Worldcon Report

A great way to handle Worldcon is to be a dealer, spend much of the day behind the table, have some low-key dinner with friends, swan through a party or two, and then retire to the room by 10:30 or 11pm. No panels, no Hugos, no super-late nights of bellowing nerds, no nothing. A couple of strange conversations happened anyway, including one with a guy dressed like a bird who came up to the Haikasoru table, performed a bird call, and shouted, "Guess what bird I am!" I gave up. He was a red-tailed hawk. (He had a different bird costume on every day.)

We did have a small print edition of our new mini-anthology Saiensu Fikushon as an exclusive, and people liked it. Five bucks, and small enough that the objections over luggage and shelf space were handily defeated.



We did a lot of business over the weekend. It looks like Kansas City, MO has no real bookstores—indeed, even the airport didn't have one. Lots of locals with Saturday or Sunday passes were thrilled to get their hands on real books they would not have otherwise encountered.

In BBQ news I went to Arthur Bryant and Jack Stack and really enjoyed them both. The little City Market area also had good non-BBQ places, and was a jaunty walk. Molly Tanzer and I bought our Mixed Up! contributor Maurice Broaddus a cocktail.



In other book news, both Dreamhaven and Larry Smith carried I Am Providence; Dreamhaven sold out on Thursday (!) and Smith was down to one when last I checked on Saturday. (There was also a brief IAP-themed interview with me here at Qwillery.) Bullettime hit the free table and I also signed a bunch of copies of Starve Better from Apex. I was thrilled to hear that Apex sold more than thirty copies of Erica Satifka's Stay Crazy (see this Q/A) as well during the con.

I even stood on a long line to get a signed Charlaine Harris book for Olivia.



No real care for the Hugos: the only interesting potential result was whether Chuck Tingle, whose writers spent months ingratiating themselves with Worldcon by rightly mocking Theodore Beale, would beat out No Award in the short story category. T(he)y did not.

And I did manage one Mamatas Lift, of Jason Sizemore, who recorded it selfie-style from three feet off the floor:



See you in...San Jose?