Sasquan was my first Worldcon, and it turned out to be quite the doozy for this first-timer.
When we arrived on Thursday, the place wasn’t on fire, but smelled and looked like it. The nearby wildfires in central Washington were sending up smoke, and the wind conditions blew that smoke right across and into Spokane. It was noticeable on Thursday, and progressed to downright apocalyptic levels on Friday.
This was the sun on Friday morning. I took this right outside the convention center, and there’s no filter on that image:
By lunchtime on Friday, it smelled like you were standing next to a particularly smoky campfire. By the late afternoon, you couldn’t walk around outside for more than a minute or two without your eyes starting to burn, and deep breaths would make you cough. By dinnertime, it was practically dark, you could see the car headlights cutting through visible smoke at ground level, and you could start smelling the smoke intruding even into air-conditioned buildings.
I did hear plenty of “Smokane” jokes, and someone said that this was the first Worldcon to be held in Mordor. People were walking the streets with masks on their faces or scarves wrapped around their noses and mouths. We stayed mostly indoors all day.
This was also Robin’s first Worldcon, and the first time she’s been to an event with me as Author Wife. She hardly ever gets to dress up for anything, so I think she greatly enjoyed that aspect of the trip in particular. Here’s a shot of two goobers in their Friday night finest before heading out to dinner:
The dinner on Friday was thrown by 47North, my publisher. They had reserved a private room in a nice local restaurant. And check out my dinner neighbor for the evening:
That would be Mr. George R.R. Martin. We had a lovely chat over some excellent food, and if you had told me that the con was over at that point and we’d have to go back home the next morning, I would have considered it a great success. Great food, lovely people, and a fun evening all around.
Robin with my editor Adrienne, thanking her profusely for not beating me with a sock full of nickels for turning in the latest Frontlines novel four months past deadline.
On Saturday, I spent my morning signing books and having brunch with the 47North crew while Robin did SpaCon back at the hotel. Then we met up with a friend for lunch, and in the afternoon, we both attended the 47North “Meet the Authors” event back at the con hotel. By the time the Hugo ceremony rolled around, we were both dead tired and not in the mood to change quickly and rush back to the convention center, so we sat out the ceremony and had a nice leisurely dinner with a friend. (I checked my phone for Hugo news near the end of our meal, and learned that THREE-BODY PROBLEM had won for Best Novel, which pleased me immensely.) After dinner, we saddled up the rental and drove to GRRM’s Hugo Losers party, which was held in a super-nice mansion in town. By that time, Robin was definitely running on fumes, and we had a flight out at 9am the next morning. I briefly considered suggesting to her that she skip the party and just hit the hay so she wouldn’t be traveling across the country on three or four hours of sleep the next day, but she wanted to come along. And it’s a good thing she did, because the party turned out pretty epic.
Robin and I with some friends from Germany, Simon and Damaris. They run the bookstore in Berlin where I did my reading in June, and I was happy to catch up with them at Sasquan and introduce them to Robin.
So we were at the Hugo Losers party, mingling with old and new friends and generally having a good time, when GRRM had a special surprise for us. He brought out a table full of trophies made from 1950s hood ornaments which he called the Alfies, after Alfred Bester, the winner of the inaugural best Novel Hugo in 1953. George started giving them out to various people who would have been on the ballot without the slates, especially in those categories where the nominees all came from the slates.
And then he awarded one to Annie Bellet, who withdrew her short story from the ballot the same day I withdrew my novel…and I thought to myself, “Self, he may call you up there too.” The room was packed with people, many of them authors and editors of works you’ve probably read, and I basically had two or three minutes to think up something to say that wouldn’t make me look like a giant jackass. At that moment, I was pretty glad that we had decided to take the rental over to the party and I didn’t get hammered before getting to the mansion.
Long story short, I too got called up to the podium by George R.R.Martin a few minutes later, to absolutely deafening applause and cheers. And then he handed me this:
One of only eight Alfie Awards in existence.
It was a surreal and lovely experience, and we talked about very little else on the trip home and most of the week after. It’s humbling and immensely joyful to be on the receiving end of so much goodwill and kindness from my peers and mentors in the industry. I may be able to add more awards to the shelf in the office in the future, but I doubt that anything can ever top this one.
