My notes are full of random story things for myself and several bits of amusement that are non sequiturs. Also there was so much amazing food eaten I will not even try cataloging that. So. Con report, panel report, whatever. I think everyone who’s been to more than one con knows that some of the best parts are having a meal with someone you’ve been missing for months, or walking along getting to know someone you’ve never met who has a great deal in common with you, or things that can’t be put into a con report. Therefore: panel notes, and paraphrasing of them. I’m going to try to be careful about listing things by people’s names, because I know that some people who go to Farthing have had issues with family or professional stuff with their names online, so when I am concerned that it might not be okay with them and yet the comment really needs attributing, I will use first initials. This is more con report than I generally do and more than I will probably do in the future, but I have a friend who was supposed to make it to Farthing and could not, and I want to share as much of it with her as I can.
Of course in con notes, there are the random quotes I can no longer connect to anything. Debra: “If it’s good enough for 10% of Welshmen, it’s good enough for me.” Unrelatedly, Theresa: “I wasn’t sure if I was going to go with creeping fascism or ducks, but it was one or the other.” And Timprov: “Jack, you have debauched my Horta.” Oh, and me: “Nobody plays the banjo by accident, so you get to skip to once is enemy action.”
The Joy of Reading. This is the Sunday morning panel where people bring short things to read to make people laugh and think. I wrote down who read what in which order, and I’m pretty sure I got it all right, but corrections are welcome. We had excerpts from:
CJ Cherryh’s Cyteen
Ada’s forthcoming novel from Tor
a short uncollected John M. Ford story from Asimov’s
a bit of Eric Frank Russell comedy
Italo Calvino If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler
Meg Huchinson’s “Google Thinks It Knows Me”
some Charles Wright
some Sue Charmin Anderson
Jo Walton’s “The Baseless Fabric of This Vision” (which you can now read yourself on Jo’s new website)
Superman Miracle Monday
Tim O’Brien’s “How To Tell a True War Story”
Shamus Culhane’s thing about animation and inspiration
and a great deal of Edward Gorey’s The Unstrung Harp, which is the one about Mr. Earbrass writing a novel.
This list: it is a bit like saying who you had meals with in terms of conveying what it’s like. I really like the Joy of Reading panel concept as it plays out in a group like Farthing Party. (Possibly I would only like it at Farthing Party. I don’t know.) It’s cozy and companionable. I don’t have to like everything that gets read to like the fact of the reading together.
I’m hoping to condense some of the notes I have on actual panels so that it’s not one post per panel, but on the other hand, I’d rather just post this than leave it sitting around on my computer until I do more. So: more panel reports later.