Sep. 15th, 2014

jack: (Default)
I had lots of thoughts about worldcon I didn't have time to write up.

One of the coolest things about worldcon (and eastercon) is that people are encouraged to mix equally, that famous authors are not mobbed, and conversely, get to chat normally if you run into them.

Something I've always found difficult about Eastercon (and worldcon) is that if I already know people, it's a wonderful place to hang out with them with way, way, way too much to talk about. But I'm not naturally channelled into meeting _new_ people. This wasn't an issue at worldcon because I ran into so many people I knew already, I kept meeting more people and friends-of-friends. And if you just, you know, talk to people you don't know about science fiction, they almost always reciprocate! And if you volunteer immediately without being embarrassed about knowing anything already, or go to more workshop-y items, you'll definitely meet people. But if you're a bit too shy to do that, you can end up in a bubble of only meeting a specific subset of the con, even if there's other which would be better: I've heard several reports of "con was like X", "it wasn't like that for me" along those lines.
jack: (Default)
I've not seen the Tom Cruise film yet, but seeing it talked about I read the book it was inspired by. I'm not sure if that was right, at first I heard very mixed reports of the film, but now I hear more and more good ones, so I do hope to see it.

I always love groundhog-day plots. The perfectionist in me revels in _knowing_ whether a choice you made could have been better, and the freedom to experiment without immediate consequences.

The book is very much like a mixed Japanese/USA starship trooper meets groundhog day. If you like that, it does it very well! Although I felt it didn't add a lot to that if you're already familiar with the parts.

I'm not sure if the time travel is consistent or not. I've read so many variants my judgement has started to glaze over.

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