WFC Report

Thursday

So, Daniel and I went to the World Fantasy Con in Tempe, Arizona during the last few days of October. We had an uneventful flight to Tempe, arriving Thursday afternoon. As is not uncommon, the con began pretty much the moment we caught the shuttle bus to the hotel - our fellow passengers were fellow con-attendees and writers Alma Alexander (a.k.a Alma Hromic) and Irene Radford.

It was pouring rain and generally being very un-Arizona-like when we got to the hotel. We checked in, and cleaned up a bit, and ended up hanging out in the lobby with some of Daniel's Clarion West classmates: Charlie Allery, Jeff Weitzel, and Tempest Bradford. Fun people, all. Eventually we wandered off and had dinner at a pretty decent Tex Mex place with Charlie.

Then I went to a bunch of readings. I heard Graham Joyce read from The Facts of Life - a book that I'll definitely have to go and pick up. Then I went to the Broad Universe Rapid Fire readings - nine writers reading for 5 minutes apiece. Great fun, though it's a bit of a tease because everybody read tiny bits of pieces that were longer than 5 minutes. Naomi did a swell reading. Suzy McKee Charnas, Carol Berg, and Gwyneth Jones also read from works that I'll be keeping an eye out for.

Then I went to a reading by Patrick O'Leary, who read a really incredibly creepy tale called "The Witch's Hand", which should be out at The Infinite Matrix any day now. At least, I hope so. Because I really need to find out how it ends.

At some point, I wandered into the dealer's room and picked up a copy of John Clute's Scores, which I mentioned in an earlier post. It was my bedtime reading for much of the con. I just now discovered that Clute is writing reviews for The Infinite Matrix. Yummy.

Friday

Friday morning started with a panel on Collaborations in Fantasy and Horror, which was pretty unremarkable, except that it featured a new horror writer named Jeremy Robert Johnson, who seems like a sharp guy. I'll have to check out his work.

Next was a panel on Standalone Fantasy Novels, which basically boiled down to: a)Standalone novels are often more artistically satisfying, but b)Readers like to come back to their favorite worlds and characters, and c) Bookstores generally don't want hardcovers with a cover price greater than $24.95 for the typical not-famous writer, so huge books will get split up into multiple volumes. Leading to the conclusion that series novels are here to stay.

Next was a panel on writing Fight and Battle Scenes, featuring Joe Haldeman, David Drake, Michael Stackpole, and Thomas Harlan. The most interesting part of the panel was listening to Joe Haldeman and David Drake talk about how they pretty much invented the genre of military SF - and about how they had a great deal of difficulty getting their early military SF published. It seems very strange now that The Forever War was rejected by every single SF novel publisher and was originally brought out by a mainstream publisher.

Finished off the programming for Friday with an excellent reading by Mary Anne Mohanraj and a panel on Researching Historical Female Characters, where are mostly learned that Sarah Hoyt and Alma Alexander are really sharp and interested in cool stuff. Must read their work.

Friday night's parties are a bit of blur. I came, I saw, I partied. At about 11:30 p.m., I burned out on social interaction and went to hide in my room and read John Clute. Eventually Daniel came back, and I read him all the wittiest lines I could cull from Clute. Went to sleep.

Saturday

Saturday started with the obligatory State of Short Fiction (specifically short fantasy in this case) panel, with Ellen Datlow, David Hartwell, Gordon Van Gelder, and Betty Ballantine. Mostly I learned that I want to be Betty Ballantine when I grow up. She's awesome. Otherwise there wasn't much new: on the upside, a great deal of very fine short fiction is being published, and excellent small press markets are proliferating and doing all kinds of groovy experimental small-press things. On the downside, the big traditional pro print markets are not so thriving. The usual fears about the internet being one vast crudzine are voiced, with everyone being very careful to exempt SciFiction. An audience member points out Strange Horizons and Infinite Matrix as additional bastions of non-crudzineliness. Gordon and Ellen reveal that they get lots of excellent fantasy, and don't get nearly enough good science fiction. And so on.

Then I go and hear Joe Haldeman read from Old Twentieth. Ooooh, I'm looking forward to this book when it comes out. Joe is always a magnificent writer, but I think this one has a really cool premise. (A bunch of immortals travelling on a generation ship are addicted to virtual reality simulations of the twentieth century, because it was a century where people could still die. Then weird things start happening in the simulations. Hijinx ensue.)

After that, I needed a break, so I wandered around downtown Tempe and had coffee at the Coffee Plantation. I came back in time to catch a Charles DeLint reading - he did some singing, too, which was fun.

Had dinner with Diana Sherman and Simran Khalsa from my Clarion class and a whole bunch of other folks. We came up with an amazingly cool/silly idea for an anthology. (I shall say no more at the moment, since it's not entirely my project to reveal.) Then a bunch of us got together to do a book swap of our freebie books. We ended up sitting around and reading the opening paragraphs of various books aloud to each other, and discussing the merits of each opening. Lots of fun.

Went to the launch party for Aeon, a pretty nifty-looking new electronic magazine. Went to the Tor party.

Sunday

Sunday was pretty quiet. Went to The Year In Fantasy - Recommendations for 2004, where a lot of books got recommended. Daniel and I didn't have tickets for the WFC awards banquet, so we had a leisurely lunch and coffee elsewhere. We came back and hung out in the lobby chatting with folks for a bit, and then went to a last panel where the WFC awards judges talked about how they made their decisions. (Basically, they read a ton of stuff and discussed it over e-mail. It sounds like it was a very amicable crew this year.)

More chatting in the lobby, and then Daniel and I and Jed Hartman had some dinner at a pleasant little Italian place, and talked about genre reading protocols and other nifty things. Then we went to the airport and came home.

And that folks, was World Fantasy Con. I rather suspect that that was all much less entertaining to read about than it was to experience, but I hope it was at least marginally edifying/amusing.