Belated WorldCon report.

I got back from Worldcon a week ago, and first thought I’d recover from the con, then I thought I’d formulate an epic post, then I got distracted by the edits back from my agent about the novelization of Heaven, and then suddenly a week’s gone by, people are now blogging about the cons from last weekend, and I still haven’t written word one. It’s a bad habit of mine to put off blogging when I worry how much I have to say. Either not enough or too much. And ten stuff piles up and I end up getting deluged with stuff.

Honestly, too, i worry about con reports getting too long, mattering mostly to the author, and to a lesser extent, the people they know who went to the con who look for mentions of themselves. But let’s just hush the fretting and get on with it.

In short, WorldCon was the best con I’ve ever attended. Hands down. It feels weird to say that, as I went solo, roomed solo, and ate several meals solo. But I found the downtime quite nice, and I didn’t have to feel guilty when I had my usual dreadful waking-at-7am con curse. But the con was vastly different than the others I’ve been to. It was my first truly literary con – sure, they had some podcasting and new media and blogging panels, but it was a literary con all the way through.

Things I discovered-

• I don’t know a damn thing about fandom. Or at least, I didn’t. I was sitting with Charlie Jane and Annalee from io9, taking advantage of the only free wifi around, when a woman came up to us and said, with an air of announcing royalty, that David Kyle of First Fandom wanted to email his wife and wondered if he could use one of our computers. We shrugged and said sure. The woman looked at us as if we were ignorant. “Do you know who David Kyle is?”

“Uh, no…”

“Do you know what First Fandom is?”

We looked at each other, suddenly aware that we were in the midst of a massive faux pas, but no idea what to say beyond the truth. “Uh, no.”

She sighed explained that First Fandom was the group consisting of people who had gone to the first WorldCon, 67 years ago. David Kyle was one of the remaining members, and he “was the one in the red blazer.” (I tried to remember seeing someone in a blazer, couldn’t recall.)

Having initiated the grubby n00bs, the woman went off to get Mr. Kyle. It took her a while, and Charlie Jane and Annalee had to move on, so I hung out until the very old man approached the table. He said very nice things, working to wrangle gmail, and had me sign the notebook he carries around with him. He was joined by two other men, one of whom decided to show me his fanzine, and explained to me how to read it (it’s less patronizing than it sounds. I’ll have a post about fanzines in the future.) I sat there for an hour and learned about fanzines, heard stories about Worldcons gone by, including stories about H**lan E**ison and other familiar names. I finally had to beg off due to needing lunch and went and had dim sum at my hotel. But they gave me a lot to think about.

• The SF community is quite welcoming. I was gratified to be remembered (and hugged- squee!) by Tobias Buckell and Neil Gaiman, and upon meeting John Scalzi, was thrilled to hear he had read Playing For Keeps. Jay Lake and Shannon Page were excellent to talk to and interview. I met Pat Cadigan who was an inspiration from the moment I met her. I spent a lot of time with Lee Harris from Angry Robot, and Pablo Defendini from Tor.com, who was always welcoming online, and even moreso in person. I had dinner with Pablo after my experience with fandom and we discussed how it seems to have evolved. I also got to sit with Pablo at the Hugos (was utterly thrilled that Cheyenne Wright was the colorist for the Hugo-winning graphic novel, Girl Genius.) Afterward, Pablo, Annalee, Charlie Jane and I served as the entourage for Hugo nominees Lou Anders of Pyr Books and John Pacacio to the Hugo afterparty, where I spent quality time with John Kessel, met Nancy Kress, got to gush over Connie Willis again, and countless others.
• The comment about “the future” from Viable Paradise was true. Near the end of VPX, 2006, we were told that the time would come that we would run into our instructors again at some con or another. They would naturally welcome us, but they would ask us what we were working on. And if we couldn’t answer, they’d politely go about their business. They were there to teach us how to be pro writers, and if we weren’t going to work on what they taught us, then they couldn’t treat us like peers at cons. I spent quality time with former instructors Cory Doctorow, James Patrick Kelly, got a brief hug from Jim MacDonald, and got to say hi to Debra Doyle and Teresa Nielsen Hayden.

There are many other things to mention- running into Barbara, my roommate from VPX, Rock Band at the Tor.com party, and the countless interviews I did for I Should Be Writing and Tor.com (My Tor content is here.) I did have a horrible panel that suffered from too many panelists and not enough audience, but that was one down part of the whole con. I was astonished at how welcome I felt, was lucky to have such nice folks like Lee and Pablo to let me hang out with them, and was utterly overwhelmed with awesome.

I know I’ve forgotten things. (And I know I suck for not adding a bunch of links to people. But you’re a big girl/boy, you can Google.) Sorry about that. But it really was the best con ever.

Former instructor and bestselling author Cory Doctorow. And me.