ConFusion 2006 Report
ConFusion was sublime. On Friday I was given a temporary tatoo of Tux the penguin, which I put on the back of my hand with the inked inscription, "0wnz0r3d!!1!"
Why did ten people sign up for a "Coffee With Vernor Vinge" in order to hear themselves talk for an hour? GRRRRRR.
Mr. Vinge is so polite. In this respect he's the inverse of a guest of honor from a previous year who talked so much that no one else could get a word in sideways. That previous guest, who will remain nameless, was the ... ahem ... sterling example of rudeness. But Karl Schroeder noted on the panel about the Singularity that we had Vernor Vinge, the inventor of that name, the author of the seminal paper on the topic, whose presence justified the panel discussion... and for the last fifteen minutes he has been sitting here silently taking notes on what the rest of them were saying about it!
He took a lot of notes. However, he was always ready with something brilliant and visionary when asked, and only when asked. I told him I was bound and determined to attract him to Penguicon one of these days. He is intrigued by the concept.
He gave glowing recommendations for the novels of Karl Schroeder and Charlie Stross. If only I could persuade Penguicon to invite Charlie Stross... I've started carrying the Stross banner as strongly as I carried the Doctorow banner, but the others consider him to be Doctorow part two, and they just gave me Cory Doctorow last year. Trans-atlantic plane fare ain't cheap, so we can't cater all the time to frighteningly advanced cutting-edge futurics. Room must be made for easier, more introductory tastes.
Fortunately North America has among its precious few literary futurists not only Vernor Vinge, but Karl Schroeder. I got Mr. Schroeder to sign my copy of Ventus, and invited him to Penguicon as a Nifty Guest, which he accepted! Karl Schroeder is the most challenging SF author that I read, in the sense that he is a thorough skeptic and iconoclast about the mainstay philosophical positions that most SF authors and readers take for granted. He is incredibly persuasive about it, even when I don't agree with him, and commands my respect and attention. Did you know in addition to being an award winning SF novelist, he has a career in technology? In CafePenguicon, he and I and the author Tobias Buckell had a fascinating discussion of e-books, GURPS Transhuman Space, and the emergence of computer technology to layer itself onto our real world, such as a device that uses GPS and the internet to hail the nearest taxicab. (Gotta have a panel at Penguicon with Mr. Schroeder about "technology as legislation.")
CafePenguicon had a lot of throughput but slightly fewer regs than normal. OpenCola was produced by the inestimable overthesun, and consumed in mass quantities. We collected more feedback questionnaires than I could count. Even Karl Schroeder taste-tested and approved it, and he used to work for OpenCola! I provided RoboSapien and cosette_valjean provided party favors, all very well received. Eric Raymond discussed how awesome it would be to get Charlie Stross at Penguicon, and said he would work with me to attempt to persuade the concom and the board. I introduced him to a hard-SF TV show -- which only had four episodes, needless to say -- called Century City. I didn't realize Eric was looking forward to playtesting another of my innovative game designs. He has a wonderful idea for a game of his own, and when he found out I did the graphic design for Attack Vector Tactical: Core Rules-- which he loves-- he brought me on board the project to do art. :)
My brother Andy's pants were stiched to a chair in the gaming room for almost the whole convention. He had a great time! Thanks to Eric Raymond for teaching us to play Puerto Rico. Thanks to anyone who befriended Andy! Of course I found him sitting in consuite reading. It was Perelandra from C.S. Lewis' space trilogy, which sparked a discussion about the anti-modernity stance of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, since that trilogy ends with scientists being hideously slaughtered by wild animals. Someone recommended that I get the anthology "Flights" and read Neil Gaiman's story "The Problem With Susan," which is a response to Lewis. Speaking of stories that respond to the author of Narnia, on Sunday in the dealers room I always buy a book, and this time it was a book I've wanted for a long time, "Galileo's Children: Tales of Science Vs. Superstition", an SF anthology edited by Gardner Dozois. It contains "Oracle" by Greg Egan, a time-travel alternate history in which C.S. Lewis debates Alan Turing. It's free on Egan's website, and have you read it yet?
The Chuck Roast was incredibly fun. treebones and Freon both demonstrated their genius, as a tent-revivalist and a paranoid conspiracy theorist who had to be carried off the stage, respectively. No doubt you have heard of the all-singing, all-dancing musical extravaganza with netmouse, renniekins, rikhei, cosette_valjean and talyen. At the end, cosette_valjean won the auction for "the last chance to get in Chuck's pants." It was an auction for the shorts he wore under the Bubble Man costume.
Late on Saturday night, John scalzi graciously accepted my apology for using inflammatory word choices on his blog that sparked an ugly backlash, which I think he neither remembers nor cares about. He offered cosette_valjean twenty bucks to buy me from her if she would throw in a goat. He referred to us as husband and wife no less than three times, but given that he instructed rikhei in how to disembowel me with a hair stick, I knew of no important need to disabuse him of that notion, or any other notion, ever. :)
Went with lots of people to dinner on Sunday and shared a nice chicken pasta with netmouse. Most of us went hot-tubbing and swimming afterward, which was divine. Also I got to meet and chat with skzbrust, who might come to Penguicon. Later I SMOFed with rmeidaking in the Dead Dog party, who is probably going to be conchair next year, and she promised not to try to recruit me to return to the concom again. But I said, by all means, anybody can try to recruit me!
Other than smashing my precious coffee grinder on the pavement while loading the car, it was a splendid weekend all around.
Why did ten people sign up for a "Coffee With Vernor Vinge" in order to hear themselves talk for an hour? GRRRRRR.
Mr. Vinge is so polite. In this respect he's the inverse of a guest of honor from a previous year who talked so much that no one else could get a word in sideways. That previous guest, who will remain nameless, was the ... ahem ... sterling example of rudeness. But Karl Schroeder noted on the panel about the Singularity that we had Vernor Vinge, the inventor of that name, the author of the seminal paper on the topic, whose presence justified the panel discussion... and for the last fifteen minutes he has been sitting here silently taking notes on what the rest of them were saying about it!
He took a lot of notes. However, he was always ready with something brilliant and visionary when asked, and only when asked. I told him I was bound and determined to attract him to Penguicon one of these days. He is intrigued by the concept.
He gave glowing recommendations for the novels of Karl Schroeder and Charlie Stross. If only I could persuade Penguicon to invite Charlie Stross... I've started carrying the Stross banner as strongly as I carried the Doctorow banner, but the others consider him to be Doctorow part two, and they just gave me Cory Doctorow last year. Trans-atlantic plane fare ain't cheap, so we can't cater all the time to frighteningly advanced cutting-edge futurics. Room must be made for easier, more introductory tastes.
Fortunately North America has among its precious few literary futurists not only Vernor Vinge, but Karl Schroeder. I got Mr. Schroeder to sign my copy of Ventus, and invited him to Penguicon as a Nifty Guest, which he accepted! Karl Schroeder is the most challenging SF author that I read, in the sense that he is a thorough skeptic and iconoclast about the mainstay philosophical positions that most SF authors and readers take for granted. He is incredibly persuasive about it, even when I don't agree with him, and commands my respect and attention. Did you know in addition to being an award winning SF novelist, he has a career in technology? In CafePenguicon, he and I and the author Tobias Buckell had a fascinating discussion of e-books, GURPS Transhuman Space, and the emergence of computer technology to layer itself onto our real world, such as a device that uses GPS and the internet to hail the nearest taxicab. (Gotta have a panel at Penguicon with Mr. Schroeder about "technology as legislation.")
CafePenguicon had a lot of throughput but slightly fewer regs than normal. OpenCola was produced by the inestimable overthesun, and consumed in mass quantities. We collected more feedback questionnaires than I could count. Even Karl Schroeder taste-tested and approved it, and he used to work for OpenCola! I provided RoboSapien and cosette_valjean provided party favors, all very well received. Eric Raymond discussed how awesome it would be to get Charlie Stross at Penguicon, and said he would work with me to attempt to persuade the concom and the board. I introduced him to a hard-SF TV show -- which only had four episodes, needless to say -- called Century City. I didn't realize Eric was looking forward to playtesting another of my innovative game designs. He has a wonderful idea for a game of his own, and when he found out I did the graphic design for Attack Vector Tactical: Core Rules-- which he loves-- he brought me on board the project to do art. :)
My brother Andy's pants were stiched to a chair in the gaming room for almost the whole convention. He had a great time! Thanks to Eric Raymond for teaching us to play Puerto Rico. Thanks to anyone who befriended Andy! Of course I found him sitting in consuite reading. It was Perelandra from C.S. Lewis' space trilogy, which sparked a discussion about the anti-modernity stance of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, since that trilogy ends with scientists being hideously slaughtered by wild animals. Someone recommended that I get the anthology "Flights" and read Neil Gaiman's story "The Problem With Susan," which is a response to Lewis. Speaking of stories that respond to the author of Narnia, on Sunday in the dealers room I always buy a book, and this time it was a book I've wanted for a long time, "Galileo's Children: Tales of Science Vs. Superstition", an SF anthology edited by Gardner Dozois. It contains "Oracle" by Greg Egan, a time-travel alternate history in which C.S. Lewis debates Alan Turing. It's free on Egan's website, and have you read it yet?
The Chuck Roast was incredibly fun. treebones and Freon both demonstrated their genius, as a tent-revivalist and a paranoid conspiracy theorist who had to be carried off the stage, respectively. No doubt you have heard of the all-singing, all-dancing musical extravaganza with netmouse, renniekins, rikhei, cosette_valjean and talyen. At the end, cosette_valjean won the auction for "the last chance to get in Chuck's pants." It was an auction for the shorts he wore under the Bubble Man costume.
Late on Saturday night, John scalzi graciously accepted my apology for using inflammatory word choices on his blog that sparked an ugly backlash, which I think he neither remembers nor cares about. He offered cosette_valjean twenty bucks to buy me from her if she would throw in a goat. He referred to us as husband and wife no less than three times, but given that he instructed rikhei in how to disembowel me with a hair stick, I knew of no important need to disabuse him of that notion, or any other notion, ever. :)
Went with lots of people to dinner on Sunday and shared a nice chicken pasta with netmouse. Most of us went hot-tubbing and swimming afterward, which was divine. Also I got to meet and chat with skzbrust, who might come to Penguicon. Later I SMOFed with rmeidaking in the Dead Dog party, who is probably going to be conchair next year, and she promised not to try to recruit me to return to the concom again. But I said, by all means, anybody can try to recruit me!
Other than smashing my precious coffee grinder on the pavement while loading the car, it was a splendid weekend all around.