Worldcon report
Back from Worldcon, and wow, what an experience. Escapade's the largest con I've ever been to before this, and I have to say, the shift from 225 to 6500 was a little daunting. Well, that and the sheer non-stop-action of it all. Dealers room, art show, concourse, panels running from 10am - 10pm every day, and then giant sprawling room parties afterwards.


Of interest mainly to NYC/Boston folks -- because we were traveling Thursday while the Republicans were still in town (mutter), we decided that giving Penn Station a miss was definitely the right idea. So I hunted around and managed to find something called the Limoliner -- basically this is a big luxury bus that runs from NYC to Boston and DC. I don't do well on buses usually, but surprisingly it turned out to be just fine, and it brought us literally right outside our hotel. Worth checking out if you're looking for a different way to travel -- it's not a lot cheaper than the train, but a bit less, with reserved seating and easy & quick boarding.

On to the con. We arrived at 5pm and C. immediately had to run to a panel he was moderating while I waited on a scarily long line to check into the Sheraton, one of something like five hotels being used for the con. (!) I unpacked and settled in a little, then we went together to the panel "Return of 20 Panels an Hour" with some longtime friends of C.'s, including mabfan. I can't remember if I saw gnomi there or only later, but it was at some point soon. :) Afterwards, C. and I went off and got all dressed up (sekrit message to Sonia: yes, I wore the dress, and it looked fabulous :D) and went to First Night, which was something they tried here for the first time: they set up booths and activities to get people mingling and excited about the con. It was fun; everyone was just in a happy mood, and we saw some bellydancers in gorgeous outfits. After wandering about a bit there and admiring some of the old costumes on display in the concourse, we went on to the Ankh-Morpork (or as I persist in calling it despite knowing better, Ankh-Pomork) ball, which was pretty much empty, but the people who were there were lovely -- one guy taught us all the one-step, and there was some swing also. But we conked out early, being wimps. *g*

Friday morning we met the_shoshanna and her husband (brief digression: I kept having the impression that I had met Mr. Shoshanna before, just from having seen photos of him, and Shoshanna had to remind me twice that no, I hadn't actually met him before. :>) as well as one of C.s' friends for breakfast at the ungodly hour of 9; after that, we hit the dealer's room, where I unfortunately saw Michael Whelan's table; unfortunately, because he had an artist's proof of his piece Avatar for sale. I'd never seen the piece before, and it made me want to write something inspired by it, so I spent a large portion of the rest of the con dithering over it, until I finally exercised some self-restraint and got the very nice coffee table book instead, with the same picture on the cover and inside even if in smaller format. Also, we did not buy his $30,000 original painting from the art show.

After this, I apparently had a fit brought on by being at a con without work to do, and proceeded to spend the next few hours tracking down various different program people trying to get a slot to show vids in. I basically just wanted a little Special Interest Group room with a TV, as I even had my DVD player along, but somehow along the way it turned into using one of the big program rooms. (Not that I argued when I realized that's what they were trying to put together. ::g::) The program people were clearly overwhelmed by the amount of organizational work to do, and considering the scale of this thing, I wouldn't at all have been indignant or surprised for them to just say no, but instead they went above-and-beyond to get it to happen, especially Mark Gordon and Chuck Shimata. Really just fabulous people.

I then headed over for most of the panel "The Future of Short Fiction," with the editors of the major sci-fi and fantasy magazines. The news isn't good -- circulation numbers are falling, there aren't newsstand sales, the magazines are dying slowly. (This isn't actually news; they've been dying slowly for the last twenty years. People just don't buy short story collections anymore; they want novels.) On the other hand, Strange Horizons, the pro online magazine, is flourishing, and fanfic is certainly exploding; neither of those really got discussed, though.

Digression for a bit of a rant. I came to Worldcon expecting to like the panels best, and ended up enjoying them the least, or rather feeling some dissatisfaction with them. Partly, I think I chose the wrong panels to go to, and partly, it was a question of expectations. I was "trained" fannishly on the Escapade-style panel, which is a roundtable format where the panelists are mainly moderators for the entire room. The Worldcon format is the traditional panel style, with a small group of experts at the head of the room, at a table on a stage with microphones, discussing amongst themselves, with occasional questions from the audience. Now, I found that panel format very useful at USENIX (big professional computer science convention), and the reason it worked for me there (and in a couple panels at Worldcon, most notably the cybercrime panel) was that the people on the panels were actual experts -- they had real knowledge that I didn't have, as opposed to simply opinions based on their personal experience. (Well, and even then, that kind of panel can be interesting, but only if all the panelists are clever and amusing and play off each other well, which is hard to arrange.)

At any rate, I was choosing panel topics mostly based on "hey, this would be interesting to discuss," which is the way I'd pick among Escapade panels, rather than by "hey, that's someone I want to hear talk for an hour," or "hey, I don't know anything about that and would like to learn," which in retrospect I think would be a much better approach for picking Worldcon panels to attend. The format actively discourages audience participation and it very clearly privileges the panelists' opinions above that of audience members; that kind of hierarchy was frustrating to encounter in panels when my reason for going was already knowing something about the subject and wanting to move on from there and possibly contribute to the discussion.

Also, I was not exactly feeling the love for fanfic from the general community, and that honestly did bother me. I know I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but I really don't get the mentality that insists on drawing lines between original fiction and fanfic that clearly don't exist except by virtue of snobbishness and saleability (which, as is evidenced by the problems with selling short original fiction these days, is not even really true anymore), and by the end of the weekend I was having vivid juvenile fantasies (you know, the kind where you imagine an entire conversation in your head, all opposition being swept away by your brilliant arguments and snappy comebacks ::g::) of getting on a panel in future and talking up fanfic as a flourishing art form in its own right and an ideal training ground for writing original fiction to boot. I did not get carried away so far as to actually climb up on a soapbox and start declaiming, however. ;)

Anyway, my little rant over -- back to the actual report.

After the panel, we went to lunch with another friend of C.'s, which was a little rushed because we had to get back for C's second panel, "Cyber-Crime: Present and Future." We ate at the food court in the Prudential Center mall (attached to the convention center), and on our way back I spotted a Barnes & Noble sign. So I sent C. on ahead to his panel and scurried off to grab Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norris, because the hype totally got to me.

Another aside (this is starting to convey some of the flavor of the con, what with the going in several directions at once), mostly of interest to cereta and elynross -- none of the dealers at Worldcon had Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norris, bizarrely, since it was out in all the B&N stores; however, the small press publisher Donald Grant was there with the hot-off-the-presses Dark Tower VII. They have the books in their hands, they'll be shipping the limited artist's edition starting tomorrow, and then bookstores will have the general hardcover edition on Sept. 21. They were taking orders but not actually selling the book, or else I would have gotten it and taunted you both by reading bits of the ending out in channel. (I kid! I kid! Don't hurt me!)

Then on to the panel -- the_shoshanna was there, which was cool, and it was a terrific panel -- in addition to C., who had many entertaining stories to tell from Juno days, we had Harlan Ellison's lawyer (who has also worked with unnameable govt organizations on cybercrime issues), and Harold Feld, a lawyer/activist who's working on preventing the erosion of civil liberties online. They all had really interesting stories and a lot of expert knowledge, as well as strong opinions. It was a great panel, and there was particularly an interesting discussion of whether there are any really new crimes online, or whether it's all been done before. (Interesting bit of info: the Nigerian scam is actually just a facelift of a scam called "The Spanish Prisoner," and which has been around since 1577.)

C. also had another panel at 4pm, so we briefly went back to the dealer's room (we think -- we're having a hard time piecing together our schedule *g*), then back to panels for one on "Rumors at the Speed of Light," which could definitely have benefited from being more of a roundtable -- it was small and several of the panelists didn't really have any expertise in the area. Afterwards, we went back to our room for some downtime and ordered room service. We had planned on going to the sock hop/swing dance, but C. was really wiped out and I wasn't much better, so I sent him to bed and went to the 10pm slash panel instead, after finalizing the plans for the vidshow with event staff and, um, the first 100 pages or so of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (henceforth JS&MN, and yes, it will appear again).

The one and only slash panel was unfortunately another disappointment as a panel, although I was happy to see theodosia here, as I hadn't actually gotten a chance to talk to her at Vividcon, and I had the pleasure of meeting veejane as well as another person who may or may not be bookjunkie -- if you spot this, bookjunkie, please let me know if I've got your lj name wrong! I also met a lovely fan from the UK, whose name I have already in my typical sieve-brain style forgotten, so if you're reading this, please remind me? ::hangs head:: I also spoke to a handful of other people there, but exactly who and about what is all just gone.

I was really too tired and should probably just have gone to bed, which was probably part of why I didn't enjoy the panel. The panel ended up almost entirely focused on anime because that's what the panelists were all into. There was some discussion of how Eroica was the first manga that crossed over to slash fandom which I was able to follow because I know Eroica, but aside from that the panelists touched on a lot of anime/manga very quickly (have forgotten the ones mentioned), mostly just squeeing about "the pretty boys," which isn't really what rings my bell when it comes to slash, so, not very satisfying. Anyway, I stole the mike for a second at the end to tell people about the impromptu vidshow (which was going to happen Saturday), and then I staggered back to the room and to bed.

Saturday started with an early lunch with the local fen, many of whom were coming in for the day and others who were just coming to hang. C. and I bumped randomly into flummery in the concourse on our way to get our mysteriously nonfunctional hotel keys replaced, so we said quick hellos and let them hit the dealers room while we finished our errand; then we headed over to Vinny T's for lunch. As we were on the way to the 11am appointment, I got a call from giglet who let me know I had missed her email saying that the restaurant didn't open until 11:30. No harm done; there was a Walgreens nearby with cold Cherry Coke that provided badly-needed caffeine, and then the nice waitstaff let us come into the air-conditioned restaurant and hang out at the bar while they finished setting up. giglet, teenygozer, and the_shoshanna joined us shortly, and in impatience to get back to the con, we sat down and ordered food, and happily bayleaf and briar_pipe got there soon enough to catch up with us. briar_pipe generously forgave me for being an idiot and brightly going "Hi! Nice to meet you! What's your lj name?" when I'd met her less than a year ago when cesperanza and I were in town. *facepalms*

After lunch, which was excellent, we all split up with plans to see one another again at the vidshow; C. and I hurried to the Del Rey panel to catch not my editor but another editor I'd met, just to say hi in passing; we then peeked in at the SFWA auction and left after seeing there was nothing there we couldn't live without, as I am not to be trusted in auctions (case in point, the sword from the HL convention that is still sitting on our sideboard). I *think* this is when we went to see the artshow, which was enormous and full of beautiful although very expensive pieces. I saw a particularly lovely piece by someone named Arthur Campbell, a knight in full armor and closed helm, lying dead in the snow; it reminded me of feochadn's vid "Ebben? Ne andro lontana." I'm still thinking of it wistfully, but it was $2500. Alas. There were also some funny squishy knitted things that just looked cute. Yes, I know that's incoherent; sorry, what brain I have left is going.

C. had another panel at 3pm, "The SF/F Detective," which was fun, and brilliantly moderated ;D, talking about the intersection of detective and mystery fiction with science fiction and fantasy. After that, we went back to the room for a little bit (I worked through some more of JS&MN) and then went down to hang out at the room slated for the vidshow.

So the way the programming folks eventually slotted in the vidshow was a little complicated. Initially, something called "Boston fan films" was slotted from 4-6 pm, but had never shown up. They did appear in the end, but the film staff said they were only an hour and a half long, and then the item following (Trekkies) was also an hour and a half in a two hour slot. So I was allowed to squeeze between, from 5:30 - 6:30.

Except, of course, that the fan films kept going and going and going. It was a videotape of a staged performance which I think called for some good drugs before watching, and there were a total of three people in the audience for it, with a growing crowd outside. After some dithering, I finally went in and asked if anyone minded ending it early so we could actually have the show, and fortunately no one objected (at least not loudly enough to stop me *g*) and after some tech issues solved by switching to the backup dvd player, all went smoothly. I'd grabbed a handful of vid DVDs before running out of the house, hoping to show them to some of the local fans who hadn't been able to make it to Vividcon, and out of it and some DVDs borrowed from flummery, I tried to put together a hasty playlist of vids from genre shows.

The much-shuffled playlist I'd intended to use with vague rationales was:

1. Superstar
   Buffy, and a great character study as well as a high-energy vid. Also, a touch of femslash.
   
2. Solsbury Hill
   Stargate, and I was hoping that the Daniel story was known well enough for the narrative to be accessible; also, a non-slash SG vid. I wanted to keep the show predominantly gen, and I didn't have a non-slash Smallville vid to show.
   
3. Tainted Donuts
   Not a good choice, in retrospect -- I picked it because they were showing marathons of Cowboy Bebop through the whole con and I hoped that people might know the source, plus it's a wild constructed reality, but it's a tough vid for non-vidfans to get.
   
4. Haunted
   I wanted this and Darkness Darkness as examples of recruiter vids for lesser-known fandoms; it did get at least one 'what fandom was that?' question after, so I think it worked to some extent, although it may have been another vid that kind of exceeded the general audience's grasp.
   
5. Razzle Dazzle
   No explanation necessary -- totally accessible, hysterical, familiar fandom. I had planned to start with this but moved it to the halfway mark because I knew some Trekkies people were going to be showing up mid-show, expecting Trekkies to start, and I wanted to appease them *g*
6. My Beautiful Reward
   Lovely vid; Firefly marathons were going on also, so I figured the source would be accessible also.
   
7. Darkness, Darkness
   Ditto above for recruiter vid; also, the visual symbols of horror that I think are familiar to everyone
   
8. Whatever
   As I said in the show, a deeply serious look at Angel. *g*
   
9. The Mountain
   I doubt there was anyone at the con who hadn't seen LOTR. *g*
   
10. Wipeout
    Stargate and Farscape in one, lots of fun, bouncy vid.
    
11. (And I had to stop there, sadly, because we were out of time, though I also wanted to show these others.)
    
12. Itsy Bitsy Spider
    Stargate and dark humor plus creep.
    
13. Le Freak
    Smallville, bouncy.
    
14. Olivia
15. Lovely & lyrical vid for The Last Unicorn, which I figured would be familiar to much of the audience, plus a -- for lack of a better word, comfortable vid, one that's not challenging on the eyes or ears.
    
16. All Souls' Night
    Not really genre, but teh pretty.
    

It was fun to do, and I think people enjoyed it, even if some of them were a little baffled *g*, but really, my main emotion afterwards was GREEN PULSING FIREY ENVY ENVY ENVY ENVY ENVY.

Ahem.

*Twenty foot screen*, I kid you not, and the vids looked gorgeous. The sound was pretty sucky, but we could fix that. I love how small Vividcon is, and the Springhill Suites is terrific, but oh, I want that screen, wah.

After the vidshow, C. and I went to pre-Hugo Awards dinner with flummery and teenygozer and her friend Jon. We ate at the food court to save time, and afterwards we waited while Thing 2 went and got bottled water -- and then she came back with the bottled water, but also with an *ice cream cone*, so obviously then we had to get ice cream of our own. :P We ended up splitting up for the actual awards because C. and I wanted to sit in the balcony.

The Hugo awards were surprisingly entertaining. Neil Gaiman was master of ceremonies, and startled me by sounding a great deal like Peter Wingfield, and also somewhat resembling him, at least in profile. Robert Silverberg gave an adorable speech about the history of the Hugo awards; he's been to every single one. The anecdotes he shared generally confirmed me in my opinion of awards ceremonies (that they're a damn good reason for having a Tivo), but the event itself was not at all interminable, as I had feared it might be. Helped that several of the winners gave ten-words-or-less acceptance speeches, especially the enthusiastic Frank Wu, who ran up, seized his Hugo, leaned over and said, "I. Love. You. All." and dashed away again. ::g::

Our pal mabfan sadly didn't win for his short story; unfortunately, he was up against Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald, a Sherlock Holmes/Lovecraft crossover. ::sends vibes for next time::

Afterwards, we went and hung out in the SFWA suite for a while, where I met a few NYC-area folks who are working on pro writing, and then spent some time outside chatting quietly with our friends Ian and Kit before crashing for the night.


Sunday morning is a blur. I do remember we stopped by the tables in the concourse for the upcoming Worldcons (2005 will be in Glasgow, Scotland; 2006 in LA, 2007 in Japan), and then C. went to go have lunch with his brother. I flaked out entirely, took JS&MN, and sat in the sunny Prudential courtyard and read and read and read. I did see C's brother and family just for a moment to say hello, then C. and I went back to the con. We hit the art show *just* before it closed, and once again did not buy the $30K Michael Whelan painting, even though it would look really cool in our living room.

Having been kicked out, we went to the "Creating Gods" panel (on how to deal effectively with deities in sf/f, either as forces or characters), with Lois McMaster Bujold, George R. R. Martin, Tamora Pierce, Jo Walton, and others. There were some interesting ideas tossed out, and also fun with the lights being swapped on and off multiple times by people leaning against the light switch, but I once again left with the feeling that I would much rather have been sitting around with a half-dozen of you all discussing the topic.

Afterwards, C. went to Harry Harrison's autographing line to catch him for a few words, and I went to Charlaine Harris's small panel called "What Do Fans Want?", where she basically was asking us what we'd like to see in her Sookie Stackhouse series (Dead Until Dark, et al). She's a lovely person and reminded me very much of sockkpuppett; somehow she gave the same impression of both being gracious and not taking shit from anyone. ::grins::

After that, C. was pretty toasted, and so was I; we decided to call it a day as far as panels went, had an early dinner, then went back to the room for naps. And, er, also I finished JS&MN. The book really deserves a post of its own, but for now I'll just say I highly recommend it.

After resting a while, we headed downstairs for the Masquerade. I'd never been to a Masquerade before, and though afterwards some other folks said it wasn't as good as in previous years, for my part it was a lot of fun. The junior division had some really adorable entries, and Best in Class was taken by a terrific edition of The Death of Rats. (Terry Pratchett was the Guest of Honor of the con, and unsurprisingly, many of the costumes were Discworld-based.) There was also a very cute "Grim Sweeper", bringing death to all dustbunnies. :-)

The adult division had 35 entries, and I won't even attempt to describe them all. We had a Pale Rider, preceded by Rincewind and a great motorized version of The Luggage. Probably the most original one was the cast of a fake time-travel series complete with time machine, all in period costume: H.G. Wells, Louisa May Alcott, Annie Oakley, Mary Shelley, and Samuel Clemens. But the last one was my favorite, another Discworld-based one:

As it opens, Vetinari is talking with a wizard and one of his guards about some disturbance in Ankh-Morpork; the wizard muttering how terrible it was, chaos in the streets, women everywhere. The guard explains they hired Cohen the Barbarian and his daughter to capture the creature causing the disturbance. The barbarians come in with a creature swathed in canvas. Cohen says Vetinari should let them kill the creature now, but Vetinari insists on having the creature revealed.

The canvas is whipped off to reveal... TOM JONES! Aaagh! He proceeds to start singing "It's Not Unusual," while panties start flying out of the audience; a witch appears on stage and throws hers; Cohen's daughter loses it and goes for him also; even the master of ceremonies throws a pair. A frenzy of stabbing and slaughter ensues, as the various characters kill each other off, and at the end, the only one left standing is Cohen, who proceeds to grab Tom Jones and plant one on him. ;-)

I can't find the program info or awards info online; we left before the awards were handed out, as we were even-more-completely wiped out and still had to pack. But hopefully they'll be posted soon at noreascon.org.

And that was it! This morning we packed up, had a quick breakfast, and caught Amtrak back to NYC. Overall, the con was both wonderful and overwhelming. I feel as though I'd like to have it all to do over again, knowing what I know now -- it's the kind of con that takes conscious managing and planning, at least for me to enjoy the most, but it really does have something for everyone. I'm seriously considering going to Glasgow for the next one.

Now, however, it's time for me to get back to work; I haven't really gotten anything done writing-wise since before Vividcon, and I need to get the nose to the grindstone. The progress reports will be starting up again tomorrow. (There, I've committed myself, ha!) I'm hoping to have it done by November -- I'd like to try and do either my sci-fi concept or a crime novel for Nanowrimo, but I can't if Book 2 isn't done.