Eeek.

I'd love to buy you guys dinner in NYC sometime, but if you want security around you'll have to hire them yourselves.

Jane

I may even dare to introduce myself this time. At Vericon last year, I lurked in the back, and I really enjoyed listening to the panels. I even came to the Viable Paradise presentation -- although I've never really aspired to write fiction, I do aspire to listen to writers as they chat.

My only problem: I won't be able to make it to "Five Things You Should Never Say to Your Favorite Authors When You Meet Them". I hope someone takes notes and posts them to the Web; otherwise I'll be afraid to greet anyone, lest I make a newbie mistake!

I made the same mistake....

I am praying daily that someone will post a panel report.

I'm still living down "Excuse me. Have you got a cigarette?"

In my defence, I had absolutely no idea that that was Steven Brust.

(And I still owe him three cigarettes and my abiding thanks.)

So I'll hope to see you at LACon -- will you be doing a kaffeeklatsch, like you did at ConJose?

Then again, there have been times as well when encountering Famous Authors, even ones whose work I greatly admire, and could think of nothing to say to them at all, other than, well, "hi!" Some authors just look very intimidating.

So, for those of us not attending Boskone, and could use some tips before this year's Worldcon, what are the sorts of things one should never say/do when meeting authors?

But I digress.

About Boskone... I had heard that it was something of a relaxacon, but the programming you listed above sounds like anything but. Too far and too late to fly there this year, but something to think about for later.

Do people ever print highlights or transcripts from these conventions? I live halfway around the globe, so no chance of attending, but I would love to hear about some of the discussions.

I managed to do it by proxy. I'd told a woman of taste and refinement about how I'd noticed an odd quirk in the books of a writer we both enjoyed: that in all his books to date the hero ended up with a maimed hand. (It's a good thing I didn't know about Langford's "Clench-Racing" game at the time or there would have been a lot of shouts of "Chapter Three!" or "Chapter Seven" in public places.) I must have been more emphatic than I thought, because when she found herself in a long elevator ride with the author in question she suddenly mortified herself by bursting out with "Why do all of your leads end up maimed in the hand?" (The author by the way was gracious about it: he said he hadn't realized it until someone mentioned it to him a couple of months previously.)

Serge -- Boskone a relaxacon? Somebody was having you on.

I don't know where I read that thing about Boskone being a relaxacon, but it sounds like fun as, in fact, I prefer cons where there's lots happening. Is it always held at the hotel of the 2004 worldcon?

Has been since ...2003, I think. Before that, it was held at the Sheraton in Framingham. The year I met the esteemed Mr. Miller, Boskone was at the Statler-Hilton. I know this not because I was at that Boskone, but because I was newly dating the aforesaid Mr. Miller, who was caught in a snowstorm coming home from the con and wrecked his car at the entrance to his apartment complex. That would have been the same snowstorm that shut down Baltimore City so hard that thirsty people were breaking into the liquor store across the street from my apartment, motivating me to dig out my car and flee to Mr. Miller's country place, barely avoiding wrecking my car at the entrance to his apartment complex, and spent a lovely three days in good company until the city got dug out.

Most of which has very little to do with Boskone...

...and everything to do with True Science-Fiction Romance Stories. Say hi to Steve from Sue and me.

Fine. I'll just have to take a picture of her, then...

("This is your brain. This is your brain on Marriage. Any questions?")

Only 28 years or so...

I think Sue and I also remember certain things differently

I'm OK with that; different processing units, after all. What weirds me out is the things that happened in my life before we met that he remembers better than I do, and vice versa.

Damn.

I wonder if Hillary Clinton will go? Teresa should photograph her under the same conditions as everyone else...

Next year will be in the Westin Waterfront (Boston).

I'll be at Boskone, running the hucksters room this year, so I'll be fairly easily findable, and not constantly running off to get another kaffeeklatsche off to a smooth start.

"Mr. So-and-So! I've always wanted to meet you -- it's such an honor. By the way: Teresa Nielsen Hayden."

"Eek!"

(Alas, it's enough farther away that the "walk home after the T stops running" approach to commuting starts to get impractical. This may be a problem for me next year.)

Actually, I can oversee the progress of the construction from my office window, and although we'll be one of their earlier sizable events, they're scheduled to be open about eight months prior to that.

So much for a working day ...

Teresa will be carrying a camera and taking pictures of as many of you as can be induced not to run.

No problem. Furthermore, if elected, I will not serve.

Also Friday at 9PM--I'm supposed to talk about the development of Big Bang theory via my book on Lemaitre. This may not be a great session, as my wife won tickets to a wine-tasting festival the same early evening...so I could well be shit-faced by the time I have to talk.

I hereby apologize to anyone in advance who drops by....

On the subject of things not to say to favorite writers, I've had more than my fair share of idiocies.

1. Do NOT tell Ted Chiang "I am looking forward to your next story."

2. If an author is clearly so tired that they can no longer maintain a coherent conversation, just get out of their way.

3. Do not tell anyone that you would cut out their heart and eat it if you thought it would make you write as well as they do. Laughing merrily afterward to show you were only kidding does not help at all.

Of course, one should note that writers can also do bad things to readers. One of my favourite (non-sf) writers once (a) tried to seduce me (but I was young and naive and missed the signals), but succeeded in (b) giving me a bad case of diaorrhea.

Sure. Here are mine:

http://kate-nepveu.livejournal.com/tag/cons

and

http://kate-nepveu.livejournal.com/tag/cons?skip=20 (because the navigation is broken)

A friend of mine is a professional translator. She was chief translator on a project that over 90% of you probably will never hear of and since then an obsessed Canadian fan has spent years abusing her on every newsgroup or forum where her name comes up as well as bringing her up on those where she hadn't been mentioned so he could blacken her name further. He's advocated having her drowned face-first in a toilet bowl filled with fecal matter as well as other fun stuff you don't want me to mention here, and has a lengthy webpage about how her mistranslation of four lines at the end of the work totally destroyed it for all time for anyone who ever is unfortunate to see the translated version.

This is flipping psychotic. I mean, I've not bought the new DVD version of Metropolis because they used the wrong frame rate when they transferred the restored print and I haven't bought the big DVD collection of Buster Keaton's films because it's been reported that some of the title cards in Sherlock Junior have been cut, so I can understand being displeased with a work that's been jerked around with, but this is worlds beyond normal.

My friend doesn't use newsgroups or forums much anymore.

I guess this means that when you offer to show off your obsidian knife collection, wise fans run away.

Obsidian is so passé when you can have titanium alloy instead, don't you think?

I think it's David Gerrold who, when asked that question, said that he gets his inspiration from the Book of Ideas. The tricky part is that one couldn't gain access to the Book without first being a writer, but one couldn't become a writer without first having an idea.

I may be misquoting him, but that seems less messy than a cardiac-based diet.

Where do you get your ideas? -- I've been asking myself that question for decades.

I tried to be as unresponsive as possible after that to make sure I was dropped from his mailing list.

My, what lovely weather we're having!

You could not ask for a worse introduction to Lewis' fiction*. Try one of the Narnia books.

-r.

*though in the third book of the space trilogy, which by far was the least comprehensible, Merlin (yes Merlin) gets some truly excellent lines about the aesthetic values of 20th century. The third book really could have benefited from being re-written in a Lovecraftian style.

Not to worry.

(What, you thought Snokone was an accident?)

I first "met" Patrick and Teresa in rasff and knew them only that way for quite some time, and then... hmm... I guess the first time I met them in person was...? At one of the old get-togethers NYC raseffers used to have?

I'd try not to take your somewhat unsuccessful first face-to-face meeting with Patrick too personally. He's actually a very good guy. You can't always know when someone is under an avalanche of things that have to get done, especially in a convention situation. I'm absolutely certain he didn't consciously intend to make you feel shunned. We all get swamped sometimes.

Ay yi. I'm sure I did one of the many things I do that convince friendly strangers that I hate them. To say that this pains me is to understate the case. I'm sure the fault is mine.

I've never met most of the people who post here. Sure, I've seen some of them on panels, but not to the point of actually talking to them. Exceptions would be Sharon Lee and her Mr.Miller (Mr. Miller? Sharon must have been on a Jane Austen trip when she wrote that.) I doubt that Faren Miller remembers me. Or that I made such a vivid impression upon Lisa Goldstein from that 10-sec intro at 1990's ConDiego.

Because if they did they'd be so ashamed at the other stuff they carry that the only answer would be for the staff to beat themselves to death with copies of The DaVinci Code.

Another question not to ask: why does your book have such an inaccurate cover? Which is better than: why does your book have such a crappy cover?

If I were a writer and someone asked me why my book had such a crappy cover, I'd say I asked the publisher to hire Vermeer and that they tried to, but that he was booked solid.

I think I can help make sense of this.

Deep in the back of my authorial lizard brain, there is a deeply childlike troglodyte of a man who minces no words when he offers his opinions of my work. (As an unpublished author, this guy is often my only reader— and he's not a very likable fellow. Very difficult to please.)

Anyway, this guy pretends to read a lot of literature. Of course, he's only a mirror of me, and I know his reading habits. He's been scarred ever since he went looking for Catch-22 in the fiction section of a bookstore. When he didn't find it on the shelf and he worked up the courage to ask for help from the staff, the clerk responded by saying (was she sneering?), "Oh, that. It's not fiction. It's literature." Sure enough— there it was, in the literature section. All this time.

My inner troglodytic writing critic is convinced that I'll never be capable of literature. The best I can hope for is to be able to call myself a "pulp fiction" writer and not be laughed out of the room by people who actually make their living do it. He's probably right, but he's an uncouth bastard who never picks up a book.

I try very hard not to let the troglodyte speak for me, but it's difficult. He's not really a separate person, you know. He's just one of Marvin Minsky's little "agents of mind" that serves to keep me from turning into an egomaniacal authoritarian little shit. Occasionally, he'll get a chance to control the speech center at exactly the wrong time. That's when I'll say something like what you heard from that author at ConDiego.

I can't speak for the person you are quoting, but if it had been me who said something like that to you, I would now be tearing my own guts out with a rusty clawhammer for having insulted someone else when I was trying to be self-deprecatory. (I suppose it's possible the person you met was saying that as a deliberate putdown, but I don't have any evidence of that.)

One of the life lessons it took me the longest to learn was why it's important to learn how to accept praise gracefully— sometimes self-deprecatory humility is insulting. More often than not, it's insulting in the situations where you can least afford it. Oh, how I wish I had learned this lesson when I was twelve years old. Where would I be now?

Anyway, if that writer is introduced to you again at LACon, please consider my story and try to figure out whether to cut some slack. The person may have just let their inner troglodyte loose at the wrong moment.

On the other hand, there are a lot of purely malevolent assholes in the world. Feel free to stomp the little rat-bastard into a greasy spot for me if that's the case. If there's one thing I hate, it's pretentious mewling gits— like my inner troglodyte— who think that "literature" is only the fiction that people read because it's supposed to be an important cultural artifact, not because it's actually any good.

Then I had the immense comfort of checking the location again, and realising that I have never been to a ConDiego, so it couldn't have been me. Nevertheless, there but for the grace of God go I, and God has not always seen fit to provide me His grace in this matter, no doubt for excellent reason.

Vicariously, therefore, but with certainty that I have done as bad or worse, I beg your forebearance. Most likely it was not meant the way it came out. On the other hand, if it were meant that way, the bum should be moidered.

That person's question reminds me of its mirror image, which was inflicted upon someone who writes in a genre even further down than SF/fantasy on the totem pole of literature. No, not novelizations based on videogames. Romance. Anyway, that question is: when are you going to write a REAL book?

With a question like that, or with the question YOU were asked, I'd respond with the lyrics of the song that's entertainment in the musical the bandwagon where Fred Astaire, Oscar Levant, Nanette Fabray and Jack Buchanan tell us:

Jack :
Everything that happens in life
Can happen in a show
You can make 'em laugh
You can make 'em cry
Anything
Anything can go....

The clown with his pants falling down
Or the dance that's a dream of romance
Or the scene where the villain is mean
That's entertainment!

Nanette : The lights on the lady in tights

Oscar : Or the bride with the guy on the side

Jack : Or the ball where she gives him her all

All : That's entertainment!

Nanette : The plot and the hot simply teeming with sex

Oscar : A gay divorcee who is after her ex
Fred : It could be Oedipus Rex

Jack :
Where a chap kills his father
And causes a lot of bother

Nanette : The clerk who is thrown out of work
Oscar : By the boss who is thrown for a loss
Fred : By the skirt who is doing him dirt

All :
The world is a stage,
The stage is a world of entertainment.
That's entertainment!
That's entertainment!

The doubt while the jury is out
Or the thrill when they're reading the will
Or the chase for the man with the face
That's entertainment!

Nanette : The dame who is known as the flame
Jack : Of the king of an underworld ring

Oscar and Fred :
He's an ape
Who won't let her escape

All : That's entertainment!

It might be a fight like you see on the screen
A swain getting slain for the love of a queen
Some great Shakespearean scene
Where a ghost and a prince meet
And everyone ends in mincemeat.

The gag may be waving the flag
That began with a mystical hand
Hip hooray!
The American way
The world is a stage,
The stage is a world of entertainment.

It was very difficult to respond to, because it was a weird axiomatic problem -- I think fantasy and SF novels are just as real as mainstream novels -- and she had no idea in the world that her intended compliment had just insulted me.

People are very odd.

By the way, is it my imagination or do mystery writers reside higher on the totem pole of Literature? It may be because, Verne, Wells and a few others notwithstanding, SF really came to be in the pulps, while mystery had more honorable roots in the 19th Century. But that wouldn't explain fantasy being in the same position as SF.

I can remember being told by a writer (a very fine published poet and critic) that reading SF would rot my mind (he also warned me against admiration for T.S. Eliot, for other, but worthier, reasons).

As for what that writer said to you, he/she was right, wasn't he/she? SF (and comics) rotted MY brain anyway.

I bet he'd take that well.

Anyway, no one here should worry -- the person who said this doesn't post to this blog.

FWIW, the only people who post here who I've met in person were in a totally different context. I ended up here because I followed a Boing-Boing link, and said to myself "Hey, the style of this place is just like the GEnie SFRT where I used to lurk!", and indeed there was Yog Sysop, and Mitch Wagner, and and... Realising that Charlie Stross was the same charlie@antipope I'd known from Usenet years ago was the icing on the cake.

I did eventually end up meeting some of the SFRT people in person but it was a different bunch than here, some of the West Coast fantasy crew (Teresa Edgerton and the infamous Borgia Sisters, ...) In any case, it was the same process - getting to know people online and then wanting to follow up in person.

It is very difficult to overcome native shyness or introversion, but the rewards can be substantial.

Hey, Clifton, I knew Teresa. I met her a few times thru her buddette Yoko Olsgaard, but it was ages ago. (Meaning around 1990.) But I never heard of the Borgia Sisters. I expect I would remember ladies thus named.

Now Lisa, I do remember you (and Doug), since I used to see you quite often. But a combination of budgetary matters and introversion means I'm unlikely to get to a con where I can see you or other "Making Light" posters in the foreseeable future. Oh well....

I'm working on a LJ report. It may take a day or two.

(It's on my LJ because I've moved most of my social blogging to LiveJournal; I find its social-networking features appealing and useful, and it makes the namechecks more visually interesting.)

Say, didn't I see your blue shark on Beam Jockey's web site? I think it was in the comment section of the aircar thread. (Speaking of which, can you imagine what would happen if functional aircars did exist? Especially in LA? Hugh Laurie works there because of House and he describes its drivers as acting like baboons on crack. What if they were allowed to drive in a tridimensional environment...?)

My partial report (panel-free, for reasons explained in the post)

Txanne: Wow, again.

What's your secret, Mike?

It took me a very long time to figure out WINOLJ (I was trying to get "without", which I usually abbreviate as "w/o", in there somewhere), so I'm happy to pass it on.

That, Kate. sounds like something from the Skiffy Channel, preferably starring Bruce Campbell.

I believe Jo Walton was responding to the following question, Serge -- the one that you asked a little way upthread: How DID you wind up responding to that librarian, Jo?

In zero-G, the hangin' tree don't work.

And do we get Sam Elliot to play David Hartwell? We'd have to convince Elliot to shave off his handlebar mustaches. Or someone could suggest that David Hartwell grow his back?

I think I've already gone out of my way to do that!

I didn't ask about D&S because Gardner Dozois was not in evidence, in spite of the many panels for which the program listed "Gardner" in big type at the beginning of the list of participants. I don't imagine I'm the only one who took that double take.

One thing not to tell your favorite author is just about anything when she's taking a phone call about the panel she's supposed to be at right now. Especially since I knew about that panel, and was planning to attend, until my plans got distracted. Sorry, Teresa.

Going to the autograph session with an author's early novel and mentioning how much more I liked it than her other stuff has since struck me as a possibly infelicitous remark.

And when I saw Susanna Clarke's lecture at the Smithsonian, I was moved to ask about her wonderfully amusing use of footnotes. I started out with "What possessed you...", but a fortunate stammering fit gave me time to reformulate the question.

Yes, my blue shark has shown up on many a fannish LJ comment thread, including that one. Aircars in LA? Bah, imagine aircars in Boston! This is a city where people drive down one-way streets in reverse, because it doesn't matter which way you're moving if your car is pointed in the right direction....

... I saw it in Barnes & Noble and it looked great.
... I'm going to save it for a rainy day.
... I've heard great things about it.
... Who's your agent? I've decided to write a book too.
... I thought it was a selling review actually.
... This is the same book you were working on five years ago?
... Who is it about?

That's three pages--and not the funniest--out of 218, and the cartoons are also worthwhile.

I forgot whose Round Tables that there were the things going on in, but there was I'm-not-sure-how-to-describe-it interative fictional adventures in which there were the Borgias, who tended to take on the name of poisonous plants.

Esther Friesner on her Round Table did riffs on Grand Opera with hamsters and such, and that was part of the genesis of Cheeblemancy.