Norwescon, Day One
As I said a couple of days ago, Norwescon started off on a good foot.
Left work around noon (I work in Kirkland, so it's an easy drive), got down there an hour before the green room opened. Very smooth check-in because of the way things were run, which was really nice.
Jay Lake's reading was very enjoyable -- he read a really short one to allow for later comers, then a longer one that centered around Longinus. Didn't care much for the first one, but the Longinus story was great. Wish I could remember the name of it, so I could find it in print.
After that was the opening ceremonies, which seemed a little more flat than usual, but that's not a big deal.
I had my first panel right after the opening ceremonies -- "Anthropology in World Building" with Julie McGalliard, Amy Thomson, and Bryan Lovely. Interestingly enough, it wasn't as good as I'd hoped. Nothing bad, but it just didn't flow as well as it might have. I blame the fact that it was at the very start of the con to some extent, but that might be just shifting the blame. I do think that the panel would have benefited by narrowing things down a bit -- the topic could easily be dramatically different with SF than with Fantasy. Bryan Lovely was (in my mind) the star of the panel (very sharp mind). I was okay, but didn't sparkle. (And no, not just because I'm not a vampire).
Immediately after the Anthropology panel, there was the "Science of Time Travel" panel. I'll admit that I was really nervous about this one. Mostly because I was moderating it, and I'm not a scientist or an engineer, as much as I spend all day with many of the latter and a few of the former. The rest of the panel had Brian David Johnson, Steve Gillett, and Jean Johnson on it, with the last minute addition of G. David Nordley as well. It went way better than I'd feared and was really quite an enjoyable panel. Some of the things that would have been difficult to explain were taken care of by Gerry on a large white pad. I understood what he was saying (mostly because I'd been doing research on it to get ready for the panel), but I'm not sure how much of the audience did. It was still very useful, though. There were a number of cool avenues that I would have liked to go down that we just didn't have enough time for, but the panel went pretty well. It would have been a very different panel without Gerry Nordley, and I'm not sure if it would have been better or not. Somethings would have been harder to explain, but he dominated a lot of the dialog, which kept us from going down some of those cool pathways. I'd never met Jean Johnson before, and although I wasn't overly excited about her latest novel "A Soldier's Duty" (I think the main character is too static for one), I was impressed with her. I knew Steve Gillet from some years ago, even if not on a personal basis, so he didn't surprise. And Brian David Johnson, who is the futurist for Intel -- definitely a hoot. Really nice guy. Still, all in all, a very satisfying panel (especially since I'd been pretty nervous about it).
I didn't get to any panels as an audience member on Thursday, but I did get up to the Presidential Suite for the Small Press party for a little while. Had a chance to chat with Steve Gillett, Gerry Nordley (and his wife), and Ted Butler about a number of things, including global warming and glacial retreat, which was really enjoyable. Didn't socialize much other than that -- I don't tend to do well at parties where I don't know people -- I'm too much of an introvert, by and large.
And then I drove home -- I wasn't staying at the con because it was within driving distance of the house (about 40 miles), and I didn't want to spend the money on a hotel room (I'm a cheapskate). It did make for some nasty early mornings, though. But that's for the next report.