Another fun day at WorldCon. After last night getting rather late due to the Hugo awards I decided to sleep in a bit and only arrived at WorldCon a little before 11. The late Hugo awards had left Leona even more tired than me, so she didn’t arrive until late in the afternoon, but fortunately I had company for the panels from my new friend Kristina, the Robin Hobb fan from Finland I mentioned in my previous post. She actually also happens to be, like me, a Fennoswede (a more correct term would be Finland-Swede, but I like the term Fennoswede as coined (to my knowledge) by SatW).
Anyways, we started off the day with the panel “Gender and “Realistic History”” featuring, among others, Scott Lynch and Jo Walton. It was a very interesting panel on how professions that we now think of as having been historically male only (like blacksmithing) were also quite common among the female population. Another subject was how much more accepted and part of every day life both homosexual relationships and transsexuals were than many would believe.
We also attended the panel “Authors and Their Cats” featuring (among others) Robin Hobb and Elizabeth Bear, where several authors shared their best cat stories and cat pictures. That panel was immediately followed up by the panel “Built Upon the Shoulders of Giants”, featuring (among others) George RR Martin. It was also a very interesting panel which focused quite a bit on the importance of world building.
After the panels Kristina and I parted ways for the day, I to queue for a George RR Martin autograph and she to get an autograph from Robin Hobb (I had already gotten mine during the Kaffeeklatsch). The line for GRRM was quite long, despite the fact that I entered it about 45 minutes before he started signing. Once he started signing though the line moved really fast and 30 minutes later I had my autograph (GRRM is a machine when it comes to signing…). The total 75 minutes of standing in line left me quite exhausted though, so I sat down in a corner of the conference hall to read a bit while waiting for the Masquerade to start. While waiting I unfortunately forgot about Scott Lynch featuring in the Grimdark Fantasy panel, but luckily that one is available on YouTube so I can watch it later on.
Anyways, after queueing for about an hour (lots of queues today…) to get into the Masquerade I got an excellent seat and then it was just a matter of enjoying the show. I was surprised at how few people took part of the costuming competition (only about 25) considering how many beautiful costumes I’d seen throughout the convention, and I have no idea why that was. While waiting for the judges to decide on a costume competition winner there was an epic performance by the acapella group Sassafras, featuring several songs telling tales from Nordic mythology (a subject I love). My favourite song of theirs was My Brother, My Enemy, and once I got home I immediately bought a copy of their album.
Speaking of heading home, while the masquerade was going on there was a huge thunderstorm outside, but luckily by the time it was over and I headed home it had calmed down (I also got really lucky with the buses and got home in about 15 minutes). So, all in all a great day. Tomorrow is the last day of WorldCon, there’s one more panel featuring Robin Hobb that I’m definitely planning to attend, other than that I’ll play it by ear.