Scotland

Worldcon has been a dizzying whirlwind, and I don’t just mean the wind-and-rain-swept tarmac between our hotel and the exhibition center! There’s been a lot going on, starting with a table talk and then a well-attended and -received panel called “Lost Wonders of Science Fiction.” The original title was “Dead-Ends of Science Fiction,” because it was about common tropes (psi, flying cars, personal spaceships, rugged individualists farmsteading the planets, etc.) that were once common but have largely fallen by the wayside. I hinted to the program committee that a more enticing title might be “Lost Wonders,” and they agreed. It was lots of fun, and many people came forward to accept Reefs of Time beer coasters from me at the end.

We put a good deal of energy into finding our way around a particularly incomprehensible building layout, thwarted by nearly nonexistent signage and the con’s decision not to print paper maps, instead telling us to use downloaded maps on our phones. (In fairness, the online maps undoubtedly provided by the exhibition center weren’t much help even when printed out.) Despite this, positive energy abounds, and everyone seems to be having a good time. I have worried in the past about the aging of the SF readership, but here there’s an excellent turnout of younger fans. At the same time, I’m noticing the absence of many of the older writers I used to see routinely at cons.

Interstellar the movie: When I saw it, I didn’t really notice that much of the score was organ music, played in fact on a great pipe organ in a church! I learned this when organist Roger Sayer—a bona-fide church organist, who helped compose and performed the music for the film—gave a presentation, an organ concert that featured some space-oriented classical pieces, plus a compressed version of the Interstellar score. I’m not ordinarily the biggest fan of organ music, but this was pretty amazing.

Speaking of amazing, I’ve just come from a wonderful concert by the Worldcon Philharmonic Orchestra, which sounds like maybe a fan orchestra, but actually was a genuine philharmonic drawing on musicians from a variety of Scottish symphony and session orchestras. It was all SF and fantasy-oriented pieces, ranging from “Tam O’Shanter” to “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” to “Saturn” from The Planets to Star Trek and Star Wars medleys. It was fantastic!

The most surprising moment came when I walked past a panel in the art show, looking at some lovely cover paintings for Aliette de Bodard’s books. I asked the man standing there if he was the artist, Maurizio Manzieri. He said yes, and then he looked at my name badge and exclaimed, “You’re Jeffrey A. Carver!” I laughed and asked if my name was familiar to him. “Of course!” he said. “I painted the cover to La stella che cambiò [the Italian edition of From a Changeling Star]!” I gaped in astonishment. That was back in 1990, and I’m not sure I ever knew who the cover artist was. But he remembered it at once! At that moment, my daughter walked up, and she snapped this picture of us. Edit: Well it turns out (see comments section below) that Maurizio didn’t paint that cover, after all. But he did recognize my name when he saw it, and thought he’d painted something for me. That’s almost as good.