Worldcon Notes: Thursday is Random Thursday

My first panel (for which I was moderator) was "Future Pharma" talking about speculative pharmaceuticals, projections from the state of the art today, and especially the ways that drugs, their social context, and their consequences can drive stories. We had a broad panel (five of us in total) with a range of backgrounds and interests. I was a little surprised at how packed the room was, but from anecdotal data, the room sizes are gauged very well to the attendance (and these aren't small rooms). (My 8pm panel was more lightly attended for the room size, but at that point it was competing with dinners and parties both.)

That left me an hour to kill before my autograph session, for which I had extremely modest expectations. I spent a lot of it talking to people at bid parties and ended up pre-supporting Dublin for 2019 and New Zealand for 2020. (I now feel odd that I don't seem to have paid any attention to any of the 2018 bids.) I decided my win conditions for the autographing was one book, with a stretch goal of two. One of my online acquaintances dropped by to ask if my display books were for sale, but I sent her off to one of the dealers instead (to support them) and she returned to get both books signed. So: win. There were also a couple people who dropped by filling autograph books, so that was ok. I also had a chance to chat with one of my fellow session members, J. Tullos Hennig who is heading up a panel on historic research I'm participating in next month at Gay Romance Northwest.

I used twitter intersections to chat with a various people I've met online: Rachael Acks, who was manning the SFWA table in the dealers' room, and Elise Matheson who makes lovely jewelry. Jewelry is being my weakness this con. I now own a pendant of an opalized ammonite with a silver mount. Even better, since Elise had been meaning to buy my books, I was able to clinch the deal by using them as part payment. Win-win!

Several people had suggested I didn't want to miss the "Medieval Science and Engineering" panel (Bradford Lyau, Guy Consolmagno, Ada Palmer, Jo Walton, Eric Swedin) and evidently a lot of people had concluded the same thing because the room was packed, including all the aisles. Great discussion of the non-linearity of progress and the meanings and uses of engineering in the medieval period.

Next up was the File 770 get-together at a local restaurant. I've been starting to comment in the book discussion threads there, though it's a bit of a fire-hose to keep up with lately. Got to meet Mike Glyer and a whole bunch of the regulars.

Final program item of the day was the 8pm panel "Exploring Orientation and Gender in Fiction" which I am too brain dead at this point to summarize adequately. After that I decided to make the unusual (for me) move of checking out the bid parties. Bumped into David J. Peterson at the Helsinki party and had the fun of seeing someone do a double-take when he introduced me as one of his first linguistics teachers. (We were trying to remember exactly which class(es) I was his TA for at Berkeley. For those who don't know why this is funny -- he's been doing some language construction for a little show called Game of Thrones.) I worked my way through entirely too much delicious food and unusual alcohols (pine tar liqueur? really?) at parties for Helsinki, Montreal, Japan, and New Zealand. But midnight seemed like a good goal for getting back to my own room for the night.

Worldcon Notes: Friday is not a review

Fridays are my review days, and I actually have a couple things finished to review, but it's 11pm and I'm making an early night of it, so the reviews will wait.

Had my Kaffee Klatch today. In theory, all ten slots were taken, but four of the pre-registered people didn't show, and then one person showed up at the last minute, so I had seven in all, including at least one person who had simply decided that Kaffee Klatches were a good way to meet authors they'd never heard of before. I also got a surprise when one of the guests was someone I knew when I was a kid but who I hadn't seen since freshman year of college. Most of the rest were people I'd interacted with in some fashion online.

I led off with the promised demonstration of nailing the octopus to the wall, then we chatted about language and geography and why European history in the world of Alpennia hasn't diverged more due to magic than it has. I've lost track of more of the details but before we knew it the hour was up and it was time for the random drawing for the book give-away. I really enjoy this format of interaction.

I took the leftover Alpennian almond cakes off to the get-together of people from the Making Light blog and spent the next two hours chatting with folks there. Once again, this is an online community where I've gotten to know people through postings but mostly had not met in person before. Ended up selling a couple of books and making dinner plans with a small group for Sunday evening.

Decided I needed to rectify the fact that I wasn't yet pre-supporting either of the bids for 2018, but between New Orleans and San Jose, my recent experience of New Orleans weather this time of year made SJ my natural choice. I'd been exchanging triangulating tweets with yet another twitter friend and we finally got face-to-face at that location and had a chance to chat before I had to dash for my dinner party with the roommates and a couple of local friends. They took us to a local place that does serious foodie dishes including their own charcuterie and we indulged in fine food.

I got back from dinner just in time to catch the tail end of the Escape Artists get-together. (This is the umbrella group that includes podcastle.org where my story "Hoywverch" was published.) So I had time to talk to some of the staff and other authors/artists featured on the shows. I decided to skip the masquerade and instead went off to the SFWA suite where I practiced my random socializing for a couple hours before the ambient noise was getting to much and I figured I'd call it a night.

Air quality has been so bad today (due to multiple fires) that they posted warnings on all the exit doors from the convention center suggesting people minimize time outdoors and cover their mouths. The smoke has overwhelmed the HVAC filters and even all the indoor spaces reek. I feel for all the folks with breathing issues.

Hard to believe it's only Friday and there's still two more days of convention!