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cathyr19355 at 03:48pm on 04/09/2004
cathyr19355 at 03:48pm on 04/09/2004It's Saturday at the Worldcon, and so far it's been a good convention.
They started things out with a bang on Thursday night with an opening night party called "First Night", which was sort of a street carnival set up along the Fan Concourse. They had an amazing amount of short-term entertainment; belly dancers, a magician, a theramin player who would let the audience members try out the instrument, a fortune teller, cartoonists. One booth was running a spoof election for "First Citizen of Fanotopia" and invited passersby to get up on their soapbox (they had a literal soapbox) to plug one of the candidates: Robert Heinlein, Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and I think one other. The only rule: NO REFERENCES TO ANY REAL ELECTION OR CANDIDATE, or to any SF author who wasn't (safely) dead.
They had a LiveJournal party, too, but it was very crowded and I didn't see any LJ users there I know, so I didn't stay long.
Later on, Eric and I ran into![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hotc, one of Eric's author friends, and we went off to the gaming area and played "Puerto Rico" and "St. Petersburg" two German strategy games.
Friday I actually went to a panel with Terry Pratchett about Death as a literary character (you can see why they put him on that panel, can't you?) and later on had dinner at a local Thai restaurant with David Freedman, the economist (also known as Cariadoc of the Bow in SCA circles) and his family. Then I spent most of the rest of the night in the GT Suite while Eric partyhopped.
Today we're getting a slow start. I'm in our room typing this on Eric's laptop and all I've done today is vote for Site Selection. Oh, and we watched people from a local outfit called Higgins Armory demonstrate medieval swordfighting techniques. The best part was the demonstration by two guys wearing full 15th plate armor explaning how two knights thus armed would fight each other. (Short answer--a combination of grappling and throws, designed to improve your chances of sticking the pointy end of your sword into one of the five or so small areas of the body not entirely covered by metal.)
The amount of scheduled events at this con is huge, by the way. They officially gave up on having a pocket program at all, because they have at least 20 panels per hour and couldn't figure out how to put it all in a portable grid. So they issued a 100+ page booklet on 8 1/2 by 11 paper, with all the panel information listed in teeny-tiny print, and a blank grid in the back, and suggested people make their *own* grid. (Naturally, I've missed most of the stuff I wrote in on mine.)
There is still plenty of Worldcon to do, so I'll stop here and do another installment report later.
They started things out with a bang on Thursday night with an opening night party called "First Night", which was sort of a street carnival set up along the Fan Concourse. They had an amazing amount of short-term entertainment; belly dancers, a magician, a theramin player who would let the audience members try out the instrument, a fortune teller, cartoonists. One booth was running a spoof election for "First Citizen of Fanotopia" and invited passersby to get up on their soapbox (they had a literal soapbox) to plug one of the candidates: Robert Heinlein, Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and I think one other. The only rule: NO REFERENCES TO ANY REAL ELECTION OR CANDIDATE, or to any SF author who wasn't (safely) dead.
They had a LiveJournal party, too, but it was very crowded and I didn't see any LJ users there I know, so I didn't stay long.
Later on, Eric and I ran into
hotc, one of Eric's author friends, and we went off to the gaming area and played "Puerto Rico" and "St. Petersburg" two German strategy games.Friday I actually went to a panel with Terry Pratchett about Death as a literary character (you can see why they put him on that panel, can't you?) and later on had dinner at a local Thai restaurant with David Freedman, the economist (also known as Cariadoc of the Bow in SCA circles) and his family. Then I spent most of the rest of the night in the GT Suite while Eric partyhopped.
Today we're getting a slow start. I'm in our room typing this on Eric's laptop and all I've done today is vote for Site Selection. Oh, and we watched people from a local outfit called Higgins Armory demonstrate medieval swordfighting techniques. The best part was the demonstration by two guys wearing full 15th plate armor explaning how two knights thus armed would fight each other. (Short answer--a combination of grappling and throws, designed to improve your chances of sticking the pointy end of your sword into one of the five or so small areas of the body not entirely covered by metal.)
The amount of scheduled events at this con is huge, by the way. They officially gave up on having a pocket program at all, because they have at least 20 panels per hour and couldn't figure out how to put it all in a portable grid. So they issued a 100+ page booklet on 8 1/2 by 11 paper, with all the panel information listed in teeny-tiny print, and a blank grid in the back, and suggested people make their *own* grid. (Naturally, I've missed most of the stuff I wrote in on mine.)
There is still plenty of Worldcon to do, so I'll stop here and do another installment report later.
impressed
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