A Story of Coincidence and Chance

Image: MInicon Con Suite signage done in intentional 60s/70s style.

MInicon is going to stop putting me on panels. I managed to miss another one yesterday (Saturday.) I would say through no fault of my own, but that would be a lie. I made the very intentional decision that I wanted dinner that was more than a gobbled con suite sandwhich.The only "to be fair to me" part of this equation is the fact that I had a solid block of panels fro 5:30 pm until 9:30 pm and no dinner break. Still, I probably could have made it work with a little inguinity. (Voice over: Readers, she did not.)

But, we'll get to that part of the story in a minute.

I got to the convention yesterday some time just afternoon again. Since the Con Suite seems to be the hang out and find people to chat with place at Minicon, I wandered over there with the secondary thought that more coffee is, for me, never a bad idea.I know many people for whom "more coffee" is a terrible idea or for whom it quickly reaches the level of a terrible idea, but I am one of those lucky souls who can--and do--drink caffeinated coffee right up until bedtime.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the person I ran while looking for coffee wascaffeine! He was sitting with a bunch of folks that I either did not know or did not know well. As it happens, my favorite thing about cons is talking to the people I have not yet me who might be awesome. And they were! Names, of course, now escape me, but there was a mustache that I shall never forget! Very curly! Very Salvador Dali!

I had a lovely chat for a good long while with everyone there about various Apple+ shows we'd seen and now I have a recommendation to try to watch Ascention, a mini-series about a generational ship. This rather highly specific conversation that started because I had brought up the Elon Musk character type that you find in science fiction novels of a certain type, often newer SF/cyberpunk--although, not always, as I would argue the Charlie Stross's Manfred Macx from Accelerando (2005) reads as Musk-like, even though it may pre-date the Real Life version's heyday. At any rate, that got me remembering For All Mankind, an alternate history series that I absolutely adore--at least the first several seasons of. Alas, unfortunately, one thing that hasn't aged well is that it has a Musk analog, though at least the character in For All Mankind is Black. (I have a hard time finding other people who have seen it because Apple+ is not as popular a streaming service, despite the fact that it has a lot of good, originally produced SF like Silo and, of course, Murderbot.)

caffeinemeantioned that he felt I was missed on the cyberpunk panel. He felt one of the panelist was of a type that he thought I would have been a good counter to. Well, poo. Again, it was a choice I made? I can't really regret that one, though. Shawn's 59th birthday comes around only once!

At some point, despite really enjoying the company and the corresponding conversation, I decided I should probably move along and so I wandered off to check out the dealer's room. I ran into Anton P. again and he wanted to introduce me to the bookseller who is going to be at Quantum Con, so we could figure out a way to have some of my books at there. (Look at me, reminding people about this con again!!)

We made our way slowly around the room, stopping first to chat with Greg Ketter, who was staffing the Dreamhaven Books & Comics table. Greg, as you may know, went viral right after Alex Pretti's execution and so one of the things I got from him was a donation for Da'Wah Institute, a local mosque that I regularly patrol (even still.) Da'Wah is having a lot of finanical woes thanks to Operation Metro surge and is running a fundraiser: https://www.gofundme.com/f/stand-with-minnesota-dawah-institute-during-a-difficult-time. Greg is not a fan of the GoFundMe model and so we arranged for me to pick up an actual direct donation. He told me a little bit about all the other causes he's been giving money to and how weird it is that people are STILL just randomly sending the store/him $20-$100 bills, sometimes with no note at all.

I managed to not buy anything in the Dealer's Room, despite being sorely tempted by a woman who makes these absolutely incredible spider brooches. I just ran out to the car to see if I was smart enough to grab one of her business cards, but, alas, I was not. If I remember to today, I will, so you all (at least all of you who are not spider-phobic) can look at these amazing objects d'art.

Then, I need to confess that I have some very dear friends, Laurie and Cate, who I run into who at cons, during the resistance, etc... (and I think because god hates me)... I always, ALWAYS flub their names. For some reason, in my head, I always want to call Cate, Cat, and Laurie, Laurel. It's annoying. I tell you this as a confession of my sins in the hope that the universe will absolve me and I CAN START GETTING IT RIGHT. Because I was talking to Anna W. and Anton and they came up to chat. I went to introduce them and completely fucked up their names again. Gods, I love for that to never happen again. (Voice over: Readers, she will do it again, later, in this very story.)

I finally went to my first panel around 4:30 pm and it was "Greg and Naomi are Still F*cking Angry." This was basically a panel for collective healing from the trauma many of us are feeling around the federal occupation that was ICE. Despite (or maybe because) of that, it was a really good panel. For those of you unfamiliar with Minicon or Twin Cities are fandom, there was ZERO push-back. Not one question from the audience of the "but aren't you all domestic terroritsts?" or "but we need to get rid of criminal immigrants, right??" variety. Not one. THIS is largely why the metro area of the Twin Cities was NOT the city/cities to fuck with. It is not 100% blue, but it is REALLY 99.9% blue here.

rant/

As a side-note. I do think it's funny in a sad way that everyone on our side who talks about this tends to forget Saint Paul and suburbs like Columbia Heights (where Liam, the Bunny hat boy is from) and will use "Minneapolis" as a short had for where EVERYTHING happened (sometimes even while filming in front of the SAINT PAUL capitol building), and, ironically, the more inclusive term for all of us is "the metro area" which fucking Trump and his cronnies got right when they called their evil, "Operation Metro Surge."

/mini rant

Anyway, my point? A good panel. Well with it.

Then, I had a panel with Naomi at 5:30 called "Evil Overlords." That one was fun, but I will admit that other than writing about Morningstar/Lucifier, I don't have a huge amount of personal experience writing about Evil Overlords. The good news is that GoH Pat Wrede does. I happen to know thatnaomikritzerproposed this panel, in part, to make sure that Pat had a chance to talk about her newest novel The Dark Lord's Daughter. This panel was also an excuse to introduce a new generation to Peter's Evil Overlord, aka "The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I were an Evil Overlord" list: http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html We almost got off the rails when someone brought up some real life evil (again, why do people do that?) but the heart of the audience member's question was actually about how one DEFINES evil, generally, and so we were able to wrestle it back to true before everyone started to implode over the morality of the bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The panel I skipped in favor of dinner with Lois McMaster Bujold and Naomi Kritzer (the sheer number of Hugo awards I dined with was astronomical!) was "On Writing Badly." As I noted to the two of them, I guess I know a lot about that since my career has utterly tanked? I will have to ask around, but I sort of presume the panel was not about writers who suck at writing, but more about how important it is to allow first drafts to suck, etc.

The final panel of the evening was "Reading Dystoria vs. Living Dystopia" which turned into a very lively discussion, despite the fact that it STARTED at 8:30 pm. Again, Naomi moderated. Adam Stemple andpegkerrwere on the panel with me. Peg started us off in a good direction talking about how writing the fan-project Alternity surprised her by how many responses to an evil overlord (Voldemort in this case) used in the local response to Metro Surge that they predicted. Naomi asked us what we thought dystopia novels and stories got wrong in comparison to Real Life Dystopia and what they got right? A lot of the responses to the first question seemed to revolve around the fact that none of us expected evil to be this obvious and this stupid. Books and other media have prepared us largely for smart and clever evil. I tried to talk a bit about the fact that I feel like one of the things that books about dystopia get wrong is the idea that it takes someone special (or with a special McGuffin, like the One Ring) to resist. This met with some push-back (and not necessarily wrongly) from the audience who wanted to argue that the Hobbits were supposed to represent ordinary people. I agree with that? My issue is that Frodo did inherit the One Ring, so it's not like he stepped up JUST BECAUSE. He was called because he had the McGuffin and had to choose to be a hero. Most of the people I know who faced guns with whistles were ordinary people, some in their pajamas, who decided that evil simply must be stopped right here, right now. I think I made my point better when I suggested that a way to think about it is how different a triology LotR would have been if the first town that the Nazgul stopped at looking for "Baggins" simply grabbed their whistles and formed a human chain saying, "We don't know any Baggins, but we will not let you take them!"

Because that's what happened here, in essence.The Nagzul showed up and we said, "We see evil and we are willing die to make sure that it does not spread."

Obviously, that didn't fully happen yet, but that was what the vibe of our response was.

ANYWAY. That very naturally led to me hanging out in the con suite way too late, drinking coffee with a dear friend who was a former A.I.M. member, and swapping "war stories" from the ICE raids. (Side note: my friend obviously generally has more expreience facting down Federal Agents and it made me feel weird about the work I've done for the resistance. Like? Was I brave enough? Does any of it count if I never saw an ICE agent FOR CERTAIN? Of course, in the morning light, I see that all actions against fascism are acts of bravery, but it is so weirdly easy to turn this into a heirarchy of activism.) 

Right! Well, that got long! Apologies for that. I'm off now to hopefully hang out with a friend who I played a journaling RPG with. I started the project, mailed it to Poland, and then the person in Poland mailed it to this friend who wrapped up the adventure. So, I haven't seen the finished project. I have one panel today that I am moderating called "Second Book in the Series." I'll let you know tomorrow how all that goes!