Eastercon!

Eastercon was fun. I wore my Jayne hat and everybody complimented it.

Alex and I got there after a train journey that was mercifully not really affected by the Engineering works. I believe it might have made one of our train legs slightly longer, but not a lot more than 15 minutes or so. We got there at about 11.30 or so, having set out at 9. We registered at the con (OMG they gave us mugs!) and then I checked us into the hotel while Alex waited for our badges to be printed. The hotel room was really nice, with a hiauge bed. The bathroom could have also been nice, if it wasn't because the shower was too low for Alex to stand under it, and, most importantly, it didn't have hot water. At least the bath did, so we got to have a brief bath on Sunday morning.

As expected, the vendors room was full of books and stuff and the hotel was fool of geeks (I do feel sorry for the "normal" people staying in the hotel those days, although it was just an airport hotel, so who stays on those over the weekend? People with funky connection flights? people whose flights got delayed? Someone with business that can't go back home for the weekend? Anyway, I digress, let us go back to Eastercon).

I went to "Fandom: hobby or way of living?" talk. Basically we endded up differentiating between fan (which is a private affair) and Fan (someone more public who, for example goes to cons), and talked about the fan nature. A very good point raised was "what do normal people do during Easter?". Apparently most people do DIY. I think I enjoyed my Eastercon experience as to think of turning it into a regular event.

I went to a talk by the Director of Science at ESA on fictional vs factual space programs, and how what we considered fiction and fact in space changes over time, and not that long ago. So, while I have always known that Venus has sulphuric acid clouds, he grew up thinking that the clouds hid vegetation, some sort of paradise. He mentioned the COBE mission, and I dare you to guess what T-shirt I was wearing. Yes, you've got it right, the Science T-shirt! xkcd has *always* the answer. Has anybody founded an xkcd church?

I also went to a pannel on last year's SF movies. Apparently some crazy people don't like 300. Go figure. However, some movies were recommended, like Enchanted (which will also unleash the girly girl inside me). I have downloaded it already, and will watch in on Sunday when Alex is away.

We didn't do much more on Saturday, except buy some more books and fill out the quiz, with the help of some nice passers-by. One of my coworkers, Sean, was helping a friend sell his collection, and said hi and bought 3 books from them, at their recommendation. We went to a pub recommended by a friend for dinner (walking to it the roundabout way, 3 sides of a square). We were planning to go to the night quiz, but we were so exhausted (remember our crazy time to go to bed on Tuesday at 4 am) and were in bed really early. Appropriately, we read in bed before going to sleep, and that was really nice.

Sunday morning saw us tired, and with a disappointing breakfast. We shopped a bit more for books, and then Alex went to a talk about the death of RPGs. I had a bit of a panic, and decided that I could not possibly go into Charlie Stross' talk late, so I sat in a corner crocheting and feeling a bit sad. I think I was just really tired, and there were lots of people. Although I didn't know them, the numbers didn't bother me, because they were also geeks, but having gone to a party had made me a bit too tired. Talking of geeks, they were lots of little geeks. Lots of babies and toddlers, some of them dressed up too, and they were soooooo cute. Ooooohhhh, the little geeks. And so very well behaved as well, you could barely tell they were babies about. Several people were dressed up as well, including two Kaylee's dresses!

We then went to the "not Clarke's awards" panel, which was rather fun. Our main conclusion from it was that we should get Brasyl, by Ian MacDonald, because it is apparently awesome, although it was not in the Clarke's short list. We left early and went to one of the proper hotel bars (as opposed to the convention bars) and got nice sandwhiches (not that you care about what I ate, but never mind).

Then it was Gaiman's talk. I sadly was not lucky enough to go to his Kaffeklatchs (basically, have coffee with him), but I really enjoyed his talk. He read us a short story and the first chapter of his latest book, and talked about stuff. I got very excited when he was talking about the community, and how if suddenly SF were to disappear, we'd all... take up knitting, and keep coming and meeting. Yey, knitting! There were several other ladies knitting about, including people I've previously seen at cons knitting. Talking of ladies, there were lots of us. I mean, it was still majority male, but there was a healthy number of women, and that was very nice to see. It was rather disturbing, however, how lightly people talked about their first cons in 1984 (Gaiman's first con). That is the year I was born.

What else? I went to a presentation on Greek and Roman mythology in the Sandman, and to another about Physics mistakes in SF movies, which was rather entertaining and fun! Sound in space, etc.

After that, there was not much we wanted to do before it was time to leave, and, as the vendors room was closed and we were really tired, we made an exit an hour earlier than our train tickets. We didn't get home too late, and it was nice.


Oh! I bought a badge that says "I gave my books their own room, now they want the whole house". It amused me. However, on Monday Alex and I realised that we are starting to run out of shelve space! We thought about it, and we think we can fit without too much rearranging 3 more full size Billys and 2 small ones. We can fit smaller bookshelves in other places as well, but if that is the case maybe it might be time to look for a bigger place. What do older people that have more books than we do do with theirs?

Anyway, Eastercon was fun. I've rambled, haven't I?