Yesterday (and today) we wore the Dex t-shirts Bernadette made for us. We decided to take the trolley, since it runs all night. First thing, this old guy dropped a dime and I picked it up for him... it was Hal Clement! In '95 I was at a table talk with him. I told him I really enjoy his books, which is true. It turns out that we are across the street from another official con hotel. How lucky can I get? We got a nice AAA discount, it isn't quite as posh as the other hotels, and yet we're still practically in the thick of things.

Rich wanted to go to a 10 o'clock presentation, and I figured I'd skip a Heinlein thing, even with GoE's ghost narking at me. I planned, instead, to browse the dealer's room. We'd checked out the Consuite Thursday after the Pratchett thing, but didn't find the GoE-friend we were looking for. It's small and cramped, and I couldn't figure how they would have the party there last night. It turns out that the art show is not open till 10, dealer's room not till 11(!)

I wandered the other exhibit hall, with the history of fandom, and the groups pushing future cons, and the odd little groups like The Kitten, the Witches and the Bad Wardrobe (apparently Buffy fans.) I got more freebies. Left voodoo mail. (This is a great system I learned about at the last con. There's an alphabetical file, and there's a list of the con attendees. You write your message and file it, and put a map pin in the recipient's name on the list. When they pick it up, they take the map pin out.) I looked at the art room. Nobody had bid on that picture yet. (Today I saw it was bid up to $35. I didn't like it THAT much! I should have bought it outright. Her others, which feature dragons and kitties, are cute but not doing as well.)

More buttons or bumper stickers:

Miskatonic University: ex ignoratia ad sapientia, ex luce ad tenebris.

If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.

What's the point of being fascinatingly crazy if you can't enrich the world with it.

I don't have a solution, but I admire the problem

The first cup of coffee recapitulates phylogeny.
[You know, I have a family of scientific illiterates who have never heard the saying.]

Of course you can't flap your arms and fly to the moon. After awhile, you'd run out of air to push against.

It is far better to sit idle, then to just do nothing at all.

I sat at a table and put some pieces into a puzzle. I was beginning to get really maudlin when I spied Bernadette. She'd gone to Illustrators of the Future and had her Dex shirt signed by Frank Kelly Freas, Laura Freas, and Frank Wu.

I made a quick pass through part of the dealer's room before I caught up with Rich, at the Real Speed of Light talk. Cliff Stoll is FUNNY, I wish I'd stayed for the whole thing. He was talking about being at Berkeley with the tear gas and climbing to the top of the bell tower, and he was illustrating by jumping around the room and climbing on chairs. I had forgotten who it was till then, but I loved CUCKOO'S EGG. Currently he is marketing Klein bottles.

We had one more chance to weave through the dealer's room, but it also closes early(!) so we hadn't really seen everything.So, today I had a vague idea of looking more thoroughly at the this room, especially the Tom Holt books. I was looking for the dedication to my friend, and found it in FALLING SIDEWAYS. Then I thought I'd see what he'd written in the other of his books I hadn't seen before, NOTHING BUT BLUE SKIES.

For two disparate Jans,
Fergus and Yarnot:
Friends indeed.

I stacked up a number of books to get then was told (by Glen Cook, whose Garrett books I also like) that they only took cash. I hastened down to the ATM, where I got someone's help to get money. (2002, at a science fiction con, and I needed help. Oh, well.) I then went out to the concourse hoping to see someone. Yay, here came Bernadette and Rob, and for the second time today (more on Time One later) I bounced at her! LOOK! Then we saw Rich. He was more concerned that I hadn't waited to get cash from him than he was impressed by the dedication. But hey, it's his name, too, and he finally came around.

Well. Back to telling about yesterday.

Sound and Spirit.

Bernadette was at "What makes us laugh?", another panel with Terry Pratchett on it. (Also Andrew Wheeler, K.D. Wentworth, Edward Willett, and Mike Van Pelt.) She saved me one Pratchett quote: "The question is: does humour belong in Science Fiction? The answer is Yes. Now, does anyone have any anecdotes about Harlan Ellison?" Rich was off designing spacecraft. He was disappointed in it, as it devolved into the kind of program management talk that his job was. Robert went to the Skiffy Channel Panel.

Meanwhile, I love "Sound and Spirit" with Ellen Kushner, and this was to be a sneak preview of the Lord of the Rings show which will air the week of November 9th. This was the big gaffe of the convention. They were supposed to have a CD player there, to play the radio show, you know. No CD player. Ellen riffed for awhile while the program people tried to find one. No laptops with CD capacity (I find THAT hard to believe!) No walkmen. A guy hunted up a tape recorder, and she started to play one of the other radio shows which she has on cassette, but she was having trouble. "Is this thing on? Well, it should be working..." and finally, "oh, SHIT!" when she discovered she was actually recording. Heh. After she played that bit, she gave the guy the slightly altered tape with his recorder.

Ellen continued to riff, to tell something about the show and about the playlist for this particular one, till finally someone found a boom box. Then we got to hear some of the show. I would have really enjoyed hearing the whole thing, and I'm going to try to tape it when it comes locally.

"Sound and Spirit" was described as "Joseph Campbell meets Ellen's record collection." It's heard on 128 stations. She seemed to think it was new in Sacramento. I've heard it for years, but maybe it's new in San Jose. The website would give that impression, anyway. Some of her more popular past shows of the past 5 years are "Spiritual Resistance," "Welcoming Children into the World" which I've heard, and one she refers to as "Jews in Narnia." The most recent one was "From Canterbury to Graceland." On the cassette, just past "oh, SHIT!", the show was about "Courage." I see a show on "Overcoming Obstacles" coming from this really awful day.

Some of the LotR playlist: Thomas the Rhymer, Shadowfax, Sibelius, a Medieval Viking chant, The Hobbitons, a Dutch group, the Danish Tolkein Quartet, and Glass Hammer from the U.S. Led Zeppelin(!) did a Tolkein and ecology movement song. The Starlit Jewel did "Merry old Inn." Ellen told us that Michael Swanwick's 7-year-old son wanted to keep up with his friend so he insisted his dad read him Lord of the Rings. She points out that it's the saddest story to a grownup while it's a big adventure to a child. She ended the program with a filk by Tom Sullivan.

Rich and I went to lunch at Original Joes. He noted that it looks like a Mafia stronghold. Later we read a review that said much the same thing. The food was OK but not exceptional. Back at the Convention Center, we ran into our associate pastor. I'd seen his unusual name and wondered, and sure enough. Our pastor let him have this weekend off since he had signed up to come with his brothers 18 months ago. He was absolutely thrilled with the con. Today I spied him in the exhibit hall and he said he'd be in a cavalier costume tomorrow. Hmm. My priest dresses up funny.

There were signs on many of the doors that said "this is not a door." Too tempting. People had written in things like "it is a duck." "It is a tree." "It is a ceiling." "It's a surfboard?" "It's my wife." "It is a sign. The door is under the sign."

Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot

Rich went to "SF Tech we can do NOW" (He's been disappointed with the panels to date). Meanwhile, I was a glutton for pun-ishment, and even though David Gerrold wasn't on the panel, they had some doozies. I copied down the final lines. Don't rook a grift Norse in the South. An involved Don Quixote story with Sansa Poncho and Repulsinea, wilting at tinmills. The oily Boyd cachets the warm. The spirit is wilting but the flash is weak. Don't spy over milled Krilk. Fractions speak louder than thirds. Into each reign some lights must fall. I left once the audience started up, but not before I heard the classic that ends I was not a slave, I was an indentured servant.

There was a t-shirt that said "Actually, I am a rocket wizard."

Buttons:

I went on a nostalgia trip -- it wasn't as good as it will be.

[for Pagan] If I lived in Hell, I'd be home by now

I have a photographic memory, but I'm out of film.

Heinlein's Predictions, how did he do?

I went to this one for the dwarf. They changed us around so we could be in a room with an overhead projector, but had no overhead projector, and even if they had, there was no screen. Robert, meanwhile, went to one on Alien Music Theory. Rich was at a Rocketship talk, and Bernadette was chasing down autographs. (This and Sunday were the two days the kids had lots of books to carry.)

Well, without the projector, and as I didn't get one of the explanatory lists of predictions about 2000 Heinlein made in 1950 and updated in 1965 and 1979, I'll have to depend on my hurried notes. The 1979 update was in EXPANDED UNIVERSE and was 80,000 words of new material. It's doubtless blasphemous to comment that mighod, he needed an editor!

Clean hits, they say:

1. Interplanetary travel is yours when you pay for it. There was disagreement. I think he meant individually, not as a government project. One of the Hughs said "no government is going to ber so complaisant as to allow free citizens to be free citizens."
2. Contraception and control of disease changes relationships of the sexes and socioeconomic order. Bradley Lyau (from UCSanta Cruz, where Heinlein's papers are) said "If I were living a Heinleinean lifestyle I'd be lynched by all the women." He also said that RAH supported and criticized his society. The swing of the sexual revolution is going back as we misuse technology.
3. Freud will be regaurded as a pioneer and replaced by measurement and prediction. A man in the audience with Hodgkin's, treated with drugs that suppress the sex drive, said you have no idea how funny advertising is when you're not in the game.
4. Your personal telephone will be small enough to carry in your pocket, and will take images, simple messages, etc.
5. We will not achieve a world state but
6. Communism will wither away and vanish from the planet. China is, they say, moving away from Communism but "it will never totally vanish as long as we have newspapers, universities, and Hollywood." Someone else said the U.S. was the most successful Communist state. You know, I wish the anti-Americans would make up their mind WHY!
7. All aircraft will be controlled by a giant continental electronic web.
8. Mankind will not destroy itself nor will civilization.
9. We won't have time travel
10. Or faster-than-light technology
11. Or transporters
12. Or scientific proof of life after death
13. Or a permanent end to war.

Partial hits

1. No way to repel an attack from outer space. A long discussion of SDI followed.
2. We'll all get hungry. Population is leveling off with wealth and education.
3. The cult of the phony modern art will disappear. (Others said this was a clear miss, as long as we have the NEA.)
4. Cancer, the common cold, and tooth decay will be conquered.
5. Regeneration is the next big thing. They said this was a clear miss, but what are we doing with all this cloning?

Partial misses

1. We will explore the solar system. Sigh.
2. The first ship will be a building.
3. 1000 mph will be commonplace. There was a long discussion on "commonplace" vs. "ubiquitous."
4. 1 cent a mile travel will be commonplace. Discussion of 1950 dollars followed.
5. Major research into controlling gravity.
6. Fish and yeast will be common foodstuffs, beef a luxury, lamb will disappear. (Gerhard would have liked that.)

Clean misses:

1. Housing shortage solved by new technology. He was thinking about bubbles. Zoning laws won't allow them. "Oh, f###," quoted one panellist, "it's another cursed dome."
2. Intelligent life on Mars. He should have wondered about intelligent life on Earth!
3. Increasing mobility will disenfranchise the masses, and state lines will disappear (abt. 1990) "No, it was apathy [about disenfranchising]"
4. The U.S. will never start a preventative war. One panellist said that Iraq has already started it. Great disagreement.
5. No (something) robots.
6. No artificial life.
7. No real understanding of how mind related to matter.

Heinlein gave himself 66% in 1979. The panel was inclined to cut him too much slack.. oh, not the 2 years to 2002, but if it looked like we were thinking about starting on something, and it'd be done in 2020, they wanted to give him that, too. It was an interesting panel and I enjoyed it for Gerhard.

Rich and I made another quick pass through the dealer's room, where I got some of these bumper sticker sayings:

Failure is not an option, it already comes bundled with the software

Energize, said the Captain, and a pink bunny appeared

Computers run on smoke. If it leaks out, they stop working.

KFC -- Kids For Cthulhu

I missed my dwarf, when I saw Babylon 5 stuff. Someone was wearing a jacket that said Mad Scientists Union local 42. I saw a guy in Viking horns tipped with Jack in the Box antenna balls.

And so to the Consuite, with a couple-hundred other people (including a stereotypical drooling fanboy), to the Seamstress Guild's Pratchett Party. Rich got a ribbon for the Alchemist's Guild, while I was a member of the Fool's guild. The room was hot and crowded but there was plenty of food of the chip-dip and cookie variety. Pterry finally came in, but he was spending a lot of time with his hostesses. I finally caught up with him and asked him to take this picture, re-enacting one in 1995. At ConFrancisco I had asked him to pose with Bernadette, who admired his books. He said "I'd be happy to have a picture with my dear friend what was your name again?" Now, I'm sure this happens to him on a daily basis, but it was a thrill for Bernadette. We told him this story and he thought B. must have been a good deal shorter then. He's not the first to think she's younger than 25... Thursday we rode the elevator with a Phil Foglio drooling fanboy who was trying to flirt with B. (she didn't notice) and he apparently thought she was a teenager.) After that, we left and went back on the trolley to our motel. Good day!

Today we woke up pretty early. We wanted to sell softballs, so had to kill time till 10. I thought maybe we could do the Nature center. However, it turns out it's only open on weekends, at 10, more or less if they feel like it. Drat. So we explored the civic center, which is well out of downtown. We looked at Japan town, then went south to the Play it Again Sports and looked for a way into the nearby park. No such luck. Finally, the store was open. They didn't want any softballs, so it was a pretty disappointing morning.

We drove to Monica's and parked. They were loading up to go to the coast for some salmon. Then we walked over to the Convention Center. We went up to the Seattle party. They're bidding for NASFiC in '05. So, once I'd eaten the salmon, the bagels, the apples, then I asked what NASFiC was. It's North American Science Fiction Interzone Con. If Worldcon (which is not named because it's the world, but was named for the World's Fair in 1939) is out of the U.S. or Canada, it's an alternate convention for us. Dandy. Seattle would be great fun with my niece and with Vince, and Bernarob are definitely planning on going to the '06 worldcon, so could want to do this. Charlotte is also bidding on this one. Rich discovered a tray for state quarters, trading on faith... if you need a state, trade another. He wants to check the "P" Philadelphia coins. I overheard a guy who says he talked to Bush 41 about White House fuzzy dice.

Back in the elevator, a guy said to Rich, "I read Dex Lives." We got his name and I left voodoo mail for Bernadette. A Random Fan! (He's from Massachusetts.) Then I was walking along the concourse, and I saw her. I started to bubble and bounce! She wound up leaving him a little drawing, and he was thrilled.

So, today I got to bounce twice. I'm excited about B's fan, but really really thrilled about my book dedication!