Sounds Like Weird
17 August 2011
Woke up at around 8:30 (unusual for me), dragged self down to the buffet and had some moderately miserable food. (Buffets? Generally suck.) Rick trundled off having snacked on fruit, etc.
Mike and I went to go print up BayCon fliers [1] and then got back just in time for peak line length at registration. Lucky us! Missed the Welcome to Reno Panel, but got to see the last five minutes, as I came early for the next panel.
…Which happened to be John Scalzi’s “A Trip to the Creation Museum,” which was fascinating and horrifying at the same time.
Next, we went to Opening Ceremonies, where all the guests of honor and special guests, were introduced, including the one and only Doctor Demento. I remember listening to him in my teenage years a lot; frequently we’d be coming back from some event or another on his broadcast night and con the school bus driver into tuning into his show. Later on, he showed a video for “Fish Heads,” featuring a very young Bill Pullman.
This year’s writer guest of honor is my own personal favorite writer, Tim Powers. I’ve been a fan of his ever since The Anubis Gates first came out and a friend pressed a copy into my hands. After that, I met him at conventions, and he was one of my instructors at Clarion when I went in 2002.
Rick and I went to separate events after that; he went to the Dr. Demento show, where I went to a panel about the revenge of the nerds — specifically, how geeks are now portrayed differently in media. What surprised me most about that panel, I think, was that no one mentioned CSI. The omission is particularly notable when you consider panelist Connie Willis’s daughter, Cordelia, is herself a CSI.
Then Rick and I went to dinner at Famous Dave’s Rib’s, which turned out to be quite excellent. One snafu, my fault: I intended to order green beans and was insufficiently specific, so I got brown beans. They were okay, but I only had a couple of bites. The ribs were mighty tasty.
When we returned, we headed for the party floor. The San Antonio bid for 2013 is running unopposed, so going to the party was a formality, mostly. While there, I got to catch up with writer Carol Berg, whose first book was published around the time of the Chicago Worldcon in 2000 — I remember sitting in the audience and listening intently to the first novelists. I read several of the books, including Mindy Klasky’s The Glasswright’s Apprentice, but Carol’s novel Transformation remains the favorite of the books I discovered from that panel.
After my visit to the party floor, I got caught up talking with Ctein, who was out in public using his iPad. I said I’d really liked his iPad article and we discussed the very different ways we use our iPads. Another guy was hovering nearby and started asking questions — he’d been considering buying an iPad of his own.
[1] Oh, btw, announcing the Writer Guest of Honor: Brandon Sanderson!