Oh, World Con.
We just got back from a trip to Anaheim for the 84th annual World Con – the second year in a row I’ve gone. Last year, I managed to have a booth there for Liminal Fiction, and went to a number of table talks and got to meet some great folks. However, I got started late, so I wasn’t on any panels. And I felt a little out of my element the whole time.
Back in 2018, Mark and I went to the San Jose one, but only for a day and a half, and it was basically “in for a few panels” and then back out.
This year, for the first time, I felt like I actually belonged there. I knew a lot of folks from last year and from other cons and events that I attend, and I had my great core crew from Sacramento, Marvin, Greta, Bel, and of course, my husband, Marco, with me.
For anyone has never gone, World Con is a lot. There were more than 1,700 events to choose from over the five days, including panels, workshops, table talks, and other activities. At any given hour during the day, there were as many as 20 to 30 things going on, spread across the Anaheim convention center and the Hilton Hotel. It took me literally three hours to go through the entire online schedule.
And that doesn’t even count everything that goes on at Bar Con. For those who don’t know, Bar Con is an informal thing that happens at most fan cons – basically a gathering of folks in the bar area of one of the main hotels where a lot of friendships are made and a lot of business transacted.
So how did this year‘s World Con stack up? It’s… complicated.
The Dealer Room was fairly large, and I was thrilled to have my Sacramento friends there to help run the Liminal Fiction table. That said, it was basically in the basement of the Anaheim Convention Center’s North building, and there were no signs directing people on the main floor down to the dealer room.
In addition, from what I heard, traffic was down by about a third from last year, at least in part because of a lot of non-US conference goers who declined to attend this year. This was also evident on the Dealer Room floor, where there were twenty to thirty empty tables, presumably all of which had been sold at some point.
That said, the Dealer Room volunteers were lovely. We were quite happy with their support. But those two factors meant that traffic was substantially reduced over the five days from last year.
Sales wise, we did all right, but for comparison sold as much this last Saturday at the San Jose Book Festival as we did all five days at World Con.
There were so many panels, and I only managed to attend to the three I was a part of, because I was also working part-time for SFWA and running the Liminal Fiction table. But the panels that I was a part of were all fantastic, and we had some great discussions about queer fantasy, cities and ships as characters, and artificial intelligence. Last year I went to an AI panel featuring Neil Clark of Clarksworld. This year I was on a panel with him. 🙂
I was also happy to meet some amazing authors. I had dinner with David Brin, David’s lovely wife and daughter. and Gay and Joe Haldeman and I also got to meet – albeit very briefly – Robert Silverberg. I wish I’d been able to make a better impression!
And I met Daryl Gregory. He was a lovely human being, and I’m hoping to have him at the Nebulas again next year.
Part of my problem is that I haven’t read widely in mainstream sci-fi and fantasy for a while, so many of the big up-and-coming names are folks I don’t know. I’ll have to rectify that.
I also really enjoyed my time at the SFWA table, meeting volunteers and members and folks who were interested in realization. I found out that I knew a lot more than I thought I did about the organization, and that was one of the highlights of the con.
So how was World Con?
It was amazing. It was slow. It was fun. It was overstuffed with events and fascinating people.
And I hope I get to go again next year!