My Tenth Worldcon…

So, Seattle 2025.

here’s a con report starting with an introductory bracket and ending with a closing bracket.

We begin with a scheduled pre-con visit by two houseguests, Mark Roth and Ellen Montgomery, who arrived in Bellingham at 5 PM on the Monday before the con, stressed out and tired from a cross-country train trip filled with… adventures. I set out a light supper of risotto and caprese sandwiches (ripened-on-the-vine REAL toamtoes, mozarella, and fresh crusty bread) and Mark wanted to know where he could leave a glowing review for the restaurant. 🙂 we (the royal we) will take the kudos and run. On the next day, the Tuesday, which was the only day they had to spend here really, we went to visit Whatcom Falls (more of a Whatcom Trickle right now at the height of summer but still) and then we walked the trail to the upper falls and the swimming hole into which idiot immortal youth leap from a high rock up above. Mark had a few THINGS TO SAY about that. All three of us with canes or walking sticks, this was far more strenuous than I had really anticipated. We went to replace the lost calories in the Lafeen’s Donut Shop (best donuts evah), and then I took them to Cordata Avenue which does a spectacular show for Fall – it was early for that, just August and it’s at its best from mid-September to late October, really, but there were hints of the glory there, and so I’ll chalk it up as a win. After a late lunch we repaired homewards where Mark had an extended argument with his tablet about consolidating two files that he had been working on into a single working copy that he could continue to work with and the tablet consistently doing pretty much everything BUT what he wante to accmplish. Computers. Can’t live with them, can’t shoot ’em. THings calmed down enough that we all went to bed – and the next morning we packed the car, waited for my catsitter to show up at my place in order to get the spare key that she needed, and then headed to Seattle, and to Worldcon.

My GPS, given the address that Mark gave me for the Sheraton hotel, inexplicably took us to a quaint residential dead-end instead. It thn became a question of hunt-the-hotel – we aimed at the the skyscrapers of the Central Business District and WINGED IT. We eventually found the Sheraton, I offloaded my guests, and sailed off to find my OWN hotel (a different one). It had the suckiest entry into its garage that I have ever seen – I drive a RAV4 now and it doesn’t do TIGHT CORNERS all that well, and this was not fun. But I eventually found a parking spot and laboriously (have you ever tried dragging a wheelie suitcase while you’re walking with a cane) into the elevator and into the lobby. Turned out my room looked directly out at the convention center, kitty corner across a street – later that night I took a picture:

But before that photo… I dropped everything at the hotel, turned on my heel, and raced straight out again for registration and my first panel at 6 PM that evening, about alternative histories and “what if the world had spun differently”. In the Greenroom just before the panel I met one of my copanellists, who turned out to be fascinating and entertaining, and, joined by another attendee who had nothing to do with the upcoming panel, we had a spirited discussion about why people EAT. Specifically who people eat weird things. My copanelist’s question was about coffee – who first put a bitter raw coffee bean in their mouth, then roasted it, then crushed it, the boiled the crushed powder in hot water, and, in the Arab world, just because it wasn’t bitter enough, then added cardamom to it? Who completed that train of thought? WHo thought it was a good idea? (I had no answers. I am an addict. I go where the coffee leads me. The coffee, like spice, must flow.) The panel itself was interesting in that it had two Spanish-speaking South/Central American gentlemen, my friend from the Greenroom (an American with Saudi heritage), and a guy who had, amongst other tendrils, Japanese roots – all men – and myself, the Single White Female who was admittedly originally from Eastern Europe and grew up in Africa and all that but the optics must have been interesting from the audience. I think the panel went well. Somebody took a photo of the panellists afterwards, I don’t know on whose phone, I hope whoever has it shares it with the rest of us. After that, I met up with some friends who were on their way to dinner so I joined them. The restaurant had an entire roster of cocktail drinks which were wordplays on well known science fiction works. I have a feeling they printed up these menus especially to ensnare fen.

That was Wednesday.

Thursday I had commitments in the morning, then a panel at 3 (on Refugees in Science Fiction – and apparently someone rocked up a day later to the guy who moderated the panel and told him that it was a great panel and also that I, personally, was a “treasure”. Well. [scuffing ground with shoe and looking down modestly]. I try to give good panel.. After that I raced to get something to eat (having skipped breakfast entirely due to aforementioned commitments), spent more money than I should have in the Dealers’ Room, and ended up in the Greenroom to catch my breath and get a cup of coffee before meeting a friend for dinner – but while I was there I was eavesdropping on a fascinating conversation about writing and editing and realised… that I was listening… to Betsy Wolheim. I kinda inserted myself into the conversation, made a couple of interesting contacts there, and was late to meet my friend – but so was he (it’s WORLDCON) and we did meed up and manage to have a meal together and then I had another panel at 7:30, about how to vet fictional society rules. That was a GOOD PANEL with excellent panellists but I was tired by now. I tried to keep the flames fed for the duration of the panel, but when it was done so was I. I still had to make that walk from the convention center to the hotel with my trusty cane, and it was kinda drizzling just a little at this point, just enough to be a nuisance, a harbinger of the heavier rain that came later that night when I was safely in my room. I actually opened up my laptop that night… and wrote some 500 new words on the WIP. Hey. I count it as a win.

Friday was spitting rain, and I had books in tow to take to my Table Talk (what used to be Kaffeeklatsches) in the AM. A couple of friend fans turned up for that, as well as a young woman who had… actually… RESEARCHED ME before she turned up, having read my blogs and my interviews online and whatnot. I don’t think I’ve ever had that kind of dedicated interest laid at my feet before. It was… a novel experience. I had five books with me there, and at the end of the Table Talk this young lady BOUGHT THEM ALL.I mean, yeah, WOW. 🙂 I darted hither and yon for the rest of that day, meeting friends I hadn’t seen in years (cons, gods love ’em, are good for knitting up unravelled contacts, and you end up with unscheduled hours just sitting and yapping with people whom you badly need to catch up with because both your life and theirs went through some seismic stuff during the time you were apart and you kind of need to pour out all the accumulated sympathies or congratulations that you had been storing up for some time. ) I had dinner plans with Matt Ruff – yes that Matt Ruff – that evening and Seattleite Matt took me to this dumpling place just around the corner from the convention center which was packed out and also a sort of Tardis because I didn’t realise when we came in that there was a WHOLE EXTRA BACK ROOM to the place, also full to the rafters. It isn’t the cuisine I eat often, but it was a fun experience and they provided me with a pot of fine oolong tea to go with it, and Matt spoke of a new novel aborning and I asked when I could throw money at him for it (he is one of the few writers whose new work I will pre-order sight unseen, and not just because he is a friend) and it’s going to be a while but now that I know it’s coming I’ll just keep refreshing the relevant pages until I see it and THEN I will throw money at it. Matt walked me back to my hotel in the drizzling rain, and that was THAT day.

I was supposed to meet up with Robin Hobb after her signing the next morning in a gap between things that she and I had other commitments for, but that just didn’t happen. Sometimes Worldcon orbits just spin off in different directions. I did manage to catch up with her briefly at her autographing event later and we exchanged a few hasty catchup words but ah. I would have loved a longer chat. Then I wandered down to the Dealers’ Room again, where I really should not be allowed to go while in possession of a credit card. My complete haul this year included four books, a necklace,a pair of new earrings from Angel Creations (I am addicted to her stuff), and a pair of kitten-paw socks (complete with little pink toebeans at the sole) and probably a few other things I do not now precisely recall. Like I said. Get me OUT of there. My own autograph group session was at 4:30, shared with superstar Brandon Sanderson who had a line snaking halfway around the central core of the Center. He graciously came by to chat to all the other people who were sitting there watching him wear out his signing arm, and he said to me that yeah, he remembered me, we were on a panel together at one point. Which, yeah, we were 🙂 I’m glad I was that memorable; he must have had hundreds and hundreds of panels and fellow panellists since that one that I’d shared with him.

Then I went back to the hotel and here’s the closing bracket of the trip.

They are doing roadworks in Seattle. MAJOR roadworks. to the point that all the exits to northbound I5 interstate which I needed in order to get home were closed down. ALL THE NORTHBOUND LANES THROUGH CENTRAL SEATTLE WERE CLOSED. SOmeone told me that the express lanes were still open going north and it sounded simple enough when the hotel concierge told me how to get to that exit – it was three left turns one after another and I should have been there. But the third left turn wasn’t into the street it was supposed to be, and then I hit I5 SOUTH exits which I did not want, and then I got tangled up into one-way streets of a busy core of a large city, and I knew getting out of Seattle was going to be a bitch and oh boy wasn’t it just. In the end I gave up, found Denny Way, followed it to Aurora Avenue North, and drove a little way up that until I could find a place to pull off and park while I told my GPS to TAKE ME HOME and find a bloody entry point to the I5 in order to do so. Which it finally did. But a journey that technically takes anywhere between 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours took me closer to three hours by the time I was done. The sun was well down by the time I got home, and I reached my house just a smidge before I would have been doing so in the dark.

The cats were sorta happy to see me arrive. The White Lady went, oh, you’re BACK. Can I have a treat? The Little Emperor attached himself to me like a limpet and cried and cried and cried at me, and then wrapped himself around my arm when we all went to bed. The White Lady kind of went, oh, you’re REALLY back, only the next morning and then proceeded to carefuly supervise my unpacking while I was doing that.

Today consisted of giving the cats their breakfast, unpacking, doing the necessary laundry load, and then basically dealing with accumulated emails which had piled up during my absence. It’s about as much as I could manage for the day (still decompressing). There’s a long To Do list now that I”m home, but it’ll have to wait its turn.

In the meantime, have a few pictures.

Until the next time we all meet. Live long and prosper.