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Farthing Party recap
Well, Farthing Party plus surrounding events. Panel notes will be sketchier than my usual standard, as I missed roughly half of them and was too busy enjoying the other half to take many notes.
Friday:
The trip to and through BOS was uneventful and not problematic and the flight was fine. Unfortunately I arrived at the part of YUL's transborder terminal that's built long enough to reach the actual US border, or at least it feels like it when walking in from the gate.
I did walk fast enough to beat the "rush" (a half-empty CRJ-100; some rush) to the immigration desks, and once I got through those my bag quickly arrived at the carousel. I headed out to the curb and bought my Aerobus tickets, then caught the 1105 in to downtown, making it to the hotel at about 1130....
...and discovered that the room wasn't ready and wouldn't be until 1400-1430 or so. (Check-in time was 1500, so that wasn't actually unreasonable, just grumpy-inducing.) Having already missed the lunch and museum group that left at 1100, I figured it was worth getting a tourist day pass to the Metro and poking around town. I checked out the Palais des Congrès which is the Worldcon bid facility; there are several food options, and I tried Noobox for lunch. Quite tasty and not too expensive, either. I then puttered around the city for a couple of hours before heading back to the hotel to check in and sit down for a bit.
I joined the 1600 gaggle headed to Maple Delight, where we were joined by the original 1100 group as well. Good news: neat people and tasty ice cream. Bad news: my cell phone rang...work call. Bah. Took care of that, chatted some more, and then we all headed back toward the hotel to form dinner parties, each of which could head out to a restaurant.
And we did, as it turned out, all head out to a restaurant: Shambala, a Tibetan place on the next block over from the hotel. We swamped them, and quite literally ate them out of both beef and cheese momos (dumplings, very similar to jiaozi/gyoza/pot stickers).
After returning to the hotel, we gathered in the small bar area for a while, and even started a game of Settlers of Catan before they closed and kicked us out. Since it was the travel edition, though, we just picked up the board and everything and moved to a table in the lobby to finish the game.
Thus ended the first, or perhaps zeroth, day.
Saturday:
Program began at 1100. Needing food beforehand, I headed out to the ATM at Banque Sous-l'échafaudage[1] a block away. No luck. I meandered downhill toward UQAM and the central coach station, and eventually found an ATM that liked my bank card. I returned and found a restaurant I'd wanted to try based on the restaurant reviews posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
farthingparty; I had apparently rolled an almost-hit on my "meet people for breakfast" skill roll, since ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
papersky and many others were just leaving. This was at least confirmation that the place was a good choice, and it was; a lovely croque-monsieur later, I returned to the hotel happily fed.
[1] What Google's translator gave me for "bank under scaffolding"; this was the famous Secret Bank that nobody could find even when standing in front of it.
The first panel was the Good Read panel, which I was part of and enjoyed very much. It prompted me to re-read Deep Wizardry and to read both Mary Lawson's Crow Lake and Nevil Shute's Kindling, neither of which I had previously read. Crow Lake was interesting partially because I went at it with SF reading protocols, which meant that I was finding incluing where the author had no apparent intention of doing any. The odd and unintentional cross-connections between books (self-sacrifice in Deep Wizardry and Kindling, for example) were decided bonuses and I'd love to be part of a similar panel again.
After that, the next panel (one track means never having to say "why can't I see both") was Introducing People to SF. This was lots of fun, and included a wonderful tale of a hand-sell of Farthing ("Do you like mysteries? Do you like English country mysteries? Well, you'll probably like this....") and other techniques. The discussion moved around a bit, and at one point came to John Barnes via Orbital Resonance. I offered my incompletely-remembered version of this quote byjames_nicoll (my rendering was something like "There are two kinds of John Barnes books: those with fisting and those without. Sadly, it is never marked on the covers which is which.") which managed to knock over tnh. Credit/blame james_nicoll for that, though, since it was his observation.
(Aside: damn, but I miss the old USENET.allbery just posted this musing on community, which says many things I had not really managed to put into words.)
The panel after that was my other program item, "The Undefended Borders of SF". I'd made some notes beforehand of particular works and categories I wanted to mention, so that Unknown magazine would get its appropriate namecheck without slipping my mind at the worst possible time. We ranged from magic as technology (Waldo and Magic, Inc. and Operation Chaos having somehow managed to slip my mind when I was making the notes, sigh) through to some of Ted Chiang's short stories (science fiction where the science is Biblical cosmology or even theology), the Vlad Taltos books (fantasy trappings, SF underpants), and so on.kate_nepveu, who'd been scheduled to be on this panel, was definitely missed.
My program participation taken care of, I then needed food. Badly.tnh had a wonderful-smelling burger from Frite Alors, so jonsinger and I headed there to get lunch. After a good lunch and great conversation (lasers!) we returned; we'd missed the Awards panel and I had to skip "Issues in Farthing" to avoid spoilage. (My to-be-read pile is rather well stocked, so it's in good company: Rainbow's End, Dzur, Glasshouse....)
When that panel ended, the accretion of dinner groups commenced. As with the previous night, multiple groups descended upon the same restaurant; this time, though, there were only two groups (with a total of about half as many people) and we arrived at the Indian restaurant not long after they'd opened for dinner. (I didn't note the name but it may have actually been "Nouveau Delhi".) I had the chicken version of the specialty of the house which I can't remember the name of, but it was pretty good. (Lots of tomato.)
Due to somewhat slow service to our table (group of 8) it took longer to get out than we'd planned, but I was still back to the hotel not long after the party started. There was a cash bar (CAD3.25 for a can of Coke, but at least it was Canadian Coke so it had real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup), some small tables, and comfy chairs. I had a nice talk with René Walling which wound up with me buying my pre-supporting membership in Anticipation, for which I have some anticipation. Heh.
Several cards were circulated to send to those who were sadly missed. I tried drawing a shark, but if there was any actual resemblance to one it was purely coincidental.
I went to my room and brought down the games bag, getting together a game of St. Petersburg followed by a 5-player game of Bang! The latter resulted in a total Sheriff team victory, as both the Sheriff and the Deputy survived to the end. I, as the Renegade, had been quickly dispatched. The game ended and we all went off to bed so the hotel could close up the room.
Sunday:
The sad day for me, as I had to leave early. I was able to go to the first program item, "Joy of Reading", which had plenty of both. Wonderful selections, well read. As with any good example of this type of panel, I left with a list of books to add to my to-be-read pile (see above). I missed so much after that...I will have to re-read "The Vitanuls" but it won't be the same.
After that panel I checked out of the hotel, caught the 1135 bus to the airport (arriving at about 1200), and proceeded to encounter the Lines of DOOM. In order: check-in kiosk, bag "drop-off" (actually just getting your checked bags tagged), boarding pass check before the Last Chance Duty Free Shop[2], US immigration and customs, boarding pass check before the checked bag drop-off, security checkpoint (complete with the Table of Seized Liquids).
[2] Which was extremely quiet. I think it had something to do with the fact that over 50% of their stock is liquids. I bought chocolates—without liquid centers.
Arrival time at the concourse: 1300...for a 1405 flight, and I hadn't eaten lunch yet. I was very glad I hadn't taken a later bus.
Lunch was procured at Burger King, where the bilingual menu board featured the BK MEGAPOISSON on one side, and the much more prosaic BK BIG FISH on the other. I didn't see any golems.
My flight was delayed and left around 1500; I was home at about 1715, and proceeded to spend my evening doing server upgrades.
Despite the truncated nature of my experience offarthingparty, I had a great time and would love to do it again.
Friday:
The trip to and through BOS was uneventful and not problematic and the flight was fine. Unfortunately I arrived at the part of YUL's transborder terminal that's built long enough to reach the actual US border, or at least it feels like it when walking in from the gate.
I did walk fast enough to beat the "rush" (a half-empty CRJ-100; some rush) to the immigration desks, and once I got through those my bag quickly arrived at the carousel. I headed out to the curb and bought my Aerobus tickets, then caught the 1105 in to downtown, making it to the hotel at about 1130....
...and discovered that the room wasn't ready and wouldn't be until 1400-1430 or so. (Check-in time was 1500, so that wasn't actually unreasonable, just grumpy-inducing.) Having already missed the lunch and museum group that left at 1100, I figured it was worth getting a tourist day pass to the Metro and poking around town. I checked out the Palais des Congrès which is the Worldcon bid facility; there are several food options, and I tried Noobox for lunch. Quite tasty and not too expensive, either. I then puttered around the city for a couple of hours before heading back to the hotel to check in and sit down for a bit.
I joined the 1600 gaggle headed to Maple Delight, where we were joined by the original 1100 group as well. Good news: neat people and tasty ice cream. Bad news: my cell phone rang...work call. Bah. Took care of that, chatted some more, and then we all headed back toward the hotel to form dinner parties, each of which could head out to a restaurant.
And we did, as it turned out, all head out to a restaurant: Shambala, a Tibetan place on the next block over from the hotel. We swamped them, and quite literally ate them out of both beef and cheese momos (dumplings, very similar to jiaozi/gyoza/pot stickers).
After returning to the hotel, we gathered in the small bar area for a while, and even started a game of Settlers of Catan before they closed and kicked us out. Since it was the travel edition, though, we just picked up the board and everything and moved to a table in the lobby to finish the game.
Thus ended the first, or perhaps zeroth, day.
Saturday:
Program began at 1100. Needing food beforehand, I headed out to the ATM at Banque Sous-l'échafaudage[1] a block away. No luck. I meandered downhill toward UQAM and the central coach station, and eventually found an ATM that liked my bank card. I returned and found a restaurant I'd wanted to try based on the restaurant reviews posted to
farthingparty; I had apparently rolled an almost-hit on my "meet people for breakfast" skill roll, since papersky and many others were just leaving. This was at least confirmation that the place was a good choice, and it was; a lovely croque-monsieur later, I returned to the hotel happily fed.[1] What Google's translator gave me for "bank under scaffolding"; this was the famous Secret Bank that nobody could find even when standing in front of it.
The first panel was the Good Read panel, which I was part of and enjoyed very much. It prompted me to re-read Deep Wizardry and to read both Mary Lawson's Crow Lake and Nevil Shute's Kindling, neither of which I had previously read. Crow Lake was interesting partially because I went at it with SF reading protocols, which meant that I was finding incluing where the author had no apparent intention of doing any. The odd and unintentional cross-connections between books (self-sacrifice in Deep Wizardry and Kindling, for example) were decided bonuses and I'd love to be part of a similar panel again.
After that, the next panel (one track means never having to say "why can't I see both") was Introducing People to SF. This was lots of fun, and included a wonderful tale of a hand-sell of Farthing ("Do you like mysteries? Do you like English country mysteries? Well, you'll probably like this....") and other techniques. The discussion moved around a bit, and at one point came to John Barnes via Orbital Resonance. I offered my incompletely-remembered version of this quote by
james_nicoll (my rendering was something like "There are two kinds of John Barnes books: those with fisting and those without. Sadly, it is never marked on the covers which is which.") which managed to knock over tnh. Credit/blame james_nicoll for that, though, since it was his observation.(Aside: damn, but I miss the old USENET.
allbery just posted this musing on community, which says many things I had not really managed to put into words.)The panel after that was my other program item, "The Undefended Borders of SF". I'd made some notes beforehand of particular works and categories I wanted to mention, so that Unknown magazine would get its appropriate namecheck without slipping my mind at the worst possible time. We ranged from magic as technology (Waldo and Magic, Inc. and Operation Chaos having somehow managed to slip my mind when I was making the notes, sigh) through to some of Ted Chiang's short stories (science fiction where the science is Biblical cosmology or even theology), the Vlad Taltos books (fantasy trappings, SF underpants), and so on.
kate_nepveu, who'd been scheduled to be on this panel, was definitely missed.My program participation taken care of, I then needed food. Badly.
tnh had a wonderful-smelling burger from Frite Alors, so jonsinger and I headed there to get lunch. After a good lunch and great conversation (lasers!) we returned; we'd missed the Awards panel and I had to skip "Issues in Farthing" to avoid spoilage. (My to-be-read pile is rather well stocked, so it's in good company: Rainbow's End, Dzur, Glasshouse....)When that panel ended, the accretion of dinner groups commenced. As with the previous night, multiple groups descended upon the same restaurant; this time, though, there were only two groups (with a total of about half as many people) and we arrived at the Indian restaurant not long after they'd opened for dinner. (I didn't note the name but it may have actually been "Nouveau Delhi".) I had the chicken version of the specialty of the house which I can't remember the name of, but it was pretty good. (Lots of tomato.)
Due to somewhat slow service to our table (group of 8) it took longer to get out than we'd planned, but I was still back to the hotel not long after the party started. There was a cash bar (CAD3.25 for a can of Coke, but at least it was Canadian Coke so it had real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup), some small tables, and comfy chairs. I had a nice talk with René Walling which wound up with me buying my pre-supporting membership in Anticipation, for which I have some anticipation. Heh.
Several cards were circulated to send to those who were sadly missed. I tried drawing a shark, but if there was any actual resemblance to one it was purely coincidental.
I went to my room and brought down the games bag, getting together a game of St. Petersburg followed by a 5-player game of Bang! The latter resulted in a total Sheriff team victory, as both the Sheriff and the Deputy survived to the end. I, as the Renegade, had been quickly dispatched. The game ended and we all went off to bed so the hotel could close up the room.
Sunday:
The sad day for me, as I had to leave early. I was able to go to the first program item, "Joy of Reading", which had plenty of both. Wonderful selections, well read. As with any good example of this type of panel, I left with a list of books to add to my to-be-read pile (see above). I missed so much after that...I will have to re-read "The Vitanuls" but it won't be the same.
After that panel I checked out of the hotel, caught the 1135 bus to the airport (arriving at about 1200), and proceeded to encounter the Lines of DOOM. In order: check-in kiosk, bag "drop-off" (actually just getting your checked bags tagged), boarding pass check before the Last Chance Duty Free Shop[2], US immigration and customs, boarding pass check before the checked bag drop-off, security checkpoint (complete with the Table of Seized Liquids).
[2] Which was extremely quiet. I think it had something to do with the fact that over 50% of their stock is liquids. I bought chocolates—without liquid centers.
Arrival time at the concourse: 1300...for a 1405 flight, and I hadn't eaten lunch yet. I was very glad I hadn't taken a later bus.
Lunch was procured at Burger King, where the bilingual menu board featured the BK MEGAPOISSON on one side, and the much more prosaic BK BIG FISH on the other. I didn't see any golems.
My flight was delayed and left around 1500; I was home at about 1715, and proceeded to spend my evening doing server upgrades.
Despite the truncated nature of my experience of
farthingparty, I had a great time and would love to do it again.
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Actually, as I imply in that article, it's not my rule but Pete McCutchen's, a well-known Republican apologist on rasf*. While I view as a slightly more polished version of Clayton Cramer, I'm not going to take credit for his bon mots.
The suggestion that we ear-tag Tor editors is mine, though.
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You know, usually when a woman ends up on the floor because of me, the cause turns out to be my fondness for dramatic gestures combined with my total lack of depth perception.