WorldCon 66: Days One and Two...
WorldCon 66 has been amazing thus far, and I don't expect to be at all disappointed for the remaining three days.
As always, the highlights are the people. Countless (or at least "I lost count") fans have stopped by to say hi, buy stuff, gush, or otherwise interact. It's great fun for me, and Sandra has been enjoying it as well.
Then, of course, there are the fellow professionals with whom I'm privileged to rub shoulders. We had dinner with Phil and Kaja Foglio and friends on Wednesday night, and Steve Jackson and Monica Stephens on Thursday. After each of those meals we wandered the room parties and the con suite as a posse, meeting and greeting other notables, fans, and friends along the way.
And for all that there are still a million-zillion-bobillion people here I don't know, but who I can meet if I want to. I expect I'll be meeting a bunch more tomorrow, because the comic I created for the newsletter has no dialog -- it's a "caption this" contest. I hold out reasonable hope that in this festival of creative minds SOMEBODY can make me laugh hard enough that I give them free books.
For those of you who have been by to buy stuff -- THANK YOU. Sandra and I were worried that the large expense of this trip (flying our children off to California for fun at Grandma's falls under "babysitting," for instance) would make it unprofitable, but apparently we've more than broken even already.
For those of you who plan to come by to buy stuff -- HURRY. We're already running out of T-shirt sizes, magnet sets, and mouse-mats, and at this rate it looks like we'll run out of books before Sunday. Yes, you can buy this stuff online, but here at WorldCon there's no shipping fee, and we're eating the sales tax.
My only complaint with WorldCon 66 here in Denver is that it's very spread out compared to WorldCon 64 in Los Angeles. We're in six or eight different hotels, the Convention Center is being shared with two other events, and the result is that fandom doesn't seem to be developing the critical mass it did two years ago. We're just a little too far apart, and when we leave the Convention Center for hotels, we scatter, rather than clumping up and raising the ambient temperature of the networking.
Still, it's a good event. No, a GREAT event. I'm having a fantastic time.