Views from Medina Road

Friday evening (day 3) was the Eos party, this year held poolside at a Hyatt hotel about a mile south of the Convention Center/Hilton/Marriott complex. The whole Locus gang carpooled there, then wended our way through a 'Junior American Miss' pageant of some sort (reminding more than one of us of JonBenét Ramsey, again in the news) to reach the outside party area. I'd run into David Marusek in the Hilton lobby just as we were leaving, and was inclined to bring him along, but neither of us was confident of the feasibility of his showing up there uninvited... I think it wouldn't have been a problem. Some parties are strictly invitation only, with guards checking at the door; others, like Eos', seem open to anyone who knows about it, and certainly there were many SF celebrities there who weren't directly associated with HarperCollins or Eos. I sat at a table chatting with Gardner Dozois and Susan Casper and Andrew Wheeler, as the setting sun glared in my eyes. There wasn't much food, but the bar was open. Over in a corner was Gordon Van Gelder and Julie Phillips (author of the Tiptree bio), experiencing her first SF convention; Gary Wolfe took me over to meet her.

Later that evening my partner, his work week over, met me at the Hilton with his 15-year-old son Michael. After dinner we wandered through the 5th floor parties, giving Michael -- a goodlooking, popular student at a prestigious private high school, Junior Olympics swimmer and soccer player, smart but no more familiar with SF than via the occasional Flowers for Algernon read for class or superhero movie seen with friends -- a glimpse into the hardcore world of SF fandom. We pushed our way through the Asimov's/Analog party in the SFWA suite, saying hi to Ellen Datlow, and around through the hallway maze, but it wasn't long before partner and son called it a night. But they both came back on Saturday for the Hugos (see a couple posts ago).

After the Hugos on Saturday (day 4), partner driving son back home, I stopped by my room to post the winners. I'd had the page ready, needing only to delete all the non-winners from the listing, though as it turned out, I'd guessed every one of the fiction category winners (to mention in the homepage headline) wrong, and had to rewrite that. Still, I made it up to the 19th floor in the Marriott for the Hugo-Losers party just as the Locus gang arrived, which was good since this party was closely guarded by officials checking paper invitations, and I'd not received any such invitation. I coat-tailed in with the Locus gang. The party was hosted by a Japanese contingent associated with next year's Worldcon, and they provided plum wine, sake, sushi rolls, and various crackers and tofu slices whose tastes belied their appearances. I passed Craig Engler for about the third time that day, who said again that we've got to get that website category back!, and chatted with Jonathan and Geoff and Mary and Rick and others.

Sunday morning (day 5) partner and I met Mark Budz and Marina Fitch for breakfast. They'd driven down from Santa Cruz just for the weekend, having come part-way Friday night and the rest of the way by early Saturday. After breakfeast we ducked into the convention center to grab the latest newsletter and say goodbye to the Locus table folks (Bill and Amelia), then met Diana Gill for brunch at the Hilton, talking about the convention and what's to see in SoCal and what HarperCollins is planning for their website. Then -- the close timing of events the past couple days being almost uncannily successful -- I checked out of the hotel just before noon, rendezvoused with Mark & Marina, and departed Anaheim to drive home, about an hour's north of Anaheim, with Mark and Marina stopping by for a couple hours before they headed on north to home.

Convention Over.