Here's day one of my TorCon report, brought to you courtesy of the Handspring Visor and Stowaway folding keyboard:

Greetings from TorCon! Daniel and I are here, safe and sound and not too much the worse for wear.

I suppose you could say that our con experience began in the departure lounge at SFO last night. It's surprisingly easy to spot the SF fans in a crowd of random travellers. At one point, the woman sitting two seats down from me just sort of looked over our whole row and said, "I bet we're all going to the same place." And we were. We had some pleasant conversation with a few of our fellow congoers.

The flight was uneventful, but I didn't sleep as much as I'd hoped to. I listened to my iPod, and marvelled at our getting a metal fork and spoon (and a plastic knife) with our dinner. I can't remember the last time I got metal cutlery with an airline meal. In fact, I can't remember the last time I got an airline meal.

Also marvelled at the odd French spoken by the airline flight attendants during announcements. The pronounciation sounded good, but everything came out in this weird staccato. French just should not sound staccato. I'm not sure if this is just some weird characteristic of Canadian French, or if it's peculiar to airline French.

When we got to customs, the lighted signs all read "Welcome TorCon". It probably shouldn't surprise me that a 5 day convention with a few thousand attendees would merit welcome signs at the airport, but I was strangely pleased. At least it made it easy to explain to the customs agent what we were in town for.

Getting through customs was no problem. We got to the hotel at about 7:30 a.m., checked into our room, and crashed for a few hours.

We got up, grabbed a quick lunch at the hotel (the York Deli? They do a decent turkey sandwich, anyway.) Having everything priced in Canadian dollars makes everything feel subliminally very expensive, and then when you do the math you realize it's pretty cheap.

The first panel I attended on Thursday was "Beyond the First Draft", with panelists Josepha Sherman, Robert Silverberg, and Joshua Bilmes. (Two more panelists, Jeanne Cavelos and someone else, were slated for the panel, but didn't make it.) I had hoped for a panel on how to revise and tighten a first draft of a novel. What I got was yet another panel on the do's and don'ts of "breaking in", getting an agent, and so on. The panelists were all lively and interesting, though, and I did pick up a couple of good pointers.

Bilmes made the point that an agent or an editor is not just picking up a book, they're picking up an author: a writer that you only do one book by is a losing business proposition. So, any information that you can give an agent about yourself as a writer (publishing credits, relevant experience, recommendations from other published writers, other books you've got in the works) is good: but keep it factual (no gushing about how brilliant your unpublished novel is), keep it relevant, and make sure it actually reflects well on you. (It's amazing how many people send out cover letters that begin, "This book has been rejected by 23 publishers...")

Another interesting tidbit: Bilmes mentioned that some of his clients were writers whom he'd read short stories by and been impressed enough to contact them and ask if they had a novel.

After the panel, I wandered up to the dealers room, and was swiftly joined by Daniel, who had managed to round up Diana Sherman and Simran Khalsa (from my Clarion class) and Alex Lamb (charming British fellow from Clarion West '97). We wandered around the dealers room, and bought stuff (I bought a collection of Neil Gaiman essays at the NESFA table.)

After a bit, we went off in search of a bar, intending to have cold drinks and do a little bit of pro-spotting. We never did find the bar, but we bumped into Gardner Dozois, and Ed Greenwood (who created the Forgotten Realms D&D campaign setting, and seemed a bit astonished that Daniel recognized him). We lounged outside the internet lounge and waylaid Charlie Stross and got him to give us the scoop about what's going on with his various novel projects, and commiserate about the pain of turning a planned series of 200, 000 word novels into a series of 100, 000 word novels. (The pain comes largely from the fact that at least one of the 200, 000 word novels was already written, and dividing one novel into two is a lot like separating Siamese twins joined at the head. It's time consuming, dificult, and you run the risk of simply killing the patient.)

We ended up back at the convention center, sitting on one of the couches at the upper level. Alex and Diana plotted Diana's novel. Thomas Seay and Leah Cutter dropped by.

Daniel and Simran and I went to a panel on "Has Science Fiction Failed as a Fiction of Science?" or something like that. I'm generally leery of panels that ask big portentous questions in their titles, because if you ask a question like "Has Science Fiction Failed?", you're pretty much guaranteed to get four panelists who begin by answering, "No," and then spend a lot of time trying to figure out what to talk about. In this one, a lot of time was spent trying to define Vinge's concept of the Singularity. I amused myself by pulling up my electronic copy of Vinge's original article on the Singularity on my handheld, and reading along with the panelists. I'm beginning to become leery of panels on the Singulairty, because the panelists spend 20 minutes defining what the Singularity is, and another 20 minutes explaining their personal takes on why it will or won't happen, which leaves maybe 5 to 10 minutes for the actual subject matter of the panel.

After the panel, Daniel and I went back to the hotel to nap and change, and then set off on what turned out to be an ill-fated expedition on the Toronto subway to dine at a restaurant Daniel had read a good review of. We had an outdated address for the restaurant - its place was now occupied by a large hole in the ground (a construction site.) We returned to the hotel and had a pleasant meal at one of the hotel restaurants.

Then we joined up with Diana, Simran, and the newly-arrived Blunt, and eventually wandered over to the hotel bar, where Mary Anne Mohanraj, Jed Hartman, Greg van Eekhout, and lots of other fun people were hanging out. (I'm finding myself suddenly reluctant to list names, because I'm sure to forget somebody, and that seems somehow insulting. If I met you at WorldCon, and I forgot to mention your name, please don't be offended.)

I toddled off to bed and crashed at about 1:00 a.m. And that was day one of Worldcon.