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WorldCon Saturday
Sep. 5th, 2004 08:44 pmI went with M and J, though of course ran into others... no fewer than five people from the Nephilim/Cthulhu gaming group (though I knew
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cthulhia would be there) and was pleased to run into zyxwvut. I was surprised to learn that J, whose middle name is E. E. "Doc" Smith, had never been to an SF con before. M was a little more fandom-seasoned, but not necessarily with conventions. And so, I couldn't help feeling a little like their host. They had a great time, and I was made happy for it.
Didn't buy much. I almost bought a nice black button-down shirt with a little badge on the breast for a notional Mad Scientist's Union. While I liked the design, I concluded that I'd feel way too self-conscious about ever actually wearing it in public.
I did buy Cory Doctorow's latest novel, Eastern Standard Tribe, but I didn't try to get to him to sign it.
The mean age of attendees was, I state with confidence, at least 40, maybe closer to 50. It really was a vast sea of middle-aged nerds... thousands of them, Mr. Rico. I recall seeing a panel at the last Arisia with a name like "The Greying of the Fandom", and thought that was foolish, the product of the faulty conclusion that since one and one's own friends are getting older, the whole fandom must be aging too. At a thing like Arisia, there are tons of younger people, including lots of kids (usually the children of longtime fans, but often as into everything as their parents). I assume that their absence from Worldcon can be blamed on the general inaccessibility due to the relatively high admission (a full-weekend badge costing five times as much as Arisia's), though I will allow that the lack of gaming probably made it even less attractive to the youngern. So I dunno if I should feel concerned or not.
At one point one of the M-ANs approached M to inform her that her hair was "full of bounce and vivre". She accepted the compliment gracefully.
The panels I attended were a mixed bag.
- The little one on alien languages had a clumsy moderator and panelists who seemed ever on the verge of infighting. Most of the discussion was from people confusing communication with language. Fooey.
- The large panel on the future of copyright was great. Had impressive personalities inlcuding Creative-Commons champion Cory Doctorow, a copyright lawyer who had recently represented Harlan Ellison, and some other editors and writers. Pointers collected, ideas noted.
During the talk, M made fun of Cory's flat, high-throughput speech style by writing "R." before his name in the program book. We thought this was hilarious, because we're hopeless. (As are you, if you understand the joke just from my describing it.) - We followed Cory to the next panel he was in, about the future of privacy and information security, and it was a disaster, quickly sinking into a morass about US terrorism policy. Jerks in the audience kept trying to interrupt with sniping comments, including one sitting directly in front of us, who would sometimes turn around and snipe at us because we happened to be sitting there. Yikes.
M actually foresaw the panel's direction and fled before things heated up. J and I (and A, from the N/C group) stuck it out, for some reason, even after I had to ask A and the jerk to stop arguing about Ghandi so I could hear the panelists. (Seriously.) - Detatched from my adventuring party to attend a one-man talk on using computer games in education, presented by a member of an MIT group I hadn't heard of before. It was great. I talked to him a little afterwards, and gave him Volity's URL. When I mentioned that it was the project I had wanted to pursue when I applied to the Media Lab, he casually invited me to apply to his group, which wasn't the Media Lab. This was a nice bit of ego-boost.
As I bought my lunch from the hotel staff, the two old ladies behind the counter were chatting about what a nice weekend it's been, and the one who took my money said to me "We were just talking about how nice you all were!" I thanked her and said we do our best. I've actually heard about encounters like this several times, over the years I've had anything to do with SF cons... I guess that hotel staff hears "convention" and battens down for boorishness, so when they get a gaggle of geeks instead it must be a nice relief. (Partying geeks get as rowdy as any, but they tend more towards creative trouble than destructive...)
Went to the Hugo awards, of course. None of the four of us (the fourth this time being Josh the GM) had heard of any of the stories or books nominated, but we all had fun applauding everything anyway. Seeing the old fans give each other awards for decades of service was a real treat, as was hearing all the stories from emcee Neil Gaiman and grand old guest Robert Silverberg, who had been to every single one of the previous 50 Hugo award ceremonies, and had a lot to say about them.