…and exhausted. I don’t quite have full-fledged con crud, but I think I’m skirting it. My own fault for wearing myself out. Worldcon, for those who’ve never attended, is a marathon endurance contest: panels and events and schmoozing by day, parties and events and schmoozing by night. Did I mention the schmoozing? Oh, yeah, there was schmoozing.
The good: Montreal! Holy moly, that’s a beautiful city. Wish I’d had time to see more of it. I think I’ll go there on vacation sometime, when I can just relax and enjoy myself. Bixi, Montreal’s ingenious system of public bikes. The lovely B&B where I stayed with Alaya, though it was far away from the convention center and necessitated the use of the Bixi bikes. Meeting folks I’d never met before but knew of and admired from afar, like Nalo Hopkinson (at last! after years of being mistaken for her!) and John Scalzi and Steven Boyett, at whom I totally fangirled because he’s the author of one of my favorite books (omg which is coming back into print and has a SEQUEL coming out soon at last and the protag is black wtf yay omg omg omg squee okay). Also, was thrilled that some folks I know won Hugos, including David Anthony Durham who got the Campbell, and who rocks the tiara if I may say so myself. On his noble brow it became a man-crown. Congrats to him and all the other winners!
Oh, and my green dress for the Hugos looked awesome, thankyouverymuch. Had matching toenail polish, but nobody noticed. Alas.
The bad: Some extremely ill-considered panel staffing with regard to matters of race. Seriously, wtf? Whoever thought those panels up must not have actually wanted productive conversation to take place (and it didn’t, since in several cases anti-racist fans and pros decided to boycott the panels, or in a few cases did a guerilla takeover). That was when the panels even made sense — many had titles/descriptions that nobody could figure out, including the panelists. And that was when the panels actually took place when and where they were supposed to, because there was much shuffling and cancellation/decancellation/recancellation funnybusiness. (I found out I was on one panel about 2 hours before it ran, for example.) Also not fun: the utter lack of wifi in my B&B for the first three days, which forced me to sit in the Dealers’ Room to use their very shaky wifi just to get my email fix. The smell on the party floors.
I’m leaving out lots here; it was a very packed 5 days. All that said, the good outweighed the bad, so I’ll put this con in the “win” column.
And now I’m going to take a long, well-deserved rest, and thank all available gods that World Fantasy isn’t until October.
I saw your dress! And indeed, it did rock. As did you, in the Avatar panel.