matrixrefugee (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
matrixrefugee) wrote2005-02-19 11:58 pm
matrixrefugee) wrote2005-02-19 11:58 pm
Entry tags:
More Boskone Fun...
As soon as I posted the entry about Boskone, I remembered a few things I had failed to mention:
--Orson Scott Card.... he's a multi-Hugo and Nebula award-winning writer and was Boskone's guest of honor. I tried reading his "Enchantment" in preparation... but I just couldn't get into it for some wierd reason, even though it's a retelling of one of my personal favorite fairy tales, namely "Sleeping Beauty" (My other favorite is "Beauty and the Beast"). I liked his "How to Write Fantasy and Science Fiction", which helped me start learning the craft (but I'm afraid it's since been eclipsed by David Gerrold's much more readable "Worlds of Wonder"). Thus, I missed his Guest of Honor speech. (If his public speaking is anything like his books, maybe I didn't miss much.)
--Overheard Conversations: At places like this, it's hard not to accidently listen in when people are talking, specifically in places with as much traffic as the Dealer's Room.
Of course I can't (and shouldn't) repeat this conversation verbatim, but I'll share the gist of it since it was interesting.
The convo involved two women and a man sitting at a table in back of where I was standing with my head screwged around while I was reading the titles on the books in a bookcase at another dealer's booth...
They'd started out by commenting on the Unitarian convention/gathering-thingy taking place the Very Same Weekend. Then the man (a big balding character with a white goatee beard, looked like a cross between Santa Claus and a devil) pointed out all the times that a wedding had been scheduled in the same hotel, the same weekend as Boskone. One of the two women, an average-looking lady in her middle years, jokingly mentioned one year when the bride at one of these weddings had been standing in the hallway, glaring at the Boskone-goers and griping about all "the freaks". The second woman, a heavy-set earth-mother type, added that it might be fun for some convention-goers to plan to have their wedding *at* the convention. The fella added another slant on the convo: religous ceremonies at conventions; they've had Shabbath ceremonies for the Jewish con-goers, and circle rituals for the Neo-Pagan/Wiccan members, they'd even had a Catholic Mass. He mentioned one time when a fundamentalist Pagan had started yelling at a group of Catholics having Sunday Mass, but he himself had intervened, telling the crazy "Hey, leave them alone: this is their circle, this is their sacred space."
I love it when people defend other people's faith after some wacko has snarked at it. I probably should have turned around and shook the man's hand for being open-hearted towards other people's faith.
--Orson Scott Card.... he's a multi-Hugo and Nebula award-winning writer and was Boskone's guest of honor. I tried reading his "Enchantment" in preparation... but I just couldn't get into it for some wierd reason, even though it's a retelling of one of my personal favorite fairy tales, namely "Sleeping Beauty" (My other favorite is "Beauty and the Beast"). I liked his "How to Write Fantasy and Science Fiction", which helped me start learning the craft (but I'm afraid it's since been eclipsed by David Gerrold's much more readable "Worlds of Wonder"). Thus, I missed his Guest of Honor speech. (If his public speaking is anything like his books, maybe I didn't miss much.)
--Overheard Conversations: At places like this, it's hard not to accidently listen in when people are talking, specifically in places with as much traffic as the Dealer's Room.
Of course I can't (and shouldn't) repeat this conversation verbatim, but I'll share the gist of it since it was interesting.
The convo involved two women and a man sitting at a table in back of where I was standing with my head screwged around while I was reading the titles on the books in a bookcase at another dealer's booth...
They'd started out by commenting on the Unitarian convention/gathering-thingy taking place the Very Same Weekend. Then the man (a big balding character with a white goatee beard, looked like a cross between Santa Claus and a devil) pointed out all the times that a wedding had been scheduled in the same hotel, the same weekend as Boskone. One of the two women, an average-looking lady in her middle years, jokingly mentioned one year when the bride at one of these weddings had been standing in the hallway, glaring at the Boskone-goers and griping about all "the freaks". The second woman, a heavy-set earth-mother type, added that it might be fun for some convention-goers to plan to have their wedding *at* the convention. The fella added another slant on the convo: religous ceremonies at conventions; they've had Shabbath ceremonies for the Jewish con-goers, and circle rituals for the Neo-Pagan/Wiccan members, they'd even had a Catholic Mass. He mentioned one time when a fundamentalist Pagan had started yelling at a group of Catholics having Sunday Mass, but he himself had intervened, telling the crazy "Hey, leave them alone: this is their circle, this is their sacred space."
I love it when people defend other people's faith after some wacko has snarked at it. I probably should have turned around and shook the man's hand for being open-hearted towards other people's faith.