And as you can see, in this picture Bob forwarded to me last week, he has the nerve to laugh about it!

I don’t care if the guy is a Grand Master—isn’t it time he had his license revoked?

And just to show that my memory isn’t what it once was, I had thought this accident had taken place at a publisher party at the 2001 Philadelphia Worldcon, but Bob assures me that he had instead mowed me down a year later at a party held at San Jose’s Tech Museum of Innovation during the 2002 Worldcon.

My first Worldcon was 1974, so they’re all starting to blend together, folks.

John Picacio has alerted me to my brief appearance as part of a feature segment which appeared on NBC affiliate News9 last week.

Since I can’t seem to embed the video, if you want to see me (as well as John Picacio and John Hertz), click here—and then keep your fingers crossed.

And whatever you do, don’t blink!

I spoke too soon when I wrote that Denvention ended for me on Sunday night, because when I headed out Monday morning to grab some breakfast to bring back to the room, I ran into Joe from Chicago, whose last name I didn’t catch. I’d never met him before, and because we were now both without badges, I couldn’t tell at first whether he was, as they say in organized crime, “a friend of ours,” and so didn’t immediately say hello in passing as I would to a fellow fan. But once we sorted that all out, we had a nice talk about this con and Worldcons past, his first being ’82, if I’m remembering correctly, versus my ’74. And he was a subscriber to Science Fiction Age, so I’m forever in his debt.

An hour later, when I left the hotel to head over to Zaidy’s, a deli which served pastrami highly recommended by Bob Silverberg, so that we wouldn’t have to suffer airport food for lunch, there were friends Sandy and Risa Stewart, waiting for the shuttle to take them to the airport. Even though I’d bumped into them several times each day of the con, I hadn’t known we were in the same hotel.

I couldn’t chat long, because I needed time to get over to Zaidy’s and back with the pastrami for Irene and a bissel brisket for me in time to make our own way to the airport. As I walked, I saw a cornerstone labeled Writer Square, which I soon discovered was a sign for a shopping complex.

(more…)

After grabbing a bagel and some orange juice in the Green Room, I headed off to Daniel Abraham’s 10:00 a.m. reading. He performed “The Curandero and the Swede: A Tale from the 1,001 American Nights,” straight from the galleys he had been sent to proof for its upcoming appearance in F&SF. I was impressed when I’d heard him read “The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics” (for which he was a Hugo nominee this weekend) at the World Fantasy Convention in Austin, but this tale was several levels advanced from that, and left me a little stunned by its perfection. It was a masterful and moving story, and I look forward to seeing it in print to better judge how much of my reaction was to the performance and how much was to the page. His subtitle promised us another 1,000 stories, and he did share some of the others he intends to tell about these characters. I wish him the stamina to pull it off.

I had intended to the attend the “Arthur C. Clarke: In Memorium” panel at 11:30 a.m., but decided that I’d had too much death this weekend, what with my participation on the Williamson and Budrys panels. Though I’d only be in the audience of this one, I decided that it would be too much. I’m afraid that as I keep going to cons, there’ll be more and more panels like this, dedicated to people I’d long known and/or long read. I don’t know that I’ll be up to them all.

So instead, to pass the time until I was supposed to meet my lunch mates at 12:45 p.m., I wandered the dealers room for the last time, and signed a case of copies of Postscripts #15. I also bumped into Oz Whiston, who’d recently made her first sale to Analog, and we caught up on what we’d been doing since we first and last met at Balticon earlier this year. (more…)

Irene and I started the day with breakfast at the 16th Street Einstein’s Bagels, after which she headed to the Dealers Room while I went off to check the Green Room for the rest of the members of my 10:00 a.m. panel. I didn’t find any of them there, but I did find Pat Cadigan, who was loudly proclaiming to the rest of her table that “The 21st Century can kiss my ass!”

“The 21st Century can kiss your ass?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “You can quote me on that.”

So that’s what I’m doing.

The two panels I participated in Saturday left me feeling melancholy. My first panel of the day was “A Tribute to Jack Williamson,” which also featured Connie Willis, David Hartwell, and Melinda Snodgrass. A couple of hours later, I took part in “Wonders of 1958: Algis Budrys’ Who?,” which while focused more on the book than the man, did turn into a memorial of sorts. That latter panel also contained John Hertz and G. David Nordley. These two panels, while celebratory, and while they contained many happy, warm, funny, and uplifting memories, left me feeling somber. (more…)

After leaving the Hyatt bar, John Kessel, Sheila Williams, and I wandered over to 16th Street for lunch and ended up at the Appaloosa Grill, where I ate bison for the third time this trip. Before the meal began, John and I
cracked open our laptops, and we attempted to transfer a multi-gigabyte video I had made of him performing in one of Jim Kelly’s plays at Readercon.

We failed miserably.

No matter what we did, the computers wouldn’t talk to each other. (Never send a Humanist to do an Analog writer’s job.) What we needed, we decided, was a Stross, or someone like him. So we shut down our computers and stopped torturing poor Sheila with our ineptness.

After an hour or so of chatting about short stories, internet flame wars, and the trials of international submissions, John and I headed back to the convention center in search of a Hard SF writer who could solve our problem. Along the way, we bumped into Stephen Baxter heading the opposite direction on California Street. Surely he would be able to link up our laptops! Alas, he knew better than to even try.

His solution? Find Stross. (more…)

I had a 7:30 a.m. breakfast with Bob Silverberg at the Hyatt Friday, which turned out to be the second of three breakfasts he was to eat that morning. How he keeps his boyish figure I have no idea, considering that at our breakfast alone he gobbled a huge open-faced bagel with a great schmears of cream cheese and mounds of smoked salmon. (Well, actually, Bob never gobbles, as he’s far too dignified for that … but you get the idea.)

As we were finishing up our meal, Gardner Dozois passed by to tell us that he saw Fred Pohl having breakfast alone (not many of us were up that early after Thursday night’s partying), and so we joined him, along with Susan Casper, and we all kibitzed for another hour. Who needs a convention when you can sit at a table like that?

I could have spent the day there having a ball chatting and doing my best to absorb the assembled wisdom of the ages, but I had to leave for my 10:00 panel, “SF Magazine Publication and Market Share.” Bradford Lyau moderated me, Sheila Williams and Stanley Schmidt on the proposed mandate of “How many people are still reading short fiction in monthly magazines? Is the market growing or contracting? What influence do anthologies and web-publications have on market share?” I’m not sure whether we fully addressed the topic—I know that we were all trying to remain as upbeat as possible—but the following issues came up. (more…)

Irene and I went to dinner Thursday night with Bill Shunn, Laura Chavoen, Geoffrey Landis, and Mary Turzillo. Laura charmed the concierge into getting us reservations at Vesta Dipping Grill, which we were told was a hot restaurant in the hippest part of town.

What that turned out to mean was a room so dark that the menus were almost unreadable, and food so overproduced as to detract (as far as I was concerned) from the true pleasure of the ingredients. After all, does a well-cooked scallop really need to come with three overpowering dipping sauces that mask, rather than complement, the tender taste of the flesh?

But both the conversation and company were excellent, which, after all, was why we were really breaking bread together anyway. (Above, in order, that’s me, Laura, Irene, Bill, Geoff, and Mary.)

After dinner, we headed straight for the SFWA suite over in the Sheraton, where I got embroiled in a conversation about science-fiction cliches with Benjamin Rosenbaum, John Kessel, Michael Swanwick, Leslie Howle, and others, sparked by some comments Ben had on a story John recently wrote. Eventually, I slipped away with Sheila Williams and Robert Silverberg to a quiet and air-conditioned back room to discuss the history of magazine price and page-count changes going back the beginning of the SF magazine. We chewed over this topic for at least an hour, which would probably interest no one except those who also have ink for blood the way we do.

Nearing exhaustion, Irene and I finally left, and—after a brief survey of the Australia party and the Con Suite—staggered off to the free bus at 16th Street which would get us a little closer to the Marriott. Lawrence Watt-Evans and Julie Evans were already there. As we chatted, Paolo Bacigalupi turned up, which changed the wait into a mini-convention all its own.

For those who need more visual aids to imagine themselves there, I’m now up to 72 photos over at flickr.

I had some time between my morning panels and my planned lunch with Jetse de Vries, so I decided to check out the art show. Many times I overprogram myself so extensively at Worldcons that I go home without having taken a leisurely stroll there, and I didn’t want that to happen again. Aside from John Picacio and his diorama that turned into three covers for a series of Jeff Ford novels, the artist who intrigued me the most was Brianna Martray.

After I finished wandering the art show, I still had a little more spare time, so I stepped into the dealers room, where I immediately bumped into Vivian Perry and Ed Bryant by a table selling a striking nude portraits, including a dramatic one of Chip Delany. I hadn’t seen Vivian for a few Worldcons, and so caught up on her musical career. That’s her below, so that when she’s on her future concert tour someday I’ll be able to say I knew her when.

Then I found Jetse de Vries at the end of his e-publishing panel, and we took off for lunch. Jetse and I have passed like ships in the night at many conventions, and we figured that we were long overdue for a chance for a quiet conversation. Over bison burgers, we discussed his recent trip to view a total solar eclipse in Siberia, compared notes on our world travels, and traded writing techniques.

The afternoon reading of my most recently short story went well. I handed out Spongebob Squarepants marshmallow lollipops to give the crowd a sugar rush and keep them awake just in case my sonorous voice combined with a day of wandering the con knocked them out.

I’d share more, but now I’m off to breakfast with Bob Silverberg, and so a report on Thursday night’s doings will have to wait!

Thursday started off healthy, with a one-mile walk organized by Stu and Stephen Segal. This event will occur each morning of the con, with different guest writers and editors, under the umbrella title of Strollin’ with the Stars. Walking along with me today were Ellen Datlow, Frank Wu, and 30 or so other attendees who, like me, obviously hadn’t partied hard enough last night.

Here I am with some of the survivors in front of the Big Blue Bear at the completion of our hike.

As the group broke up, I bumped into Jim Kelly, Connie Willis, John Kessel and a few other writers, who helped me solve the issue of which 10:00 a.m. panel I should attend—”Short Fiction: On Its Way Out?” or “Writers Reading their Juvenilia.” Jim was on the first of those, and Connie was on the second, which meant that I had the two panels before me in microcosm. Jim said I should definitely choose Connie’s panel, because she’d be funnier than him. (Though maybe he just didn’t want me in his audience.) I decided to take his advice, since most panels on the future of short fiction should offer razor blades for the audience members to use to slit their wrists on the way out anyway.

The four writers willing to embarrass themselves in public were Edward Willett, Connie Willis, Sarah Hoyt, and Joshua Palmatier. Ed came up with some great titles for his novels as a teen, including Castra Glaz, Hypership Test Pilot (sure hope I spelled that name correctly) and The Slavers of Thok. But the true star of the panel was (as it so often is) Connie Willis, who read two different hilarious pieces.

She started with “For the Love Of Susan,” a story she wrote back in high school about a young girl with a crush on actor George Maharis from the TV show Route 66, and how they were brought together by a car accident. Then, after regaling us with the titles and plots of some of her old true confessions stories such as “Wanted: A Boyfriend for Grandma” and “Swept Away in a Torrent of Passion,” she read from “I Called for Help on My CB and Got a Rapist Instead.” The performance was much funnier than that title would have you believe.

Bottom line—if Connie’s on a panel, be there.