15 December 1997: Inherit the Con

Monday, 15 December 1997:

Inherit the Con

Well, I've got just about all my Xmas stuff wrapped, packed, ready to ship-or-whatever, and so forth. And just in time, too; even though I write in this journal nearly every day, it hadn't quite registered that it's already the fifteenth of the month. Somehow, for shipping purposes, it still feels like the tenth. Hm. I do this every year. Well, back in school when I flew to my folks' for Christmas, I'd often do my shopping on the 22nd and 23rd. I'm better than that, now!

Tonight I read about a third of James P. Hogan's novel Inherit The Stars, which is the book for our SF book discussion group for next month. (I skipped the discussion this month; didn't feel like socializing. Still don't, right now, but since I'm hosting the next one, I can't really miss it!) This is the third time I've read ITS, and it's one of my favorite SF novels. Yes, it is rather embarrassingly male-centric, and its characters are decidedly flat, but it's a great piece of scientific theorizing and reasoning, and is only 200 pages long, so it gets to the point quickly.

I've spent a bunch of time the last several days posting to the Minicon mailing list, as plans for the 1999 (yes, over a year from now) con are quite controversial in their effort to focus the con and rein in the general chaos which has made it (for me and some others) less and less fun over the last couple of years. Many people feel exactly the opposite - that Minicon today is exactly what they want - and intensely dislike the proposed changes. So there's a lot of shouting going on, and a lot of lack-of-listening. I'm not involved with the con's organization, and I defer to the people who have been officially put in charge of the thing, but although I don't entirely agree with their approach myself, I think overall it will make for a much improved con.

Oh, yeah; plus the fact that I just like to jump in and argue sometimes. Grin!

Michael Rawdon (Contact)