The World Science Fiction Convention is colloquially known as WorldCon. The 2006 WorldCon was hosted by L.A.con IV in Anaheim, California. This was my first WorldCon, and it was a lot of fun.
I left Wednesday, August 23, after work. My companions for the drive were Howard Tayler, the professional cartoonist behind Schlock Mercenary; Spencer Ellsworth, a friend from one of my writing groups; and Kimball Larsen, a friend of Brandon Sanderson. (Brandon drove down earlier in the day with another group of Utahns. You can read the saga of organizing rides for everyone here.)
Our group broke up the drive by staying overnight in Las Vegas. We hit a breakfast buffet in the morning and then continued on to Anaheim.
Some highlights of the trip:
- Meeting up with several of my Writers of the Future co-authors: Ken Scholes and David W. Goldman from Volume XXI, and Andrew Tisbert, Ken Brady and Jason Stoddard from Volume XX.
- Hanging out with several Codexians: the aforementioned Spencer Ellsworth, Ken Scholes, and David Goldman, plus Lawrence M. Schoen, Christina Kinnan, Elaine Isaak, Matt Rotundo, Jenny Rae Rappaport, Robert J. Defendi, and John Pitts. Various combinations of us got together at various times for various meals.
- Seeing several of the major authors I had just seen the weekend before at Writers of the Future.
- Spending Friday afternoon making the rounds of L.A. bookstores with Brandon and his agent, Joshua Bilmes, so Brandon could sign the copies of his books in stock. Joshua was kind enough to answer my questions and share his knowledge about the publishing business.
- Attending Lawrence’s reading of one of his hilarious Amazing Conroy stories, and then later going to the launch party for his Conroy book Buffalogenesis.
- Going to the Writers of the Future ice cream party put on by Galaxy Press and chatting with various GP people who had been too busy to talk much during the WOTF festivities the week before. I found out that the two anthologies I’m in are going to be translated into Turkish, which will be my first publication in a foreign language.
- Having lunch on Saturday with Stan Schmidt, editor of Analog, along with David Goldman and Amy Bechtel. Stan asked us all to be more prolific in writing stories for his magazine.
- Attending my first Hugo awards ceremony. The Hugos are one of the two major awards for science fiction and fantasy, the other being the Nebulas. I’m sorry to admit that I hadn’t read most of the nominated works, but I had seen the winners in short and long film (a Doctor Who Episode and the film Serenity, respectively.)
- Attending various parties and meeting people throughout the whole convention.
Sunday morning, Howard, Spencer and I began our long drive home. (Kimball went later in the rented car. For an explanation of that, see the saga of organizaing rides linked to earlier.)
Overall, it was a long and tiring weekend, but a great experience.
Next year’s WorldCon is in Japan, so I will not be going unless through some incredibly unlikely sequence of events I get nominated for a Hugo. But two years from now it will be in Denver, so I’ll be going to that one.