WorldCon/ChiCon '12 Day 3: Con Crud Apocalypse

THERE HE IS!!!

Started the day feeling that tickle in the chest that preludes 'con crud'. That generic sick people tend to get after being surrounded by thousands of others from around the world for days at a time.  Decided to attend a couple of seminars on apocalypse literature. The first one had Jason Sizemore, Karen Burnham and John Hertz on the panel for "Is the Apocalypse such a bad thing?"

 Somewhat dull but some interesting points were brought up. The apocalypse of the dinosaurs led to us. In literature, the classic story "Childhoods End" had the literal end of the world but the evolution of mankind to a higher state.  Also mentioned was 'Ender's Game' where humanity committed genocide against an alien species for our own survival. An interesting social aspect was a British commenter regarding the common use of firearms in end of the world stories as 'right wing'.

The next panel I attended was "Looking forward to the post apocalyptic world" w/ Elizabeth Bear, Sean Mead, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Kameron Hurley and Jeanne Cavalos.

This was a much more lively discussion at the beginning w/ discussions about just what types of apocalypse would be beneficial, how much infrastructure damage could be handled, the classic wide knowledge base of 'survivors' in the various stories, how most of us would be the 99% of victims etc. John Mead also referenced people going to their library for the Foxfire series of books. Then politics started being brought up. One individual on the panel, who at the beginning had criticized the bigotry and racism involved in colonialism then went on a tangent on how she unfortunately had canning in common w/ 'those people'.  'Those' being 'survivalists in the middle of Nebraska. Hmm. No bigotry or racism there. All the other traditional stances on 'global warming', 'peak oil', etc. were brought up over and over pretty much killing the fun feel of the seminar it had started with.  Afterwards, I spent about an hour talking w/ John Mead who was a ANG vet.

Found on the message board:

Spent awhile talking w/ some old friends and then got shanghaied into helping set up trays and food for the after Hugo awards supper.  After all the food I had eaten in the ConSuite, I certainly had no issue w/ helping out. After that I spent till about 3am talking w/ people I hadn't seen in 20 years plus some new friends. 


Good day overall.

WorldCon/ChiCon '12 Day 1

WorldCon/Chicon Day 2: Orbital Mechanics Don't Apply

WorldCon/Chicon '12 Day 4: The Pile of Hamsters Disperses