Bubonicon 42

Hey, Leo’s here. I see you have already met Rina. But she is not the only one posting on this blog. I will show up occasionally too. Like this time, with a report on the Bubonicon 42 science fiction and fantasy convention that took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a week ago: August 27–29.

The last day of the convention also happened to be the official publication date for my Pink Noise book. This was my first ever convention to which I was invited as a guest author, largely thanks to my friend Ian Tregillis, whom I met earlier at a Boskone and a Readercon, but whom I had known for much longer as a fellow member of the OWW (Online Writing Workshop). Ian is a member of the group writing the Wild Cards collaborative series of stories, edited by George R. R. Martin, and has recently had his first novel, Bitter Seeds, published by Tor. I was happy to bring my copy with me for him to sign.

Who knew I would have problem bringing my own books to the convention! The first printing’s shipment from India was delayed by the U.S. customs, who decided to select it for random exam. The date of the release kept shifting, from Monday to Tuesday to Wednesday, until it came to Thursday, the day before the convention. Early in the morning, I drove from my home in Massachusetts to Port Newark (New Jersey), where a Con-way Freight truck was scheduled to pick the cargo before driving it to my distributor’s (and fulfillment company’s) warehouse in Ohio, sometime between 12 pm and 4:30 pm, when the SalSon Container Freight Station closed for business.

Having arrived shortly after 12 pm, I set to wait. One hour later, no truck. Two hours, three hours later, still no truck. It was already past 4 pm, with less than half an hour for the CFS to close its doors. I ran the risk of showing up for my book’s debut without a single copy in hand.

Finally, the truck showed up. I had been planning to take a few boxes myself (to send the copies out to reviewers and to sell them from my own website directly), but it could not be done at the loading dock, for administrative reasons. So I had to wait until the truck was loaded and then had it stop a short while past the gate, where I took four boxes off right off its back. I wonder how it looked from the side; for a casual observer, the only thing missing was a gun in my hand.

When I arrived back home, it was already close to the midnight. Packing took time, so I only had about two hours to sleep before I had to drive to Boston Logan Airport for an early morning flight to Albuquerque. Needless to say, I arrived exhausted—but also exhilarated. From what I little I saw of the city (chiefly, the airport, the hotel at a walking distance from the airport, and the views of the city and the mountains from the plane), and despite the massive renovations at the hotel, it left a very good impression on me. It just felt sunny, calm, friendly.

Thankfully, I wasn’t on any panel that day, so I was able to take some rest (not much, though). I attended one panel: The Future’s So Bright: Perils of the New Future Novel, where I listened to Ben Bova, Steven Gould, Victor Milan, John Maddox Roberts, and Walter Jon Williams (as the moderator) talk about science fiction failing to predict cell phones and many other things. But ultimately, is our stories’ meat really in the predictions? I think all participants agreed that it was not.

The same day, I met with Steven Gould and Laura Mixon, my friends from the Viable Paradise, a speculative fiction writers workshop on Martha’s Vineyard, whom I hadn’t seen seen the 10^th workshop’s anniversary reunion (at which, by the way, my Pink Noise story started to take shape). Also on Friday, I met, for the first time, Ben Bova, with whom I was to be on two panels over the next two days. And, of course, I also met Ian Tregillis and Melinda Snodgrass, whom I knew since a Boskone.

On Saturday, I was on the Ray Guns To The Rescue: Fact & Fiction panel, with Kevin Hewitt, SM Stirling, Ian Tregillis, and Ben Bova as the moderator. It was an honor, and also somewhat intimidating, to share the table with several science experts on the subject matter, but I think I had something interesting to offer too. Overall, I think I managed very well.

I attended a few panels that day, including one on Steampunk and another one on the Singularity. I wish I had been on the latter one, rather than in the audience, though. It was quite interesting, with John Maddox Roberts, Melinda Snodgrass, Walter Jon Williams, Ian Tregillis, and another writer who replaced Laura Mixon (who didn’t feel well that day) but whose name escapes me now. I believe I had too much to say about it, indeed too much for a comment from the audience. But nevertheless, I found myself involved in a many-hours debate (outside the halls) with another member of the audience, until I missed the costuming contest almost entirely.

On Sunday, I was on another panel, Are We Not Alone: Resurgence of Little Green Men, with Ben Bova, David Lee Summers, Robert Vardeman, and John Maddox Roberts as the moderator. Here, I offered my own solution to the Fermi Paradox. Briefly: As shown by Ilya Prigogine, open systems far from equilibrium are more likely to continue self-organization, decreasing their entropy by exchanging it with their environments. This leads the ever-rising spiral of self-organization, from the formation of galaxies to that of stars and planetary systems, to the geological process, to the rise of life, to consciousness and intelligence, to the complex society dynamics, and who knows where hence. But since this is accomplished by returning entropy to the environment, the distances between the self-organizing entities grow (relative to their size) at every turn. Thus, enormous voids between galaxy clusters, even greater distances (relative to their size) between planets, and likely even greater ones between inhabited planets—and therefore, even greater ones between the planets that have developed intelligent life. So, even though we may not be the only ones out there, our closest counterparts may be very, very far away.

As we kept talking about aliens and about how to tell if they’re intelligent (complexity of behavior?), someone from the audience mentioned if we may encounter non-sentient (not self-aware) intelligent life—apparently, an influence of Peter Watts’ brilliant, but conceptually flawed, novel Blindsight (don’t misunderstand me, please! I love it dearly, and even voted for it for the Hugo’s; and I have had an interesting argument with Peter about the book’s message—but it’s wrong!). So it was that, for the first time, I offered my Pink Noise as being, in part, a response to Blindsight.

Shortly following the panel, I had a reading, which went very well indeed. I was surprised to see so many people come to a reading by a first-time author, especially given that the room was hidden at a crook of a “Vogon Bypass” created by the hotel renovations crew. I think I did well too, for the audience responded with many non-trivial, interesting questions. I was touched when one of the listeners told me she too had experienced some brain damage from a car accident.

When I later visited the dealers’ room to check on how my books were selling, I was delighted to hear them (the wonderful folks from Who Else! Books, Denver, CO) ask if I had more books in my room. So, I didn’t bring them all the way from Port Newark for nothing, then.