I unpack the camera! For now, here are some from Mr. Gregory, and some from Ellen Datlow.

Prosaic: Weather and Travel

So, when we moved here, we asked about snow. And they said, "Oh it snowed once like, thirty years ago. It doesn't snow in Houston!"

We beg to differ.

And as you'll see from the daylight picture, some of it is still around this morning!

Of course, when we moved here last year they also said "Houston never really takes direct hits from hurricanes!" So in retrospect, we should have been buying snowshoes.


I'd say we were lured here under false pretenses except for one thing. Everyone also said, "You'll love it here except for the weather!" And we do.

In other news, I'm leaving on some hastily arranged travel today. My father's in the hospital in central Arizona, so I'm heading up to help out. It doesn't look life-threatening so far; his pacemaker went off a few times and upon further examination they found some blood-clots hanging out where they oughtn't. Still, I'm glad to go up and cheer folks up and help around the house as needed. I should be back in Houston on Tuesday, preparatory to my final exam on Thursday night. While I'm there I'll be away from high-speed internet connections, so I'll be less responsive to email and comments than usual.

In Which We Arrive Home and Discover Something Surprising

We left San Antonio around 10am, after breakfast and a long, hot shower (which we feared would be our last). We drove along the Alt-90, not seeing too much damage until about 50 miles out from our home. First it was small branches down, then larger ones, then signs down, only 50% of the traffic lights working... it didn't look good.

As we neared home, we saw a housing development much like our own. New houses, roughly comparable construction. At least 70% of the wooden fences were down, and almost every house had roof damage. Larger and larger trees were blown over. We figured that's what we were in for.

However, as we crossed I-45 towards home, we noticed some working lights and two operable gas stations without insane lines. On the final overpass heading home we saw that another area of our subdivision had no apparent roof damage. The traffic light at our turn was working, and all the roofs on the way home appeared whole.

We got to our house and noticed two things immediately. 1) The Library window was unbroken. 2) The garage door opened.

In fact, NO windows were broken, there was NO water in the house, we lost NO shingles (that we can see), our wooden fences are WHOLE, and we have POWER, GAS, and WATER (even if it has to be boiled).

To say that we are ecstatic would be an understatement. In our wildest dreams we never imagined life would return to normal so quickly. We are INCREDIBLY lucky. Other parts of our area have much worse damage--certainly the shoreline folks got nailed, the Boardwalk in Kemah may have ceased to exist, and even downtown League City, a little farther inland from us, got hit with some small tornadoes after Ike passed through. Then there's the fact that so many in the greater Houston area still lack power, water and gas.

We want to thank everyone who offered us good wishes and help if needed; while we're mighty glad we didn't need to throw ourselves on anyone's charity, we feel amazingly blessed to have such good friends. If any of you feel like you can, please remember those in Houston who are going to have a much rougher time getting back on their feet. The Red Cross and the Salvation Army are a great organizations that are an incredible help in times like these. If you can throw a few bucks their way, it would be a real help.

For us, all's well that ends well. It was a more drama-free experience than I'd expected, and we got incredibly lucky. Thanks everyone!

We have a plan, but not much info

Life here in San Antonio has been nice and relatively relaxing. We've taken the dogs on a couple hikes out at Eisenhower Park on the outskirts of town, which makes for nice & tired puppies. We've got a minifridge, a microwave, and AC. This afternoon I'm planning on catching up with homework and some writing.

We've also got a plan; we'll stay here on Sunday night and try to head home on Monday. The League City website says "PLEASE DO NOT RETURN TO THE CITY OF LEAGUE CITY UNITL MONDAY SEPTEMBER 15, 2008. Certain areas of the City are without power and there is some localized flooding. Emergency Operations personnel are currently engaged in damage assessment."

However, there isn't much specific information yet. We can't quite tell from the maps whether we're in a 11-13 foot storm surge zone (which should be fine) or a 20+ foot storm surge zone (which would be Very Bad). Also, we won't know until we see for ourselves whether our windows survived - even if we escape flooding, wind-driven rain would damage a lot of stuff (and likely a LOT of books). So we've just got to wait and see. We do know that two of our fencing friends who weathered the storm in Dickinson, about two miles from us, made it through safely and are not flooded. That bodes well.

Thanks for everyone who has called or emailed to check up on us, we really appreciate all the good thoughts. I'll keep this updated, but the real news should come on Monday.

Never, Ever Skip a Testing Step.

Plan A was board up & hunker down; that failed. Turns out our windows aren't deep enough to accommodate the plywood locking clips. (Much swearing was heard.) Plan B is to evacuate; we've made a hotel reservation in San Antonio, so that's where we're heading. With any luck we'll be home Sun night, Mon morning. Wish us luck! I'll be twittering status updates periodically.

My WorldCon Reading List

I was trying to think of how to summarize my WorldCon experience, and going through my notes, when I was struck by all the titles I have written down. When you're talking to a bunch of really smart book people, one tends to come away with a massive to-read list, and this Con was no different. In the absence of any particularly brilliant wrap-up piece, I thought I'd share with you the titles that various people shared with me.



(Picture: Traci Castleberry, Oz Whiston, Amelia Beamer, Farah Mendlesohn, Gary Wolfe, Curtis & myself at P. F. Chang's)

Star Rover by Jack London. Gary Wolfe recommended that I find this one when I told him that I'd recently read Before Adam by the same author. While Adam can be considered SF, it's really part of an older sub-genre, "Prehistoric fiction." One can see examples of it in collections like Adventures in Time and Space (1946), but you don't see it terribly often. Robert J. Sawyer's Hominids series may be a modern re-invention of the sub-genre. Gary mentioned that it was quite huge in France back in the day, and that there may be a new academic study on Prehistoric fiction, The Fire in the Stone: Prehistoric Fiction From Charles Darwin to Jean M. Auel, by Nicholas Ruddick coming out next fall. Star Rover is London doing straight SF, which should make for an interesting contrast.

The Fortunate Fall by Raphael Carter. I was talking with Cheryl Morgan about how much I loved the Tiptree Award-winning short story "Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation by K. N. Sirsi and Sandra Botkin" by Raphael Carter. That story is cast in the form of a scientific paper about the neurological basis of gender classification, and was on Wendy Pearson's reading list for the SF Masterclass. It was simply amazing, probably one of the best things I read for that class. Cheryl mentioned that the same author had written a book, and a couple days later presented me with an ARC of it as a gift. Thanks Cheryl! I'm looking forward to it.

The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq by John Crawford. At the "Bleeding Heart Liberals and Military SF Panel" (Elizabeth Moon moderating Joe Haldeman, John Hemry and John Scalzi), they briefly digressed into books that they use to research military history and tactics. Both Moon and Haldeman highly recommended this book, which is enough for me. They also mentioned that a commencement speech that J. K. Rowling gave this year is particularly insightful about storytelling, so that may be worth looking up as well.

"Toxic Donut" by Terry Bisson. Charles Brown did a Kaffeeklatsch this year. It’s a peculiar but very enjoyable WorldCon institution in which one expert sits down with 9 admirers for a quiet hour-plus long discussion. However this one included 6 "experts" and only 4 admirers. During the discussion, Graham Sleight mentioned this Bisson short story as packing an intense and funny examination of an idea into roughly 2000 words. I often enjoy Bisson's work, and I need to look up "Bears Discover Fire" anyway, so I'm hoping to find this one as well.

"I Hold My Father's Paws" by David D. Levine in either the 20th or 21st Dozois anthology. At dinner, speaking of LBGT themes in fiction, Farah Mendlesohn mentioned this story as a particularly good metaphorical examination of the transgender experience. In this story apparently the narrator's father happily transforms into a dog, and it examines how the man deals with that. Again, Levine is an author I enjoy, so I'll try and find it. Farah also mentioned a story called "Quantum Prophecy" by Michael Carroll, but I've completely forgotten the context—all it says in my notes is “(YA, SF).” I'll blame the good Gewurztraminer wine at P. F. Chang's.

Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart. Gary Wolfe claims that this is the best fantasy written about Houston, where I now live. I think he's on a campaign to get me to read all of Sean Stewart's work; previously he told me to read Galveston, saying that it had the best description of a hurricane in all of fantasy literature. The hurricane was pretty good, but the integration of plot with character development was even better, so I'm looking forward to reading this one.

The Real Inspector Hound, a play by Tom Stoppard. At the book reviewing panel, Graham Sleight mentioned this play that Stoppard wrote about theatre critics. It sounds hilarious (probably helped by Graham's ability to come up with short, pithy summaries of these things), and does remind one that no matter what we write as critics, the authors always get the last word.

Benchmarks by Algis Budrys. As I was running around getting critical collections by Damon Knight, James Blish/William Atheling and Paul Kincaid, Gary Wolfe reminded me to pick up this collection of Budrys' criticism. Of course, none of the dealers had it, but I've now ordered it from [link] ABEBooks, along with New Maps of Hell by Kingsley Amis, which had been on my list for a while.

At lunch, talking about something Gary Wolfe mentioned at the Masterclass, Graham Sleight recommended I read (what I remember hearing as) Aristotle's Aesthetics. Now I'm thinking that I either misheard (I didn't get a chance to write that one down), or that it's a subset of Aristotle's Metaphysics, since I can't find that title. Perhaps I have the author wrong? If Graham happens to stop by, hopefully he can correct me. (Ed: Aha! Aristotles Poetics. That makes much more sense.)

Graphs, Maps and Trees by Franco Moretti. At the "Popularity vs. Critical Acclaim" panel (about which more in another post), James Morrow Farah Mendlesohn recommended this book/story as something that literally diagrams the evolution of the mystery genre. Sounds fascinating.

And of course, at the "20 Essential SF Books of the Last 20 Years" panel, my fellow panelists came up with tons of stuff that I haven't read yet. Cheryl Morgan should be putting up the combined lists on her website soon, after which I'll be adding titles to my To Read list, and maybe doing some data mining with it.

Given that I was writing down things people were telling me, I'm sure some of the titles and authors are misspelled/incorrect. If anyone knows the corrections, please help me out in the comments. Still, this list is actually a pretty good summary of my WorldCon experience: interesting conversations with really smart people over dinner, drinks, panels, and in hallways. Considering that I went to four WorldCons without really getting to know anyone, this was my Best WorldCon EVAR—but I suspect they'll just keep getting better from here. I'm already looking forward to Montreal.

WorldCon Day 4

Not much time to post. I need to head down to help Farah out with something, then pack, check out, swing by the dealer room (still looking for a copy of What it is We Do When We Read Science Fiction by Paul Kincaid to round out my collection), and head out. We should be back in Texas late Monday, and I'll post my wrap-up thoughts Tuesday, most likely. Had a great time last night, mostly happy with the Hugo results, great people to talk to at parties.

WorldCon Day 3

Yesterday was my first ever panel, and it went well. It was mostly the standard reviewing panel, just like every year. Douglas Frantz brought along some survey results about reviewing ethics, which provided some interesting talking points. We all agreed that reviews-for-hire are bad (no matter how standard in the movie industry), and that one should never claim knowledge you don't have (don't imply that you finished a book if you didn't). There was a little more confusion on the subject of pseudonyms: do you "out" the author and review the book in the context of their other work? Do you treat the pseudonym as its own identity? It's a tricky question, but one I rarely have to worry about; usually I have to treat the pseudonym as an individual because I don't know any better. Perhaps someday that won't be true, but it's an easy out for now.

After that was a long lunch with Graham Sleight, Farah Mendlesohn and Jo Walton at a lovely vietnamese fast food place, the Lemongrass Grill. Thier Pho with tofu was just what I needed. We spent some time talking about the BSFA awards and the possibility of re-instituting the non-fiction award. I need to pay attention to that now, since I'm a member now. We also spent some time talking about programming options for the 2009 WorldCon in Montreal, where Farah is head of Programming. It looks like they're thinking of doing some out-of-the-box thinking (pardon the buzzword) and moving away from a pure reliance on 3-5 person panel discussions. Thinking back to one of the most interesting programming items I ever saw, which was Gary Wolfe and John Clute in conversation at Glasgow 2005, I think that's an excellent idea.

After that I wandered around the dealer's room some more. Curtis went to the Trailer Park presentation but didn't see anything that blew him away. We went down and bought our memberships for Anticipation and Curtis voted in the Melbourne site selection. We hung out with the Locus folks for a bit, then had an early dinner.

Sorry for the lack of Twittering last night, but I spent the evening watching the opening ceremony of the Olympics, which was awesome, as always. Although a thunderstorm interrupted the satellite feed for an annoyingly long time. I've been an Olympics fan for a long time, and I have to admit that I really enjoy the opening ceremony theatrics. I even enjoy the Parade of Athletes. It was a good night, and my experiment with drinking mead, which I'd never tried before, was a success.

There's other great non-WorldCon news: the first day of the Olympics featured Women's Sabre fencing, and the USA women swept the medals! Gold, Silver and Bronze. We've come a long way! Of course, does NBC have any recordings of this historic event up on the website? No. A Czech woman winning 10m Air Rifle? Of course! Historic American domination of a sport we failed to medal in for more than a century? Nah. No love for the fencers!

Today I'm on two panels in the afternoon, then it's the Hugo ceremonies, which I'll try to twitter. Then it will be parties! (If we can ever get to the party floor; the stack at the elevators after the Masquerade was so bad that Curtis just came back to our room for mead & Olympics).

WorldCon, Day 2

Hey, I sat through an entire panel yesterday! It was a good one, too. Military SF & Bleeding Heart Liberals. Elizabeth Moon did an excellent job moderating John Scalzi, Joe Haldeman and John Hemry. I twittered about it, and don't have too much to add. I also attended Charles Brown's kaffeeklatch, which probably didn't address the questions of the folks who were there. One gentleman was an aspiring author, another an aspiring editor, but with folks like Charles, Gary Wolfe and Graham Sleight around, we always ended up tallking about books and reviewing. Unsurprisingly Charles has a *very* low opinion of those of us who review online, but that's to be expected.

Other than that I spent time wandering around the dealer's room and art show. The art show has some very good pieces, and more high-quality space-related art than I remember from previous shows. Of course, all the really good stuff is well out of our price range, but we can dream. I managed to stay fairly good on my book-buying: Illyria by Liz Hand, Survival by Julie Czerneda, and The Dragon's Nine Sons by Chris Roberson. By lucky happenstance, I then ran into Chris Roberson at the Locus table, and got him to sign his book for me.

Dinner was wonderful. The group: Curtis, Traci Castleberry, Oz Whiston, Amelia Beamer, Farah Mendlesohn and Gary Wolfe (if I got anyone's name wrong, please let me know!) We went to P. F. Changs and it was Delicious - I'm glad I took Gary & Amelia's suggestion on the Northern short ribs. They even had a gluten-free menu for Farah. The conversation was excellent, and some plots were hatched about possible program items at Anticipation next year in Montreal. It looks like writing workshops, for both fiction and non-fiction writers, will be a real possibility; also that Curtis might get involved with some of the science track programming. Walking back to the party hotel I had a lovely conversation with Farah about writing style, which gives me hope that I'm on the correct path to improve mine.

We headed up to the SFWA suite, which was full of authors. I talked with Stephen Barnes, who is hoping to start a sequeal to his Lion's Blood/Zulu Heart sequence this year. It would essentially cover the civil war, end slavery and bring Aidan and Ky's relationship to a resolution. I can't wait to read it.

As I twittered, David Marusek is investigating how to make his writing more commercial. One can't blame him: he's living purely off writing income now, and would like to move out of Fairbanks, Alaska. He's been reading some of the trashy best-sellers for tips on things like pacing. Well, whatever works. I wish him all success. I was embarrassed that I hadn't read Counting Heads yet, but at least I could tell him how much I admire his short fiction.

It was getting quite hot in the suite, and Curtis and I were beginning to flag, so once again we went to bed at a reasonable hour and woke up at a reasonable hour (midnight and 7 am). This is very un-WorldCon of us, but I think it's working well so far.

I'll be off soon to be on my first panel ever, "Book Reviewing: The Missing Link in the Publishing Industry." Graham Sleight and Jonathan Strahan will be there, so worst comes to worst I'll simply sit back and let them do the intelligent talking. "Better to keep silent and let others think you a fool, than open your mouth and remove all doubt." Wish me luck!

WorldCon, Day 1

Although Wednesday started inauspiciously, what with being attacked by a bottle of soda and nearly mauled by some other out-of-state drivers, once we actually got to the con things got much more enjoyable. As we were regsitering Aaron Buchanan, Kirsten Gong-Wong and their daughter Teddy came up to say hi. After registering we headed up to the dealer room to say hi to Amelia Beamer at the Locus table and Howard & Sandra Tayler at the Schlock Mercenary table.

After that we headed back to our hotel to actually claim our room (no early check-in for us!). After settling in for a bit (a much-needed breather for myself), we hit the "Year in SF: 2008" panel. I missed most of it, but they were very enthusiastic about the original anthologies this year. Afterwards I said hi to folks, and walked with Charles Brown back to the dealer room. I mentioned some books I was looking for, and he wheeled me straight over to the NESFA press table. I got The Immortal Storm by Sam Moskowitz (early fan history), More Issues At Hand by Atheling/Blish, In Search of Wonder by Damon Knight, and then Charles threw on The Tale That Wags the God, also a James Blish essay collection. If I do no other shopping at this WorldCon, my most essential goals have already been met.

Curtis also went to the "Real Spaceships" program item, which sounded interesting. I hung out at the Locus table, talking with Teddy and Amelia and watching the flow of people go by. People gathered there around 6pm for dinner at a fondue place a few blocks away. It was confusing, but everyone got fed and the company was excellent.

After dinner folks wandered back to the Grand Hyatt, where we're staying, for drinks and then a (relatively) early night. I was back in my room around 11:30.

One thing that I'll need to write more about when I have more time is Gary talking about an aesthetics of SF and what that might involve. Interesting stuff that needs more thought.

That's it for now: today I need to juggle meeting Curtis' awesome niece & introducing her to her first con, lunch with a friend, kaffeklatch with Charles, and dinner with another friend. It will all work out somehow.

Curtis has posted first day pictures on Facebook. I'm going to choose some to put up on Flickr, but not until we're home on Tuesday. Curtis is hoping to have them up closer to real-time.

Fort Collins, Colorado

Things have been quite lovely up here. We've been catching up with family (and "friending" all of Curtis' family on facebook). Curtis is now on facebook, if anyone wants to send him a friend request.

Yesterday was mostly spent hanging out, with a great dinner outside in the perfect weather (although the bees were out enjoying themselves as well). Today we're planning on heading up to Rocky Mountain National Park for some sight-seeing.

This will also give Curtis a chance to try out his new camera. He was out shopping with his brother yesterday, and couldn't resist the temptation. (To be fair, he called me to give me a chance to talk him out of it, and I really couldn't. I was feeling a bit sad about not taking pictures at WorldCon too.)

The only slightly worrying thing is Tropical Storm Edouard, currently bearing down on our house back in Houston. It's not currently projected to become a hurricane, so the house itself should be fine, but we're a bit worried about the dogs in their boarding kennel. I'm sure they'll be fine, but they've never been away from us in these kinds of conditions, and I'm just like a parent, worrying.

There's one other funny bit in this: the week before we left we pushed to get plywood cut for all the windows, so that when a hurricane hits we'll have everything ready. We finished the boards for all but three windows, which cleared up the garage enough that we could get the car back into it. However, now all the lovely storm-worthy plywood is sitting safely in the garage, with no one to put it up now that a storm really is heading for us. C'est la vie.

Witchita Falls, TX

Writing from a La Quinta in Witchita Falls. Free wi-fi, which is great. I was able to check my gmail & google reader from my iPod touch while Curtis was on his laptop. Multi-tasking means getting to sleep earlier.

The Armadillo Grill in Bowie was really pretty good - I had a club sandwich and Curtis had the chili cheeseburger, and it definitely hit the spot. Very nice waitresses, too. If you're heading North on 287, it's off the 4th (last) exit for Bowie. At first it looks like you'll be out of luck and there will be no food for you, but keep up your hope and you will be rewarded.

BTW: Twittering can be addictive when you're in a car with little else to do, a working cell phone, and for those stretches when you're not the one driving.

Last random note for the evening: on the road between Bowie & Witchita Falls, in the middle of nowhere, with NO other buildings around, is an Adult Video store, all lit up with Neon (and with cars out front). That's random enough. But just north of this store is a two-sided billboard. If you are headed towards the Porn store (heading south) it is an advertisment for the Porn store. Logical enough. However, if you are leaving the Porn store, it displays a Christian-sponsored anti-pornography statement. Methinks this is probably a local point of some contention.

Random thoughts from the South-western edge of the Bible Belt. Good night!

Pre-Travel Panic

So here's what I've got to do today (some of which would've been done yesterday if it hadn't been for that damned-to-the-eternities-of-hell migraine):

• Edit & Post my review of the Mundane Interzone
• Write up notes on the last issue of Baen's and see if there's an essay in there somewhere
• Edit my review of Flood by Stephen Baxter
• Edit my review of Lord Tophet and send to SFSignal
  
• Laundry
• Mail out birthday present for my sister (whose birthday occurs during WorldCon)
• Get car washed/waxed
• Get pet food
• Other random shopping bits
• Fill out FAFSA for my next round of student loans [the FAFSA site won't take Safari or Firefox 3.0, and the copy of IE on my laptop is so crappy that it's refusing to open the FAFSA link at all. Not my day. I'll try it again from the road--maybe there's a brower on Curtis' laptop that might work.]
  
• Back-up my laptop and the important files from my new Mac
• Cook dinner
• Pack
• Print out list of hotels along our travel route

Well, the sooner I quit whining and start doing, the sooner I'll be done. Cheers!

Extra Spiffy Twittering

One more thing: I've added my Twitter feed to the sidebar over to the right. So if I do manage to actually do some liveblogging from Denver/Worldcon, you can keep track of it right here without having to sign up for Twitter.

I feel like I should be doing more productive things right now, but I console myself with the knowledge that I did draft a new review today (~1500 words) and that has to count for something, right?

Twittering

No sooner speculated upon than done. I think I've got the Twitter basics figured out and my cell phone configured. My user name there is SpiralGalaxy (KarenBurnham was taken already). Will I remember to actually do anything with it? Doubtful, but it's fun to experiment. This is the SGR Laboratory, after all!

Prepping for WorldCon

It's hard to believe that I'll be leaving for Denver in only 3 days. The plan is: we drive out of here Friday after lunchtime and see how far we get. Then we drive the rest of the way to Fort Collins, CO on Saturday, there to spend time with Curtis' wonderful brother, sister-in-law, and three nieces Sunday - Tuesday. We'll show up at WorldCon on Wednesday.

I'm not sure how much online stuff I'll be able to do while I'm on the road. My brother-in-law has plenty of 'Net access, but I imagine I'll have more important things to do. Once we check into the hotel at WorldCon, there's no telling how much Internet access will cost, so we'll play it by ear. I've got several things in draft form right now. I'm hoping to post one before I leave (a review of Geoff Ryman's Mundane issue of Interzone), and get one or two polished up to post automatically while I'm away (a review of Stephen Baxter's Flood, if nothing else).

I probably won't be able to contribute much to the WorldCon photo bonanza - while we're lucky that our digital camera weathered our trip to England, it died soon thereafter. (Much better to die in Houston than at Leeds Castle before we'd seen Cantebury Cathedral and St. Pauls.) We're on the fence as to whether to get one before we leave--right now I think we're leaning towards taking our time and getting my pro-photographer brother to find something for us instead of rushing to get something right now. Although there's the risk that Curtis might explode if forced to watch the Masquerade without taking pictures, so that will have to be weighed.

At WorldCon itself I'm currently slotted to be on two panels (my first EVER, wish me luck!) One is: "Book Reviewers: The Missing Link of the Publishing Industry," currently schedule for 11:30 on Friday. The other is: "Popularity vs. Critical Acclaim," scheduled for 4pm on Saturday. My co-panelists will include such luminaries as Graham Sleight, Jonathan Strahan, Farah Mendlesohn and James Morrow. Come see all the brilliant people that I will be sitting next to!

Anyway, we'll be shaking off our post-Hugo hangovers and starting the drive home lunchtime-ish on Sunday, and probably getting home Monday evening. I will have my cell phone with me, and I'm considering experimenting with Twitter (John De Nardo showed that it can be done when he went to the Nebula award banquet this year). If so, I'll post details here before I go.