Denvention: Friday

[stoutfellow]

The saga continues....

Having tested the hotel's breakfast and found it wanting, I sought a better alternative, and found it in a place called Sam's. Better, oh yes. A better selection of better food, at less than half the price. I had my archetypal eggs-bacon-and-toast breakfast, and continued to breakfast at Sam's as long as the convention lasted. Mmm....

The first panel of the day was "Without the Universal Translator", a discussion of the problem of communicating with aliens. There was agreement that the UT (the Babel fish, the translator microbe, give it whatever name you choose) was a fantasy, and the problems of learning even human languages were discussed. (The classic story about the nature of pointing was brought up, although it differed in some details from the version I learned in college.) One audience member brought up the Eskimo "words for snow" myth, and all five panelists landed with both feet on the poor schlub. It was entertaining, although I didn't learn much that I didn't already know.

Panel two was "To Be Announced: we pick the panel, the audience picks the topic", featuring Chris Garcia, Connie Willis, Greg Bear, and Jay Lake. It quickly turned into an improv duet by Bear and Willis, some of which was sidesplitting. (As an aside: it's always a pleasure to see that an author you like is just as enjoyable in person as in print. I went to several of Willis' panels, and was utterly charmed.)

Lois Bujold gave her Guest of Honor speech at 1:00, and, as usual for her, it was filled with food for thought, this time on the nature of genres and of science fiction in particular. She dissected the difficulty involved in combining SF and romance (in the genre sense), and... well, read it for yourself. A very interesting talk.

I'd been planning to go to another panel on alternative history next, but the schedule was so packed that I wasn't sure I'd get to the Dealers' Room, so I skipped that panel. I wound up buying a batch of used books at $2 each from an unidentified dealer, and four more books - two used, two new - from what turned out to be Glen Cook's table. I identified myself as from the St. Louis area, and mentioned being amused at seeing a billboard for Nooney Krombach there. (One of the Garrett books - Dread Brass Shadows - has an offstage character by that name, which amuses Garrett hugely. It turns out that Cook got the name from a St. Louis law firm, which apparently no longer exists. He admitted that he swipes names that way fairly often.) The used books were:

• Avram Davidson's Ursus of Ultima Thule, which I once had but lost long ago;
• James Branch Cabell's The Silver Stallion - I'm slowly building up my Cabell collection;
• Hal Clement's classic The Nitrogen Fix;
• Julian May's Pliocene Exile tetralogy.

From Glen Cook, I bought Naomi Novik's Throne of Jade and Terry Pratchett's Johnny and the Bomb (completing my set of the Johnny books), plus used copies of C. L. Moore's Northwest Smith and Ursula Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven (read once many years ago, never purchased). (Book count for trip: 19.)

At 4:00, I went to a panel on humor in science fiction, mainly because Phil Foglio was one of the panelists. This one was a disappointment; the discussion of the topic was earnest, and Foglio did not shine the way I hoped he would. Ah, well, I'll just have to rest content with Girl Genius, Buck Godot, and What's New with Phil and Dixie....

Next, a panel on time-travel stories and the research they call for. Connie Willis and S. M. Stirling were among the panelists. Much of the discussion had to do with the various dodges necessary to avoid paradox - multiple time lines, temporal inertia, and what have you. (Willis revealed that in her next book, which will be her fourth Net story, she will upend the can't-change-the-past rationale from the earlier ones. This was hinted at in To Say Nothing of the Dog, but I'll be interested in seeing where she takes it.)

For dinner, I tried a place called Bubba Gump, where I had a passable fruit smoothie and some mediocre fish and chips. There were no napkins, and I had to ask for a fork. One of the hostesses was wearing Spock ears....

Afterward, I wandered over to the Sheraton for a filk circle dedicated to cartoon characters (comic books, TV cartoons, webcomics, you name it). Unfortunately, most of the filkers had to admit that they had about one such song apiece, and the room was rather dead. The only filkers there I recognized were Blind Lemming Chiffon (whom I'm not very fond of) and Kathy Mar. (I had planned to get in quite a bit of filking at Denvention, but the Sheraton was far enough from the Convention Center that it was hard to get up the oomph, and this was the only filk session I managed to get to. Sigh.)

And that was Friday.

Comments

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the report, sweetie.

Love, C.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

I knew I should have gone to that time travel panel. Oh, well.

And I'm glad I didn't try Bubba Gump, although the people they posted at the door to try to get you in certainly were persistent.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

In fairness to BG: because I was alone, I went to the bar instead of waiting for a table. Even so, the service was pathetic. (Apparently they expected a bar coaster to be enough to catch the inevitable spillover from the smoothie. Not likely....)

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Oh, well, at least you didn't starve [g]. I thought it was silly that they kept the name from Forrest Gump myself. I mean, the movie is over ten years old...