Here's my World Fantasy Con summary, composed on the plane ride home.

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I'm on the plane, flying back to Oakland from Washington D.C. It's Sunday evening. The last four days are already starting to blur together, so I think I'd better get something down now while I still remember it.

I had a great time at the con. World Fantasy combines something of the intimate feel of a smaller con like Potlatch, but with the large number of professional writers and editors of a larger con.

Here are the items of interest I can recall...

Arriving

We took a red-eye flight from Oakland to Dulles International Airport. The flight was uneventful - I slept through it. Dulles turns out to be the D.C. airport farthest away from Capitol Hill. In hindsight, I think I'd have chosen to pay a bit more and fly into one of the closer airports -- the cab ride to the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill was $60. (We found a cheaper option for getting back to the airport involving a short cab ride and a bus ride, but that took extra time.)

Anyway, we got to the hotel at 7 a.m., checked in, and slept until about 11 a.m. Then we got up ready to hit the con.

Books

So, I'd heard that World Fantasy participants got a big bag of free books. That didn't quite prepare me for the reality - we got a big bag of free books (in a really nice sturdy tote bag). What was nice was that many were ones I wanted to read: Robin McKinley's Sunshine, which I'd nearly picked up at Other Change of Hobbit last weekend; Ian MacLeod's The Light Ages; Lian Hearn's Grass For His Pillow, the sequel to Across the Nightingale Floor. Also Greg Keyes's The Briar King and Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment, which I probably would never have bought in hardcover, but which I'll be glad enough to read eventually. (I know, I know - I feel like the only person in the world who is not a stone Pratchett addict. I like his stuff just fine, but I haven't yet found a book of his that really thrills me. Apparently I keep reading the wrong ones. Who knows, maybe this one will do the trick.)

And there were a slew of paperbacks, of varying degrees of interest.

So, I certainly could not have been described as in want of reading matter, but that didn't stop me from picking up a few things in the dealer's room. I picked up Paul Park's Three Marys. I think I may not know my new testament well enough to really get it, but, hey, it's Paul Park. I also picked up a few chapbooks: Christopher Rowe's Bittersweet Creek and Ben Rosenbaum's Other Cities from Small Beer Press, and Jason Erik Lundberg and Janet Chui's Four Seasons in One Day. That last one has a really gorgeous cover - I think those two have raised the bar on chapbook design there. I have not had a chance to read any of these chapbooks yet, but I'll try to post a few comments when I do.

Daniel picked up Kij Johnson's Fudoki, which was highly spoken of on at least one of the Best of the Year Panels. Which makes for a nice segue into...

Panels

World Fantasy Con doesn't really go in for tons of panels. I don't think any panels were scheduled before 10 a.m., which I think is really great. At TorCon, I had to choose a couple of times between getting to an early panel and getting a little extra sleep, a shower, and a good breakfast. I usually chose the latter, and wisely so, I think, but it's nice not to have to make that choice.

The first panel I attended was on short story collections. Good set of panelists: Marty Halprin of Golden Gryphon, Gavin Grant of Small Beer, Gordon Van Gelder (of, like, duh), and Sean Wallace of Prime Books. Everyone was really smart, but I felt like the panel never really found its feet: There was general agreement that short story collections are a Really Good Thing, and a rehearsal of the reasons they aren't, for the most part, economically feasible under the publishing model of the big New York houses, and some discussion of how small presses do make them economically feasible. (Prime Books seems to rely on print on demand, which saves them the huge expense of carrying inventory. Golden Gryphon relies on small print runs of relatively expensive, high quality hardcovers, which can be sold slowly over a period of years. Small Beer does small print runs of relatively inexpensive chapbooks and trade paperbacks, and may run largely on the coolness of Kelly Link and Gavin Grant.)

Then there were two Best of the Year Panels. Part 1 was supposed to be a panel of reviewers, though it included Kelly Link and Jay Lake, who do more editing and writing than reviewing. Part 2 was a panel of editors, including Ellen Datlow, Jo Fletcher (of UK Publisher Gollancz), Steven Jones (of Mammoth Book of Horror), and Jonathan Strahan. Both panels yielded a decent crop of recommendations. There was a surprising amount of agreement between panelists on the reviewers panel. The editor's panel was a little more lively, with some friendly disagreement over the merits of Jeffrey Ford as a horror writer and various other topics. The editor's panel skewed quite a bit towards the discussion of horror, which disappointed me a bit, since I don't read much horror.

A recurrent refrain on both "bests" panels was: "There's this really great book that hasn't come out in the U.S. yet." An audience member asked if this was some kind of sign that American SF was in trouble, since so many of the exciting books seemed to be British. The panelists didn't seem to think so. The Brits (and to a lesser extent the Australians) are just doing some great work right now, and it's increasingly getting noticed by folks on this side of the pond.

In fact, I learned from Jim Minz of Tor that he had quite recently picked up the rights to the works of two authors who had been mentioned on these panels: Brit Steven Erickson (I hope I'm spelling that right), and Australian Jennfer Fallon. Good news for fans of well-written, complex epic fantasy. (Though, personally, I thought that the first volume of Erickson's series, The Gardens of the Moon, was a bit slow moving, and contained much hinting of action to come without much action in the present moment. I hear that the series picks up in future books, though.)

The final panel I went to was entitled something like "Good to Great", and was intended to answer the question of what makes the difference between a merely good book and a great one. John Kessel offered the "first, most, only" rule: a book is great if it is the first, most, or only of its kind. Others offered the idea that a great book is one that changes a reader's worldview or inspires them to read it over and over again. There was a lso a lot of discussion of the position of SF and fantasy in the academic world, and why most academics don't accept genre novels as "great literature". (I liked Patrick Nielsen Hayden's self-described bit of nutbar conspiracy theory, in which he pointed out that if you wanted to create a literary canon that was most non-threatening of the status quo, you would choose to do precisely what the makers of our present literary canon did: elevate literature that talks about character over literature that talks about ideas.) There was lots of audience participation, too. My kind of panel.

Readings

It's clear that the organizers of WFC share my opinion that readings are better than panels. There were readings running all day long every day of programming, often running until 11:30 at night. I managed to make it to quite a few readings.

I heard Joe Haldeman read another segment of his upcoming SF novel, which used to be called Sea Change and is now called Camouflage. I've heard Joe read three or four bits of this in various venues, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Ellen Kushner read a section of a not-yet-finished novel set between the events of Swordspoint and The Fall of the Kings. Delia Sherman read part of an absolutely lovely Tam Lin retelling set in New York City in the late 1960's: it's in the newly released anthology Firebirds. Kelly Link read part of a wonderfully bizarre ghost story in the new-ish Ellen Datlow anthology, The Dark. Jeffrey Ford read part of a story that I don't even know how to describe which is in the new Polyphony 3.

If these small samplings are any indication, we're having a good year for original anthologies. I think I'll have to pick up all three of those anthos. Though it will probably have to wait until I've cranked down my to-be-read pile a few notches.

Garth Nix read an Arthurian story from a recent F&SF, explaining beforehand that he hates most Arthurian stories, but he's written two. (I can sympathize, I'm in the same boat.) He followed up with a hysterically funny parody of long multi-book fantasy series by presenting the "prologue" to his "forthcoming series of 47 novels", which had grown to 58 novels by the end of the prologue, because he had decided that "it needed 11 more novels to really tell the story properly." I hope it gets printed somewhere, because it's really funny and I can't possibly do it justice by summarizing. You'll probably catch me muttering, "The Return of the Mistakenly-Purchased King" and giggling from time to time.

Nix finished off by reading us the opening of Mister Monday. Daniel opined that Nix is becomming the next Neil Gaiman. He's awfully good, anyway.

I also heard Alex Irvine read a nifty short story based on the "Wee Willy Winkie" nursery rhyme. He finished the story on Tuesday, so he doesn't even know where it'll be published yet, but I'm sure it will find a home. Carol Berg read from the opening of an upcoming fantasy novel: the premise wasn't stunningly original (woman takes in, against her better judgement, a strange man who doesn't speak her language who is running from the law), but I liked the heroine, and there were some hints of some interesting backstory. Patrick O'Leary read from a very creepy story - I came in late for his reading, and missed the title and any info on when it's coming out, but I'll be looking for it.

Meeting and Greeting

I met a lot of new people. It was great to meet fellow Journalscapers Jenn Reese, Jason Erik Lundberg, and Mike Jasper, if only briefly. I got a very big kick out of meeting Chris Cevasco, editor of Paradox. He asked me to sign a copy of issue 1 with my story in it for him, which I did. My very first autograph! Wooo!

I was also very pleased to be able to meet Teresa Nielsen Hayden. I really love Making Book, which is a collection of her essays, and i wanted a chance to tell her so. I had a bit of fun with poor Teresa though. You see, there's an essay in Making Book called "God and I" (which you can also read on the Nielsen Hayden's website). It describes how Teresa was excommunicated from the Mormon church, and is a tremendously funny essay. So, whenever anyone comes up to Teresa and says, "Oh, yeah, my favorite essay of yours is...", they almost always say "God and I" and I think she's started to feel about it the way Asimov felt about "Nightfall" or Sturgeon about "Microcosmic God" -- a kind of "Yes, yes, I'm glad you like that piece, but isn't anyone reading anything else of mine?"

I like "God and I", but it is not, in fact, my favorite essay from Making Book.

So, I walked up to Teresa, and introduced myself, and mentioned how much I liked Making Book. And Teresa looked very happy.

And then I said, "Oh, yeah, and my favorite essay is..."

Teresa looked distinctly dismayed.

"...Tor Copyediting Preferences!" Teresa laughed, with obvious relief.

(Really, I tell no lie. TNH writes about copyediting the way a great rock journalist writes about music. You can dance to this essay. Though I got the title wrong: the version that appears in Making Book is called, "On Copyediting".)

I also got to meet John Joseph Adams of F&SF. He's a very friendly guy, and very willing to answer young writers' questions about the submission process at F&SF.

I met many more interesting people, too many to list here really.

Old Friends

Of course, a great part of the fun of the con was hanging out with old friends. Several members of my Clarion West class were there: Diana Sherman, Ysa Wilce, Adrian Khactu, Simran Khalsa. James arrived on Saturday night. A bunch of Daniel's Clarion West classmates were there: Alex, Michael, Tempest, Anna, and Eli. And Neile and Leslie, Clarion West administrators extraordinaire, were there.

Also saw Cliff Winnig and Naomi Black from my writers' group back home (you wouldn't think we'd need to travel across the country to socialize, but sometimes it just works out that way.) And I saw Strange Horizons editors Susan Groppi and Karen Meisner. And Alex Lamb, and Leah Cutter, and Jay Lake, and Frank Wu, and other people I see primarily at cons.

As usual, there were many people I would have liked to have spent more time with. The smaller size of WFC compared to Worldcon did make it easier to find people, but there were still some folks that I only managed to chat with in passing.

Parties

Saturday was the big party night. I went to the Tor party (loud and crowded and hot and sweaty and actually great fun), and the small press party (where I admired chapbooks, and listened to a Lawrence M. Schoen reading that was pretty cool), and the SFWA party (which was a nice uncrowded refuge from the Tor party, and was serving cheesecake, yum!).

Going Home

We got up way too early on Sunday to meet an old high-school friend for breakfast. We caught up on each other's lives, and gave him some of our duplicate goodie bag books. (We ended up leaving the rest of our duplicates on a table in the lobby, in the hope that they would be adopted into deserving homes.)

Then we made our way to the airport, and got on our first flight, to Chicago. We immediately conked out, and slept through the whole flight.

"You two were exhausted!" a flight attendant said as we disembarked. "You guys slept through the whole flight!"

I started to say, "Hey, we've just been at a con!" but I figured that probably wouldn't mean much to our flight attendant, so I just smiled and said, "Yeah, I was tired."

I'm still tired. But I'll be home soon,

I'm already looking forward to Tempe, Arizona in '04.