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October 12, 2006

Trip Report Part 3: The 1001 Program Items

[Beware: this post is huge! Really huge! Much more huge than I thought it would be. Read at your peril. You have been warned.]

Too Many Choices!
The first day of LA Con IV dawned hot and sticky, but that morning, as hordes of fannish types (many in ingenious and clever Space Cadet costumes, per the convention's theme), loitered outside the convention centre, waiting for the whole huge shambling show to get underway, there was a definite anticipatory buzz in the air. Many folks were bent over their Pocket Program books, a weighty spiral-bound tome listing every program item, and how to find them, for the five-day run.

It was while we first looked through our Pocket Program books the previous day, and starting to panic at the sight of detailed and complicated maps depicting not only the convention centre but also relevant areas in the two convention hotels, and the big arena next to the convention centre, that we began to think, "Holy crap! This thing's a lot bigger than we were expecting!" In fact, it was much, much bigger than anything we'd previously seen (or possibly we just don't get out enough).

This first day of the convention 108 items were scheduled. You might think, well that at least gives you plenty of choice. I mean, at some points there were as many as 10 or 15 items on at the same time. With numbers like that, the odds were good that at least two or more items that you really wanted to see were running at the same time, presenting nasty dilemmas. Not so much for me, since I spent most of my time not on various panels and not gawking about the Exhibition Hall (more about that below), at the EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing booth in the huge, hangar-like Dealers' Room. Michelle, on the other hand, often found herself having to make hard choices over which of several interesting things she could see. Somehow she managed, but felt disappointed at all the excellent stuff she was missing. (The following day, Thursday, btw, featured 264 items!)

Exhibition Hall and Dealers' Room
The Exhibition Hall (only one of many available at the convention centre) looked big enough it should have had its own weather, like those vast workshops at Boeing you hear about. When it opened at midday on Wednesday, the waiting hordes plunged through the doors--and, like me, stopped cold, astonished.

The first thing on display was a collection of replica robots from various sf movies, of which the star was a perfect replica of Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet (and various lesser works we don't go into). With Robbie were replicas of C-3PO and R2-D2 from Star Wars, a fairly dodgy-looking Dalek, a Terminator, a poor copy of the robot from the movie Metropolis, the two little worker bots from Silent Running and--oh yes, Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? If the game was, Which of these things is not like the others? then the answer was pretty clear. "What's she doing here?" Weird. Meanwhile, at the other end of the group was a man-sized version of Gigantor, clanking hero of cheesy Japanese cartoons I watched (and watched again) many times during my childhood.

The Robbie the Robot, though (which I could have bought for $17,000), made me smile the most. Forbidden Planet is one of my all-time favourite sf movies. Seeing the big metal guy there, talking and operating, etc, made me feel like a big hairy fanboy of the first water. An excellent start to the proceedings.

Pressing on into the great cavernous space, there was a replica of the Martian Rover Spirit/Opportunity over there at a NASA exhibit, and over here was a great selection of costumes and props from all 40 years of Star Trek, including a lot of items from the original series (I ooohed and aaahed, seeing actual Phaser pistols, Tricorders, Dr McCoy's famous "salt shaker" surgical instruments, a Klingon disruptor pistol, and much else. If only you could actually touch these gems!) And just over yonder was a big exhibit of costumes from all incarnations of the show (and movies), but these didn't look nearly so impressive, possibly because the mannequins wearing them were perhaps a couple of sizes too small for many of the garments; they just kind of hung on the mannequins, shapeless and disappointing.

More disappointing was the recreation of the original Enterprise bridge set, populated by waxwork figures of the original crew, donated by a local museum. The likenesses were, hmm, approximate, and the wigs they wore didn't exactly add to the verisimilitude. You could pay money to have your photograph taken with the wax dummies, but I never saw anybody taking them up on the offer.

Then, going around a corner, suddenly there's the original 1960s-vintage Batmobile (!), the Back to the Future time-travelling DeLorean, a fairly convincing copy of Mad Max's Ford Interceptor--and, weirdly, a small car, nothing terribly remarkable about it, except that it had been extensively modified by this local guy to look very much like a Rebel Fighter from Star Wars. It was extremely impressive, very detailed both inside and out, but the thought I couldn't shake was that you would not dare drive it around in the course of day-to-day life: some hoon would be sure to start souveniring various bits of the marvellous detail work (the laser cannons, for instance).

There was also a big Art Show, which I completely ignored, other than simply registering its sprawling acreage. Michelle went and checked it out at one point, and was gone a long time. On her return she remarked that it was like other convention art shows she's seen (only on a huge scale): work covering the whole gamut from enthusiastic amateur to all kinds of slick commercial material. She enjoyed it.

The other major feature of the Exhibition Hall, before it gave way to the Dealers' Room (which took up the rear half of the space), was a huge two-sided wall divided up into yearly sections dating back to the 1930s, and reaching up to the present. You signed the board to mark the year you first joined fandom. On this first day, there were very few signatures; by the final day it was thick to the point of near-unintelligibility with countless signatures. I never had a pen with me when I went past the wall, but I eyed off the "1979" section fondly.

Then, suddenly, it was all dealers all the time. Countless book dealers; jewellery dealers; folks selling all manner of swords and similar weaponry; another selling a range of professionally-made capes and cloaks; folks flogging funny t-shirts by the hundred; others selling genre-themed plush toys (the plush Cthulhus were my favourite, followed by the plush Microbes). Oh, and right up the back, in a corner by themselves, but with tonnes of books to flog, were the Scientologists, not doing much business, by the look of it. (It was like they had a Forbidden Planet-style force field set up to keep customers out.)

And, in amongst all this overwhelming stuff, was the EDGE booth, where Publisher Brian, his fabulous wife Anita, Wonder Publicist Janice, and several other actual EDGE authors (Rebecca Rowe, Lynda Williams, Janice Cullum) were gathered behind the most impressive display I've so far seen from them at a Worldcon. Oh, and in the back of the display were huge posters featuring the covers of the new releases, including my own HYDROGEN STEEL, and Rebecca Rowe's FORBIDDEN CARGO, among others. We caught up, got hugged a lot, and had a fine time. Anita, Brian and Janice told, I think, every single person who came by that not only did my book ECLIPSE win the Aurealis Award, but that my ORBITAL BURN was shortlisted for it. (I had to explain exactly what the Aurealis Award was about, and that there are actually two major genre awards in Australia, of which the Ditmar arguably has more credibility, but still...) It was great to hear everyone being so enthusiastic about my work. I tell you, these folks are like family to us, they treat us so well.

What really gobsmacked me, not just this first day but throughout the entire convention, was the number of folks who came along who bought not just my new book, but all three of my books. Never at a convention have I signed so many books, and never has my writing hand hurt so much--but it's the very best part of being a writer, signing books and meeting folks who've decided to take a chance on you. These experiences make up for every other difficulty, inconvenience, the chore of travelling all that way, the expense, the whole thing: making a connection with a reader is pure gold.

The Dreaded "Mix and Match Writing Challenge" Panel
Meanwhile, later that day I had one program item: the dreaded "Mix and Match Writing Challenge". I was petrified. Also on the panel were heavy-duty sf author John Barnes, David D. Levine (who went on to win the Best Short Story Hugo), Peter S. Beagle, and Valerie Frankel--and panel moderator (and Guy in Charge of Programming for the Whole Convention), Craig Miller). Intimidating.

All the same, I trooped (er, limped on my poor aching foot) along, found the room, and gaped at the sheer size of these rooms. Unlike the sorts of rooms I've seen for panel discussions at other conventions, which are small and intimate, these rooms were big. Room for over 100 people big. And this one soon filled up. I sat up there at the desk, feeling embarrassed and nervous.

Then the other panellists started pulling out these handwritten sheets of paper, reading through them, riffling the pages this way and that. Hmm. The instructions I received for the panel said that the panellists would be given some combination of famous character, setting, and storyline (with all names filed off), and told to write a story featuring these items. I figured that we'd be doing it live, in front of everyone.

No. The idea was that the Sunday before the convention started, the moderator emailed all the participants with their assignments, and asked everyone to write them up at home, and just bring them along to the panel, and read them out loud to the gathered throng.

On Sunday, when this email arrived here, I was on a plane somewhere over the Pacific. I didn't see the email until we got home many days later.

So while Moderator Craig was explaining about these emails to everyone, and getting everyone to introduce themselves, I was panicking, feeling acutely embarrassed, horrified, and wishing to die. Craig took pity on me, though, and said that while everyone else read out their stories, I could get busy writing mine, and then read it out at the end. Paper, a biro, and some instructions materialised--and I got to work, writing furiously, thinking about the ingredients I'd been given (a character description that sounded like either Frodo or Sam from Lord of the Rings; a setting that was obviously the Ringworld; and a storyline that was The Wizard of Oz). By the time everyone had finished and it was my turn, Craig asked if I'd written a story. I said, "I've got an opening...?" He said that was fine, and got me to start reading.

My story involved a nervous young woman, Sally Protagonist, not exactly bold of heart, waking up and being stunned to find herself stuck on a world arranged in a giant hoop--and then being accosted by a Wizard-type figure who explains, as heroine is baffled and confused about where she is, and why the world looks like that, that she is to go on a bloody great long quest, with the goal of flattening out the world. The world was broken, and had curled up on itself (like those hidden dimensions you hear about). There was a whole lot of "you are the Chosen One" and "destiny" and "you cannot refuse" etc. Once the Wizard figure explained everything, heroine said, sensibly, "But that's bullshit!" which got a good laugh, to my enormous relief.

Upshot: for the rest of the convention I met several folks who had been at that panel, and who claimed they'd been so impressed at seeing my scribble this nonsense live, in front of them, that they wanted to come and find me and buy my book. I could not have been more astonished.

That Evening
After the Dealers' Room closed at 6pm, the Edge folks and quite a few friends and colleagues, marched off in search of dinner. We wound up at a nearby IHOP. I had heard of these places, but never seen one before. When the enormous food arrived I was reminded of a Cory Doctorow story, "Themepunks", I'd read on Salon.com sometime back, in which the main characters, in a nasty near-future setting, go to eat at a local IHOP, and one of the characters observes that the food there is essentially "candy", all very sweet and fattening, etc. I agreed, but still it was tasty and Michelle and I had a fabulous time hanging out with everyone (Lynda Williams, Rebecca Rowe and her hubby, Sharon and Mike, Bruce, Heidi Lampietti (of Red Jack Press).

And then, time for bed. We were still not quite adjusted to the local timezone, and were knackered, and my headache was still grinding along in the background of my head, no matter what I did to it.

Then, of course, around 9pm, the Disneyland artillery battery fireworks started. Aaaagh!

In the next exciting episode: The rest of the convention! Lots of panels! Expensive food! Buying too many books! Still with the headache! Hanging out with Publisher Brian and Anita and company a lot! Homesickness! All this and much, much more!

Posted by adrian at October 12, 2006 07:52 PM

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Posted by: Cheyenne at October 21, 2006 07:51 AM

Posted by: Charlie at October 14, 2006 07:37 AM

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