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WWEnd at WorldCon: Day 2
We woke up early on Friday eager to get the day started and to forget the horrible chorus of snores that ensured nobody got a good night’s sleep. There was a lot of finger pointing and the stories of snores and nocturnal emissions grew in the telling throughout our wicked expensive breakfast but by the end we were all still friends. With our appetites’ diminished we headed down to the dealer’s room to set up our fan table.
The fan tables this time around were on the other side of the dealer’s room but we had a corner spot, which is essential for our big monitor, and we were lucky in our neighbor’s to either side. The Heinlein Society is on our left with WindyCon on our right. Great people at both tables which is nice. We hooked up the big 31 inch monitor to the laptop, spread out some piles of bookmarks, the new ones for this year and some left overs from last, and settled in to hawk the site to passers-by. The crowd was good and many folks made it past the dealer’s tables to the fan section so we had a nice flow past the table.
Just like last year we had all manner of people come up to see what we were about. Some folks just wanted to take a peek and refused all attempts at communication on our part. You could almost hear them thinking “don’t make eye contact, don’t make eye contact” as a kind of mantra to ward off evil. Others stepped up and talked our ears off about their own projects with no apparent interest in WWEnd at all. We made a fine captive audience it seems. For those people it was “Smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave.” Of course the majority of our visitors were fans just like us and many took an active and keen interest in the site. Those folks were a pleasure to talk to and it was quite fun to see how much they enjoyed our short site tour. I hope we’ll see some new signups after the con.
The table was busy with just the three of us so there was not much time to do many panels. In fact, I was the only person to get away at all. I got to attend “100 Years of Edgar Rice Burroughs” which was an entertaining and insightful discussion of his major works and influences from Tarzan to John Carter and beyond. The room was packed (and much too hot), the panelists were in high spirits and the audience offered some nice questions and commentary without the usual awkward soapboxing you often see in these kinds of panels. One thing that I noticed was that the whole crowd was a bit long in the tooth. I believe I was the only person there under 50 which is not particularly surprising since WorldCon skews older anyway (and Burroughs is most definitely old-school) but I could not help but wonder who’s going to keep reading Burroughs when this generation is gone? It would be a shame if people only came to know his work through the movies.
The rest of the day we spent taking turns at the table and wandering the hall again getting autographs and looking for presents for the kids. We went to the autograph session that featured Robert Silverberg and George R. R. Martin. Strangely there was no line for Martin, despite being up for the Hugo, while the Silverberg line was rather long. Quite a change from last year when the longest lines were for Martin. We got Martin to sign our bookmarks and later we got sigs from Seanan McGuire too. 3 more to go!
Once we wrapped up for the day it was time to find some eats. Since we had pizza the night before it was time for some Chicago hot dogs. We walked about a mile or so to American Dog and ordered up some dogs. Chicago style dogs come with relish, peppers, sliced tomatoes, onions, mustard and a wedge of pickle. They were delicious. We left determined to have another dog later on the trip. Back at the hotel we decided to skip the parties and headed to the bar instead for some beers and hot wings while we waited for our pal Chris to get there. Chris showed at last call so we bailed and went back to the room full, sleepy and 2 sheets to the wind. The theory was that if we were too drunk to care we might all pass out before the snoring started again. Another good day at the con.
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