There, that’s better. Four-and-a-half hours of sleep can work wonders!

Yesterday began with me waking up at 4:15 and getting to BWI Airport three hours before my 10:05 flight. I had a ton of work to do on the upcoming Fall Preview issue of SCI FI magazine, and doing it at the airport instead of at home that morning meant that I missed all the nasty Baltimore traffic which would have slowed me down had I tried to get there in the midst of rush hour. So I had a calm commute and then many productive hours of wifi work before my flight.

Once all (well, almost all) caught up, I flew to Providence, rather than Boston, to take part in what’s been a longtime Readercon tradition—since Providence and Boston are equidistant from the con’s site of Burlington, Massachusetts, I extend the con conviviality by having lunch in the land of H. P. Lovecraft with Paul Di Filippo (and sometimes his keeper, Deb Newton) before driving to the con with them from there.

Here we are about to devour lunch at their favorite Chinese restaurant.

My fortune cookie told me that You always know the right times to be assertive or to simply wait, which bodes well for not making a fool of myself this weekend—or at least for not making more of a fool of myself that I usually appear to be.

After lunch, we picked up Deb at her office, and headed straight to the con. The trip took around an hour, and we arrived in the early afternoon. I went to my room to catch up on further work before programming began, and once I satisfied myself that the world would not crumble, headed down to the bar around 4:30, where I joined a long table made up of Paul, Deb, Farah Mendelson, John Clute, Liz Hand, Geoff Ryman, Claude Lalumiere, and Jacob Weisman.

We began the annual ritual of catching up, and for some reason eventually started sharing the teasing names with which we each were attacked in childhood. My own, in order of my having earned them, were Gigantor, Milton the Monster, Shakespeare, and Hollywood. I won’t explain the reasoning behind them here (though I might do that at some time in the future), and I won’t share here the names the others had earned. Some information is best left buried. Or if offered up at all, it should be by their owners alone.

When the group departed for their mass dinner in the hotel restaurant, I moved to the lobby (because I had made other plans), where I was absorbed by another motley crew, this one made up of John Joseph Adams, David Louis Edelman, Christopher Cevasco, and Doug Cohen. We discussed David’s chances of winning this year’s John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, John’s upcoming vampire and dystopic SF anthologies, the artwork Chris chose for Paradox magazine, and more.

When Resa Nelson arrived so that she and I could go to dinner, I introduced her to the group and was delighted to discover that this meant I was the one to give her faces for some people whom up until then she only knew as names—Doug, who works with her in her role as the Film Editor of Realms of Fantasy, and Chris, who had published one of her stories in Paradox. The world grows ever smaller, and I’m glad to have a part in it.

Resa and I then headed off to the Lemon Tree restaurant, a very nice Thai place we’ve gone to many times before. Resa’s first novel, The Dragonslayer’s Sword, based on a short story I published 15 years ago in Science Fiction Age, is now out, and she autographed the first copy for me.

After dinner, I went to two readings. At 8:30 p.m., I listened to Andy Duncan read a portion of his story “The Night Cache,” and then at 9:00 p.m. I heard Guest of Honor Jonathan Lethem read from his novel in progress, Those Birds and That Tower (though he warns that his title will probably not survive by the time the book hits print in Fall of ’09). Since neither work is yet published, or even complete, their performances were big teases, because I can’t rush out to read either, and I want both right now.

At 10:00, I attended a screening of the documentary The Polymath, or The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. I will go to any lengths to hear Chip’s voice, and this documentary definitely delivered. Since I’ve read almost every word he’s ever written (well, ever published), I was aware of much of the information imparted last night. But I will say that though I knew he was a prolific writer, I was unaware of the full extent of his prolificity in another field, one in which it seems he shares a record with Wilt Chamberlain.

Before the film began, I heard someone ask whether whether she could still enjoy what she was about to see not having read any Delany, and I turned and got into a discussion with the two women sitting behind me, Julie Andrews and Desirina Boskovich, graduates of the 2007 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing Workshop. I assured them that Chip was a fascinating speaker regardless of whether one knew his work. We chatted briefly before the film began, and I meant to find out what they thought once it was all over, but I was sitting next to Bob Colby, and we immediately got into a discussion about Chip’s infamous experimental film The Orchid, which he remembers being booed at Noreascon I, the first Boston Worldcon, and I remembered having been shocked by at the film show of (I believe) the 1971 Lunacon. (What 16-year-old wants to see his favorite comic-book artists naked? Well … perhaps I should rephrase that. This 16-year-old didn’t want to see his favorite comic-book artists naked!) By the time I turned around, Julie and Desirina were gone. But before the con is over, I aim to find out what they thought!

Afterward, in the lobby, I sat with , Andy Duncan, Ted Chiang, Marty Halpern, Michael Cisco, Laird Barron, and a couple of other people whose names I did not catch. Much of our conversation was spent in remembering the recently deceased , but there was also talk of other Clarion instructors, such as Carol Emshwiller and Algis Budrys. Soon, however (for me, at least), exhaustion took over, and I headed back to my room, where I tossed up some photos and made this morning’s brief, barely coherent entry.

I hope I sound more coherent this morning. If not, be very afraid, because I think this is about as coherent as I ever get.