WFC and Beyond
I have been "showing the flag" of SFSFC at World Fantasy Con, in the form of our WFC 2009 book bag, which I find much handier than the one they gave folks here at Registration anyway. (Mind you, I'd broken the zipper a while ago, and Lisa repaired it just before I came over here, which made it much more useful again.) I also was able to get away from the con for a few hours to go see the Brighton Pavilion, which is a remarkable place and I'm glad I got to see it. This evening, I went out to a nice dinner with friends I don't get to see often enough before retreating to the room to get a bit of mundane bookkeeping done before I head back down to the Mass Signing. Later tonight, we hope to give one of the winners of the SF & Fantasy Translation Awards her plaque, as we have three of the six directors of the Awards' board of directors present in person, a remarkable event in itself, as well as the winner.
As appears to be the way of such things, there are only two panels on the entire convention program that I wanted to attend, and they were both at the same time. I chose the one on "Do Awards Matter?" and was happy that the panelists called on me when the discussion got into some of the finer points of how the Hugo Award rules work and why there's a 5% cut-off to make the ballot in any category. (It has the practical effect of preventing a "long tail" of nominations leading to an overly-long ballot with, say, a fifteen-way tie for the last place on the ballot.)
Meanwhile, Chris Garcia, who is also at WFC, tracked me down to do an interview with me he'd been meaning to do for a long time. Yes, someone I see every Monday night in the Bay Area (when I'm there, which is less often these days) had to travel to the UK, as did I, to do an interview. Life is funny sometimes.
As appears to be the way of such things, there are only two panels on the entire convention program that I wanted to attend, and they were both at the same time. I chose the one on "Do Awards Matter?" and was happy that the panelists called on me when the discussion got into some of the finer points of how the Hugo Award rules work and why there's a 5% cut-off to make the ballot in any category. (It has the practical effect of preventing a "long tail" of nominations leading to an overly-long ballot with, say, a fifteen-way tie for the last place on the ballot.)
Meanwhile, Chris Garcia, who is also at WFC, tracked me down to do an interview with me he'd been meaning to do for a long time. Yes, someone I see every Monday night in the Bay Area (when I'm there, which is less often these days) had to travel to the UK, as did I, to do an interview. Life is funny sometimes.