And I alone survived to tell the tale...

[gridlore]

OK, everyone survived, but I'm home first from the con to tell about it.

Westercon was good. Having previously been exposed to the non-Euclidean geometry of the place I was able to get around quickly (being able to take the stairs helped immensely here.) Many people expressed their pleasure at seeing me on my feet and looking hale and healthy. We got in Friday night and pretty much crashed, wandering around a little bit to see who was there. This threw me off all weekend. I'm used to cons starting on Friday and running through the weekend. Starting on Saturday messed up my sense of time.

I'm not really going to try to do a blow-by-blow account, just touch on the highlights. Honestly, I spent a lot of time in the hotel room just chilling out and napping. But I did do my panels.

First of on Saturday I had Science Fiction and Empires with Jay Lake and Tad Williams (Leslie Fish was a no-show at the con). This was a lot of fun with great ideas and a lot of humor. Tad and Jay decided we needed a "Get Doug Published" panel after I commented that I was the only non-author on the panel.

After that, I had Shout It To The World: Why I Have a Blog.. Another fun one with some interesting points made.

Then came How Did You Get So Buff? The panel I did with Larry Niven. Great gouts of fun here, and Larry and I had the same story idea at the same time. I stole it, but have to mention him prominently in my Worldcon GoH speech. It's a fair trade.

That was it for Saturday. I spent some time on the party floor, but was in bed by about 0100.

The only panel I had on Sunday was The Future of Religion. Very interesting, and I wish Marcia Minsky had shown up to give a rabbinical opinion on the proceedings. My take was, even as an atheist, faith in something is part of the human experience. Organized religion will be with us when we go to the stars simply because such efforts will be high-risk and difficult and those things attract people with more conservative, builder mindsets. also churches make great centers for social organizations.

Went to bed very early on Sunday, my stomach wasn't feeling too hot.

Monday was supposed to be my Death March of panels. Instead, I pretty much blew everything off and instead ended up in one of the best wide-ranging fannish discussions I've ever had in the Consuite. We started at Earthquakes and ended up with 19th Century British politics. I love fandom.

I did attend Illegal Aliens which was supposed to have three panelists but ended up with one, Jay Freeman, who did a fantastic job of running what turned into an open discussion of the ways aliens might show up, how our laws would handle this event, and even such topics as Panspermia.

Sadly, my next panel was the one I was most looking forward too and was the biggest disappointment. Our Future Military. The moderator didn't, one panelist sat there sullenly discounting every advance mentioned as "Buck Rogers crap" and the audience was determined to turn the panel away from future military developments to a wankfest about Iraq.

Finally, I had The Twilight of the Dice? about the future of tabletop RPGs. We mostly kept this one on topic, and came up with some good points, but everyone was tired and it showed.

After that, another early night.

Today there was only one thing I wanted to see, and Kiri and I had two pieces to pick up from the art show, but I asked murphymom to cover the art stuff and walked over to the CalTrain station (nice walk, it is a beautiful day here in the Bay Area) and caught what turned out to be an express train home (for the local train buffs, it was CalTrain 228 which I caught at the Hayward Park Station. That train makes all stops until Redwood City. It skips Menlo Park [is the Atherton station gone?] then after Palo Alto goes straight through to Santa Clara and San Jose Diridon.)

I've skipped a lot of things, like being sold into slavery at the basfa meeting or having an annoying person follow me into the men's room to argue a point while I was peeing, but I think y'all get the point.

Did get some loot. A "Winchester Mystery Hotel" t-shirt to go with my "Escher Marriott" shirt from Baycon, a book of Reynold's short stories set in the Revelation Space universe, the Vorkosigan omnibus we were missing, and a set of silencers for my dog tags. Even though I wasn't trying to collect a ribbon wang, people kept giving them to me!

GNOMEWARD BOUND Ribbon given to all full members of the con.
Guest
LiVE JOURNAL I suppose I was supposed to write my user name on this at some point...
FRiEND OF JohnO
TOAST Given out by our Toastmaster
Fanzine Lounger
Techno Peasant
Jedi Knight
Sith Lord
OMG UR EMO!!! I love how these two go together. I just wish I had gotten the "infidel" one earlier.
Lather! Rinse! Repent! Hygiene 6:2:1
INFIDEL
BASFA
Phoenix in 2009 I wasn't supposed to have this one. They were given it to people who bought memberships. I found one on the ground.
NUKE THE SIGHT FROM ORBIT

I think I can sum up the weekend by saying that the single best thing was catching The Hunt For Red October and A Few Good Men back to back on the tube. Good con, better relaxation.

Comments

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

Jay Lake is a lot of fun, and do to friend of friending, I got to attend Jaycon (which I believe is the 7th or 8th celebration of his 37th or 38th birthday) this year.

Eventually, I'd like to wind up at a con with you so I could get my copy of Ground Forces autographed.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm looking at possibly going to LosCon (http://www.loscon.org/34/index.html) or TusCon (http://home.earthlink.net/~basfa/) later this year. After that, BayCon (http://baycon.org/2008/index.php) and possibly Westercon 61 (http://www.westercon61.org/) in Las Vegas.

[kshandra]

One of my favorite events of the con was the Liars' Panel: Jay, johnnyeponymous, James Stanley Daugherty and Mark Ferrari, pulling the long bow early and often. At one point Chris literally fell over backwards in his chair, he was laughing so hard. (There was a writeup of this particular panel, and some of the better jokes, in the Sunday newsletter, but they don't appear to be up on the website yet.)

[dalen-talas.livejournal.com]

Ever thought of doing an East Coast con?

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

I'd love to get back for one; it's just a matter of money and time. Right now, we are seriously looking at going to Montreal in 2009 if they win the Worldcon bid.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Sounds awesome.

[katster.livejournal.com]

and then there was the point where the gopher sitting in front of the art show door handed you a sawbuck and told you happy birthday. :)

(It was a fun con, and it was nice catching up with you over the course of it.)

-kat

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

What no Traveller or Imperium ribbons?

I think any talk of the future of the military should ask whether the 5.56 mm round is the thing to build it around.