Anticipation – Day 4
After a late night, perhaps starting off Sunday morning with a session on Putting Philosophy in SF wasn’t the best option for a fuzzy brain, but by the time the coffee kicked in and the panel led by James Morrow warmed up, the session turned out to be quite interesting despite getting a touch heavy at times.
 The second session that John and I teamed up to go see was Writing for a Livingheadlined by George R.R. Martin. The panel discussed the number of trials and tribulations they’ve had throughout their career and how they’ve managed to keep their careers going. Howard Tayler (Creator of Schlock Mercenary) gave a great personal history of the choices he’s made throughout his career and how heavily influenced they were by his desire to maximize time with his family. George R.R. Martin recounted his rise in the sci-fi world until his most ambitious novel The Armegeddon Rag, while a great novel, was  ”a total commercial disaster” that sent his career spinning.  After a couple of subsequent books finding no support he found his way to Hollywood and wrote TV scripts for The Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beastfor much of the 80′s, only to make a comeback in the 90′s with his Song of Ice and Fire series and as editor of the Wildcards series. Catherynne Valente also gave a wonderful perspective on how she has used a number of different avenues to keep her writing career afloat during years she hasn’t sold a novel.  Two interesting approaches she has taken are to post stories online one chapter at a time and have readers ”pay what you think it’s worth” via PayPal, and her subscription based Omikuji Project in which she sends a short story (only available to subscribers), artwork and other ephemera to the subscription list with one lucky member receiving a unique gift each month.  The panels varied backgrounds, perspectives and means of keeping their writing careers alive and thriving was very interesting and entertaining to take in. John was pleased to have had the opportunity to meet George R.R. Martin afterwards.
The afternoon saw the dealers room stirred into a frenzy as Neil Gaiman and his entourage whisked in to do some unplanned signings for dealers and fans that were in the room. Unfortunately the closest we got to Neil was a quick exchange with one of his attachés who said, “Neil is coming around to the dealers to sign stuff, get anything you have for him to sign ready!â€, followed 10 minutes later by “Neil has run out of time, sorry, he won’t be by.â€Â So all I’ve got is this photo of him signing someone else’s book 
  Fortunately, Andrew’s son Harry got to meet him at Monday’s scheduled signing and got his copy of The Graveyard Bookinscribed with a very cool graveyard scene doodle by Gaiman.
As an added bonus, later in the day David Kyle(co-founder of the Gnome Press, publisher of the first hardcover editions of Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, Conan series, and other greats like Clarke, Heinlein and Simak) came by the booth to browse and enjoy Andrew’s collection of Gnome Press books which, as Kyle put it, were ”in the best condition I’ve seen in years”. This is about as big a compliment as one can receive coming from the man who published them over 50 years ago and has been part of the Sci-fi/Fantasy scene for over 70 years (the man just celebrated his 90th birthday!).  David Kyle was a pleasure to meet and I snapped a great shot of him and Andrew discussing the famous map of Cimmeria (designed by Kyle) that graced the endpapers of the original Gnome Press Conan’s and subsequently included in many Conan publications.
That evening I decided to go see the Hugo Awards and was fortunate enough to line up early (alongside Sci-fi scholar Amy Sturgis who was wonderful to chat with) and found a decent seat for the show. The Hugos were more entertaining than many award shows with the crowd in full support of the winners and the acceptance speeches short and well spoken. Gaiman won the big prize for The Graveyard Book and the rest of the winners have been posted here.
Looks like this was a really wonderful time. I’m kinda kicking myself that my wife and I couldn’t scoot of Ottawa for a few days to take it in ourselves, but schedule-wise it just didn’t work. So, I get to live vicariously through photos and recaps such as yours.
[...] E. Howard’s Conan stories—several of which we had on display. Mr. Kyle commented that they were “in the best condition I’ve seen in yearsâ€, which was a better compliment than I could have wished for. It was a huge pleasure to talk with [...]