More Pi-con

For such a small con ( usual attendance is around 300 ), Pi-con had an excellent variety of events and program items. I was impressed.

Friday evening hubby and I attended a reading by award-winning author and guest of honor Jo Walton. She was very entertaining and not a writer we were previously familiar with. From now on we will definitely keep an eye out for her work.

Early Sat. morning we both attended a live demonstration of medieval sword fighting techniques. This wasn't your usual "stage" fighting; this was the real thing! Swordsmaster Steven Hirsch has studied texts of the time describing, even picturing, the actual techniques used---and they were pretty brutal.

We also attended some lively panels: NASA's 100-year plan for sending out starships, Star Trek's "attitude" toward the disabled, and several others. We sampled some of the rooms in "dealers' row". But one of the highlights of the con for us was the "rapid-fire reading" given by several members of Broad Universe---a group that I belong to, which is dedicated to promoting the work of women writers. Not only were the readings interesting, but we were able to get acquainted with some of my fellow writers.

Quite a few con-goers decided to leave Sat. pm due to Hurricane Irene; others, like us, decided to wait out the storm at the hotel and stay over one more night, which the Holiday Inn was very gracious about. Sunday turned out to be a really fun day. I attended a panel discussing e-books and self-publishing and publishing in general. Hubby went to one across the hall on 1960's SF movies ( his forte, not mine! )

A wrap-up/gripe session commenced at 3 pm and ran for about an hour and a half. We'd never attended one before as we usually had to head for home before then. Comments were overwhelmingly positive. And there were several first-time Pi-con-goers besides ourselves.

Instead of closing shop at that point and leaving the over-nighters to their own devices, the con committee scrambled to come up with additional panels. And very thoughtfully, the con suite, where free food and drink were available, stayed open to accomodate the remaining fans. We attended a very entertaining spur-of-the-moment panel discussing "Babylon 5", one of our all-time favorite TV series, the one credited with inventing the arc storyline. That panel was one of the best at this con.

We really didn't want to leave Pi-con, but perhaps the best thing of all was discovering a "new" convention, dedicated to geeks like us, that was close enough to get to by car, and that was small, friendly, and welcoming. We made some new friends and really look forward to seeing them at next year's Pi-con!

That's a wrap!

MRTighe