CascadiaCon

[stoutfellow]

This is quite long, so it's under a cut.

Friday. The flight from St. Louis to Seattle was relatively uneventful. The layover in Minneapolis was enlivened by a repeated page for "the person who left two cats at the checkin counter at Gate [xxx]". On the Minneapolis-Seattle leg, we were provided (for a fee) with a semblance of a meal, which included, among other things, a packet of "cheese spread" - and nothing with which to spread it. I wound up breaking the "spread" into two pieces and putting them on crackers.
On arrival in Seattle, I found my way to the Radisson and checked in. Registration for the con, however, was over at the Hilton, so I caught the shuttle over there. After registering, I moved to a nearby table to try to find a program booklet in my goodie bag; in the middle of this, I heard a voice carol, "Book Fairy!" I turned around, and a cheerful woman pressed two copies of Keith Laumer's Retief! into my hand, instructing me to keep one and give the other to someone I didn't know. (More on this later.)
I found the pocket schedule, and decided to attend a panel on "Is There Anything Left to Watch on Television?" En route, I spotted filkferengi, who ordered me suggested that I go to such-and-such a room, where I would find "Meg and Tony" waiting in line. I pointed out that I'd never met Meg or Tony, and she gave me a brief description of Meg's shirt. After I had wandered for a while, asked directions twice, and been subjected to a couple of minor embarrassments, Meg - mmegaera - spotted me, or rather my nametag. (Hers was hanging backwards, and obscuring a crucial part of the picture on her shirt.) Tony (Zbaraschuk) soon appeared as well. The line, it turned out, was for a performance by Uffington Horse, with Heather Alexander as lead singer.
The beginning of the performance was about fifteen minutes late; while we waited, I fulfilled the Book Fairy's request by offering a copy of Retief! to the woman sitting on my other side. We chatted for a while and exchanged mystery-author recommendations; she suggested Sue Grafton, and I gave Julia Spencer-Fleming (natch) a plug. The performance was energetic and entertaining, though marred by poor miking - I couldn't catch more than a few words clearly. We had to leave the performance early, as filkferengi had made arrangements to meet her husband for dinner at 6:00. The five of us wound up dining at Denny's, after the wait at our first choice proved to be something like an hour. Conversation topics included travel and the merits and demerits of living in different parts of the US. Afterward, there was talk of going to a party, but I was rather frazzled and begged off.
Saturday. I rose early and breakfasted at Denny's, which had proven to be right across the street from the Radisson. (The restaurant at the Radisson was rather expensive.) As it was only about 7:00 and nothing was scheduled until 10:00, I went back to the hotel and read for a while. (I'd brought along Trollope's Dr. Thorne, which I finished, and To Rule the Waves, a history of the British Navy.) A little after 9, I went over to the Hilton, planning a raid on the Dealers' Room. When it opened, at 10, I... well, let's say I was about $150 poorer when I emerged. (The booty: Paul Park's A Princess of Roumania; Iain M. Banks' Feersum Endjinn; a thick anthology of short stories by Lord Dunsany and another by Clark Ashton Smith; Charles Stross' The Family Trade; Gene Wolfe's The Knight; Barbara Hambly's A Free Man of Color, the first of the Benjamin January books; Neal Stephenson's The Confusion, the sequel to Quicksilver; Flint and Dennis' 1634: The Galileo Affair; and an Uffington Horse CD, including several of the songs from the performance the night before.)
filkferengi had established a panel on the relation of Regency Romance to SF as a rendezvous for Bujold listies; I met Meg outside the Dealers' Room, and we headed over. The panelists were Jo Beverley and Mary Jo Putney; Putney gave every attendee a free copy of her A Kiss of Fate. The panel was fairly interesting; the main topic was the reason why the brief Regency period (ca. 1810-1820) was so popular as a milieu and a model. (In that context, I suggested that the early Victorian period, as exemplified by Dr. Thorne, should be a rich mine for story lines, but I was hissed down, on the grounds that that period wasn't exactly congenial to women and hence wasn't appropriate for Romance. I'll concede that point, but I stand by my assertion; I'll be posting a review of Dr. Thorne later.)
Afterward, a bunch of us gathered for lunch at the Happy Teriyaki Sushi restaurant. Those present were a number of present and former LMB listies and SOs: filkferengi and her husband, mmegaera, Phyllis Eide, Lathia, Dan Reitman, carbonelle and her husband, Pat Mathews, Beth Mitcham, and me. There were too many of us for table-wide conversation; at my end, topics included romance and mystery authors and the merits and demerits of the Liaden books. I did hear Harry Potter come up at the other end, but nothing more.
After lunch broke up, I went to a panel on space opera. The panelists had a good deal of fun, focusing on less serious or campy works such as Trek and Galaxy Quest. I asked whether they would count either Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky, or both as space opera, but (despite some support from the audience) they didn't. (WRONG ANSWER!!!) Next up was a panel on medieval literature as a source of ideas for fantasy. Many of the books the panelists recommended I'd already read, or at least had on my shelves - Joinville and Villehardouin on the Crusades, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", Chretien de Troyes, the Mabinogion, Dante, Chaucer, Boccaccio - but they also named Eschenbach, Lady Julian of Norwich, The Cloud of Unknowing, and Margery Kempe, which I will have to look into.
After a brief rest, I went to another panel, on "Social Science Fiction and the Shape of Things to Come". One of the panelists was Jerry Pournelle, whom I'd never seen in action before. Unfortunately, he had a number of hobbyhorses which he insisted on riding, including a tirade against the social sciences. Regardless of the merits of his position, this was really off-topic for the panel, which was supposed to be about science fiction focusing on social issues, such as 1984 and Animal Farm. When the panel finally got back on track, someone made the mistake of mentioning global warming, and off Jerry went again... The panel was a disappointment, but I did have an interesting conversation afterwards with Lawrence Schoen and Howard Hendrix, two of the other panelists. Schoen had expressed a wish for SF which dealt with issues of cognitive psychology such as memory; I asked him to what extent Cherryh's Cyteen filled the bill. He was turned off by the political maneuvering of that book, but pointed instead to her treatment of the regul in the Faded Sun trilogy. (The regul, as a species, have virtually errorless memory, and as a result, prior to contact with humanity, had no concept of lying; there is a scene in which one of the regul suddenly realizes what lying is and what it's for, and the impact of that realization on her and on the regul around her is, indeed, quite interestingly handled.) I returned to Cyteen, mentioning the azi; Hendrix then came up. He had never read the book, so we explained azi and Ariane Emory's plans and concerns to him. I don't know how much they got out of it, but I enjoyed the discussion.
filkferengi, Tony and I had dinner at a place called Roaster's; topics included Terry Pratchett, Joan of Arc, livejournal, and "Far Side". Afterward, Tony went to the masquerade; filkferengi and I joined her husband in their room to watch the masquerade on closed-circuit TV. This wasn't entirely successful, as the screen froze after the third or fourth contestant. There were only eleven contestants - only one in Master class - in any case. I went back to the Radisson after a visit to the internet lounge to check on my e-mail.
Sunday. I was awakened at about 6:00 by a phone call from someone who sounded drunk; he was, however, coherent enough to apologize for the wrong number. About this time I realized that I hadn't noted down when my flight out was. (I bought the ticket online, and didn't print it out.) I decided to hit the internet lounge again to get the information. First, though, there was a panel on paleontology I wanted to attend. Two of the panelists were specialists in early primates, and the third on dinosaurs; naturally, the discussion centered almost entirely on the latter. Mostly they talked about the bird-dinosaur connection; among the items which came up were whether tyrannosaurs had feathers (probably not; larger animals have less need for insulation - how much hair do elephants have?), what the initial function of feathers was (certainly not flight; much specialization has to occur first. One of the panelists is a maverick, suggesting brooding as the purpose), and the ancestry of tyrannosaurs (anatomical evidence suggests that they had scaled up relatively quickly from something small, and a candidate for that "something small" has recently been found). Afterward, I headed for the internet lounge, which proved to be closed due to equipment malfunctions. Fortunately, a nice lady let me use her laptop to check on my flight, in exchange for half the connection costs (i.e., for $2.50).
Next up was a jam session, featuring Heather Alexander, Roberta Rogow, and Nancy Freeman. There were also several amateurs with instruments ranging from guitars and drums to recorders and something like an accordion without a squeezebox, powered by the player's lungs. Those of us without instruments were encouraged to join in as well, improvising words or just providing ooh-oohs. I did my part, trying to improvise low harmonies, with mixed success; I have to admit that the stutter-step rhythm of "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" defeated me. That was a lot of fun; Rogow had some of her CDs for sale, and I bought one. Meg and filkferengi were also there, and we went over to the Con Suite for a bit of refreshment (dogs and beans, mostly). Conversation centered on health issues.
I went to another panel on "Fundamentals of Fantasy Literature" - i.e., which are the classic fantasies?  Attendance was sparse, so instead of having the panel up at the front table we just formed a circle and tossed suggestions back and forth. Many of the Usual Suspects were named; among those suggested that I don't have and hadn't read were Silverlock, Kara Dalkey, E. Nesbit, Sharon (or is it Susan?) Cooper, and Avram Davidson. One panelist suggested that Clive Barker's Weaveworld really should be classed as fantasy rather than horror. (I suggested The Shaving of Shagpat and the earlier work of Tim Powers - through Last Call, although, as one of the panelists insisted, his Declare is something of a return to form.) I was the recipient of a Book Fairy gifting this time, getting Jennifer Fallon's Medalon.
A bit later, I went to an announced reading by Robin Hobb; she'd been recommended to me repeatedly, under both of her published names, and I thought this would be a good way to decide whether to buy any of her work. Unfortunately, she never showed. Next was another panel on romance in SF (this time not restricted to Regency); though there were three LMB listies present, the discussion managed to go an hour without any mention of Bujold. (The Liaden books, Weber's Honor Harrington series, and, perhaps oddly, Cherryh's atevi books did come up.)
Another rendezvous for dinner followed; filkferengi, Meg, Tony and I were joined by Paul Stratton, and we decided to try the buffet at the Hilton restaurant. (It was delicious; salmon, beef-broccoli stir fry, egg rolls, and fried rice, as well as a number of excellent desserts.) There was to be a Baen party at 10:00; I decided to go back to the Radisson to rest a bit before coming back for the party. I awoke at ten till ten from a nightmare involving Jay North and an alligator... I rushed over to the Hilton (it was starting to rain lightly), but was unable to find the party and gave up on it. At least I burned off some of the calories from the buffet!
Monday. With the con winding down, filkferengi, her husband, and I decided to go touristing. We took the ferry to Bainbridge Island; the ride itself was a treat, and the trek around the island was fun as well. We found, among other things, a very nice - if eclectic - bookstore, a lot of interesting flowers and foliage, many dogs (ranging in size from teacups to fit mounts for King Id), and some extremely expensive real estate... Afterward, we went downtown. Unfortunately, much of the central square was occupied by the Bumbershoot music festival, which made it hard to get from Point A to Point B. Our main goal was the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. (Jerrie, Marty, I do apologize for being indecisive, and for leading us around Robin Hood's barn before returning to the museum.) The museum was quite fun, a combination of kitsch, genuine memorabilia (e.g., a letter from Edgar Rice Burroughs to Forrest Ackerman), and some nice displays. Finally, we went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant called El Charro, where we were served some excellent and plentiful food. At the last, they dropped me off at the airport for my return flight, which was uneventful.

All in all, I had a great time, occasional disappointments notwithstanding.

Afternotes. How tired was I on arriving in St. Louis? I just noticed that I gave the taxi driver a 40% tip, instead of my usual 20%... The weight I picked up seems to have been mostly water; I was back down to 190.5 this afternoon.

Comments

[toraks.livejournal.com]

Thanks!! That was a lot of fun to read! It sounds like you had a great time!

I definitely liked the Robin Hobb books, despite finding them a bit too generally depressing. I read the Assassin's trilogy and, I think, just one into the sequel trilogy.

Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series is wonderful!! 5 books.

The weight I picked up seems to have been mostly water; I was back down to 190.5 this afternoon.

Cool! But I've caught up to you!! ;-) (then again, still doing fine according to the book's "appropriate weight gain" for my week of pregnancy)