Friday, August 19, 2011

Worldcon Day 1


This is actually day 2 of Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention, in Reno, Nevada, but I didn't arrive until today. This is very much a Reno setting: gaudy, crammed with casinos, and very big. The two main hotels are a mile apart, the convention center is a long walk even from the attached hotel, and the dealer's room is cavernous. No one will run out of space! Shuttles run continuously around the various venues.

Our hotel, the Peppermill, has seven restaurants. Below is the one in which I had dinner with Jack, Mike Flynn, Ellen Klages, Daryl Gregory, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro and Rebecca. The restaurant, Oceano, is supposed to feel as if you are underwater. Mike, who knows everything, carefully explained to me the biological difference between the plastic squids and the plastic jellyfish. Ellen, who had played poker for ten hours yesterday, enlightened us all on house odds for various games.
I did no programming items today, except for signing at the Tachyon booth. There was a Tor party in the evening, at which everyone was present and no one could hear anyone else, because it was so crowded because everyone was present. Tomorrow I actually get to work here, with three panels. These are going to solve the issues of consciousness, cloning, and what's happening to hard SF -- all by 3:00 p.m.

4 comments:

Mark Andrew Edwards said...

Sounds wonderful and tiring. Have fun. Enjoy your panels.

TheOFloinn said...

Actually, the plastic squids were not anatomically correct. They were no different from the plastic jellyfish, save they had suckers molded on their dangling fronds. It was the great white shark that was closing in on the female diver/swimmer that struck me as restaurant-related.

Patrick Swenson said...

And me!

Nancy Kress said...

I forgot Patrick! He was there too!