I had a dream early this morning in which I was hanging out with Bill Shunn and Wil McCarthy on the way to the Denver WorldCon. We’d bumped into each other at some interim airport at which we were changing planes. Our conversation was so interesting that at one point I realized I was about to miss my flight, and so I was forced to run for my gate. As I raced, two things caused me to wonder.

First, I passed a healthy Jerry Orbach, that song-and-dance man who became a star of Law & Order, which confused me, because I thought, “Isn’t he dead?” (In the waking world, he is.) And then, as I continued running, I got to thinking—why would I bump into Wil at an airport on the way to Denver? Doesn’t he live in Colorado? (In the waking world, he does.)

Once I got to my gate, I learned that I still had plenty of time, so I sat and opened my mail, which included cards (that I never got out of their envelopes, so I never learned the occasion—Happy Birthday? Congratulations? Get Well?)—or who they were from, and copies of (gulp!) Reader’s Digest (which in the real world I only ever flip through when the line at the supermarket check-out aisle is moving too slowly). I woke up before I could board the plane.

Later that morning, I had a second SF-related dream (and can recall three other dreams that had nothing to do with writers or writing). I was attending a reunion of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Workshop—one made up not just of my year, but of all years. While there, I bumped into Cory Doctorow. We caught up for awhile, and then I moved on to look for other familiar faces. And strangely, though the public areas of the building were packed, I recognized no one else from my year or any other year.

I was given a pamphlet that contained photos of all other graduates, but I could recognize no faces there either. In the dream, I wasn’t perturbed by this, just found it odd and interesting, since from my years attending cons I figured I should be able to recognize graduates from almost every year of Clarion. I woke while flipping through the pamphlet, which was laid out like a high-school yearbook.