Jeff Duntemann's Contrapositive Diary

At Denvention 3, at the Denver Convention Center. I used to hit just about every worldcon or NASFIC, but my life got a lot more complicated in the mid-80s, and the energy I used to put into writing SF began to go into computer books. Then when Keith and I kicked off our own publishing company, yikes! So I haven't been to a Worldcon in 8 years, and haven't been to a con at all since the 2005 Windycon when ISFiC Press launched The Cunning Blood.

It was nice to be back, and it took me awhile to discern why: This is a Worldcon of Unusual Size, which is to say, small enough not to exhaust me with its hugeness, but still big enough to draw old friends from the far corners of the country into a single graspable space. Why it wasn't more popular is a puzzle; Denver is a Huge City of Unusual Size (HCUS) too, small enough to not overwhelm but large enough to be quirky and interesting. It's also one of the cleanest and most beatiful huge cities in the US, followed by Seattle and then (perhaps) Chicago, both of which suffer incresingly from size and congestion. I'm getting to be more of a small-town guy as I get older, and in my perspective even Denver is a shade big for permanent residence, but if somebody bombed Colorado Springs, I'd probably just scoot up I-25 and stay here. (Pete Albrecht continues to worry about us moving to Nebraska, but I've grown mighty used to dry climates since I first discovered them in 1987.)

I got here Thursday about suppertime and checked into the Westin Tabor Center, which has great beds and showers but lousy soundproofing, and perhaps the noisiest plumbing of any major hotel I've ever visited. This morning I awoke to a sequence of three showers, one to either side of me and then another above me. I know, I know, I'm an Insomniac of Unusual Sensitivity (IUS) and waking me up doesn't take much. The toilet tank refilling made a sound that should be sampled for a film involving spacecraft of unusual propulsion systems (SUPS) which is odd, considering how gutless the low-flow flush process itself proved to be.

But the first item on the agenda was the Flying Pen Press premiere party over at the Tattered Cover Bookstore, at which Jim Strickland would be reading briefly from his second novel, Irreconcilable Differerences. The book is terrific and I'll post a detailed review here shortly; I want to read it again now that I have it in paper. But it may establish a brand-new subsubgenre that I might as well call “cyberbilly,” which is to say, cyberpunk in the small-town American heartland. Jim reads fiction well for an audience, and while most of the other books presented left me cold, I was left giggling by a short snippet read from David Boop's new book, She Murdered Me wth Science, which, well, defies description. David has done time as a stand-up comic and it shows, and the event as a whole reminded me that I've read my own work in front of an audience precisely once, and need to practice a little.

Yesterday morning I finally got down to the convention proper, and started running into people almost immediately; first Eric Bowersox, then Alex and Phyllis Eisenstein, then Bonnie Jones, Kelley Higgins, and (later) Bill Higgins. I had lunch with Mike and Alice Bentley, and eventually collided with Jim Strickland and his wife Marcia Bednarcyk. We camped out on one of the nice sofas set near the autographing tables and ended up spending the rest of the afternoon there, hashing out the issues of how the SF publishing business is changing, and how writers of insufficient reputation (RIR) can take advantage of the changes we're seeing. “Write more!” was Eric's completely incontestable answer (directed primarily at me), but tonnage, while important, is not sufficient. The issue remains open, but I got some great insights from both Marcia and Alice Bentley, who works part-time for Studio Foglio and pays attention to other small and very small press operations in this industry. There may not in fact be a general solution to the problem, but being more visible among the people who read your kind of material is something that kept coming up. This (obviously) leaves less time for actually writing it, especially for guys like me with Unusual Sleep Requirements (USR) but as with almost any system of many equations, there's a sweet spot on the curve somewhere. The main challenge is just finding it.

I'm about to go back over there and see what else may be going on. I have a couple of sessions marked with stickies in the nicely-implemented pocket program, but I will be heading home again later this afternoon. A little con goes a long way with me, but as Worldcons go, I have so far enjoyed this one a great deal.

Well, we're not hobbits but we're back—having returned late yesterday afternoon, a whole week later than we thought we would, but we just didn't get as much done out in Chicago as we had to in the four weeks we'd allowed. The trip was hot, but dry; we saw no rain all the way across a route we now would know blindfolded. The weather broke a little by the time we got to Ogallala, and so we decided to take a day to recuperate on the clean sand shores of Lake McConaughy. It was a little hotter than I'd like, but the water in the shallows of the south shore was 83°, and even out up to my neck my little Kodak photography thermometer showed 74° down off my right hip.

We started out on the north shore, but the flies were out in force, and after less than an hour we packed the puppies and the chairs back into the car and drove around to the south shore. We stayed there most of the rest of the day. I flew my supposedly cranky parafoil kite, but in the strong breeze off the lake it performed flawlessly, almost skyhook-style, sitting stock still at 200' while pulling my 80-pound test line so hard the line was humming loud enough to hear above the racket from the ubiquitous jet skis. Carol and I swam while QBit and Aero watched, distressed, from the shore. They were willing to frolic in the water if we frolicked with them, but when we went out to deeper water for some simple swimming, they sat on the sand, dodged waves, and whimpered.

While filling up at the local Shell station for the last stretch home, I spotted the item at left used as a traffic barrier. It was about waist high. I've seen these before, mostly larger and piled up on shorelines as breakwaters, but I've never been able to determine what they're properly called. They're not exactly caltrops (they have two points too many) but they're clearly related, at least structurally.

There was high overcast our last day on the road, and even though the temps were in the mid-90s, the lack of glare made the driving a great deal easier. We got back just in time to dinner with Laurraine Tutihasi and her husband Mike Weasner, who were on their way to Worldcon in Denver from Tucson. We knew Laurraine from our Rochester NY days 25+ years ago, and Mike is the Web's leading authority on Meade ETX telescopes.

About an hour after parting with Laurraine and Mike, a carload of friends also on their way to Worldcon arrived, this time from Chicago, to spend the night and then head up to set up Steve Salaba's huckster table early this morning. Now, I'm a black belt car packer, but I have met my match, and then some: There wasn't a wasted cubic centimeter in that minivan. There was just enough room in the back seat for one person, blocked in on all sides by coolers and shelves and boxes of plush puppets and stuffed animals. (Note the “Bambi butt” that worked its way out of an overstuffed box toward the left.) It's not how I would have chosen to travel to Worldcon, but Steve, Bonnie (shown), and Eloise are all Worldcon pros from way back, and rotated positions in the vehicle often enough so the person in back didn't get suicidal.

We were away from Colorado Springs during the worst heat spell in several years, and when we got in the front door the temperature was 85 degrees, and the air rich with plasticisers and solvents still being driven from the woodwork. It was hot for awhile while we cranked open every window to get some less toxic air through the place, but it had to be done. I'll willingly admit that I'm still exhausted from our trip, but we're recuperating, and one more good night's sleep should do it. Then, probably Thursday morning, we're off to Worldcon ourselves, if not for the whole stretch then at least long enough to see Nancy Kress again (along with numerous other friends we used to see every Worldcon) and get a sense for what the SF convention scene is like these days. We used to go to Worldcon almost every year, but eventually real life intervened. I have a soft spot for Denver Worldcons; at Denvention 2 in 1981 I had two stories on the Hugo ballot. I lost, of course, but wow: What a rush that was!

It really is Nebraska. It just feels like Hell. As we pulled into North Platte about an hour ago, the 4Runner's outside thermometer read 108°. And outside, well, we're reminded of a mild summer's day in Scottsdale, except with three times the humidity. In short, uggh.

We're on our way back to Colorado Springs from almost five weeks in Chicago. We got our new niece Juliana baptized and almost everything else on our substantial do-it list done, but it took more time and energy than we thought.

Just like, well, always.

We spent last night in Newton, Iowa, the former home of Maytag, back when there still was a Maytag. The hotel we stayed in was awful enough that I will issue an all-points avoidance notice: Whatever else you may do to abuse your body, mind, or soul, do not stay at the Newton, Iowa Holiday Inn Express on 4th Street. Unless, of course, you wish to confront:

• Mold growing on the walls. Not the bathroom walls, either. The walls in the main room.
• A hole in the ceiling. It was too dark to see where it went, but it was about 1 1/2″ in diameter and looked like it had been poked with a piece of pipe. (This makes you wonder what the ceiling was made out of.)
• Wireless Internet that did not work, would not connect, and kept giving me weird error messages. At least it was free.
• Carpeting that smelled like dead fish or ocean bilge. Or both.
• Stale Raisin Bran at the breakfast bar.
• Coffee (again, at the breakfast bar) so bad I couldn't force a second cup down.

You've been warned.

Now, we like Nebraska and have been here a lot. However, there is a local weirdness I'm seeing that I don't entirely understand: Mid-grade gas is cheaper than regular. Gas is generally a bargain here, especially compared to Illinois. Why Plus should be 15c a gallon cheaper than the low-octane mix remains a puzzle.

We're going to stop at Lake McConaughy tomorrow morning (it's about fifty miles west along I-80) but if the heat remains as bad as it was today, we may dunk and run the final 275 miles to the Springs rather than spend the day. There's no shade there, and at some point I just can't deal with long periods in that kind of heat, lake or no lake. We won't know until we get there. I'll keep you posted.