Balticon Diary: Wrap-Up

After Day 2 at Balticon, I had only gotten a couple of hours of sleep, but still had one more morning of events to go.

Monday

9:00 Getting woken up every two hours while keeping track of my son did not make for a good night's sleep and my goal of another morning in the gym are ruined. I wake up just in time to shower, eat and get to the Pournelle Kaffeeklatsch.

10:00 The full story of a cranky Pournelle was previously blogged.

11:00 We load all the luggage into the car and check out. Since hotel check out is at noon there is a big exodus of other convention goers stuffing junk into their cars. We had a small suitcase and a couple of backpacks. Other people had boxes and boxes of crap including leftovers from the late night parties.

11:30 My wife goes out for one more round of shopping.

11:45 I make one last lap through the dealer room and admire the swords my son wants. I don’t even check the price. I don't want to know, but the craftsmanship is excellent. I suspect some go for well over a hundred dollars. Earlier in the weekend I had inwardly chuckled at some costumed Klingons admiring a batleth. When the Klingons gawk in admiration, you're good.

12:15 I get suspicious that the sign-up sheet for the Niven Kaffeeklatsch had the time wrong, so I go to the celebrity suite and bluff my way into the standing room only crowd. I have to sit on the spiral staircase which gives me a great view of the whole room. At one point the group wanders off into a side conversation amongst themselves while Larry just listens. I interrupt to ask him a question just to get things back on track. I don't want to listen to a bunch of fans yammer at each other when LARRY NIVEN is in the room.

1:00 I find my son in the hotel lobby reading and we call my wife to come pick us up. I get home and take a long nap.

Wrap-Up

Over the past eight or so years, I have been to Balticon four times. This was the first time we had stayed on site at Balticon, but we had been to other out of town conventions. Several years ago we went to Philcon in Philadelphia (duh) and that is where my son first got into the gaming. He really enjoys the late nights and can easily pick up friends to play the games.

I just can't get into the social aspect of the events. I spend a lot of time standing in line and chat with the people in line, but I never follow up. Since this is my second year in a row, I recognized several people that had been there the previous year as well, but I can't say that I know them. Unlike last year, I don't even run into someone I know from "real" life except for the three kids that are friends of my son.

I do enjoy science fiction conventions, especially ones with guests I am familar with. I like the seminars, panels, and talks. I just can't get into the social aspect and it's not snobbishness. Fandom is very inclusive and is a great safe harbor for people who might otherwise get shunned. It's easy to get all worked up over the stereotypes of the unkempt social misfit (and stereotypes emerge for a reason) but I would say that on average the attendees at a SF con are smarter and more successful than the mean.

I have been to seven science fiction conventions including a WorldCon, but I can't really say I am a serious fan. I go to the ones that have good guests or fit into my travel plans. To the outsider that seems pretty hardcore, but there are people so much more into the scene than I am.

One lady I was eavesdropping on was listing the Worldcons she had missed. It was only a few in over twenty years. I enjoy science fiction and it is my favorite genre, but I have a lot of broader interests. I am lucky to have a spouse that indulges my hobby even though she has no real connection. She threatens to take me to a romance novel convention. I say throw me in that briar patch. I would find my way to stay amused. It could be fun.

Next year's guest at Balticon will be Connie Willis. She is an award winning author, but I don't think she is well known outside the SF community. I went to one of her readings when we were at Philcon and she is very funny. I'm just not sure she is as big a draw as Niven/Pournelle and definitely not the rock star level of Neil Gaiman.

This time next year, my son will be graduating from high school with all the attendant hoopla that entails. I suspect my calendar will be too busy to take several days out of Memorial Day weekend to make a membership at next year's con worth it for me. I'm sure Balticon will get along just find without me.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: So just how big of a geek am I? And do you know bigger ones?

Balticon Diary: Day Two

I spent Memorial Day weekend at Balticon, a major science fiction convention. I talked my family into staying onsite so that we could experience the con 24/7. Some of us more than others it seems as I tell in the summary of our second day:

Sunday

8:00 I wake up and head down to the hotel gym. I do 20 minutes on the stairmaster and a couple of circuits of the weight machine.

9:00 I return to the room to shower and then go down to the hotel snack bar and eat breakfast. They have the TV tuned to the SciFi Channel.

10:00 I go to the lecture on building self-replicating machines. The few pictures of real examples look like a garage workshop gone fractal. We’re still a few years from needing the Three Laws.

11:00 The artist guest of honor Joe Bergeron is giving a slideshow of his artwork. Larry Niven slips in to watch.

11:45 I sneak out to go stand in line for autographs. The line is already down the hall and around the corner, but nowhere near as chaotic as for Neil Gaiman last year. I chat with the guy behind me in line. We decide a comedian could do well re-telling Jeff Foxworthy jokes as science fiction fan jokes. The audience never thinks the put-downs are aimed at them.

12:30 My wife wanders down from the room and buys an iPod case from the dealers’ room.

12:40 My turn to get stuff signed. My wife gets my picture.

12:45 I get in line to sign up for the Kaffeeklatsches with the guests on Monday.

1:00 I walk in on the comedy singers Funny Music Project in progress. The FuMP is groups of song parodists trying to become the next Weird Al. A song about Quark’s Bar cracks me up so much that I buy a CD from The Great Luke Ski, on of the better members of the ensemble.

2:00 I catch up with my wife and we decide to eat lunch. The main restaurant tells us they are closed but I can see Niven, Pournelle, and other VIPs still in there finishing up. We go to the lounge to order bar grub instead. The whole hotel is now smoke-free, so the atmosphere is breathable. Last year, just walking through the bar made us nearly pass out from the fumes. The Eastern European waitress doesn’t know what a Smirnoff Ice is, so I just order Coke.

4:00 Larry Niven gives his talk to a mostly full ballroom. One of the other fans in the audience is wearing a great Battlestar Galactica costume. There were relatively few media themed costumes. I saw one Jedi knight, but it was mostly pirates and generic elves and fairies.

5:30 We drag our kid out of the game room and head out to Silver Spring Mining Company for dinner. Good food in a fake western motif. My son says he wants a samurai sword for his birthday. He pouts the rest of the meal when we tell him absolutely not.

7:30 I head down to the con to kill some time. There is a roast for some podcasters that seem to be popular. A storyteller retells an old joke very well. One of the music parodyists from earlier in the day does a solo show. He does a take-off on a song by internet sensation Jonathon Coulton. The crowd is into it.

9:30 I make my son take a break to come listen to a scientist from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab give a talk about his doodling on the physics of the Ringworld and how seasons could be simulated by oscillating the ring along the axis of rotation but the inertia from the dirt and water would eventually dampen it down. I tell my son to go apologize to his mom for being a jerk at dinner or he is going to have a short evening.

10:30 I scarf some munchies as Niven and Pournelle do their half-hearted talk about the science of Heinlein.

11:30 Larry Niven is in a nearby room listening to the open mic filking. The Bohnhoffs are among the players. They do their Eagles tuned tribute to vintage Cadillacs called “El Dorado”.

12:00 My son is back in the game room. I tell him not to stay out too late. He warns me that his cell phone battery is nearly dead and that he might go over to a different game soon.

12:15 I take the long way back to my room to check out some hall parties being thrown by future conventions. The look lame so I head back. In the far stairwell I have to step over a couple making out on the steps.

2:00 I read about half of my new Niven book and fall asleep.

4:15 My wife is trying to reach my son on his cell phone. I tell her that it’s probably dead, so I go out looking for him. The air conditioning in the game room has failed, which is usually the most fragrant room at a con anyways, so they have spread out into the hallway, but he’s not there. I wander way down towards the 24-hour con suite and find him at a table at the bottom of the escalator playing a complicated looking game. One of the players is a girl he knows from school and they claim the game would be ruined if he had to leave.

4:30 I reassure my wife that he is fine and I go back to sleep.

6:00 My son makes it back to the room. Dawn is cracking through the window.

If my kid is going to stay out all night, it's better in the relatively safe environs of a science fiction convention. As for the sword, his eighteenth birthday falls just short of next year's Balticon. If he wants a bladed weapon, he is on his own once he is an adult. I take a lot of heat for being the "fun" parent, but even I was a little concerned about him just wandering around all night. I think if he wasn't with someone we knew, I might have been more reluctant to let his stay out.

Be sure to read my previous posts about Larry Niven and Day One.

Tomorrow: Balticon winds down.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: Your opinion on the late hours or the sword lust?

Balticon Diary: Day One

There was more to do at Balticon than just stalk Larry Niven. With the help of the program guide, I have reconstructed my weekend immersed in the world of fellow science fiction geeks. To avoid boring you all at once, I am going to post my recap in three parts starting with:

Saturday

9:30 I rouse my family out of bed at least two hours before their normal wake-up time. We grab some bagels and head up to Hunt Valley.

10:30 We get in line for pre-registration pick-up. My son was registered under his internet alias, but I don’t have the courage to go as yellojkt, so I’m there under my real name. I am wearing a Yellow Jacket tee shirt just in case. My son says he’ll be in the game room. My wife takes the car keys and heads off to the Talbot’s outlet store.



11:00 Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle give a joint interview. I ask a question about who comes up with the story ideas. They say they both do, but Jerry focuses on plot continuity and character development. Niven concentrates on the big “wow” ideas.

12:00 Time to cruise the dealer room for first editions to get signed. I had brought with me copies of The Ringworld Engineers and Footfall that I had bought second hand earlier. I find a copy of The Gripping Hand and a previously signed copy of The Smoke Ring. The book dealer has a $30 minimum for charges, so I pick up a paoerback of Draco’s Tavern, a Niven story collection I had never heard of.

12:30 I run into a girl in my son’s marching band. She shows off the artwork she has on display in the gallery. They are some small drawings of elves and furry-ish creatures that she is selling for five bucks each.

12:45 I try to check in at the hotel front desk, but they don’t have any rooms ready. I wander the halls checking out the costumes. Since Pirates of the Caribbean 33-1/3 opened the same weekend, lacey shirts, head scarves and eyepatches are very popular.



2:00 The musical guests of honor, Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff, give a concert. Their gimmick is that they do science fiction-y parodies of classic rock songs. “Hotel California” becomes “Hotel Dealer Room”. Their retelling of the Charlotte’s Web story to the tune of the Firefly/Serenity theme song kills.

3:15 The hotel room is finally ready. About the same time, my wife returns from her shopping spree. I help haul her booty up to the room. We leave a message for our son to come get a key. No response.

3:30 Jerry Pournelle gives his talk on inventing the future.

4:30 I go up to the room and munch on the snacks my wife got at the Amish market.

5:00 My son finally shows up to get is room key. He shows off the prize he got in the tournament for a game he has never played before. We all leave the con to take him to a graduation party a friend of his is throwing.

6:30 We show up at Claude’s pig roast, which both he and I have already blogged about.

9:00 The mosquitoes start coming out so we have to get my wife back indoors.

9:30 I check out the Masquerade costume competition but it’s standing room only and they are only on the kid’s costumes. My son calls and tells me his party is winding down so I go pick him up.

11:00 My son heads down to the game room. I head up to the room exhausted.

12:00 Our son calls to tell us the game he is playing is running late. I tell him to come up as soon as the game is over. I fall asleep.

1:30 My son comes up to the room and goes to bed. I sleep through all the change rattling and bedtime routines because I am exhausted. I had no idea how long my day tomorrow would be.

Tomorrow: The big day at the con including a little domestic drama.

Stalking Niven

Just like last year, I spent Memorial Day weekend at Balticon, the Baltimore area science fiction convention. Last year’s guest of honor was goth rock star Neil Gaiman. This year they went completely the other direction with Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, two old-school rock-hard science fiction writers. Last year we just daytripped to the con in Hunt Valley from our home in Ellicott City. Since that is a long roundtrip and many events run pretty late, this year we ponied up for a room onsite.

Larry Niven is easily one of my top ten favorite science fiction writers and his collaborations with Jerry Pournelle are landmarks. I made it my goal to get to every event possible that featured one or the other.

A good convention really makes the guests sing for their supper (in the case of the musical guests, literally). Larry and Jerry were booked into at least three events a day. We blew off the first night of the con, but made sure we arrived early enough Saturday to catch the joint interview. I don’t know how it is when they are working together, but it’s good thing Niven is a fairly quiet individual, because nobody gets a word in edgewise when Pournelle has the floor.

At the joint interview they were very proud that the final draft of Inferno 2 (the sequel to a book I haven’t read) was delivered to the publisher. They are also pitching an epic-sized novel that will examine the response of society to a clear and present danger and if and how society can return to normal once the threat has passed. I expect the plot will involve an extinction event sized threat from space since, as they admit, they have made a good living throwing things at Earth.

Pournelle recycled a talk he gave to a group of international secret agency types that want to guard us against future threats. The theme was that the future can’t be predicted because too many random events disrupt the linear progression of events, but that the future can be invented and shaped if you know your goals as a society. He gave a personal anecdote about how the need for precise guidance systems for ballistic missiles created the computer industry. He also tiraded against Homeland Security, No Child Left Behind, and Robert McNamara.

Niven recycled a speech about how our only defense against the Deep Impact/Armageddon sized meteor is a serious space program. Larry is a pro-space advocate and thinks any excuse to be up there is a good one. He had some good science to back-up his ideas but admitted that raising the sense of urgency in the general public is a daunting task.

Both did a full hour of joint book signing. This attracted the usual smattering of people trying to push up shopping carts full of books of everything they wrote. A three item or less rule got the line moving again.

I had been scouring used book dealers for the past few months and came up with first editions of Footfall, The Gripping Hand, and The Ringworld Engineers. I had plenty of time to try to chit-chat with Larry while waiting for Jerry to find the right page in a very old issue of Byte to sign. I asked Pournelle if he remembered Joel Achenbach interviewing him at a book signing earlier in the week for the Achenblog post called The Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle Show. Jerry could barely remember that there was a reporter there.

Click on the picture to read my tee shirt.

They both showed up for a talk ostensibly about Robert Heinlein’s contribution to science. They found the topic baffling saying that the science in Heinlein’s work was clear and lucid and rarely original. Most of the gee-whiz ideas he used were around all the popular science magazines and showcased in the 1934 World’s Fair. Jerry went on another rant and Larry slipped out claiming it was late. After Pournelle finished pontificating and getting huffy with the unruly audience, I found Niven a few doors down listening to the open filk music session. It seems he likes participating in all the other stuff the regular fans do and knew the musical guests.

The next morning I had signed up for Kaffeeklatsches which are small group sessions with the guests. Pournelle’s was first and got off to a bad start. The room didn’t have any coffee or water or snacks. Jerry had a Ziploc bag of about a dozen pills to take and no way to swallow them. Without caffeine or any way to take his meds, Jerry moves from his normal crankiness right into cantakerous. After a fan ran off to get him a cup of joe, he resumed his rant against public education and pissed off a special ed teacher in the audience. After a long digression about dyslexia and ADD, he finally got steered back to writing. He feels creative writing classes are useless. He sees science fiction magazines as good ways to get into the business because they are so desperate for material since they pay so little. Nevertheless, he’s not keen on the idea of posting his stuff on the internet for free and is especially miffed at other people that post his stuff on the web. He gave some nice personal stories about the early days of Byte and other computer magazines before his time was up.

Because of scheduling confusion, I missed the first half of Nivens’s small group talk but I still got a lot of good insight. He talks slowly and measured but always has a point. Unlike Pournelle, he is quiet and thoughtful when others talk and it sometimes takes effort to steer the talk back to his opinions. Larry just wants to see us in space. It's the mindset of a fan that grew up reading the Golden Age giants. He likes the idea of private enterprise in space aviation because that is how it was always envisioned in things like "The Man Who Sold The Moon" and Destination Moon. He writes short stories just to keep his writing skill sharp.

It was great to see two of the masters still at the top of their game. They sound enthusiastic about their upcoming work and still think the future has a chance. For more pictures of Niven and Pournelle and other sights from Balticon, check out my Balticon 2007 Flickr set.

Blatant Comment Whoring™: What author would you like to stalk?

Where The Geeks Are

In my last post, I made the case that a science fiction convention isn’t really all that different from any other gathering involving people in a close-knit hobby or shared interest. Now I will cover some things that are fairly unique to the sf convention community.

Costuming

This is the stuff that makes the evening news and newspaper articles. In actuality, probably less than 10% of the attendees ever wear a costume. The real uniform is a tee shirt with a clever geeky inside joke on it. My favorite was “Han Shot First” in a Star Wars-ish font. Costuming, or cosplay, is much more prevalent at j-pop conventions like Otakon, which I got dragged to by my son back in September. The costumes at Balticon were usually very good and, for females at least, tending towards things with wings. I did not get a picture, but one guy had a dead-on Jack Sparrow outfit.

Star Trek is unfairly associated with science fiction in the general public’s mind. William Shatner’s great Saturday Night Live skit pretty much sums up the general perception of pimply virgins dressed in Vulcan drag. However, Star Trek as a cultural force is on the wane. A poster for a more media-related convention, Shore Leave 28, features mostly actors from the Stargate franchise. The whole time I was at Balticon, I only saw one Starfleet uniform, although Klingons were out in force.

I will go out on a limb and say that Firefly/Serenity is the current milieu of choice for costumers. Something about a sharp dressed Browncoat reeks of cool, at least by science fiction convention standards. The local fanclub chapter had a booth and there was both a stage play and a radio drama centered around the Firefly universe.

Masquerade

The pinnacle of the costuming track is the Masquerade, which is a standing room only event where costumers are judged fashion-show style. The judging is divided into experience classes and is a whole geek sub-culture all of its own. This year’s Balticon had a much stronger Masquerade than I expected. The showstopper was the seven foot tall Minotaur.

I was lucky enough to upgrade to an aisle seat for shooting pictures, but even with a zoom lens, the judges’ heads and the fast pace of some of the skits played havoc with my autofocus. I’ve put the less fuzzy pictures on my Flickr site if you want to see more.

Gaming

Card and board gaming is a big feature at science fiction conventions. Some of the games have only a passing connection to science fiction. Popular ones include Settlers of Cataan, Munchkin, and anything that can be described as “Risk, but way more realistic.”

The gaming room also tends to be the most fragrant room at the convention. Some of the players get so involved in their games, they tend to neglect basic hygiene. Some cons post the 6-2-1 rule, which loosely paraphrased says:

• Get six hours of sleep a night. Most events don’t start until 10 am, so that’s plenty of shuteye even if you party or game most of the night.
• Eat at least two meals a day. The snacks in the con suite don’t count. It has to be something that you have to sit down for.
• Take at least one shower a day. That’s per DAY, not Convention. If you wear a costume, even more often is better.

Unfortunately the shower rule is often more honored in the breach.

Parties

We didn’t have a room and just daytripped in, but after-hours is when the real socializing begins. Room parties are very common and a great way to relax and cadge free snacks. I think they are technically supposed to be dry, but a lot of hosts have a bottle or two of Romulan Ale tucked away if you ask. I feel sorry for any innocent bystanders staying at the hotel, but I’m sure the staff tries to book the larger groups together.

Groups vying for a Worldcon bid will throw parties to drum up support. A lot of parties have a theme around a show or book. These parties, as lame as they sound, are where the real interaction takes place and you can meet very interesting people. At one con, I found myself talking to a teenager with bright blue hair about the meth problem in rural Maryland.

There are a lot of other things that I haven’t talked about such as filking and LARPing that are too dorky for me to even describe adequately. Not that I should judge. Afterall, I’m on the same side of the zoo fence as they are.

In summary, science fiction conventions are not for everyone. I have been to five, which gives me a laminated lifetime membership in the Geek Club to the rest of the world, but in the SF con world, I barely qualify as a dilettante. A lot of things about convention attendees skew the standard deviation curve the same direction. SF fans do tend to me smarter and more engaged than the general public, but there are plenty of things to roll your eyes at as well. If you get a chance, give one a try. It at least gives something to talk about for years to come.

Blatant Comment Whoring™: What's the dorkiest event or activity you have been involved with and would you do it again?

Balticon Recap

In my last post, I fawned over Neil Gaiman at his Balticon appearance, but there are a lot of other things to do at a science fiction convention, some geekier than others. Hopefully this will be helpful to fans and non-fans alike.

Author Presentations and Signings

The whole point of an author to go to a convention is to get a little recognition and publicity. Because of the strict timetable and scheduling of venues at a SF convention, these are usually separate events. An author will do a reading and then if his or her stature merits, a little later a signing will be scheduled into a smaller room. Neil did two signings and they were both limited in capacity. At the end of his joint talk with Peter Beagle, I raced over to get in line for the signing. The next day I overheard some people complaining about not getting in.

Peter Beagle, whom I am unfamiliar with, was doing a joint signing and had about a third as many people trying to get his autograph. Gene Wolfe was very popular as well. Additionally, lesser known authors will get a table and pigeonhole passerbys to drum up interest in their books.

Panels and Discussions

The measure of a good convention is partly the quality of the guests, but also the number and depth of the panel discussions. These take place in smaller rooms and involve two or more experts in some aspect of the field. The sessions are usually arranged in tracks around common themes such as writing, costuming or science. The sheer number available makes some triage necessary when planning a day as they often interfere with other panels and events.

The Balticon science oriented panels were particularly good. I went to one on the atmosphere of Titan presented by Dr. Tim Livengood from NASA and needless to say, Kurt Vonnegut grossly misled me about the habitability of the place. My son went to one on Quantum Mechanics and claims to have understood at least the first half of it. I also heard good things about Dr. Dinosaur.

The Dealer Room

No trip to a convention is complete without a couple of passes through the dealer room. There is usually at least one new book seller set-up and several people selling used and collectible books. It's nice to hear someone praise an author and then be able to check their books out right away. This is where I picked up two of my signing items before they went out of stock.

The other dealers sell a lot of lifestyle accessories which tends to include leather or weapons. The guy selling these beautiful reasonably priced leather Carnival-style masks warned me about taking pictures without permission. I promised him Mythical Masks a link if I blogged about him. Jewelry and theme apparel are also popular.

My wife collects penguin figurines and found a table with a large assortment of styles she didn’t have. She also bought a rather fancy dice bag. She likes using them as camera holders because they don’t raise the suspicion of security checkers at concerts and the like.

Socializing

With all the line standing and waiting, there are a lot of opportunities for talking with people that will not immediately dismiss you as a dork for being interested in science fiction or gaming or other high geek activities. I was lucky enough in the Neil Gaiman line to be in the middle of a gaggle of women that defied the shampoo-deprived stereotype of female convention attendees.

I mistook one woman's regualr clothes for a costume so that was a slight faux pas. She also had a button that said “Poly, but I would probably rather read a book.” That started a brief conversation with other linestanders that I studiously avoided. Just didn’t want to go there. Another person was a three-time NaNoWriMo participant, so I held my tongue on my opinion about that as well. I also ran into one person I know professionally. At least I wasn't using yellojkt as my ID card nickname.

None of this is particularly unusual and little different from any other event catering to a particular hobby or interest that might be booked into a convention hotel or the subject of a CSI episode. So why do science fiction conventions get such a bad rap? I’ll cover some of that in my next post. Or leave me a comment about what you think the distinction is.

Neil Gaiman, Rock Star

If the science fiction/fantasy/horror genre has a rock star, it’s Neil Gaiman. As some sort of anti-Tom Wolfe, he is always dressed in public in his trademark black tee-shirt and matching motorcycle jacket. Black is his color both sartorially and metaphorically. His writing tends towards the dark if wryly amusing end of the spectrum.

I reviewed his latest novel, Anansi Boys, awhile back. Its predecessor, American Gods, deservedly won the Hugo and Nebula awards. He got his start and early fame as a writer of comic books. His Sandman series is cited as one of the seminal works in the evolution of the graphic novel and DC comics invented the Veritgo line just to have a place for his dark visions so that children wouldn’t mistake his Sandman for the blue and gold Golden Era hero. His version of Death as a goth-clad hottie is started to supplement the traditional image of the Grim Reaper.

In addition to comics and novels, he writes poetry, children’s books, screenplays and song lyrics. His book, Stardust, is being turned into a movie starring Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert DeNiro. He wrote the script for Beowulf which is being animated Polar Express-style by Robert Zemeckis. Tori Amos cites him as a major influence. There doesn’t seem to be any challenge he’s not up to. Even his personal assistant is in a goth singing duo and has her own line of jewelry.

When I heard that Gaiman was to be the Guest of Honor at Balticon, the Baltimore Science Fiction Convention, I registered the whole yellojkt family for the event. My wife is far from a science fiction fan, but she is at least peripherally aware of what a force of nature he is. Neil flew into Baltimore straight from Australia where he was at the Sydney Writer’s Festival. Despite a half-globe’s worth of jetlag, the Balticon people made him sing for his supper with at least eight public events over the four days.

On Saturday, I caught the back half of his seminar about the collaborative process, then later that day he did a joint interview with Peter Beagle of The Last Unicorn fame. I had to race out of that to make sure I made the line for his autographing session. Other than Anansi Boys, my Gaiman collection consisted of rather battered used paperbacks. Fortunately I found hardcover first editions of American Gods and Good Omens in the dealer’s room.

Stocked with the 3-item limit, I waited about two hours to get my loot signed. He was very pleasant and impressed that I had the white cover version of Good Omens. My wife grabbed a few pictures before security shuffled us off. Well worth the wait.

As a reward for indulging my fandom all day, I took my wife to a very nice nearby upscale Asian restaurant. After dinner, I was surprised to see Neil, leather jacket and all, outside talking on his cell phone. I told him how much I liked his talk, and he acknowledged me with a thanks. That now puts me within three Kevin Bacon degrees of separation with the entire comic book industry and half of Hollywood.

The next day his premiere event was a solo appearance where he read two unpublished short stories and a poem. Since he still had a half hour to go, he spread some Hollywood gossip he vowed to disavow if it were to appear on the internet. The movie moguls don’t like Stardust being described as a cross between Lord Of The Rings and The Princess Bride, since the cult classic tale of Buttercup was a box-office flop. Incon-CEIV-able. He defended the casting of Claire Danes saying that the auditioning process involved about every female actor under thirty, some of which were truly awful. He coughed one name in particular. Let’s just say he doesn't think much of a certain former tween show star.

He also mentioned that Angelina Jolie is horribly typecast as Grendel’s Mother. His dry British wit masked all sense of sarcasm. He does seem particularly amused that Beowulf will, come hell or highwater, open worldwide on November 22, 2007. I know I will be there.

Blatant Comment Whoring: What author would you like to meet?