The lingering aftereffects of my cold have finally stopped. My congestion is gone: no more Sudafed, cough medicine or NyQuil are required. I can even feel my brain jogging back online.

Happy Memorial Day for all my USAan friends, and best of everything to the rest of you. It's good to be back.

Originally posted by abyssandapex at Wikihistory rides again!

At the "Ebook Decision" panel I got a lot of great ideas there from Brenda Clough. She suggested mini-anthologies (five stories) on themes like steampunk or military SF. They've been great financial successes for her group. Awesome: I can already think of which A&A stories I can start on with that.

Mary Turzillo and I hit it off really well, so I invited her to the café. Since another writer I was acquainted with and enjoyed reading--Geoffrey A. Landis--was hanging around, I invited him too, scarcely believing my good fortune: two people I admired! Turns out he and Mary are married. We all spent our lunch hour over coffee; the new friendship with Mary was a highlight of my weekend.

It was time to check my emails in the lobby, but I ended up having visitors. Authors I'd published, New York genre friends, people I'd only known online, authors interested in submitting to A&A and others dropped by. And all too soon, it was time for the banquet. So I donned my formal wear and stowed the laptop.

There was a hour of milling about near the mobile bar before the banquet opened and I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of SF writer Cynthia Felice. You know that scene in MIB where the applicants are all contorting themselves into uncomfortable chairs and Will Smith just drags things around until he can fill out his paperwork comfortably - other peoples' opinions be damned? That was me, pulling a heavy lower console table out from under a higher one, so Cynthia and I could sit while we gabbed and sipped our wine. She's a great person.

Then it was time. Now I've never gone to a Nebulas banquet before, and I had no idea how the seating worked, but the last thing I expected was to be told I was not on the list. It seems that when they removed my husband from the seating arrangements they removed me by mistake. I had a ticket but nowhere to sit. After a hasty consultation I was placed where a cancellation made an opening. I ended up between Cynthia Felice and Geoff Ryman, who won the Nebula for Best Novelette.

I hope someone posts Walter Jon Williams' toastmaster speech on YouTube. It was hilarious, especially the accompanying PowerPoint presentation. Then there was the sober In Memoriam list of those who left us in 2011. The awards followed, and Cynthia accepted a posthumous Solstice Award on behalf of Octavia Butler. The full list of who got what is all over the blogoshere, but my main problem was that I loved so many of the works that I found myself rooting for several people for each award.

I had planned to leave right after the ceremony, but there were so many friends to say goodbye to, so many bits of business to finish up, people to congratulate, and so many things to talk about that I stayed rather later than I intended. I was considering to come back Sunday, but when Mary Turzillo asked, "Why ever would you do that?" I looked at the Sunday schedule and realized she had a point.

So I returned to my in-law's house in Fairfax. I have the usual stack of business cards with notes scribbled on them: send this agent recommendations, send that author a story from the A&A archives we'd been talking about, check into this, set this up, do this, do this, do that. But all that can wait. I spent Sunday resting and visiting with "Mom and Dad."  I'm rested, over the cold (thanks to Zicam - that stuff is amazing), and I want to go home to show my husband all the cute baby pictures of him I got from his mother.

I'm sure he'll be thrilled.

To let the Zicam do its antiviral thing I stayed home Friday until the mass signing at 5:30 PM. So I missed having an astronaut give a group tour of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and a three-hour workshop on building a better website. So disappointing.  I returned at 5:30 PM for the mass book signing and did a few autographs and sold copies of The Best of A&A.

The Reception was next. There was an inner-city prom next door: their event had thumping loud music. Our event had speeches as the Nebs nominees got pins and the GOH/Grand Master got a gift. A paper thin wall between the events made for an interesting ambiance: it sounded like hip-hop at a dignified press conference. (This was not the only snafu from the Hyatt Regency Crystal City: they also overbooked by 20-30 people who were farmed out to various other hotels. Rick Lovett, for example, was shunted 30 minutes away by taxi.)

But the food was good. People nibbled hors d'oeuvres sipped drinks, and talked. I saw David who runs the WFCs, and recommended Mondolithic studios to him for the art for the upcoming WFC in San Jose. He's very interested. I met A&A author Genevieve Valentine and she was very nice in person. I spent time with with Ferret and his wife, and the Weekend's organizer Peggy Rae, Rachel Swirsky and hubby, and too many authors and editors to mention. 

When done with the reception I was also one of the first people in the consuite. (The niiice quiet consuite, where there was no hip-hop!)  Lawrence Shoen followed soon after and we had a talk about finding our spouses in midlife where I kept referencing research from my dating books. We had a rapt audience, which ended up including John Scalzi.  Kinda hard to top that. I made my farewells and went back "home"  to my in-law's place in nearby Fairfax, VA.

Why yes this is a photo of Mark Robinette Kowal giving her talk at the Nebula's kick-off scotch tasting. Myke Cole was playing monkey in the middle - with panache. To the left you can find John "I'm Tweeting This" Scalzi, who brought a ukelele and provided minutes of lovely background music.

To hear a ukelele solo, I need to return today. Which I will do, as soon as my Dayquil kicks in. Yes, Brian stayed home so as not to infect his elderly parents with his cold/flu.

Evidently, he delegated that task to me. Must pack Lysol wipes so I don't turn into Con Crud Mary.

I wish you the best success in placing your story elsewhere. In the future please put the actual title of your story in the subject line: I thought your story was cleverly titled "Your title here."

*headdesk*

Although Gregor Macdonald takes a negative view, his discussion about a recent TED talk/debate is fascinating reading.

Although here in America we tend to dumb down complex subjects into simple 'Either-Or' arguments, it was useful to hear the Gilding vs Diamandis debate at TED. In addition to their respective presentations, they had an onstage exchange which you can see here, hosted by Chris Anderson.

One of the major default lines between cornucopian technologists like Diamandis, and thinkers like Gilding, is the role that technology plays in the creation and extraction of resources. In ecological-economics, technology helps us extract resources. But, for folks like Diamandis, technology creates resources. It is both a distinction without a difference and also a distinction with a huge difference, depending on your perspective.

And the implications, depending on that difference, for the future price path of commodities, for inflation, for industrial growth are enormous. Read the rest here.

One of the largest orchid growers in the world is in nearby Newberry, SC - less than an hour away. 

How cool is that? I predict a day trip there, soon.

Please, please don't underestimate Southerners. If nothing else, in my soon-to-be three years here, I have learned, as my extraordinarily Southern dentist likes to say, "Just 'cause we talk slow doesn't mean we think slow." Not hardly. (This dentist, by the way has the most incredibly state-of-the-art practice I have ever seen: not just digital x-rays--a rarity in NY--but also his own computer-modeling crown manufacturing machine and LED "miner's light" and magnifying eyeglasses he wears while working in your mouth. He routinely gives me high-tech extras like fluoride treatments for free. And he has a huntin' dog named Bo.)

Another great example is my husband's friend Al. My Brian fixes legacy computers for his clients and Al owns a computer repair and recycling shop. His store is in downtown Columbia. Al is a white guy in a gentrified black neighborhood near three black universities - who all love him since he fixes their computers inexpensively and employs some of them at a decent wage, way above the minimum. He has his storefront, his home behind it, and wanted to build a steel building for his recycling operation. But the town, smelling blood in the water (business man! Deep pockets!) told him he could not build his steel building unless he paid for a fire main they wanted to go under the highway out front, so they could provide fire service. Now at this point State Route 321 is a four-lane road with a 100-ft divider, so the fire main would have cost him a non-trivial $50,000. Despite the fact that his insurer thought this was unnecessary, the building department would not grant him a permit to put up his steel building unless he did this.

So he looked up the county code. It seems that if a facility like a manufacturing plant has a "fire brigade" they don't need local fire service. Al bought a reconditioned 1969 pumper truck for $2,000. He has a huge pond as a water source--a beaver damn on a deep, swift stream--and himself and his two grown sons who work there are the fire brigade. The city building department had no choice but to fold and give him his building permit. And Al and his family get to take the shiny fire truck out and ride it in local parades, which they say is a lot of fun.


1969 pumper truck.

On the other hand I am not saying that Southerners are all geniuses. Not by a long shot.