{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3445",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 3445,
    "subject": "Gene Wolfe at WorldCon (a report)",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-09-06T23:45:50+00:00",
    "last": "2002-09-06T23:45:50+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0209-1684@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com"
      },
      "date": "2002-09-06T23:45:50+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Gene Wolfe at WorldCon (a report)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "It was mid-afternoon on Thursday when I arrived at ConJose.  (As it turned\nout, Gene Wolfe's first panel of the con was on \"Working with Damon Knight\"\nand it was Thursday at 1 -- I missed it, alas!)  I went through\nregistration, then made my first pass of the dealers' room, ran into an old\nfriend from high school, made a second tour of the dealers' room, and went\nto a panel that my friend was going to see.\n\nAfter that panel, through a silly series of events, I was separated from my\nfriend and his group of Clarion-West grads, so I gravitated back down the\nconcourse of the convention center toward the dealers' room.\n\nA bald guy was briskly going along--did he pass me?  There are a number of\nbald guys at the con, but this one had a cane, too, and that mustache . . .\n\n\"There you are!\" I said, hurrying to catch up.  \"Gene Wolfe!\"\n\nHe looked over and said hi, explained he was getting coffee for his wife\nRosemary who was watching a panel.  So we went over to the coffee cart,\nbought hot beverages, and then hurried back to the panel about Tolkien's\nstatus in the 21st century, where we sat in the front row.  We traded\nwhispered comments and winks during the panel; Gene stood up to make a few\ncomments in the audience participation part of the show.  Then it was all\nover and we left together.\n\nGene told me he was working on a mermaid story called, iirc, \"Black Shoes.\"\n(This explained why he was so quick to comment to me about mistakes about\nmermaids uttered by one of the panelists.)\n\nWith her own cane Rosemary was walking around everywhere, not a wheelchair\nor scooter in sight, and I gathered that the scooters were all taken by the\ntime the Wolfes . . . what, exactly?  Pre-registered?  (They pre-registered\nbefore I did.)  Arrived?  (Certainly not: they arrived a day early.)  In\nany event, they did not have one for her and it seemed like an\ninconvenience that they were working around.  (I regret I did not think\nmore about it until the con was over: I said to myself, \"Who do I have to\nkill to get a scooter?\"  And once I thought that joke, real potential\nnon-murderous solutions began to occur to me, but by then it was too late.)\n\nSo we walked down the concourse. Gene said something about his two panels\non Friday being back to back or something, and I didn't really get it at\nthe time because one was to be at 11:30 and the other at 1:00.  Rosemary\nopened a box and handed me a photocopy of the Washington Post \"Master of\nthe Universe\" piece by Nick Gevers, from a stack of copies: she is very\nproud.  (Later on Gene asked me if I'd ever met Nick in person and I said\nno; Gene wonders if Nick will come to the USA sometime soon, and hopes he\nwill, because he would sure like to meet him.)\n\nI said goodbye when they took the elevator down to the parking garage (Gene\ndriving her back to their hotel, whichever one it was--well it wasn't the\nHilton, which is connected to the convention center.).\n\nThen I wandered around, had dinner at an hour late for me, took the trolley\nback to the hotel, stayed up even later watching cable tv (I don't have\ncable).  So I only got about 5 hours sleep (bad!).\n\nFriday morning I had breakfast, took the trolley downtown, got off at the\nFairmont Hotel because I wanted to find the con suite, and it was said to\nbe on the 20th floor.  (Open snack area, hanging out place, free beverages,\netc.)  Just as a part of my slow orientation, since I had not managed to do\nit the day before.\n\nI walked into the hotel and there was Gene Wolfe, waiting to talk to the\nconcierge about how to phone into the hotel from outside.  Turns out that\nRosemary had not slept during the night and was now taking a nap, while\nGene had to go to his functions (the kaffee klatch and the panel).  I asked\nif he would be going to the Winchester Mystery House, since the\ncon-organized tour was that day and the only thing I had planned aside from\nthe Wolfe kaffee and most of the panel: he said no.  Which made sense,\nsince it would overlap a bit with the panel (as well as the fact that\nRosemary couldn't go).\n\nWe walked over to the Hilton, found the Green Room.  They did not have the\nname plates for the afternoon panel, it was too early: check at Con Ops.\n(Oh, and by the way, most of those panelists aren't actually at the con, so\nit will be just Gene and one other.)  Con Ops was only the next door down.\nGene got the name plates and we left the Hilton.\n\nAfter we scouted out the locations of the kaffee klatch and the panel, we\nwent through the art show.  There a young married couple from Southern\nCalifornia (I thought I could find their names in the con directory but I\nfailed) said hi to Gene and said that when they tried to sign up for the\nkaffee klatch the day before it was already full.  (\"Ooops,\" I said to\nmyself. \"I didn't know there was a sign-up sheet!  Oh well, I'll just wait\noutside.\")  Then there was talk of cats and dogs; their cat that can say\n\"No,\" and Gene saw a tape of a talking dog; tales of dogs at the Wolfe\nhouse, past and present.  Dog intelligence: how Gene's dog Dilly could\nclimb the wire fence and get out of the yard but could never learn how to\nclimb back in; experiments with dogs in mazes.\n\nThen we said goodbye to them and ended up going into the huckster room.\nGene said his cane was a defensive cane; and he acted out defending himself\nagainst Rosemary's cane.  Which led us to talk about swords: I told my\nsword story and then Gene asked permission to give his mini-lecture on\nsword forging (Scandinavian, Arabic, and Japanese) and I said yes, by all\nmeans.  So he did and it was fun; it also had direct bearing on what I'd\nbeen telling him, fwiw.\n\nWe went to the klatch area, where Larry Niven was still in place.  I met a\nguy sitting at the table outside the room who told me he was on the waiting\nlist in case a klatch participant did not show.  His name was Mike Myers\n(not the actor).  I said I'd wait with him.  He said that the man behind\nLEXICON URTHUS should not be on standby but get automatic admission; I was\nflattered and amused.  I wondered aloud why there would be a list at all;\nhe told me that a klatch implied intimacy, small numbers, that sort of\nthing.\n\nLarry Niven came out and was buffeted by Gene's snappy repartee.  Both\ngenre giants went into the room, I stayed out with Mike Myers and talked\nabout the rising market price of the Lexicon, and about Joan Gordon's book.\nThe Niven crowd was filing out, the Wolfe crowd was going in (I didn't\nrecognize any names or faces, but in fact I'm pretty sure I'd exchanged\nemail notes with Mike Myers before, so if I can't talk to people I'm not\nlikely to make the connection).\n\nLarry Niven came out again and said, \"Gene wants to talk to the guy in the\ndog shirt.\"  That was me, and it was pretty funny.  Then Gene told the\nofficial to let in all the others on the waiting list, which was really\nfunny, too, but I'm getting bogged down here.  The total audience was\naround 12 or 15 people.\n\nTalk went along these subjects:\n\nPRINGLES (the truth that Gene did work on the project; the manufacturing\nprocess; that the things are best and most addicting when they are straight\nout of the machine and still warm)\nTEXAS (including, but not limited to, the way that the zoo catches\nrattlesnakes to trade with other zoos around the world -- a barter system\nfor animals, or \"How many rattlers for a panda?\" -- whereas the common\ncitizens are more interested in killing the snakes; various ways to kill\nrattle snakes, eschewing the ridiculous special guns and/or ammo . . . )\nTHE KOREAN WAR (how he really thought he would get a safe clerical job all\nthe way up until the day the train stopped and he could hear artillery fire\nand realized that he was already at the front)\nTHE SOLDIER SERIES (the task of writing it was not as easy as he had\noriginally envisioned, because the classical world is so alien and unknown\nto non-classicists; the daily life of the ancient Greeks, by way of how\ndifferent their ways were from ours)\nTHE NEW COLLECTION (two proposed titles, the second one [\"Innocence\nAbroad\"] supposed to be an easy reject to bolster the case for the first)\nTRUE SUPERNATURAL EXPERIENCES (he said he's had five or six, iirc, but\nthere are two he will not speak about -- he told us one about a Chinese\nshop he entered one day that was not there the next day, a scenario someone\nelse immediately recognized from THERE ARE DOORS . . . )\nTHE SHORT SUN (talk about Horn compared with Severian and Silk; Gene talked\nabout Sinew and Gene's younger son)\n\nThere was a redheaded woman there who had just started reading Wolfe, was\nin fact only just starting CLAW, and already she was in a debate with her\nWolfe-reading friend about how Severian does not actually torture anybody\nin SHADOW.\n\nI think the audience all took a surprised breath and looked upon this woman\nas something as unexpected and precious as the first snowflake of winter.\nI mean, here we were charging over the entire body of Gene's work,\ncomparing this novel and that series, seeing the parallel in this life\nexperience and that novel, and here was this one reader who had only just\nstarted reading the stuff and yet already she was debating with other\nreaders and furthermore she was interested enough in Gene Wolfe to go to\nthe klatch.\n\nAnyway, there were noises about \"spoilers\" being made, but Gene laughed and\nsaid he'd go ahead and spoil it, so there was talk of torture and\nexecutions for a while.\n\nBy the time the klatch was over I was ravenously hungry.  I asked Gene if\nhe wasn't starving, he said he'd like some coffee if I could bring it to\nhim at the panel (there was actually no coffee at the klatch, which was a\npretty funny story, too, but I'll have to avoid it for the moment).  So he\nheaded for the panel and I headed for the same coffee stand we'd used the\nday before.  But where was there any =food=?  Nowhere.  I got coffee for\nGene and a banana-nut muffin for myself, then hurried to the panel.\n\nThe panel itself was pretty interesting, even though there were only the\ntwo panelists.  I was dying of hunger, though, as expected the large muffin\ndidn't even make a dent.  At around 2 o'clock, in addition to headache\ninducing hunger, I was also trying to remember something about 2 o'clock.\nWasn't there something?  A panel?  No, it was the Winchester Mystery House\ntour!  So I left the panel and went to where the Tour tickets were being\nsold before, yet the sign was down.  I knew that the bus would leave at\n2:30, but first and foremost I had to get food, so I put aside thoughts of\nthe tour and focused on food.  I saw a woman eating a sandwich and I asked\nher where she got it: she told me it was the counter at the back of Exhibit\nHall 2.  I rushed over there and discovered that the package sandwich\nlunches were all gone except for the ham ones.  I really didn't want ham,\nbut I ended up paying $6 for the package.\n\nI wandered back out onto the concourse and there was Gene, the panel was\nover.  I explained about having run out to miss the tour and get some food.\nHe asked me if I would have lunch with him and Rosemary; we both looked at\nthe package in my hand and he said maybe another time.  I threw away the\nsandwich, put the chips in my backpack, drank the lemonade, and we walked\nover to the Fairmount.\n\nWe ate at one of the restaurants in the hotel.  Gene told Rosemary that he\nhad run into me in the men's rest room: that he had opened a stall door and\nthere I was; so then he backed out and tried the next stall, and there I\nwas again; and how he still couldn't figure out how I did that part.  We\ntalked about dogs again, I think.  We talked about their trip to San Jose,\nwhich Gene had earlier described as hellish, and now I heard about the\n\"food on the road\" aspect of it.  Our waiter had an accent: Gene asked me\nwhere I thought the guy was from.  Rosemary said Greece, I said Northern\nEurope, Gene said Poland.  Gene asked him later and he was from Austria.\nWe talked about teas.  I praised Celestial Seasonings for nearly all of\ntheir teas except for their green tea, which just isn't as good as Lipton's\ngreen tea, and in fact is pretty bad.  Gene said he drinks Lipton's green\ntea, and Rosemary showed me her Celestial Seasonings tin (these \"Sucrets\ntin\"-sized things that they give away in their tea boxes), which had one CS\ntea bag (Spearmint) left in it.\n\nAfter the meal was done we said our goodbyes.  I took the trolley back to\nmy hotel and was in bed by 8:30.\n\nThe next day I was under the weather and didn't get out until late\nafternoon, so I missed Gene's panel on Religion and Fantasy at 4:00.  Well,\nI saw part of it, but I was on this quest for a banana and dared not be\ndistracted: I started at the con suite (yes, I finally got to the con\nsuite, 30 hours after my first attempt), then tried the fan lounge, then\nthat food counter over at Exhibit Hall 2, and so on.  There was a huge\nstreet festival going on a block away from the convention center, and among\nthose booths I found a crepe-making place with bananas and I pressured them\ninto selling me one.\n\nSaturday was pretty much a wash.\n\nOn Sunday I saw the Wolfes in the dealers' room.  One dealer-woman said she\nwas so glad to see Rosemary up and about, since Gene had been \"stagging\"\naround.  Rosemary said what?  Gene said \"I wasn't staggering!\"  The dealer\nsaid, \"He was trying to pick up women!\"  Rosemary threatened Gene with her\ncane as he stated that the women who allowed him to pick them up were sadly\ntoo heavy for him to carry.\n\nI helped them find some things they were looking for and then wandered off.\n\nI looked for them on Monday but I didn't find them.\n\nSo that is pretty much it, in a nutshell!\n\n=mantis="
        }
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}