catherineldf | Worldcon, Day 3.5 (Reply)

Meant to post yesterday but it just wasn't happening. I do have resource/reading lists I need to type and add to the blog but I may not get to it until I get home.

In the meantime, the "Writing Gender Roles in Science Fiction" panel yesterday morning went surprisingly well, considering we were down a moderator (also the only actual science fiction author). Julia Rios leaped valiantly forwarded and moderated and we managed to be entertaining enough that the audience a. stayed in the room and b. stayed awake and asking questions. We covered a whole range of feminist and flavors of queer stuff in histocial fantasy, other kinds of fantasy and works that other people had written which actually were science fiction. I also ran into one of my oldest friends, who had utterly failed to tell me that he was at the con.

I did some wandering after that and caught 20 minutes of a panel on starting your own press, then wandered over to the short fiction panel that Julia was on to pick her up for lunch. Ran into Brit Mandelo en route and we go there just in time to hear an author hold forth for several minutes about why he didn't submit to Strange Horizons (this was not the question that had been posed, incidentally). What better time to be hanging out with the new fiction editors of same magazine? Sigh. Welcome to Worldcon. They held up well though and we had a nice lunch afterwards.

From there, we went off to the Dealer's Room, where I ran into Eleanor Arnason and helped her find Laurie Edison's table, then ran into Brit again and helped her find the DreamHaven table to track down a book she was looking for, then ran into several other people, of whom I only remember Naomi Kritzer. I went on to the Broad Universe reading, which was pretty well attended, both by authors (some 15 or so) and audience (30 or so). Roberta Rogow ran a tight moderating ship and everyone managed to get in a few minutes of sundry works. A good time was had by all, as far as I know.

I went off to go track down my dining companions and ran into deakat and Abra and several more folks. Mark and Laurence and Jana turned up and we went off to a nice dinner at the Tavern on the Park. I've decided that a life that includes nonalcoholic cucumber margaritas is a pretty decent one. After dinner, it was back to the con for me to do the LGBTQ in SF/F panel. This one was something of a mixed bag for me - I had a couple of WTF moments but nothing worth going into detail about without further reflection. We did manage to get it together to provide some book and other recommendations which I'll put out here as soon as I get to it. I stayed late talking to folks in the audience and signing a copy of Ladies of Trade Town before recognizing that I wasn't going make it to the parties. So back to the room with me for sleep time.

And thus on to today. Had a lovely quiet breakfast at Wildberries, then went back for the SFWA meeting. I chatted with Sigurd Ellis for a bit, then talked to Lee Martindale and other folks post meeting. The last SFWA biz meeting I went to was the 2000 Worldcon, which was an utter and complete disaster so I want to note that this was well-run and efficient and did not make me want to flee the room shrieking. Good job, folks! Now I am sitting in a lobby chair on rather shaky wifi, hoping to get some work done before I go grab lunch before working a couple of hours at the Broad Universe table (1-3PM - stop by if you're here. There'll be copies of SIlver Moon as well as fine and amazing work by other Broads). I suspect I'll wind up at the Strange Horizons Tea Party, and thence to dinner with a college friend I haven't seen in 25 + years.

Having a fine time overall and glad I came.