below is my review of Rivercon.. yep I made it this year

Rivercon

I did get to Rivercon after all.
After a very insane month.
My mothers oldest brother died in a car wreck this month.
He was the first of my mom's brothers and sisters to die.
Considering they range in age from late 60's to early 80's this is pretty remarkable.
My mother was going to ride along with some other members of the family to the funeral in Tampa.
But they had a car wreck before reaching our house
(they were ok. the car was a little worse for wear)
. So it was decided that my mom would fly to Tampa.
Bless Southwest.

One of the best things that ever happened to Nashville was when American abandoned their hub,
which gave Southwest an opportunity to move in.
My mom was able to get a round trip flight to Tampa for $ 163, flying out the same day she made the reservation.

Southwest is flying most of the local fen to Baltimore for the worldcon.

I had a lot of fun at Rivercon even though I only went for Saturday afternoon and Sunday.
It really made up for not going to worldcon. Some of the programming looked very interesting and fun
(especially the oldywed game) but I never made my way to any of it (well except for one thing) because I kept on running into people to talk to.
Several people commented they saw people there they had not seen in years.
This may be due to there now only being two more Rivercons after this years.

There will be a Rivercon in 1999 and 2000 and then the con retires.

. Some people were on their way to worldcon and others were like myself.
Going to Rivercon because they could not make it to worldcon.
The convention is held in a very nice older hotel (the bedrooms are big and plus the airconditioners and elevators work)
near Six Flags over Kentucky.

There were over 800 fans at the con.

The gaming room was massive and busy.. they were having a grand time in there.

Did make it to the guest of honor presentations.
Harry Turtledove merrily told of how he has destroyed a variety of cities including
Louisville, Seattle and the state of Oklahoma and after doing the dirty deeds was subsequently invited to conventions at each place.
He concluded that the needed to do something horrible to Maui.

He also noted that even though he is in the south a lot and been a guest at several southern cons
he doubts he would ever be able to say y'all as one word.

He and the other guests of honor plus master of ceremonies Hal Clement were made Kentucky colonels.

Hal Clement spoke of a time when Fred Pohl was an editor he would buy paintings that he thought would make good covers,
send them to the writers and have them write stories to go along with the covers.
Hal Clement would change the meaning in his story to be one that no one would have considered being the meaning of the story.

Kevin Ward in making his GoH acceptance speech said
he would have been proud to have Hal Clement reinterpret one of his paintings.
He also noted the passing of Paul Lehr.

Julee Johnson Tate and Chris Tate then made separate Fen GoH speeches.
Chris noted they come to cons now more to see their friends than to see pro's.
He also mentioned they make sure they have vacation time to go to their favorite conventions.
And Chris is going to show off his Kentucky colonel to some big blue fans were he works.
(and why is colonel pronounced kurnel.. ?? )

Julee who used to be a manager of a B Dalton's told of her first con
which was the world con in Atlanta and that one of the first fen she ever met was Sue Francis
who promptly (of course) put her to work. The parties were on several different floors of the hotel so I started at the top
and made my way downstairs hitting different parties on the way down.
I almost regretted going out to eat since so many of the parties had food.
(and I am sorry I can not remember his last name but I would like to thank David for ferrying me, Anita and Tom plus Nancy Tucker Shaw to a really great place.. Like I said I almost regret eating out)
I believe the Marcon party had a small banquet. But several of the parties were strangely sparsely attended...
this mystery was solved when I arrived at the Boston at Orlando party.
Pink and flamingo's dominated but one of the major draws was this was a party catered by super caterer Naomi Fisher.
This is when we were mildly grumping that we needed room for cheesecake.
pooh Sigh...