Vacation, Day 5
Sep. 20th, 2015 07:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowWednesday, August 19, was the first day of the convention. My notes have me attending six events; I also paid a visit to the Dealer's Room, but apparently didn't buy anything. (Since I got my Kindle, the vast majority of my F/SF purchases have been in electronic form; only a handful of authors - Bujold, Willis, Powers, Butcher, Pratchett, Cherryh - get dead-tree treatment.) The events were:
1) A panel on "Comfort Reading", including among others Jo Walton and Lawrence Schoen. I have neither notes nor memories concerning this one; I will mention that this was the first time I'd seen or heard Jo Walton in the flesh; I've been reading and enjoying her reviews on tor.com for several years now. Even when I disagree with her tastes, she usually has something interesting to say.
2) A panel on "Headology and Boffo - Character and Cunning on the Discworld". This was the first of a number of events celebrating the writings of Terry Pratchett, who died earlier this year; the panelists were, as far as I can tell, members of the Pratchett Society. The topic covered the methods of psychological manipulation employed by such characters as Granny Weatherwax, the Patrician, and Carrot. I remember it as being fun, but don't recall much else.
3) The opening ceremonies. A good deal of this was taken up by a Native American storyteller, who shared songs and stories of the Pacific Northwest. (As it happens, his people were from the Seattle area, not from Spokane, but you do what you can.) I only remember one story, concerning Raven (the local version of the Trickster), and what happened when the people decided to get rid of him. Needless to say, it didn't end well for them....
4) "Ook!", which was more or less the official kickoff of the Pratchett celebrations. (The title is a reference to The Librarian, one of the most beloved Discworld characters; he was accidentally turned into an orangutan in the second book of the series, and adamantly rejected any offers to turn him back afterward.) It was more or less a guide to all the events that were scheduled in honor of Pterry, most of which information was already in the convention guide.
5) A pair of episodes of Girl Genius Radio Theater, presented by the Foglios and a handful of volunteers: "Six of One" (involving a clash between Agatha's crew and a mad, time-traveling clockmaker) and "Half a Dozen of the Othar" (in which they had to deal with a sixfold reduplication of the Gentleman Adventurer, while simultaneously settling a political crisis in the Underworld). It was pretty funny; Phil Foglio in particular is an excellent (hammy) showman.
6) The real highlight of Day One for me: the Sagan Lecture, given by Br. Guy Consolmagno, who was just appointed director of the Vatican Observatory. One of the requirements of the Sagan Prize is the giving of a public lecture on astronomy; Br. Guy asked for, and received, permission to give the talk at Worldcon. The subject was "Great Errors in Astronomy". Much of the first part of the talk covered the changeover from the geocentric model of the solar system to the heliocentric model. That subject is one of the big set-pieces in my History of Math class, and I enjoyed Br. Guy's take on it. He went on to talk about Bode's Law and the collapse of our models of planetary development in the light of the last decade or so of exoplanet discoveries; about the unfortunate Giovanni Schiaparelli, whose brilliant observations of Mars and Mercury were marred by technological aberrations and numerical coincidences; and about his own doctoral research on Europa, where he was just about the only scholar to explicitly reject the possibility of complex organics in that moon's oceans. (I'm not sure whether it's humility or the reverse, to include one's own mistakes in a list of Great Errors.)
And that was the first day.
Note: Usually when I go to cons, I sample the local restaurants, but this time around I pretty much stuck to grazing the concession stands. (I did eat a good breakfast at the hotel each day, though.) I probably should have made more of an effort, but I didn't have much contact with any of my friends, which would have made it easier to eat out. (Also,filkferengi wasn't there; things tend to happen when she's around. We missed you, Jerrie!)
1) A panel on "Comfort Reading", including among others Jo Walton and Lawrence Schoen. I have neither notes nor memories concerning this one; I will mention that this was the first time I'd seen or heard Jo Walton in the flesh; I've been reading and enjoying her reviews on tor.com for several years now. Even when I disagree with her tastes, she usually has something interesting to say.
2) A panel on "Headology and Boffo - Character and Cunning on the Discworld". This was the first of a number of events celebrating the writings of Terry Pratchett, who died earlier this year; the panelists were, as far as I can tell, members of the Pratchett Society. The topic covered the methods of psychological manipulation employed by such characters as Granny Weatherwax, the Patrician, and Carrot. I remember it as being fun, but don't recall much else.
3) The opening ceremonies. A good deal of this was taken up by a Native American storyteller, who shared songs and stories of the Pacific Northwest. (As it happens, his people were from the Seattle area, not from Spokane, but you do what you can.) I only remember one story, concerning Raven (the local version of the Trickster), and what happened when the people decided to get rid of him. Needless to say, it didn't end well for them....
4) "Ook!", which was more or less the official kickoff of the Pratchett celebrations. (The title is a reference to The Librarian, one of the most beloved Discworld characters; he was accidentally turned into an orangutan in the second book of the series, and adamantly rejected any offers to turn him back afterward.) It was more or less a guide to all the events that were scheduled in honor of Pterry, most of which information was already in the convention guide.
5) A pair of episodes of Girl Genius Radio Theater, presented by the Foglios and a handful of volunteers: "Six of One" (involving a clash between Agatha's crew and a mad, time-traveling clockmaker) and "Half a Dozen of the Othar" (in which they had to deal with a sixfold reduplication of the Gentleman Adventurer, while simultaneously settling a political crisis in the Underworld). It was pretty funny; Phil Foglio in particular is an excellent (hammy) showman.
6) The real highlight of Day One for me: the Sagan Lecture, given by Br. Guy Consolmagno, who was just appointed director of the Vatican Observatory. One of the requirements of the Sagan Prize is the giving of a public lecture on astronomy; Br. Guy asked for, and received, permission to give the talk at Worldcon. The subject was "Great Errors in Astronomy". Much of the first part of the talk covered the changeover from the geocentric model of the solar system to the heliocentric model. That subject is one of the big set-pieces in my History of Math class, and I enjoyed Br. Guy's take on it. He went on to talk about Bode's Law and the collapse of our models of planetary development in the light of the last decade or so of exoplanet discoveries; about the unfortunate Giovanni Schiaparelli, whose brilliant observations of Mars and Mercury were marred by technological aberrations and numerical coincidences; and about his own doctoral research on Europa, where he was just about the only scholar to explicitly reject the possibility of complex organics in that moon's oceans. (I'm not sure whether it's humility or the reverse, to include one's own mistakes in a list of Great Errors.)
And that was the first day.
Note: Usually when I go to cons, I sample the local restaurants, but this time around I pretty much stuck to grazing the concession stands. (I did eat a good breakfast at the hotel each day, though.) I probably should have made more of an effort, but I didn't have much contact with any of my friends, which would have made it easier to eat out. (Also,
filkferengi wasn't there; things tend to happen when she's around. We missed you, Jerrie!)
no subject
Date: 2015-09-21 01:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-21 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-21 02:39 am (UTC)I love Raven. I first ran across those stories on a trip my parents and I took to Alaska when I was fourteen.