Update
After I couldn't understand the sf version of "I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue" and I couldn't focus on the open filking, I tried to take the train back to my hotel. At the end of several minutes of hilarious interactions with the ticket guy, the punchline was "And the next train is in 20 minutes, 'cause one just left." It was kind of like a comedy routine, only not, y'know, funny. Fortunately, it's only a 15-minute walk back to the hotel, though I have no idea whether the region I was walking through was a sketchy one.
Got back to hotel, spent about 20 minutes trying to sign up for BT Openzone wireless, having given in and decided to pay the fee. Safari and Firefox both got halfway through the process and then stopped. In desperation, I tried IE5/Mac, which I haven't used at all in many months, and lo! it worked. So now I have extremely slow and very expensive wireless access from the comfort of the hotel lobby, where I can be regaled with songs like "Uptown Girl" and "One More Night" and "Shout" and "Time After Time" and "Tom's Diner" (all of which, actually, I like to varying degrees, so it's not as bad as it might be) as I download email at the rate of about one message per second. (Times about a thousand messages since I last checked mail.)
(All of the above obliquely reminds me: I complain about American customer service all the time, but at least America is a fairly service-oriented place. I had forgotten that, for example, you can sit in a UK restaurant for fifteen minutes with your credit card sitting on top of the bill, when they need the table, and the waiters still won't do anything about it. Various customer-service people here have, I should note, been very polite and friendly, and helpful to the extent that it's possible under the circumstances. But still, it seems to me that standards of customer service here are lower than in the US, in general.)
One nice thing about sitting in the lobby, though, is that you see other people as they go by. Justine and Scott wandered in, and Justine gave me a hard time (in a friendly sort of way) about my complaints about jet lag (seeing as how Australia is further away from Scotland than California is). Justine also noted that in Australia it's winter, and it's still three degrees warmer than it is in Scotland, thus inadvertantly vindicating my complaint the other day about Scotland's temperature.
In case it's not obvious, I am now officially babbling. Only another 497 messages to download before I can go sleep.
Not long after my last post, I went to Ellen K's reading, at which she read three excerpts from her novel, which is set about 20 years after Swordspoint, I think. Good stuff; I especially liked the scene of Katherine attending the theatre. The book will be out in fall 2006 if all goes well, at which point you too can enjoy that scene, and the rest of the book. She told us the title a couple of times, but I'm completely blanking. She also told us her editor wouldn't let her call it Swords and the City.
I got curious and dug up that old fan letter I wrote her, from late 1990 (sorry for wrong year in previous post). Embarrassingly fanboyish in parts (I led off with a paragraph of nitpicking an incredibly tiny continuity issue), but also interesting to see how it prefigures some of my later obsessions. Frex, even then (maybe six months before I came out to myself as bi) I was complaining about lack of good portrayals of homosexuality and bisexuality in sf, though that was a more general complaint than my later focus on a particular subgenre in that 2003 "Future of Sex" editorial.
Also interesting synchronicity that several of the things I mentioned then turn out to be at least vaguely relevant to the new book. Though perhaps that was inevitable given that the new book is a sequel.
Tomorrow: readings, panels, hanging out, etc. Oh, yes, and attempting to retrieve my luggage. And perhaps I shall be more awake.
I'm heartened by having already run into something like half the people I was hoping/expecting to see. Also by having some semblance of Internet access, even though slow.
Don't worry, I don't expect to blog the rest of the con in this much detail.
Technorati tag: worldcon.
