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Worlds Without End Blog

Worldcon: Day 1 Posted at 12:01 AM by Jonathan McDonald

jynnantonnyx

[Our fearless leader Dave has arrived at Worldcon with a few others. This is his first travel journal entry. -Jonathan]

The WWEnd Team finally made it to Reno for Worldcon! We arrived on 4 separate flights from the same city, don’t ask, and hooked up at our hotel – our hopelessly gaudy yet comfortable hotel. This place is all Roman columns, huge flat screen televisions, red neon and gold filigree. Everywhere you look there’s a flat screen showing you scenes from places you’d rather be – Tuscany, Rome, the Mediterranean. The effect is clearly not what they intended.

I’ve not seen much of Reno yet but I am loving the weather! It’s 30 degrees cooler here than it is back home where we’ve had 40+ days of 100 degree weather in a row. What a relief to go outside and not be sweating instantly! All of this means we can walk between the hotel and the convention center and we can get out to some restaurants. This is especially important as the hotel/casino eateries are wicked expensive.

We got to the convention center in the morning and set up our fan table. We had the laptops out to demo the site and had piles of bookmarks there for people to grab. The bookmarks went over really well. Folks liked the designs and even the people who read ebooks, a rather high percentage of the folks we talked to, wanted them so they could get autographs. You can’t really get your ebook signed after all.

The site demos were met with enthusiasm as well. We showed off the award pages, especially the Hugo, and the “best of “ lists, the resources pages and reading stats. The folks who stayed long enough to see the stats really got excited when we demoed the comparison feature. They especially liked the cover galleries and that they could browse the books like they would in a bookstore. We were hoping to get people to sign up on the spot but there is a lot to see here and they were ready to move on. We did get lots of promises from people who said they would definitely sign up later so we’re feeling pretty good about that.

We took turns at the table and wandering the hall and seeing some of the programming. With so many book dealers here it took hours to get around the place. My suitcase will be heavy going back. Of the shows I only managed to get to two of them.

The first was a John Scalzi’s slideshow presentation of his trip to the Creation Museum. Visitors to his Whatever blog challenged him to go and donated money for his trip expecting a full “snarkalicious” report on his return. They were not disappointed! The show was a total riot, as you might well imagine, and was packed to the rafters with giddy fans.

The second show was Dr. Demento! I grew up listening to the Dr. Demento show so I was really keen to see this one. It lived up to the hype. There was Dr. D up on stage in a tux spinning out those funny songs we all know and love and reminiscing of his years in broadcasting. He had a big screen for some videos as well and we were treated to a young Bill Paxton’s first acting gig: Fish Heads! Who knew? There was a lot of Weird Al in the program including his Star Wars/American Pie parody and his first ever recording doing an Elton John tune on the accordion. There were also a couple live performances that were really fun though the song about funky smelling con-goes probably made more than a few attendees nervous.

After the display room closed went ventured out for some dodgy Chinese food and then went to a couple of the parties at the hotel. We made brief stops at the Texas, Chicago and Spokane bid parties but were pretty tied by that time so we made one more stop at the bar for a quick beer then turned in for the night.

The previous night was not so great with Rico snoring like a cartoon bear with sleep apnea so we rolled his bed into the bathroom and shut the door. He was a good sport about it. Everyone slept well and now we’re off to do it all over again.

Flesh and Fire – Take One Down and Pass it Around Posted at 12:23 AM by Dave Post

Dave Post

Flesh and FireFlesh and Fire, the new Nebula Award-nominated title by Laura Anne Gilman, is out in hardcover from Pocket Books. This captivating story offers up a fresh and heady world where magic is accessed through the medium of wine, and where spells are incanted and decanted. Magicians are "vinearts", who study all their lives to understand the subtleties of the wines in their vineyards and the unique magic that can be summoned through them. Different kinds of wine carry unique magical properties, which the vinearts are responsible for creating.

The world of the Vin Lands are enticingly served up to us. Practitioners of the wine-based magic and the land’s temporal powers co-exist somewhat comfortably, and peace is more the rule than the exception. Life is good, especially if you’re a vineart or one of the princelings. There is a slave caste, a social device made all the more interesting because new vinearts are chosen from their ranks and not through the middle or upper classes. Life revolves around the grape and the vineyards are at the heart of the Vin Lands. Gilman’s simple, direct style draws you into the story, and makes you feel like putting your boots up on the table and pouring a nice glass of bourdeaux.

The book pours out the tale of a young vineart-to-be, Jerzy. This young lad takes the familiar path of a youngster learning about the world, learning about himself, and learning magic. Boy meets grape, boy learns how to zip off a handy fire spell, with a hint of oak and a light nutty aftertaste. In the Merlin/Obi Wan role is a gruff but not unkind chap named Malech. He’s a comfortably accomplished vineart with his own vineyards and country house, and a large staff of servants who putter around baking bread and teasing Jerzy and occasionally beating the slaves. Toujours a magical Provence. Should we care about the slavery aspect of this book, at this point? Barkeep! Another glass of that house white and be quick about it!

But hold the bottle! Danger, menace and schemes threaten the Vin Lands, disrupting the harvests, the political balance of power between the vinearts and the princelings, and more importantly, Jerzy’s education. Monsters ravage the vines, slosh up on the coastlines to consume villages, and pull down wine keg stuffed galleons into the briny depths. Because the peace of the land has depended on a very diffuse power structure, the reaction to all this mayhem is, well, a tipsy blend of consternation and denial. It is up to gruff Malech and his young protege Jerzy to get to the bottom of all these wine-threatening goings-on. Will they find out who is thrashing the peaceful vineyard towns and villages? Will Jerzy grow into an accomplished vineart before or after he decides he likes girls? Barkeep! A glass of that house red damn your eyes!

"Flesh and Fire" uses some standard plot devices that we’ve all seen before, but it is a genuinely engaging magical wine-tasting session of a tale. The real lure of the book is the magic/wine relationship, so lovingly and almost worshipfully given to us that we can taste it. The book is suffused with this heady version of magic, it is as ambient as the gritty technology of William Gibson. So when all is said and done, this is a thoroughly enjoyable read, and I can heartily recommend it – paired with a vintage Merlot.