Thursday, September 9th, 2004

Time	Event
12:10p	The problem with worldcons When I came in from the airport, Zorinth took one look at me and said: "I am never going to a Worldcon!" My voice was strained, the bags under my eyes reached to my knees and I was having trouble being coherent. "No," I croaked, "No, really, I've had a wonderful time. And I've just arranged for the two of us to go to Glasgow next year." "Really!" he exclaimed, leaping up with the enthusiasm of someone ready to start packing right away. The problem with worldcons is that they are too much fun."Fun, fun, fun, followed by lunch, followed by more fun..." as carandol famously put it. They're fun and they're finite and I make caffeine and protein and vitamin C make up for sleep. I think I have sleep-debt going into October. I'm not going to try to talk about Worldcon minute by minute, or day by day. I'm going to try some thematic posts and see how that goes. (13 Comments | Comment on this)
12:17p	Worldcon: Friends First and most important, I got to see a lot of friends. Some of them I hadn't seen for years, some of them I see all the time, some of them I'd never met in person before. I didn't get to hang out with anyone enough, but I did a lot of very intense socialising that will keep me going through months of my usual hermit-like existence. It was terrific. I saw far to many people to mention all of them by name. One of the odd things was meeting people who then didn't tell me for hours that I already knew them. kayselkiemoon this means you! I'd thought the LJ "anonymity" thing was just fine, but this was an angle on it I hadn't experienced before. Tell me your user name too! And for goodness sake come and say hello -- I'm talking to you fairmer! Say hello and let me decide if I want to talk to you. John Campbell used to say he was the only one allowed to reject stories for his magazine. One of the very good things and good ways of meeting people was helping out on elisem's table. That was lots of fun, and I did it a lot when I wasn't on program. ( really long ) (15 Comments | Comment on this)
1:02p	Worldcon: Panels I was on thirteen program items, which is a lot. Some people said that some people were over-programmed, and others under-used, but I thought the program was terrific. I didn't manage to get to any of it except what I was on -- I tried, but the one time I tried, Greer Gilman and I tried to go to malkingrey's Anglo-Saxon item only to find that Debra had thought it was a panel, not a talk, and drafted us to be panel. I managed to talk about the Saxon elegaic fairly coherently, but I didn't dare risk any more after that. I didn't take any notes and I'm not going to attempt to write proper reports, these are just some things I want to remember. ( long again ) (30 Comments | Comment on this)
1:39p	Worldcon: business I always think that I pretend that I'm going to cons on business as a kind of legal and acceptable tax-dodge -- and indeed I generally do sufficient pinning down of my editor at them that I'm sure they quite legitimately count for that purpose. This one was different in a couple of ways. The divide between being there as a fan and as a pro has somehow got bigger -- or it's more noticeable at worldcons. I really don't like the idea that people wouldn't approach me because I'm a pro. It bothers me about fifty different ways, and the worst one is that if lots of nice people do that I'll only end up meeting the pushy ones. I didn't have an autographing session, but about a zillion people asked me to sign books, mostly Tooth and Claw. I also estimate that about 10% of everyone who had bought it came up to me and told me that they love it. This was very gratifying. (It comes out in paperback in November. Buy it for all your friends for Santamass.) I was standing at Elise's stall and was introduced to a guy who's starting a fantasy line at a French publisher. "Gosh," I said. "Publish me, I live in Montreal, and having a French edition would do so much for my social life!" He laughed and gave me his card. I mentioned this in passing to my agent when we had lunch. He asked me to email him the guy's details when I got home. Later that day, another agent and editor came up and asked me about this and asked me to do the same for him. I thought I was standing at Elise's stall making conversation, but they were definitely doing business. I've started reading authors myself because they were interesting on panels. (C.J. Cherryh positively leaps to mind.) I'm aware that people do that, and do believe that going to a worldcon will put me in front of potential readers in a useful way. But I always thought of this as an excuse to go to a worldcon, not a reason to go, if you see the difference. Eh well, these are problems I'd have given large quantities of body-parts to have had ten years ago, so I shouldn't complain. (62 Comments | Comment on this)
2:45p	Another cool thing I did in Boston "There's a stained glass globe," Tom Whitmore said. "And you can walk inside it." The Mary Baker Eddy Christian Science Centre Thingummy is a thing as good as a cathedral, but not like a cathedral. I went with Tom and Marci and a couple of friends of theirs, and Nancy Lebovitz. It's immensely cool. There's a fountain that spills words onto the floor, where they swirl around before climbing up the walls to form unexceptionable secular humanist platitudes. Then there's a stained glass globe of the world in 1934, huge and glowing, big enough for ten or fifteen people to walk inside. It's a perfect aural space, magnifying even a whisper from the centre. There was a presentation, on the general cool nature of the world -- Christian Scientists seem to be for it, and not very interested in presenting their views on the flesh and the devil, which I gather they're against. ("When Mary Baker Eddy said she didn't like her teddy...") I'm actually very impressed with their use of monumental space and the fact that they had the Dictionary of Religions in their giftshop. After the presentation they let us play in the globe for a little while. I went to the very centre, where all the acoustics were with me, and recited Keats's "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer", that paeon to the glory of expanding one's horizons by reading one's book. It sounded absolutely terrific, magnified, echoing back, and I turned around so that I could stare at the Pacific when I came to that line. Then the guide asked me for the author and reference, and actually wrote it down. (33 Comments | Comment on this)

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