jcfiala

So, what did I generally think about the worldcon? I've had a few people ask me that.

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Books

"The Anime Art of Hayao Miyazaki", Dani Cavallaro
"The Cinema of Mamoru Oshii", Dani Cavallaro
"The Films of John Carpenter", John Kenneth Muir
The previous three are published by McFarland, who had a huge booth there. Apparently they sell books on film and TV criticism to Libraries and universities - these volumes are normally $35, but he was selling at half price at the con.

"Schlock Mercenary: The Tub of Happiness", Howard Tayler
"Schlock Mercenary: The Blackness Between", Howard Tayler
"Sorcery & Cecelia, or, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot", Patricia C. Wrede & Caroline Stevermer
This I got to read with my wife, the text appearing to be the correspondence of two women, with a general Price and Prejudice sort of feel to the text.

"Pump Six and Other Stories", Paolo Bacigalupi
This is based off of a recommendation of the story "Pump Six" that I had just heard in the 2009 Hugo suggestion panel.

"Dark Mondays", Kage Baker
"Blood and Iron", Elizabeth Bear

"City of the Beast", Michael Moorcock
"The Anubis Murders", Gary Gygax
"Black God's Kiss", C. L. Moore
The previous three were all published by Paizo under their 'Planet Stories' imprint, and were given away free. Kept trying to meet up with Eric Mona at the booth, but circumstance kept preventing us from meeting, which may be why I never actually spent money there.

"Roswell, Texas", L. Neil Smith (and others)
Collection of a webcomic published by 'Big Head Press'. Printed matter is in grey tones, but color is available at http://www.bigheadpress.com/roswell.

"Aunt Dimity Goes West", Nancy Atherton
Not so much a fantasy or sf book, but actually an entry in a series of mystery cozies featuring a woman whose pink bunny toy is apparently possessed by her Aunt Dimity. I was surprised to see it there.

"Mathematicians in Love", Rudy Rucker
Bought half because of the author, and half because of the title.

"Myth-Gotten Gains", Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye
I hadn't really read any of the new books since Asprin started writing again - why did he stop? - and so far, although it's nice enough, I'm not really finding it funny. I'm tempted to go find copies of the original books to see if the series changed that much, or if I did.

Magazines

"Wierd Tales", Magazine, issues 349 and 350
I also bought a subscription at a Wierd Tales party they had Friday night.

"Interzone", Magazine, issues 205, 217
"Black Static", Magazine, Issue 5
"Crimewave 8: Cold Harbours", no editor listed
These last few items were intresting - these are British magazines (and a book), and he had dropped his prices to get rich of merchandise, presumably so he didn't have to ship it home. I got the more recent issue of Interzone, which is SF, and Black Static, which is horror, and in exchange he gave me the older issue of Interzone along with the mystery collection.

Movies

"The Call of Cthulhu"
That's the black and white silent version - haven't watched it yet.

My prize on Match Game SF

"The Demon and the City", Liz Williams

I also picked up a collection of Ace/Roc sample chapters, which was amusing because apparently all of the covers but one features a sexy woman in a tank top posed almost the same way.
Additionally, they were giving out some sf covers from Japan - one of them, 'The Witches of Karres', is obviously illustrated by Miyazaki. Another one is 'The Jewel in the Skull', and finally there's another one I picked up that I have no idea what it is, but it's neat looking.

Day four of worldcon, Saturday, dawned bright and sunnily. My wife, Tammy, had to head off to work for a few hours, so I stayed around the house, relaxing and writing my previous two posts.

That was all fine and dandy, Tammy got home after a few hours, so we packed up and headed into town, parking at the convention center. We hit the Dealer's Room/Art Room floor at about 1, which is when we heard that the art show was closing down at 2pm, which was a bit of a shock. I hadn't actually entered the Art show yet, as I'd been waiting to do it with Tammy, so we immediately went in and started soaking in the arty goodness. Tammy had seen the arts how already, not knowing then that I was hoping to see it with her, so she was able to point out some highlights. It was a good show, but it's a measure of how nice Mile Hi Con's art show is that I wasn't feeling it was all that nicer than MHC's. That said, we found a nice print and a unicorn calendar in the print shop that Tammy wanted.

That done, at 2pm, they started shoving everyone out. Since everyone in the art show had had to check their bags, that meant that there was a huge line to pick your bags up again, and Tammy let me go sit down while we waited. Bags collected, we had a quick (but not very good) soft pretzel from concessions before we started going through the Dealer's Room. This was mostly for Tammy's benefit, stopping to look over jewelry, clothes, and art-related displays more than the books. Unfortunately, my feet started to really hurt after about forty minutes of this.

Unfortunately, they *really* started to hurt. I left the Dealer's and went to sit down, and even sitting down they were killing me. We advised some other con goers about local sushi (Sonoda's, 16th & Market, quite good), and then we grabbed one of the nice couches that were sprinkled around the exhibit hall floor for Tammy to rub my feet and try and get them to relax. She rubbed for a while, then she went off to the Dealer's room some more while I continued to rest, and then she returned and rubbed. After my feet had calmed down, we decided to head off home - I didn't really feel up to doing anything much.

Home was nice. We relaxed, we ate, and then we decided to return to hit the parties at around 9ish. That was fun - there were some interesting parties where we got drinks (Reno in 2011), Ice Cream (Young Writers contest), and barbecue (NASFIC in Raleigh 2010). We also enjoyed some nice shrimp in the Con Suite. There was some discussion of the recently won Hugos, but no one seemed overly surprised or upset by much of the selections, so it didn't go far. After it hit around 11 or so, Tammy and I hit the wheels to head home and relax.

Day Two

At the start of the second day of the convention, I wised up and went to Walgreens, buying a pair of shoe inserts which give me padding under the heels and arch. This proved to be a fantastic move, as although I had problems with footaches all throughout the first day, on the second day they eased off, and on the third they were gone.

Tammy, my wife, took me downtown for some early breakfast at Sam's #3, but after we were finished at 8am, I then wandered on my own to the convention center. There wasn't any programming until 10, and the Dealer/Art hall wasn't open until about then, so I ducked into the treasury room and helped out for a bit.

When 10am rolled around, I went into a panel called 'Why didn't SF predict the Internet?'. The interesting result was that SF did predict the internet, although often not using the same terms, and not as often as it predicted spaceships and the like. There was a 1946 story, called 'A Logic Named Joe'* which pretty much had an internet as the basic plot. It even predicted the ability to publish your own information onto it.

After that I felt a little claustrophobic, so I went off to delve into the Dealer's room, searching this way and that for interesting things. I didn't really feel like any more panels, so I started heading out of the convention center for lunch, when I ran into Matthew and Ritchie. They were heading over to the Sheraton (the big convention hotel, where I hadn't been yet), so I started following them, although my method of following involved hopping onto the light rail for two blocks to 16th and taking the free shuttle down to the Sheraton. I got to talk to an interesting woman with feathers in her hair along the trip, and arrived not too much later than M&R, who had apparently found Rose. I followed them around for a bit - willing to be helpful, but apparently nothing I could help with - and after they tried to deliver some things we all went to the food court across the street for lunch. That was nice and relaxing, and I followed it up by exploring the con spaces - amusingly enough the con suite is two floors underground in the Sheraton, and is huge!

I got tired after lugging around a pile of things, and started seriously thinking about returning home, which I ended up doing. I took the bus home, played around on the computer, and then had a nap. After that, my wife came home, feeling a little ill. I let her nap for a while, and then we tumbled into a car and went downtown, finding a close by street parking space - we put $2 into it to reserve it to 9:30, when we intended to come out and put in more quarters... but we ended up forgetting. Tammy's stomach was still a little green, so while she settled down to play British Rails, I went out in search of Ginger ale...

And kept searching...

Eventulally I located a can in the other side of the hotel's bar, and brought it back to her. Success! I skittered off to the livejournal get together, in time for the very end - a few people talked about unique interests they had, and then everyone introduced themselves a final time before breakdown. With that done, I decided to hit the con suite, where I ran into iamcompubear, who I hadn't seen in a long time, and certainly not since her husband tragically died. We talked a little about how horrid it all was, and her financial problems. She got a call and had to go, so I went up to check out the parties, enjoying the DASFA party the most, I think, although it was interesting seeing the rooms of fans crammed together like sheep. God forbid a fire should break out!

About tennish I got a call from my wife, who was done with her game and wanted to go. I headed down, met up with her, and we returned to the car, which was happily enough unticketed. That done, we headed home.

Unfortunately, my wife's not very impressed with the worldcon.

*Correct title provided by mandlebear! Thanks!