WorldCon and Glasgow
Actually, not a lot about Glasgow, as I spent most of my time at the convention. What I saw (of the downtown, primarily) was a very clean and well-lit city. I was also told that the police have TV cameras on most of the streets. It was nice to walk around in except for the hills. I stayed at the Charing Cross Forte Crest hotel. This was not one of the party hotels, but the primary party hotel was only about 10 minutes walk away. Given the lit streets I felt quite safe in walking the distance.
The convention center was quite spacious, and could have held a few hundred more if necessary. I didn’t notice any major mishaps: registration was very easy and quick. The dealer’s area and art show were pretty good, but I didn’t get much in the dealer’s room and wasn’t interested (not that I wasn’t impressed, which I was, just not interested) in anything at all in the art show. All in all, it had the comfortable feeling of a smaller convention yet the multi-national feel of a WorldCon.
GEnie people I met: Esther Friesner, Alexandra and David Honigsburg, Dafydd ab Hugh, Robert Sawyer, Jane Yolen, Geoffrey Landis, and a whole host of others. Other people included artist and jeweler Darlene Coultrain, BNFs George “Lan” Laskowski and Maia Cowan, Katherine and her husband Scott, the people from the Chicago in 2000 bid (most of whom I work with at WindyCon), artist Susan Honeck, Rick Foss (who handled most of my travel arrangements), Chris Claremont (who made a very good statement at the SFWA meeting), Dave Stein and Diana Harlan Stein. I also got the chance to meet Deborah Turner Harris, co-author with Katherine on the Adept books. There was also an Alarums & Excursions apa meeting Saturday afternoon and dinner Sunday evening. And I saw John Brunner the night before he died, in the SFWA suite.
High points: dinner with David and Alexandra Thursday night at the Italian restaurant in the North Rotunda, just a short walk away; Lois winning the Hugo again; the SFWA meeting Sunday morning (despite some dirty laundry that those in the know will know about and those not in the know needn’t concern themselves with); the A&E party Saturday and the Sunday dinner at a little Thai / Chinese place; the Tor party (to which Robert Sawyer and I walked over to from the SFWA suite, despite the light misty rain which the natives seemed to ignore, leading me to create the lyric “Mad dogs and Glaswegians go out in the midnight rain”) where we talked about minor league baseball teams and their promotions; the SFWA suite, which managed to work despite some early organizational problems; getting to meet Mike Jittlov and getting (autographed) one of his Freas posters that are impossible to reproduce; seeing the popularity of B5 as evidenced by the well-attended panels (as well as the two viewing parties); the fireworks Sunday night; the Chicago in 2000 party Sunday night, which I helped set up; discovering some Judge Dredd books (and a Judge Anderson solo book!) that I would later look up at Forbidden Planet.
Low points: the news of John Brunner’s death, certainly. The high prices for food and everything else: they were the equivalent of dollars in pounds, with the exchange rate at L1 = $1.61; Baltimore winning for the 1998 WorldCon, as I had voted for Boston; lonely dinners where I couldn’t find anyone else to eat with; not getting a chance to have dinner with Katherine and Scott, but they had short schedules and were very busy; not getting around to find a TARDIS (Glasgow has four of the old blue police boxes still in use, but none were close to the hotel or convention center) or any of the bookstores locally (my fault for not allowing time after the convention); the Underground stations being flooded recently, forcing the use of shuttle busses, especially since my hotel was directly above one of the stations.
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