David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Two days after returning from Australia, and still so jetlagged we feel like we’ve been run over by a mob of kangaroos, we packed up our stuff and checked into another hotel. At least we didn’t leave town. We’re at the airport Sheraton for the annual West Coast Gay & Lesbian Advanced & Challenge Square Dance Weekend, which is an event we usually wouldn’t miss, even more so this year when it’s in our home town. (It’s kind of the SMOFcon of square dancing.) So here we are. Lots of our square dance friends are here and I’ve actually found that I have enough brain for Challenge dancing, though not enough energy to do it for more than half an hour at a time.

I made all kinds of promises to myself about what I would do when I got home (eating right, going to the gym, writing) but those are all on hold until Monday. Then I will climb back on the wagon, I swear!

For my last Australian breakfast I had Weet-Bix, passionfruit yogurt, eggs with grilled mushrooms, and a flat white. Then we boarded the plane for home.

I slept almost the whole way and was feeling quite chipper as the plane landed at LAX. I thought I saw both of our bags on the carousel as we approached, but Kate’s didn’t come back around again. We waited until all the bags were gone, but it never appeared. The baggage agent said her computer showed Kate’s bag as having been checked in again on the domestic side; also, there was a similar-looking bag left behind, so it was probably a “bag switch.” The unclaimed bag belonged to someone named Holt, who had a tight connection to Denver, so it’s plausible they might have grabbed the wrong bag and then rechecked it without ever noticing their mistake. But because Kate’s bag had a tag routing it to Portland, we could expect it to rejoin us there. What happens to Holt’s unclaimed bag? Not sure, but I bet it won’t make the tight connection; Holt will curse the airline for the lost bag and never know it was their own damn stupid mistake.

This kerfuffle put us at the back of a long Customs line; also, we had to go through the Agriculture screening because I admitted to having food in my bag (including a bag of dried apricots that I wound up carrying all the way to Australia and back without ever opening it). It’s a good thing we didn’t have a tight connection ourselves.

In fact, we had an eight-hour layover. The music at LAX is like a parody of Muzak, including “Girl from Ipanema” by the 101 Strings (literally!). I was really noticing the American accents around me, they sound so harsh and uncultured (but, as Kate points out, easy to understand). We’re also back in the land of ice in drinks, but at least the electrical outlets can be used without adapters.

I slept most of the way to Portland too. We found both our bags waiting patiently in the baggage claim area, huzzah. There was a huge pile of mail at home, of course, and I had to reboot the router to get online, but otherwise everything here is safe and sound.

According to Wolfram Alpha we traveled almost 21,000 miles in the last 28 days, for an average speed of 31 MPH. No wonder we’re tired!

When we got our international plane tickets for this trip almost a year ago, we didn’t know our in-Australia itinerary so we got tickets to and from Melbourne. Later, we found it impossible to change them, so even though we finished up our trip in Sydney, yesterday we flew to Melbourne and spent the night in the airport Hilton (and when I say “airport” I really mean it: we walked straight from the plane to our room); this morning we will fly BACK to Sydney, then on to LAX with an eight-hour layover there before finally landing in Portland.

So I woke up this morning in an airport Hilton like any other, and spent the time until Kate woke up using the fast wired Internet to shovel out my email inbox, which put my head back home even though my body’s still in the Southern Hemisphere. When Kate woke up and I went into the bathroom (a Hilton bathroom like any other) for my shower, I found that I literally could not remember what continent I was on. This Twilight Zone state of mind will almost certainly continue until we arrive at PDX and, thanks to jet lag, probably for as much as a week thereafter.

Australia as a whole is also kind of a neither-here-nor-there place. Sydney has some keen and distinctive architecture but when you’re standing at the corner of King and George streets you’d be hard-pressed to point out anything that indicates you’re not in London. Although we’re closer to Indonesia than England, the faces here are almost all white and the accents likewise. We’ve heard a lot of accents in Sydney, very few of them Australian; the waitstaff at breakfast yesterday were from England, Hawaii, and Croatia and this morning’s was from India. There are some small amusing differences in language — they really do say “mozzies” for mosquitoes, “sunnies” for sunglasses, and “brekky” for breakfast, and one recent newspaper headline read “L-Plater in Horror Smash” — but all in all we’re not getting the kind of culture shock you’d normally get from traveling so very far from home.

But what Australia does have that Europe doesn’t is its distinctive wildlife, and we’ve been experiencing as much of that as we can. I’m glad to have seen the kangaroo, and the echidna, and the whale, and the giant clam. But I’m very, very tired now and it’ll be good to be home.

On Friday we went on a whale-watching cruise from Hervey Bay. While waiting for the bus to the boat we were eaten alive by mosquitoes (mozzie mozzie mozzie, oy oy oy), but saw sulfur-crested cockatoos, parrots, and ibises. It was a long cold windy ride out to Platypus Bay, but then the whales did appear and quite impressive they were too. We had three separate whale encounters, the last with a group of 3 “teenagers” who spy-hopped and went under the boat; the sound of the passengers as one whale came up about 30 feet from the boat was an excited scream almost like the one in Poseidon Adventure as the ship turned over. Unfortunately during one hard roll Kate slid out of her seat and a Japanese tourist fell on her, hurting her neck. She’s improved but still quite stiff.

Then we got on a plane and flew to Sydney. Apart from lunch the only things we had to eat that day were snacks provided by various transportation companies. There was no security to speak of at tiny Hervey Bay Airport; we were on the only flight of the evening, as near as I could tell. It was the quietest I’ve ever heard an airport, the squeak of luggage wheels the loudest sound.

In Sydney we toured Susannah Place, recommended by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman (unreconstructed terrace houses that were still pretty much the same in the 1970s as the 1840s, an interesting slice of living history); ate a pizza that was half kangaroo, half tandoori chicken, all tasty; climbed up the Harbor Bridge pylon for a museum of the bridge’s construction and great views; passed at least 7 wedding parties doing photos in the picturesque streets of The Rocks; were flabbergasted by a gullible talking statue of Queen Victoria’s dog, which appealed to us on behalf of deaf and blind children to toss a coin into its fountain, then said “thank you” although we had not done so; and went to the zoo.

Sydney’s zoo reminded me a lot of Disney World, and I mean that in a good way. Favorite animals included the bilby, feathertail glider, Kodiak bear, wallaby, quokka, turkeys, cassowary, peacock (seen from the back), golden pheasant, meerkats, free-range emu (which by the way is pronounced e-mew not e-moo), and of course the echidna and platypus. I love the way the echidnas move, bumbling along so industriously. The koalas were surprisingly active, the wombats unsurprisingly asleep. From there we took the aerial tram to the ferry, took the ferry back to Circular Quay, took the monorail for sightseeing loop, then a bus to Chinatown for dinner. If we’d taken the train back to our hotel from there it would have been a full house, or something.

One more full day in Sydney. Tomorrow we return to Melbourne for a single night before flying home. We’re kind of crispy around the edges but the trip has been a blast.

We’ve literally spent the last three days on a desert island. Did we miss anything important?

We were on Lady Elliot Island, a coral atoll at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef. It can only be reached by small plane — in fact, the island is owned by the airline that services it (as Kate says, “the ultimate trolley park”). Our plane had six passengers and the cheesecake for that night’s dessert. Even the laundry is flown in and out.

We arrived and were given a quick orientation by Dave-your-cruise-director, which seemed disturbingly familiar. Was it Fantasy Island that I was reminded of? No… it was Lost. We had arrived on the isolated island (by plane rather than sub; details, details) where all our needs would be met as long as we played by the rules. And as Lady Elliot is an “eco-resort,” solar-powered and with its own small desalination plant, in a federal protected area, there were a few rules to be followed. Limit water and power use; don’t feed the birds (no matter how much they cry, no matter how much they beg); and don’t take anything, not even a shell or a bit of coral, away. Kate took two small bits of coral and I think she’ll be spending a thousand years in Purgatory for each one.

It was also a bit like being on “Mars,” in that we were isolated and always had to keep an eye on our resource use. It was a bit like summer camp in that the food was only okay, but plentiful, and we had young and perky counselors to lead us on nature hikes and other educational activities. It was a bit like a cruise ship in that we couldn’t get off the boat island except under specific, supervised circumstances, we and the staff saw a lot of each other, and there were plenty of tropical activities.

The tropical activities included ping-pong, volleyball, and bird watching (several species of birds make the island their home, and the white-capped noddies came flocking in their squawking thousands each day at sunset — again with the watching birds commute), but the big one is diving and snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. We’d never done any such thing before, and in fact neither of us is much of a swimmer, so although we really wanted to try it we were both kind of freaked out at the prospect. It didn’t help that there was a large board in the education center with pictures of all the things on the reef that could kill you.

We started out easy with a reef walk, for which all you need is a pair of crummy shoes (crummy shoes are provided, because no matter how crummy the shoes you brought you don’t want to get them cut up by walking on coral) and a pole for balancing as you slosh through knee-deep water. (One of the rules is that you do not use the pole for poking at sea creatures, or smacking your sister with.) Most of what we saw was slug-like sea cucumbers of various types, but we also saw small fish (and one big one) and a bunch of hermit crabs.

Next came an introductory snorkel lesson, conducted in a concrete pool with a life-size (3-meter-wide) manta ray painted on bottom. It was very weird to breathe and see underwater (thanks to corrective goggles borrowed from the resort) but also very cool. Kate had some trouble at first but eventually got the hang of it.

Then we went for a for-real snorkel in the “fish pool,” which is a section of reef right off the beach where they feed the fish every day at 3:00 so they are extremely friendly. Gosh wow! So amazing, many interesting fish. I caught a glimpse of a 6-foot cowtail ray. After lunch, which we ate overlooking a perfect scene like something from some ad, we went for another snorkel, this one in the east lagoon. I had some problems with water leaking into my mask, because of the mustache, but refused to shave it off.

In the evening of the second day we went for another reef walk, this one at night, led by Dave-your-cruise-director. We saw a bunch of critters who don’t come out during the day, including spiny anemones, chitons, crabs, and a big snaky sea cucumber, but we found ourselves a lot farther from shore and a lot deeper in the water than we were comfortable with, especially after Kate’s flashlight died.

On the last morning we capped off our island adventure with a glass-bottomed boat tour. This began with quite a wade through cold water to the boat, which had a front gate that came down like a landing ship from Omaha Beach. On the way out to the reef we saw a couple of small sea turtles on the surface, and several mantas on the surface and under the boat. Then it was over the side and into the deep water with us! I had a lot of trouble nerving myself up to dive into water over my head, but I had a pool noodle for flotation and a buoyed rope to hold onto, so in I went. And how cool it was! I saw many colorful fish of sizes up to a couple feet long. I peered peering down the wall of the abyss into the shadowy deeps. I floated over coral reefs and observed giant clams and an old anchor on the bottom. Other people saw turtles and mantas but we, sticking close to the boat, did not; despite that, and the cold water, it was still magical and we want to do it again.

Now we are in Hervey Bay (pronounced “Harvey”), “the whale capital of Australia.” We saw whales from the plane and from the beach but tomorrow we’ll be heading out in a small boat in hopes of seeing some up close. Then it’s on to Sydney, our last port of call before returning home.

Some more observations about Australia:

Every single hotel we’ve stayed in in this sunburnt country provides tea makings in the room, including a small container of cold milk handed to you as you check in, and tonight (feeling a little crispy around the edges after all this adventurous travel) I had a nice cuppa. Aah.

I’ll say this for the Australians, they always put a bottle of tap water on the table as soon as you sit down. They do love arugula (which they call “rocket”) though, putting it on damn near everything. They are also very fond of pumpkin.

Sliding doors are more prevalent here than in the US, sometimes automatic (and often hard to spot, you need to look for the twin arrow decals) and sometimes manual. Not sure why, there’s no lack of space, and in fact cities here sprawl in a way that could teach lessons to Los Angeles.

Toilets here always have high- and low-water flush options but I must say that on every toilet I’ve used here even the high-water option does a crap (sorry) job of clearing the bowl; the Japanese-made Toto we have at home is much better.

And now, pictures!

We’ve been taking it rather easy, for us. Adelaide is a pleasant smallish city, quite walkable. The tram (there’s only one tram line) is free in the center city and when you pass out of the free area a conductor comes around selling tickets from a little machine at his waist. How quaint. We commented on how long it had been since we’d seen a human conductor and he admitted that he was an android. (No, really, he actually said that.)

There are flocks and flocks of colorful parrots here, squawking and chirping in the trees. I’m not used to parrots as street birds. It’s like encountering a herd of poodles, in full show trim, in the wild.

We have encountered a few Australianisms in the wild as well (as opposed to terms like “fair dinkum” which are on the postcards and such but I haven’t heard anyone actually say it): “hooning about” (meaning to act like a male teenager and/or drive too fast), “spruiker” (meaning huckster, hawker, or tout), and “no worries” (a generalized politeness noise, meaning sorry or excuse me or thank you or you’re welcome). And yes, they do say “g’day.” The Australian accent does not seem to involve the parting of the teeth or lips, which has been described as “speaking as though a million flies were trying to get into your mouth.” We’ve been told that “Americans enunciate so well” (!?).

The sun comes in from the north, of course (one sees real estate ads bragging about northern exposure) and having the traffic on the wrong side of the road is subtly disquieting. Kate noticed yesterday that looking at the street’s reflection in a shop window was calming. When crossing the street, it’s important to meet the “passenger’s” eyes to avoid being run over. Also disquieting: the crescent moon lying flat on its back. This is apparently a result of our low latitude (35 degrees) rather than being south of the equator.

The day before yesterday we went to the Royal Adelaide Show, which was very much like a state fair. One difference is the presence of “showbags,” bags of assorted goods sold out of booths in an enormous hall. I `still don’t quite “get” the whole showbag thing but I can see intellectually how it evolved over decades from “free goodie bags” to “nominal charge for a bag of samples” to “great value for this bag of merchandise” to an annual ritual of “Daddy, Daddy, it’s the showbag catalog, I want this one and this one and this one.” Many of them involved large quantities of candy and/or licensed characters (Spongebob and the Simpsons were popular). We joked about the Louis Vuitton showbag ($1500, it’s empty). We did wind up buying one showbag: a bag of assorted chocolates to take to a party.

Sheep are, of course, an important part of the show. We went to a sheep-shearing demo, which used an old-fashioned steam-powered shearing machine just like the one we’d seen at Mungo. The shearer was very methodical, the sheep remarkably calm about being wrestled to the ground and forcibly shaved. At the end of the shearing the sheep is gently punted down a chute. The fleece comes off in a single huge sheet (mostly) which is surprisingly white and clean on the underside. We also visited the goat and alpaca barn and petted some very cute kids (which I described as looking like “goat puppies”).

Another Royal Adelaide Show tradition is the “Blooming Marvelous” show: a parade of women dressed as flowering plants, with a strong South Australian emphasis; we were strongly reminded of the Honky Tonk Queen contest. I could barely contain my snerking.

Most of the rest of the stuff we saw was pretty much the same as what you might find at a state fair back home: the hall of decorated cakes, knitting, quilting, historical costumes, baked goods, etc.; the wood chopping competition (amazing how involved we all got in whether or not each competitor would beat the previous ones’ number of blows to chop a log in half; behold the power of story); the flyball championships (dog relay hurdles, tons of fun to watch); the exhibitor/vendor hall with mop demos and samples of vindaloo.

That evening we took the tram to Damien Warman and Juliette Woods’ lovely home for a party in honor of GUFF delegate James Shields from Ireland. In addition to a passel of Australians we saw American fans Tom & Spike and Karen & Mike and Brits Mark & Claire. We talked about Big Things (giant objects found at roadsides, such as the giant artichoke in Castroville and Australia’s extremely scary Big Prawn) and whether a full-size dinosaur or Ayers Rock restaurant is a Big Thing or not.

Yesterday I was rather groggy and out of sorts all day, though Kate was feeling much better. We visited the Rundle Street Sunday market, the old Adelaide Arcade, and the Rundle Street mall with its street sculptures and buskers. The South Australia Museum is quite impressive, with a big display of whale and dolphin skeletons; opalized fossils of ammonites and ichthyosaurs; fossil prints of pre-Cambrian soft-bodied creatures, including the first trilobite and first chordate; an informative gallery of Australian animals and birds, including thylacines and other extinct ones; Australian meteorites, opals, other interesting rocks; a cloud chamber showing traces of cosmic rays (apparently the only one on public display); a Russian space suit in the mineral exhibit (why??); and an extensive exhibit on Arctic explorer Mowett (he got around). After all that I was completely pooped and fell over around 9:30.

Last day in Adelaide today. Tomorrow we have a 6:00 AM flight which (after several plane changes and some juggling of luggage) will end with us on an island in the Great Barrier Reef.

No pictures today, connectivity at this cafe is crap.

After my last blog post I had one last day at Aussiecon. Over breakfast I had a nice chat with fan GoH Robin Johnson (he said he liked my Mars blogs) about Australian politics. The “Bioethics of Terraforming” panel genetically identical to the previous day’s “Race to the Red Planet” with me moderating Kim Stanley Robinson and Greg Benford (Jim’s twin brother), also nearly identical in topic. Benford and I were both deliberately argumentative to raise interest, but the panel went well and there wasn’t any actual acrimony. I also moderated “An Everyday Future: Pop Culture in SF” with Paul Cornell and G. David Nordley.

During the day I tracked down and made sure to introduce myself to several book editors. I don’t know if these momentary contacts do any good but I did get an invite to a private party (which I was, unfortunately, unable to attend) from one of them. I also got to talk for ten minutes with artist GoH Shaun Tan. I’m so glad I got to see his talk about the film of The Lost Thing after having been in Australia for a while, because I noticed many Australian elements in his work (for example, the repetitive suburban landscape, with its trams and hipped roofs) that I would never have noticed otherwise.

Many people here have had problems with the Melbourne taxis. We did too for our last dinner expedition; the “maxi-taxi” we called for the five of us never arrived, so we took two regular taxis, neither of whose cabbies was able to find the restaurant without help from the passengers (thank heavens for Google Maps on the phone). Shouldn’t basic navigation be a necessary skill for cabbies anywhere in the world? The Malaysian food we got at Laksa Me was worth the hassle, though; very much unlike what we expected and delicious in a variety of different ways.

With an early flight the next morning, we skipped the dead dog parties in favor of packing and an early night’s sleep. Alas.

The next day we flew to the small town of Mildura for the next phase of our Australian adventure. Domestic air travel in Australia, at least on the small planes we’ve taken so far, is refreshingly simple; no one here seems to care about ID, shoes, or liquids, and when it’s time to board you just board, without the tedious layers of pre-announcements and pre-boarding we’re used to at home. Also, Qantas served us some food that was actually good, and included free beer and wine.

Mildura, Victoria reminded us both of Kate’s home town of Kennewick, Washington, which is also a small agricultural town in the middle of a desert (Mildura’s crops include dried fruit, citrus, and wheat). The airport was teeny; I don’t think I’ve seen an outdoor baggage carousel before.

From the airport our guide Roger took us to pick up the other two members of our tour, a pair of older women from Sydney named Virginia and Avena. Then we drove to the Australian Inland Botanic Gardens (across the state line in New South Wales) for an introduction to the local flora (mallee, saltbush, emu bush, wattle) and fauna (apostle bird, Major Mitchell cockatoo, red-rumped parrot) and a nice lunch of soup and sandwiches. Over lunch we discussed local history, including corrugated iron as the definitive building material of Australia. Then we were off to Mungo National Park, where we saw a kangaroo right at the gate of our hotel, Mungo Lodge, as we arrived.

Mungo Lake and a half-dozen other “lakes” here have been dry for thousands of years. In fact, there’s barely any water here at all, though we arrived right after a period of rain that broke a ten-year drought and found the entire desert blooming. All the locals kept marveling at how green and lush everything was.

Once we’d dropped off our bags at the hotel we hit the park hard. We visited a dry river; saw some stone tools and a fire pit thousands of years old; viewed red kangaroos a long way off across the former lake bed; got a good look at parrots, cockatoos, and other birds; and got severely annoyed by flies and “mozzies” (mosquitoes) though not bitten. In the evening we had a delicious dinner (barramundi for me, lamb shank for Kate) prepared by our French host, after which we gazed at the Southern Cross, Centaurus, Milky Way, Venus, and Jupiter. The upside-down moon and the Magellanic Clouds were both below the horizon, alas, and the next night was cloudy. Perhaps we’ll see them later in the trip.

The second day’s breakfast included amazing warm-from-the-oven croissants and “Skippy Cornflakes.” For a horrified moment I thought the side panel on the cereal box included the advisory “contains Skippy.” Then we were introduced to Graham Clarke, our aboriginal guide for the day, who shared with us many stories of his people and some… interesting… theories about human development and climatology. We drove to the “Walls of China” (a huge curved “lunette” of packed sand blown off the dry lake bed over millennia) and walked across the fascinating eroded features there. We also saw some ancient wombat bones (Graham claims these show the lake dried up only 8000 years ago, not 12000 as most scientists think). After a simple lunch of sandwiches, tea, and fruitcake, we took a walk along the Mallee Trail for a look at (and occasionally taste of) various local plants and learned how to spot a good hollow trunk for making a digeridoo out of. We were also accosted by a flock of apostle birds, which seem to have no fear of people. We visited a feral goat trap (a water hole surrounded by a fence with a ramp to get over it; they’re smart enough to get in but not out), walked on mobile dunes, and explored a 26,000-year-old midden with mussel shells (from the lake before it dried up) and stone tools (non-local stone) just lying around on the surface. Kangaroos and emus came out as the sun went down, and I got some great photos and movies. The day ended with an amazing digeridoo performance by our guide and another delicious dinner: chicken with tarragon mushroom sauce, lentils, potatoes au gratin, broccoli, and creme caramel. It was a long day and we fell over hard around 9:30.

On the third day we walked the Foreshore Trail, which took us through several biomes of this former lake bed. Roger mentioned that we made a “bow wave” as we passed through the environment, and you could really hear it as the apostle birds in our path took up the cry. We saw a lot of wildlife: a flock of Major Mitchell cockatoos; kangaroos; butcher birds (sweet song); black kites; some very large ant holes (“preparing for rain,” says Roger); an eagle nest with (barely visible) chick; an apostle bird communal nest; magpies, galahs, and many other birds. One bird’s call was the first 4 notes of “Be Kind To Your Web-Footed Friends.” In the afternoon we visited an old sheep-shearing shed with a first-hand description of the shearing process by Roger, who grew up on a sheep station. Shearing is a hard job done by hard men with very soft hands.

After that we flew to Adelaide. Unfortunately Kate has come down with a cold so we’ve spent most of our first day here in the room. I’m sorry she’s feeling poorly but this is about the best point in the trip for this to happen and I kind of needed a day off myself. Tomorrow, if she’s up for it, we hope to visit the Royal Adelaide Show, which is kind of like the state fair.

Worldcon continues to be Worldcon and it’s going quite well for me. In the last couple of days I have been privileged to spend a bunch of time in the presence of very big names. Amazingly, I have not yet lost my voice.

Yesterday I moderated a panel on “How to Sell Your Short Stories” with Cory Doctorow, Robert Silverberg, Campbell nominee Lezli Robyn (who broke in co-writing with Mike Resnick, whom she met online after losing an auction to him on eBay) and Angela Slatter. Spread across so many writing generations, we all had different stories about how we broke in so I ran with that and centered the discussion on that to begin with. We also talked a lot about networking, though I believe the work is more important. I was a bit afraid there would be problems between right-winger Silverberg and information-wants-to-be-free Cory but it was all very cordial and informative; several people said afterwards that they liked it.

During the panel, Cory folded about 15 origami cranes, without looking; he says that when he gave up smoking he took up folding cranes to keep his hands busy and still does it. I posted this amusing tidbit on Twitter. A little while later, while watching the “Online Interaction for Writers” panel, I checked my email and learned that Cory (who was on the panel) had seen my tweet and had just become my 500th Twitter follower. Naturally I immediately tweeted about this.

The “Just a Minute” game show with Paul Cornell, China Mieville, John Scalzi, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and Cat Valente was very amusing once it finally started (room P1 was locked, so we all trooped to P3 and hung around there for a while before trooping back). I’m glad I wasn’t on this panel; it looked HARD. China was the best at the actual game mechanic (being familiar with the original BBC radio show helped a lot) but Scalzi played hard and won handily on points.

Yesterday evening was the Wild Cards writers’ dinner at high-end seafood restaurant “Fish,” which was awfully loud but had good food. I was honored to dine and converse with George R. R. Martin, Ian Tregillis, Melissa Snodgrass, Carrie Vaughn, Paul Cornell, and Brilliance Audio editor John Grace, who does the Wild Cards audiobooks.

The party situation at the Crowne Plaza has improved quite a bit. The London in 2014 party was extremely crowded and loud, while the Texas and Reno parties were more reasonably populated and we had nice snacks and conversation, but I was unduly irritated by having to cart hat, coat, and sweater around because of the mile-and-a-half walk in the cold drizzle between the Crowne Plaza and the Hilton. We retired to our room by midnight.

The next morning I slept in until almost 9:00. After breakfast, I headed off to watch “The Western’s Influence on SF” but was snagged on the way by an unpublished novelist named Saul, who really liked the “To Market” panel I moderated. We talked for most of the hour. It’s not necessarily what I planned to do with that time, but supporting newer writers is a mitzvah. The “Anachronist Fiction” panel was okay but they got hung up on the “punk” in steampunk, ignoring that the name was originally a joke. Complaining that there’s not enough punk in steampunk is like complaining there aren’t enough cubes in cubism.

Sunday afternoon was the peak of my programming for the convention. I moderated “Race to the Red Planet” with Kim Stanley Robinson and Jim Benford (Greg’s twin brother, I believe); it was in a big room, had a good crowd, and went well, providing an excellent lead-in to my Mars talk in the same room immediately following. But then I had to vamp for 15 minutes while the A/V techs got my computer to display on the big screen. I had made sure to suss out the computerized lectern control panel before my talk, but this particular room had just a blank space where the control panel was supposed to be, so I was entirely dependent on the A/V techs. While waiting I answered questions and sang Monty Python’s Philosophers’ Song. Despite the delay, the talk went well; almost 2/3 of the seats in the lower half of the large hall were filled and I finished with enough time for a few questions. After the talk, about 8 people followed me out of the hall and we talked about Mars in the lobby for 45 minutes. I also sold all the copies of Space Magic and The Mars Diaries I’d brought, which means I now have a little room in my overstuffed bag for books and souvenirs.

When I took my computer back to the room, I discovered that my tweet of a comment by Kim Stanley Robinson about utopias had made the front page of Twitter and got retweeted over 30 times. Then I met up with Kate and headed off to the casino food court with New Zealand knitter Miche (MicheInNZ on Ravelry) whom we’d met at the Texas party last night. I got a hamburger which, alas, broke my string of wonderful meals but the fries were pretty good. Then we attended the Hugos, a nice tidy 1.5-hour show (the Japanese and other subsidiary awards having been taken care of earlier). I’m very happy with most of the winners, especially Moon and Will McIntosh who is one of the nicest, shyest writers I know and was totally not expecting to win.

After the Hugos we elected to go back to the room at 10:00 rather than walk to the Crowne Plaza in the cold drizzle and try to crash the post-Hugo reception (to which we were not invited, but where almost everyone I know would be). Maybe next year I’ll have another nomination (Ben Yalow said “Teaching the Pig” is getting some critical attention, but with podcast StarShipSofa winning Best Fanzine, I wonder if Bento will ever have a chance again). I’m looking forward to the nomination statistics to see if we just missed the ballot this year as we have in some previous years.

10:00 panel tomorrow, so I’m going to turn in early(ish) now.