Apollocon in the rear view mirror

Forgive my tardiness in posting these shots taken at last weekend's Apollocon in Houston. I'd claim that I was too busy to post them, but too many people out there know better: I'm simply lazy. One disappointment was the absence of the ever-entertaining Bill Crider, who had to cancel out because of the recent diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in his wife, Judy. We're all pulling for you, Judy.



I didn't arrive until Saturday morning at the convention, and had some time to kill before my first panel. So I ended up talking with Monkeybrain mastermind Chris Roberson about setting up a Wiki to deal with worldbuilding notes and the like for various writing projects, the fact that emails weren't getting through in regards to the upcoming Armadillocon Writer's Workshop and Interzone. After running through the various panels I was scheduled for that day and having absolutely nobody show up for my reading (except for Martha Wells. Instead of reading, we just BSed through my alotted time) I made it up to the various parties going on, and ran into John Moore.



Since the evening rapidly became a blur, I won't even try to figure which party individual photos were taken at. Suffice to say, it was either at the Fencon, Space Squid/RevolutionSF or Armadillocon soirees. I chatted with editor David Hartwell and physicist John Cramer. Hartwell told fascinating stories about his experiences with Phil Dick and James Tiptree, Jr. Cramer talked about quantum entanglement and retrocausality, and my head exploded. Staggering over to the next party, I encountered Chuck Siros and Lawrence Person livin' la vida sofa.



Hartwell gets some editorial pointers from Steve Wilson of Space Squid and RevolutionSF fame. And really, what SF convention would be complete without a roving band of drunken, singing pirates?



Above we have Tim Miller of Fencon fame. Sadly, Tim was not seen wearing his Tim the Enchanter headpiece this year. Also present was Elze Hamilton, best known for her photo documentation and blogging about various Texas conventions.



Sunday I finally caught up with Kim Kofmel, one of the prime movers-and-shakers behind Apollocon and an increasingly significant presence behind the scenes at Armadillocon as well. Since she was slowly going insane from putting out fires at the con, I was able to talk a little with Kathryn Cramer. I've read her blog off and on for years--even before it was a nexus of socio-political-geo-revolutionary controversy. She confessed that she didn't know what she was going to do with the blog, since it'd taken on such a bizarre life of its own and she now figured prominently in several conspiracy theories circling the globe. So instead we switched gears to lighter fare, and traded rants about how Creation Conventions have pretty much fouled the waters for every other genre convention in the world by setting really, really bad precedents in regard to guest relations, fan relations and overall greed. On that happy note, I bade my farewells and went home, shamed by all the brilliant writers I interacted with over the weekend and vowing to be more productive myself in the weeks and months ahead (don't you just love conventions?).