WisCon 33: Favorite moments

My favorite moments of WisCon 33.


Also in reading the Chronicles of WisCon 32 I think I missed at least 60% of what was fun then - so I know this is just a small chunk of what everyone else experienced. But it is my chunk.

1. Ellen Klages' Guest of Honor speech
(Right afterwards I ran up to my room and wrote a long email to my husband about the impact of this speech).
Also glad that I planned in advance to sit with bindr and Vy (and it turned out, Rina, Jacob, Amy, Anna, Matt, and Rez) for the dessert salon, which offset quite a bit of "who am I going to sit with" anxiety that had started to kick in already on Saturday.
Getting to hear Ellen read ALL of "Time Gypsy" at her reading on Saturday, since I love that story. With lovely and well-acted English accent for the character Sarah Baxter Clarke.
And of course the Tiptree auction!

2. Finally getting to read the end of Pat's story from her reading!
(the portion she read at WisCon is the 3rd time I've heard a portion of it, due to faithful attendance at her Bay Area readings!). Very moved by the 2nd half of the story.

3. Hanging out with folks after the Governor's Club closed on Saturday night.
Eating rhubarb pie provided by Geoff Ryman after it had mysteriously appeared in his room (after we determined it was not Nisi's pie), watching Pat entertain people with her bristlebots, and discussing some "interesting" YouTube vids.

4. The strong emotion when K. Tempest Bradford (and Catherynne M. Valente) introduced Nisi Shawl and presented her with the Tiptree Award. (And Nisi introduced her mother Rose!)

5. Random conversation with Jennifer Stevenson in dealer's room which led to an invite to join her and friends (Margaret McBride, Anne Harris , and Victoria Janssen) for lunch.
Both conversation and lunch invite initiated by Jennifer - next year I will practice the art of striking up more conversations). Enjoyed the conversation at lunch (touching on many topics) and got some extra info from Jennifer re: targeted marketing, and also Roller Derby!

6. The panels overall! The Kickass Moms panel still sticks in my head the most. commented on it on live journal.

7. Parties on Sun night:
Getting more writing advice/support from Eileen Gunn and Diane Silver and hearing about Eileen's Microsoft past. Meeting Georgiette who has been coming to WisCon since WisCon 3 (and was wearing a beautiful dress).
I, on the other hand, was not wearing a beautiful dress! While I would not have ventured into the Fancy Dress party by myself with no fancy dress, I was with Pat which made it easier.

8. Signout - Briefly meeting Catherynne M. Valente (I love In the Night Garden but haven't yet read Palimpest, which she signed for me).
In chatting about my name she tells me that she too will soon have a "Russian Z name husband". (hers more Russian than mine since he lived there until he was 12 years old. Hopefully my Z 3rd gen Russian husband will come to WisCon next year).

9. Non-WisCon but still important to the weekend - Memorial Day picnic with my godparents at their house after they picked me up at the Concourse on Monday (and then dropped me off at the airport).
Really nice to talk to them and start transitioning back to the "real world"slowly. If I plan this well enough hopefully this can be a WisCon tradition, as I was also able to see them last year. Their house is so comforting.
They have lived there for over thirty years. They met my parents when all were young working in Monroe, WI, where I was born. It's really inspiring just to watch them interacting together - they are one of the main current role models for a long and happy marriage for my husband and I (since his parents divorced when he was two and my mom died when I was 16). My godmother wrote this email about my mom for me a couple years ago.

Regrets on WisCon:
I wish my flight hadn't been delayed since I missed all of Friday night - got in really late at 12:30 am by cab, but jazzed and hard to sleep.
Wish I had planned my panels out a little more, I feel like I missed several that I should have gone to (plotting the novel, romancing the beast, children's books that we remember... etc)
Wish I had talked to more people and put myself out there a bit more.
Wish I had read more of Geoff Ryman's work and Nisi Shawl's, before WisCon.
Or at least remembered that Geoff also wrote and coded the interactive novel 253, which I loved! So I could talk about it.

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: 2008

edited by Ellen Datlow
and Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant.

Checked out from the library along with many others. This is a huge book, of course - it's 458 pages. (I had started it long before starting on Watchmen and then finished today after finishing Watchmen).
- it gathers up (obviously) the best fantasy and horror (from the 2007 calendar year I think) - plus several long essays that sum up the best from that year in both genres, plus music, graphic novels, and movies.

Here are some notes:

Stories that I liked the best (most of these I did like, but not going into a detailed review here. This is mainly for me to remember what I read so I can go back and look again for these authors, etc).

* The Evolution of Trickster Stories by the Dogs of North Park After the Change by Kij Johnson
I wonder if this writer ever goes to WisCon. I'd bet she does since she divides her time between the Midwest and the West Coast.
I really liked this story (dogs get the power of speech but sadly this spooks almost everyone and they are kicked out of house and home. One woman still talks with them).
It reminds me of Pat's work.
One of her stories - "26 Monkeys, and the Abyss" is nominated this year for a Nebula (see her site).

* Up the Fire Road by Eileen Gunn
I didn't know that a Sasquatch can change how people perceive it, including Maury Povich and a couple of x-country skiers who get lost on its mountain...but now I do!
really good story.

* Winter's Wife by Elizabeth Hand
Really liked this. Liked the world, liked the Icelandic sorcery and the folk tale feel of the story.

* Troll by Nathalie Anderson
this goes very well with Winter's Wife. from the troll's point of view:

"And where do they get off, those billy goats,
calling themselves gruff? Here they come again
traipsing so innocent..."

* The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics, by Daniel Abraham
First this captivated me because it came from a spelling bee anthology (the word here being cambist (currency exchange).

* The Last Worders by Karen Joy Fowler
I liked this first because it's by KJF and also because of the portrayal of the 2 main characters who are twins (interesting reveal that they are twins, they are writing the same last name in their notebooks when fantasizing about the same boy).
Also perhaps feeling a little guilty that I am having trouble getting into "Wit's End". I skipped finishing that to dive into this anthology. This just moved along a lot better as a story.



* A Reversal of Fortune by Holly Black
I don't know if I could win an eating contest with the devil by eating a multitude of sour-gummy frogs (plus one extra!).
She is also the author of the Spiderwick Chronicles


* The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate by Ted Chiang
I liked the time travel in this and the aspect of meeting (or avoiding) your self in other times.

* Vampires in the Lemon Grove, by Karen Russell
(I want to get her short story collection - "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves).

* The Hill, by Tanith Lee
Mysterious house with exotic animals kept around it - mystery of why and what the owner is like, and what is happening with all this weird stuff going on in town?

* Splitfoot by Paul Walther
This one freaked me out - a poltergeist-type scariness in a house that it's only being visited because the owner wants to transfer ownership...And the characters who come to view/transfer the property were very unique and interesting.

* The House of Mechanical Pain - by Chaz Brechley
Also freaky and also sad. I do like the type of story where someone is exploring an old house and the people who live there - really horrible things happened in this house.

* The Monsters of Heaven by Nathan Ballingrud
The lost child, the parents driven apart by guilt and grief, and the "angels" who are so creepy (and unexplained, they're like X-files weird things - but in a short story I guess there's no time to explain).

* Mr. Poo-Poo by Reggie Oliver
Also very disturbing and sad because there is no real escape for Mrs. Poo-Poo.

* Closet Dreams by Lisa Tuttle
Also very good but disturbing

Here's a bunch of stuff from the 2007 Summaries to go back and read!
Fantasy
Ursula Le Guin's young adult series (Voices, Gifts, Powers)
Guy Gavriel Kay - Ysabel
Naomi Novik - dragons and European colonial
Logorrhea - Good Words Make Good Stories - ed John Klima
Shadowbridge - Gregory Frost
In the Cities of Coin and Spice - Catherynne M. Valente (sequel to In the Night Garden)
Territory by Emma Bull - Western with witches, blood, Wyatt Earp
One for Sorrow by Christopher Barzak - "a lyrical debut novel of Midwestern magic realism"
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare - fast paced immensely entertaining fantasy novel set in NYC.
Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos - R.L. LaFevers - 11 yr old heroine can tell when ancient artifacts carry a curse

Graphic Novels
The Arrival - Shaun Tan