Worldcon in Brief

Worldcon is about three things for me; making new friends, encountering new ideas and coming out at the end inspired and full of new plots and projects, and Renovation more than came through on all three fronts.

I promise I will write a full report for the next issue, but sitting here, three days past the official end of the convention, but only a few hours after the end of my convention experience, it seems a shame to wait so long and lose a little of the energy and feel of the past weekend in the process.

The inherent madness of the casino experience heightened my Worldcon to a bit of a fever pitch, honestly, something about knowing I didn’t have to go to sleep allowed me to just barrel through even when circumstances conspired to make me have to fit 25 hours of activity into our sadly limited 24-hour Earth days. I vastly overfilled my plate and could easily have undone my whole weekend, but the combination of great friends, old and new, the second-hand energy of the fans around me, and the rather fantastic reality of knowing that food, drink and people where a mere eight floors away at any time I wanted, day or night, got me through just fine.

But more than that, I had a blast. In between the running around, stressing over details large and small, and physically overextending myself, I managed to pack in panels, conversations, geekery and a few nice egoboos. I missed the Hugos, but was on stage at the Masquerade. I canceled one panel a day before the convention, but feel like I nailed the others and had a good time with them. I barely managed to say more than a brief hello to several old friends, but met another handful of folks I previously only knew from the pixels on my screen. Balance was upset and restored repeatedly, but always in such a way that I never quite crashed and came through dizzy but elated.

Next issue I’ll try to write something more intelligent, with details of the convention in general (Art! Signage! OMGHugos!) and my own activities (Panels! Parties! Other stuff not starting with P!), but for now let me just assure you it was a really good time and that Chicon has a lot to live up to next year. I can’t wait to see them top it.

~España Sheriff

SF/SF Issue #120, August 31, 2011