Wiscon 29 Con Report

Continuing from yesterday's installment...

Day Two - Saturday, May 28
Saturday began with a belated breakfast of Cornish pasties from TeddyWedgers, while listening to music coming from the bustling square near the hotel. After that we had a stroll around the Capitol, where the Farmer's Market was arranged. Thankfully the rain held off for most of our walk, unlike last year! We picked up some dark maple syrup, cheese curds, and some pastries on our travels.

Back at the hotel, we devoured some of the pastries before heading down to see the art exhibition and inspect the items on offer for the Tiptree auction. Nothing really grabbed us auction-wise, but there was some nice art. We ran into David J. Schwartz there and had a decent chat, then bade him farewell to check out the dealer's room.

The dealer's room had a good selection of books and shiny things, although I didn't splurge quite so much this year. I came away with a pile of stuff from the Small Beer press table, including The Dogtown Review, issues #1 and #2 (#2 looks particularly spiffy), Flytrap #4, Say... Have You Heard This One?, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet #15, Sybil's Garage #2 (Hi Sam!), Kelly Link's collection Stranger Things Happen, and a freebie comic entitled Family Reunion that Gavin chucked onto the pile. At the Wheatland Press table I found a signed/limited edition copy of Leviathan 4 : Cities, which has been on the must-have list for quite awhile. They also had preview copies of Polyphony 5 and TEL: Stories, both of which I would've snapped up had they been for sale!

Carrie even got into the act, finding Robin McKinley's The Outlaws of Sherwood. Robin was one of the guests of honour at the con, along with Gwyneth Jones.

After dropping off our dealer's room booty in our room, we partook of some of the baked goods on offer at the Tiptree Bake Sale on the 6th floor. Delicious! That was pretty much our lunch, since we'd had a late breakfast.

Before the reading that afternoon, I worked on the laptop for awhile and tore my hair out when the wireless card still wouldn't work. I resolved to hook it up downstairs and see if there was any info online that'd help me out.

The afternoon reading I went to was titled "Foreign and Not So Foreign," with Kelly Link, Mark Rich, Carol Emshwiller, and Susan Palwick doing the readings. Carol (who should need no introduction to SF fans) read an early draft of a funny experimental piece she'd been working on, which raised quite a few laughs. Kelly read an extract from her story 'Monster,' which is in a forthcoming anthology with a long title; that was a funny story. David J. Schwartz stood in for Mark Rich, reading a strange "collecting humans" story from a chapbook, and an even more bizarre story entitled, "Ashes of the Penis." Amusing and bewildering, both! Susan wrapped things up, reading an extract from the first chapter of her second novel, entitled "The Necessary Beggar." Good readings, all!

After the readings I didn't find any panels of interest, so ended up tinkering with the laptop again, this time catching up on my email with the wired connection on the second floor. We had a taste for burgers, so we headed out to a place called 'The Burger Joint.' The burgers were fairly good, although perhaps not as good as I was expecting. Feeling hungry for dessert, we went back to the hotel and split the apple fritter left over from our earlier farmer's market excursion.

The Tiptree Auction got off to a good start with the entrance of Ellen Klages in Darth Vader costume. She made some witty remarks in her Darth voice, and pulled the mask off scant minutes later. This year there were the usual Space Babe items up for auction, some obscene art, an ancient bottle of some concoction (which caused one family to get up on stage to sing "Lily the Pink;" a bizarre song I recall from school singing lessons in my youth), and a hand-made vest which caused two women in the audience to enter a bidding war before coming up on stage for a 'smackdown' sanctioned by Ellen Klages. There was also a bag of items donated by Michael Swanwick (not present at the con), which included some interesting things.

At one stage David Levine tried to sneak out and was berated by Ellen, being forced to come up on stage and have hats passed around the room in order to buy his freedom (or further detainment). He eventually escaped thanks to the generous donations of the audience.

As the auction progressed, many large bids were made. These caused Ellen to do a jig up on stage, much to the amusement of the audience. Near the end there was a five minute break where the audience was invited to peruse the remaining auction items on the table, since it was getting late and almost time to wrap things up. We had a quick look, then went back to our room.

I did some more tinkering with the laptop while waiting for midnight to arrive, but again had no luck. After spending so much time trying to get the wireless card working, I'd pretty much come to the conclusion there was some compatibility issue with the wireless card and the laptop, since everyone else I'd spoken to seemed to be able to connect just fine.

With glazed eyes and midnight fast approaching, I went back downstairs for the midnight readings. The theme this time was "Addictions and Other Imaginary Friends," with Douglas Lain, Elad Haber, Simon Owens, and David J. Schwartz doing the honours. Doug read an amusing and inventive story, which had me cackling despite my extreme tiredness. Elad read a thoughtful story entitled "Do What You Desire." David later mentioned that was Elad's first reading, which was a surprise. Simon read "Not All Can Stay," which I recall raised a few laughs. David read a dense tapestry of a story, entitled 'The Whisper, the Wire, and the Worm." That reminded me of some other tale I'd read recently, but couldn't exactly recall where. I suspect it was something in Robert Silverberg's Science Fiction 101, or perhaps one of Jay Lake's stories. Again, there was not a dud story in the bunch! I'm glad I attended more readings this year :)

Feeling exhausted after several consecutive days with little sleep, I stumbled back upstairs to bed. Alas, I missed the Ratbastards party I'd been planning on going to, so I had to be content with the wild tales of drinking and unruliness I heard about the next day. Maybe next year ;)

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And so ends day two! I attended a fair few panels and took copious notes over the remaining two days, so the next few entries might take me awhile. Stay tuned....

Meanwhile, check out some other wiscon reports.