Set Course for Las Vegas
When August appears on the horizon, it means a few things to me; not only is the summer break for our students nearly over, it’s also time to pack up my Vulcan ears and cosplay outfits so I can head to Las Vegas for my annual weeklong immersion of all things Star Trek. This year seems to have snuck up on me a bit faster than normal, partly because my usual touchstones for the calendar were missing. Without NaNoWriMo around to remind me of the quarterly writing sprints, my writing periods have organically expanded to become just about any time I feel like it; as late as last year, I used their early summer writing challenge as the veritable warning bell that it was getting close to departure time. This year, I find myself barely a third of the way into my latest project, one that I had planned on finishing by the end of July.
So much for keeping on target!
No matter. As my wife continually reminds me, I am the only one putting artificial deadlines in place; the more important part is the writing itself, and honestly, spreading it out a bit more has been the right (write?) thing to do — especially as I continue to recover from this bout of tendinitis. The last thing I want is to be sidelined again for any length of time.
Save for the first year when we flew, my buddy and I drive up to Las Vegas the day before the event gets underway. Partly that was practical, for not only is it far less expensive, it also provides more space to bring back any goodies we might find in the vendor area; it’s also extremely relaxing, for the part of Arizona we cross to get to Nevada is one of the most scenic areas of the state. Sooner or later it will morph into a future interstate, but for now, it’s miles of sloping road snaking its way through a massive Joshua tree forest bookended by hills dotted with majestic saguaro.
This is our ninth year going to the convention — save for the pandemic year, we’ve managed to be annual attendees since 2015. I wasn’t entirely sure that the content would change enough from year to year to keep us engaged, but the world of Star Trek has expanded immensely since the reboot movies and the launch of Star Trek: Discovery. While I’m a bit sad that we seem to be slipping into a period where there will be less new content, there’s so much to cover that the week often goes by faster than I expect. Since it’s also the thirtieth anniversary of Star Trek: Voyager, there will be a special emphasis on that show this year, with almost all of the original cast scheduled to appear. I do come away with something new each time we go; it also tends to refresh my sense of optimism in humanity, something I am sorely in need of this year.
I think it was the 2023 edition — the year I came back with COVID — that I picked up one of my intriguing items. Shortly before he passed away, Michael Pillar wrote a book about crafting the screenplay for Star Trek: Insurrection; it’s one of my favorite movies in the pantheon, and to my great delight, his widow happened to be in the vendor hall that year selling copies. I picked it up immediately and spent the nights after the convention eagerly flipping through its pages, discovering all that goes into writing for the screen. Some of what I read surprised me, but quite a bit of it didn’t; it was nice to know the struggles of pulling together all the threads that go into a plot are common among all of us in this craft, no matter the budget.
