Went to Worldcon. It was both exciting and exhausting. Obviously, I lost the novelette Hugo to Peter Beagle, (and Cory Doctorow, and Howard Waldrop), but was content to see Beagle win, and was pleased to be in such excellent company on the ballot (Yes, it is an honor just to be nominated).
Good things about the con:
Seeing: Carrie Vaughn, Daniel Abraham, Lou Anders, Rob Sawyer, Gordon, JJA, Sheila Williams, Brian Bienowski (sp?), Jay Lake, The Nightshade posse, Liza, Jonathan Strahan, Jim Minz, Jim Frenkel, Toby Buckell, and on and on and on and on which leads to…
The bad thing about the con:
Too little time to connect with anyone. Just a glazed whirlwind of faces and smiles and breakfast and lunch and dinner meetings with drinks and conversations that bounced from topic to topic without the time and space to follow-up. One of the reasons I loved going out to the Campbell Conference was that I got a chance to speak at length and in-depth with Rob Sawyer and Lou Anders. Sometimes we talked about sf and craft and business, sometimes about music, sometimes about children and marriages, anything was game, and you didn’t feel like you had to make your time count all at once the way you did at Worldcon where the flow of people keeps coming and the distractions keep coming, and the sleep never happens.
One other bummer thing about the con:
My wife Anjula was out in the hall during the Writers Workshop party, and a guy walked by saying to his companion, “I said hi to Paolo Bacigalupi and he just looked right through me. I guess that tells me where I stand on the totem pole.”
Woops.
I’m actually pretty bummed about this, because I really must have looked right through this guy. Not intentionally, for sure. But still. The press in the party suite was crazy, and people were everywhere, and apparently there was this guy who’d pinned a bit of his self-esteem on whether I had my shit together. Which I obviously didn’t.
So I ended up trying to be extra aware and nice to people through the rest of the con, hoping to atone for unintentional sins.