I arrived at the Westin Hotel in Boston on Friday the 18th just as the convention was getting underway, and spent some time checking out the dealer room and saying hello to new arrivals. I did manage to attend one panel: "The Man Who Sold The Moon," featuring Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop stalwart Steven Popkes and Ian Randal Strock among others. The panelists veered back and forth between talking about private space development and talking about Heinlein.
The rest of Friday was taken up by a long dinner with the rest of the CSFW, then a tour through some of the bid parties and room parties before retiring.
On Saturday the 19th I managed to see one other panel, "The Future of the City" featuring the convention's Artist Guest of Honor Roger Dean. It was very interesting, and I plan to do an entire blog post inspired by it soon.
Then the mighty CSFW group reading, at which seven (count 'em! seven!) writers read short works or excerpts. I note without false modesty that mine was the only work written specifically for the occasion.
When that ended I hustled over to serve on another panel about going "Beyond Dice and Hit Points" at which we discussed the roots of roleplaying game mechanics in wargames, the reason cards never really made it as a game element, and the intriguing possibilities of diceless and "sheetless" games. Nearly all the panelists agreed that in the end, it's the caliber of the players and gamemasters that really matters.
I had a little time off after that, and then joined Dan Kimmel and Walter Hunt at the autographing table for the most pointless autograph session ever. Given that the signing area was literally as far away from the dealer area as it was possible to get without actually leaving the hotel, there wasn't much traffic. Still, I had an enjoyable time chatting with my two fellow guests, without any pesky fans bothering us about signing books.
After another break for dinner, I moderated the "Innovation Starvation" panel, riffing off Neal Stephenson's essay of the same name. All four panelists more or less agreed that we aren't in the middle of an innovation drought -- despite a cover story in last week's Economist asking the same question. We did talk about why people might believe that situation exists, and what (if anything) science fiction can do about it.
Wrapping up the day's serious literary events was the panel on Parasites and Zombies. As the designer of Parasites Unleashed! I was able to furnish lots of Fun Parasite Facts. There was a fair amount of discussion over the precise definition of a zombie, the issue of Slow vs. Fast Zombies, and whether any kind of zombie makes sense as anything but supernatural fiction.
The rest of the night was devoted to Building My Brand as an author by going to parties and bragging.
On Sunday I woke up early (certainly earlier than most of the people who were still partying hard when I went to bed). My only panel of the day was "Home-Based Business and Children," about balancing family life with working from one's home. The panelists enjoyed numerical superiority to the audience, but we soldiered on for the full time slot.
And that marked the end of Arisia 2013 for me, even though the convention had another 24 hours to run. I was concerned about getting home before the Patriots playoff game traffic immobilized all roads around Boston.
Overall: high marks. With the exception of the autographing fiasco the convention was very well-organized and enjoyable. I'll be back next year if they'll have me, and then maybe I'll even have a novel to sign.
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