Touching highlights
Aug. 11th, 2009 12:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
green_dreamsJust some quick impressions...
The couple that found each other in the lobby after the hotel shut down the Friday night parties (apparently the CBC mentioned the parties, failed to mention they were con-only). She seemed kind of shaky, and they were just sitting in a couple of the chairs, talking to each other and to a friend, and holding each other's hand. I wished I had a camera, but at the same time it seems like too private a thing to have been taking pictures of.
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The guy in the panel on horror--an older guy, I'm guessing maybe late fifties, sixty, something like that. The group got to talking to about good creepy stories, and he mentioned the second story in a Jack Vance collection, where Liam the Wayfarer meets Chun the Unavoidable...
Yeah. If you just shuddered and made that shaky aaaagh sound, you know what I did.
And recommendations continued--may toss up the list of them later--and he mentioned "Evening Primrose". It's a short story by John Collier, and I agreed that it was a good one. So I went to talk to him briefly afterwards; I thanked him for bringing up a couple of pleasant memories, and he said I was the only other person I'd ever met who read it.
And I said "Really? The short story--the one with the line about lovely Ella, pearl pressed down by creatures of a paler, deadlier white--tentacles!" and yeah, we were definitely talking about the same story. And I mean... it's a good story. It was published in 1940 and collected in '51, and I can't--I'm kind of sad to think that he's never met anyone else who's read it, and I don't think I have either. (And I'm going nuts trying to figure out where I read it--I've gone through a ton of older books, but usually nothing older than late late fifties.) And mostly I'm happy we each found someone else to talk to about it, as that is kind of one of the points of a convention.
Thinking, as well, that I have no idea how many enjoyable stories are quietly crumbling away somewhere. Dammit. I wonder if Fanac has something on that, though it seems a bit outside their purview...
Sondheim made a musical of it, by the way. Gonna check that out.
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In a similar vein, around three-thirty in the morning on Monday, post-Hugos, I'm hanging out in the con suite when a guy who might not have been old enough to be First Fandom stops by with his suitcase. And I go over to talk, and I mean, I picked up some neat stuff--apparently Fantasy & Science Fiction used to sell lifetime subscriptions for $25, although I can't for the life of me remember if he said he got it in '47 or '57. Also he gave me several manga recommendations, a description of a birthday party his local fan group had (party and then a Harry Potter movie and then stop by a restaurant with the remains of the birthday cake), the neighbourhood dog that hung around his suburbs... Just late-night rambling, mostly. Neat stuff.
The couple that found each other in the lobby after the hotel shut down the Friday night parties (apparently the CBC mentioned the parties, failed to mention they were con-only). She seemed kind of shaky, and they were just sitting in a couple of the chairs, talking to each other and to a friend, and holding each other's hand. I wished I had a camera, but at the same time it seems like too private a thing to have been taking pictures of.
=========
The guy in the panel on horror--an older guy, I'm guessing maybe late fifties, sixty, something like that. The group got to talking to about good creepy stories, and he mentioned the second story in a Jack Vance collection, where Liam the Wayfarer meets Chun the Unavoidable...
Yeah. If you just shuddered and made that shaky aaaagh sound, you know what I did.
And recommendations continued--may toss up the list of them later--and he mentioned "Evening Primrose". It's a short story by John Collier, and I agreed that it was a good one. So I went to talk to him briefly afterwards; I thanked him for bringing up a couple of pleasant memories, and he said I was the only other person I'd ever met who read it.
And I said "Really? The short story--the one with the line about lovely Ella, pearl pressed down by creatures of a paler, deadlier white--tentacles!" and yeah, we were definitely talking about the same story. And I mean... it's a good story. It was published in 1940 and collected in '51, and I can't--I'm kind of sad to think that he's never met anyone else who's read it, and I don't think I have either. (And I'm going nuts trying to figure out where I read it--I've gone through a ton of older books, but usually nothing older than late late fifties.) And mostly I'm happy we each found someone else to talk to about it, as that is kind of one of the points of a convention.
Thinking, as well, that I have no idea how many enjoyable stories are quietly crumbling away somewhere. Dammit. I wonder if Fanac has something on that, though it seems a bit outside their purview...
Sondheim made a musical of it, by the way. Gonna check that out.
========
In a similar vein, around three-thirty in the morning on Monday, post-Hugos, I'm hanging out in the con suite when a guy who might not have been old enough to be First Fandom stops by with his suitcase. And I go over to talk, and I mean, I picked up some neat stuff--apparently Fantasy & Science Fiction used to sell lifetime subscriptions for $25, although I can't for the life of me remember if he said he got it in '47 or '57. Also he gave me several manga recommendations, a description of a birthday party his local fan group had (party and then a Harry Potter movie and then stop by a restaurant with the remains of the birthday cake), the neighbourhood dog that hung around his suburbs... Just late-night rambling, mostly. Neat stuff.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-11 03:30 pm (UTC)I didn't. Because I don't know this story. Why is it waaaaaaghworthy?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-11 03:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-11 04:01 pm (UTC)