(Another) Update Rapido

First Worldcon:  done and done.  Overall, a great experience.  But (again) its late, so I'll make this update a quick one:

Friday:  some phenomenal panels, treating subjects such as creating consistent magic systems; writing fantasy outside of the classic, and overdone, medieval european setting; the existence of hope, or the lack thereof, in the zombie genre; and post-modern fantasy.  I went to the masquerade in the evening, which ended up being my worst decision of the convention; I was expecting a Phantom of the Opera-like party/performance, but was unpleasantly surprised by what seemed like a glorified costume contest :-s.  Out of a sense of (albeit fickle) politeness, I'll refrain from going into more detail on why the event didn't exactly appeal to me.

More panels on Saturday.  I eventually found some old friends from the Utah writing scene who run Elitist Book Reviews (a fantasy/science fiction review blog).  We had lunch with Dan Wells, and in the evening met up with Paul Genesse (both Dan and Paul are local SF/F writers who are starting to make fairly big names for themselves) to watch the Hugo Awards.

The Hugos themselves were actually rather disappointing as far as who I thought earned the awards went, although Lou Anders receiving the Best Editor for Long Form award was well-deserved indeed--Anders is doing a lot of great things for the genre right now.  I wouldn't mind creating a whole post on how the Hugo's went, along with a slightly more detailed account of my overall impressions from the convention.  Such a post may (or, as always, may not) appear in the near future.

Today (Sunday) was fairly low-key; the most interesting panel I attended, by far, discussed "Twenty Years of The Wheel of Time," (Wheel of Time being one of the most popular, and formative, fantasy book series since The Lord of the Rings).  Wheel of Time was essentially the first "epic" fantasy series that attempted to span more than three books, and opened all sorts of doors for the fantasy genre (similar to the influence the Harry Potter books are having on the YA genre right now).  The panel's discussion of the books was very interesting.  (I feel like this post is riddled with parentheticals; does anyone else feel that way?)

And now I'm back at my hotel.  Headed back to Provo tomorrow morning.  I'm ready to be home, but the past few days have been great.  Definitely worth it.

Anyway, that's all for now.  I have a few posts in the pipeline that I'm interested in discussing, from my thoughts on a recent article in the Huffington Post by Mark Charan Newton to some of my opinions on addiction and their most recent catalysts.  Hopefully I'll get around to actually posting them; they might end up being remotely interesting :-).

Ci vediamo!