jack

I am back from Worldcon! It was, as usual, A LOT.

I flew out of Boston Tuesday night, got to my hotel around 11PM, which in my head was 2AM. It was the start of a lot of long days where my East Coast brain would wake me early and my con-going heart would try to keep me awake late to see as much as possible. But I never did go to any of the evening parties.

DW People I saw included gwyn, beatrice_otter, mecurtin, wickedwords, elf, batyatoon, and probably more I am forgetting. I did not get to spend as much time talking to them as I wanted, but it was great to see so many people.


Wednesday morning I got my badge early, then I took a bus out to U-City to rent a bicycle for the next two days. It was a Kona hybrid, a nice aluminum framed bike with sturdy shifters and disc brakes. I liked it a lot more than my own current bike, I'm thinking of getting one.

Biking in Seattle was fun but the downtown sure is hilly. I biked about 25 miles over the two days I had the bike, and I also probably walked the bike up close to a mile of hills I didn't feel up to climbing. So I have mixed feelings about the plan, it was nice to have the transit speed and flexibility the bike gave me, but I definitely overtaxed myself and sapped energy that could have gone to other con activities. An ebike might have been the wiser choice.

I got back to the con only to realize I had lost my badge. I think when I left the con I took my mask and badge off simultaneously and the badge must have missed my pocket. I went to registration and after some being directed to different stations, found that some lovely person had found and turned in my badge. Whew!

I was on 4 panels about fanfic and they were all really fun to be a part of. I also attended a couple more panels on fanfic, there was so much and it was great that none of the panels had to be THE load bearing panel; there were a bunch of times when we could say, for more on that check out this other panel.

I did a workshop on making maps with watercolors. I'm not sure why I signed up for this other than just wanting some sort of crafty time, but it was fun even though I was not that good, and maybe I need to do more painting. The cool but frustrating thing about watercolors is how they surprise you and do things you didn't expect they would do on the page. I don't love the map I made, but I think I can get a D&D oneshot out of it.

There was a Jewish fan meetup, which was amazingly heterogeneous in perspective and yet had this lovely vibe of kindness and openness and comfort. Several people were saying it was the most comfortable they'd felt since October 7th, to be in a room of people who understood them as Jews and Fans. We also had fannish Kabbalat Shabbat (nusach arisia) with about 30 people, and 15 or so came back for a morning Shabbat service. We had a Lecha Dodi to an adaptation of the Firefly theme and a Jurassic Park Adon Olam.

Sunday morning I hosted a crossword meetup. We had about 15 people, which is pretty good for the morning after the Hugos. I announced that I was there to evangelize cryptic crosswords and we pulled together a group of about 5 people, 2 who were total cryptic newbies, to solve the latest Square Chase variety cryptic. Meanwhile the rest of the people solved various other American crosswords I brought.

Program highlights included Ada Palmer reading from Hearthfire, Brandon Sanderson reading from the new Mistborn series, academic panels on the evolution of robots in fiction from RUR to Murderbot, and on the monastic tradition in SFF, and Leigh Bardugo, Holly Black, Matt Ruff, Caitlin Rozakis, and Nicholas Binge talking about what it was like to have their books adapted for the screen.

I didn't do as much touristing as I wanted, but also I'd hit most of the most obvious Seattle sites I really wanted to see when I was here for the Spokane Worldcon ten years back. I did take a nice walk in the Olympia Sculpture Garden Shabbos morning, and I saw a lot more of the city, just qua city, because of the bike.

And then my flight home, which was already kind of precariously late to go to work the next day, was delayed an hour. I got home at 2:30 AM Monday and somehow dragged myself to work but I was a zombie who did no functional work that day.

Anyway, that was Worldcon. It was great but too much and so I'm thinking I'll skip LA next year and do more relaxing vacations.