Worldcon Recap: The Nonsensical Version

I got back from Worldcon yesterday night.  Things are still a bit of a blur.  My mind has been dragged every which way by so many good feelings.  Truly.  Honestly.  So what follows is a recap of things I can remember right now, in a completely random and nonsensical order.  If I forgot you for some reason, please smack me in the comments.

Friends!
I went to Worldcon with my besterestestest friend ever!  On top of that, I met a lot of folks I consider to be friends, but whom I have not met in person.  Friendship is wonderful!

Yay!

General Reaction
I’ve never been to Worldcon (or any straight SF/F convention), so I didn’t really know what to expect (I suspect the same is true for Jen, who came with me, but I can’t speak for her).  Sure, a few folks offered a lot of opinions about it, but since we’re all a little different, I didn’t know exactly what to make of it all.  There were also those worrisome bits involving The Song of the South and what not prior to the actual event.

That said, I had an absolute blast.  I’ve been to anime conventions before, but since I’ve never been embedded into the anime world, I always felt a little like an outsider at such places.  At
Worldcon, the tables had turned.  I actually knew people.  More surprising was the fact that some folks knew me.  Nothing could really have prepared me for that.  In a weird way, Worldcon felt like the kind of place at which I belonged — a literature-heavy SF/F/ bonanaza!  Would I go again?  Yes.  And if I can afford to do so next year, it’ll happen.

Podcasting
We recorded a whole bunch of interviews and discussions at Worldcon.  Expect them to appear on The Skiffy and Fanty Show soon!  Needless to say, it was awesome.

WSFS Meetings
After hearing about the horror show on the first day of the WSFS meetings (from Rachael Acks), I decided I’d rather spend my days talking with people who won’t make me feel like stabbing myself.  There’s a podcast about this stuff coming soon…

San Antonio
It sucks.  The Alamo is about as unimpressive as the giant ball of twine in Cawker City, Kansas.  I get that you’re not really supposed to leave the hotels and convention areas, but San Antonio made it so you never had a reason to anyway.  Maybe that’s kind of the point.

Greycon
I’m not sure if this is normal, having never attended before, but the average age of a Worldcon attendee seemed to be in the area of 55.  More 20s-30s seemed to show up over the weekend, but they were insanely outnumbered by older folks.  We talked about this very thing in one of the recording sessions at Worldcon, which will show up on The Skiffy and Fanty Show page eventually.

Whitemalecon
There were an awful lot of white male folks at Worldcon.  Perhaps that has something to do with the venue, or maybe it’s just a normal occurrence.  All I can say is this:  it’s just weird.  That’s how I feel about it now.  I spend my workdays surrounded by women, people of color, etc.  So going from a relatively (though incompletely) diverse space to one that seemed, at least from my view of things, nearly monolithic in form…well, it was just plain weird.

Programming
I’ll break this down into mini sections:

1. I was genuinely surprised to see so many panels about SF from elsewhere in the world.  Based on some of my interactions with certain factions of the SF/F community involved in Worldcon, I seriously expected the world to get ignored.  Future Worldcons should certainly do more, but I applaud the effort.
2. The combat panel with Elizabeth Bear, Elizabeth Moon, etc. was quite interesting, though Jen and I were both surprised at the weird gender split:  this particular panel featured all women; the other combat-related panel featured all men.  I don’t know what to make of that right now.  In any case, the panel was awesome.
3. I think we went to every panel on which Tobias Buckell was a panelist.  He was awesome.
4. Myke Cole did a stint as Lou Anders for a panel featuring authors I happen to really like.  He was hilarious.
5. Why were Scott Lynch, Nick Mamatas, Myke Cole, and so many other authors and professionals absent from the programming (with the exception of Myke, who moderated a panel)?  Seriously.
6. The most annoying thing about programming at Worldcon:  all the folks who have no business being on a panel about X because they are not reasonable authorities about X.  Jen and I went to several panels in which one or two of the panelists either didn’t know why they’d been pegged for that panel or simply didn’t belong.  Case in point:  the panel on the future of the US-Mexico border featured absolutely zero Mexican and/or Hispanic panelists (as far as I could tell).  Apparently what counts as “qualified to talk about the US-Mexico border” are “folks who live or lived near or crossed a border somewhere on the planet.”

   This is probably the worst example, but we also saw a lot of panels about science or subgenres or writing that featured folks who simply didn’t fit in.  There were so many professionals and knowledgeable folks at Worldcon, so it doesn’t make much sense, to be honest.

7. Would it be possible to stop having panels about subjects SF/F peeps have been debating pointlessly for decades?  And can moderators start cutting these questions out from consideration?  Why are we still talking about the definition of space opera or loose explanations for the connection between science and genre?

Person #1:  The panels are done for the day.  How are we going to keep this party going?
Person #2:  With alcohol.  Lots and lots of alcohol.