Going to Dragon Con each year is a lot like entering the blank territory on a map marked only with "Here be Dragons." In many ways each visit is uncharted and unchartable from year to year. The landscape constantly shifts and changes around us. One year, it may be the celebrity panels that catch our attention, the next there may be no one we want to see, but the concerts might be great. Or the writing and science panels might catch our eye. Or the gaming. Or just watching Dragon Con TV (yes, they broadcast 24 hours a day on the hotel convention channels for the entire convention).
Much of what we did last year had changed or was gone. Last year we really enjoyed the concerts and Dragon Con TV. This year they weren't as good. DCTV had less variety than last year, with a number of the funnier parodies missing (the best last year was one called T.R.O.O.P.S., a take-off on the TV show COPS from the perspective of the imperial storm troopers from Star Wars). Where last year there was a bumper crop of darkwave electronica concerts, this year's music was almost entirely heavy metal. Not our thing. The one exception was a violinist who was down among the band tables, each blaring a different dissonant song. As we neared the table, we could hear he was playing the most ethereal strains of music. His was the only CD from a new group we picked up. Even the drum circle was different this year. Where last year I would have described the dancers as the synchronous swaying of massed femininity, this year I would have to go with tribalism without tradition. Anarchy ruled the dance floor to the point where most of the professional belly dancers left in disgust because people refused to give them room and were disrupting their routines. But the drummers were still good. One guy with a pickle bucket and borrowed drumsticks was holding his own with the professionals. And Karen got her dance with her friend as they both promised last year. I was quite happy to see her out on the floor enjoying herself. She had been looking forward to that.
Where else can we go where we can listen to talks given by a PhD in socio-psychologist on the nature of identity, reality as a negotiated space and community experience as it relates to fantasy games. Or listen to a PhD linguist discuss research on role-playing as an educational tool. Or hear an MBA discuss how the business model of the gaming industry differs from other industries. Or have PhD's in Physics, Astronomy and Planetology from NASA, JPL and Fermi Labs, some of whom happen to be the science advisors for several TV shows, share current and Nobel prize winning research as well as the latest proposals for exploration, or just give a primer on the Big Bang theory or antimatter. Or get into a lively discussion with a PhD in Anthropology (who teaches remotely at St. Petersburg College just up the road) on the nature of the apocalypse in various religions. Or sit with Emergency Planners and First Responders getting practical advice on how to survive a disaster. Or have the winner of multiple Hugos and Nebulas (the Pulitzer Prizes of science fiction) give advice on the best way to begin a novel. Or have a panel with Political Scientists turned writers lay out the 4 primary philosophies of American foreign policy or 4 reasonable predictions for the direction of China over the next 75 years. Or have a graduate of the New York School of the Arts teach us how to draw. Or dance until 2 am listening to live music and hanging out with Goths or belly dancers (two different events). Or have the lead singer from one of our favorite bands with a single on the Billboard charts devote 5 minutes to talking to us. All while surrounded by tens of thousands of people who share many of our same interests whether in gaming or writing or television or astronomy, all of whom are unashamed and unabashed (even a few who are uninhibited). Those are some of the reasons we go each year.
Feel free to say what you are thinking. Geek, geek, geek.
We ended up going to 15 panels from tracks on writing to science fiction literature to the apocalypse to science and space. I think that is a record for us. Of those, I would say 90% were good, with 5-6 being exceptionally entertaining or thought provoking. I won't bore you with the details of all of them, but a there were a few standout moments from the weekend that I'd like to share.
One of the more exciting panels for me was a discussion on antimatter given by a PhD from Fermi Labs (where they have a particle accelerator). This was on Friday right after a talk on Weird States of Matter that had me flashing back to my two undergraduate courses on Optics. In a way this talk built on the previous talk though it wasn't meant to be. Karen had given up between talks and headed back to the room as she was really tired, but I opted to stay. The guy giving the talk worked for the lab as well as having started his own company in hopes of exploiting the practical uses of antimatter. One potential use is as a cancer therapy. Yes, you read that right, cancer therapy. Now most people think that antimatter annihilates matter as soon as the two come in contact. Not so. Antimatter accelerated at a high speed will penetrate some depth into matter before it slows enough and the two annihilate each other. The rate of this penetration is quantifiable and predictable. That means that one day in the near future instead of conventional proton radiation or "gamma knife" treatment we may see antimatter as a primary treatment for inoperable tumors. As a bit of background, current radiation therapy relies on "fractions," multiple exposures to radiation from multiple angles over the course of weeks. In conventional radiation therapy, in order to kill a cancer cell you have to hit its nucleus with a proton while the cell is dividing (mitosis). They divide treatment into "fractions" to account for the statistical probabilities of when this might happen. With antimatter, the fractions are unnecessary. There is a 100% kill ratio if the anti-proton hits the target. As an added perk, because the matter-antimatter annihilation gives off some short-lived exotic particles, a before and after PET scan would reveal with complete certainty whether the treatment was successful. And instead of the perhaps 8000 rads received during a conventional treatment, you might receive 1 rad. Treatment for a medium sized tumor could take 2-3 minutes using 1 billion anti-protons, which cost roughly $60 to produce at Fermi Lab (that's total, not each). 1% of the output of Fermi lab could treat 500 cancer patients a year. There are a number of engineering challenges to overcome, but it is very likely I will see this in my lifetime. What you may be hearing is the sound of my mind being blown.
That was Friday's highlight. Saturday's was completely different. Saturday afternoon we went to a panel on contour drawing, something both Karen and I had done (she better than I), but something we both want to get back to. As I said, the woman teaching it was a graduate of the New York School of the Arts, fairly prestigious. She was supposed to do a panel on gesture drawing that we were more interested in, but it got scheduled out from under us at the last minute (at trend this year). When Karen and I had completed the main exercise, we both started looking for other things to draw. I settled on the woman in front of me's ponytail as this weekend was all about texture for me (more on that in a moment). Karen focused on her little girl, maybe 2 or 3 sleeping on her mother's shoulder. In the few minutes before she moved, Karen had a very good contour of her face. After the panel, Karen went up to the parents to show them the drawing. They were quite pleased and impressed, so Karen offered them the sketch, which they accepted enthusiastically, but only after asking her to sign it. The father said they would put it in a little frame. He seemed quite sincere. I think it made Karen's day. She really is good.
Sunday's highlight had to be the Cruxshadows concert, the one Karen (yes, Karen) had been looking forward to for months. They are the darkwave electronica band we see each year we are able, this time being our 4th. There was quite the crowd trying to get in. They filled the hall nearly 3/4 full with SRO in the front. My estimate was maybe 1500-2000 people between the chairs and the floor, most of them between 20 and 30, decked out in their best black, gothic regalia. We were more in the blue family of colors. We headed for the back, where Karen started dancing in the aisle, completely enrapt with the music, dancing, twirling, billowing the shawl she had crocheted and gotten multiple compliments on (including a woman asking for the pattern). Anyway, there she is in the aisle, when she nearly bowled over a twenty-something guy, all in black and mascara who was trying to get by. After the apologies were issued, he just looked at her with the twinkling smile of someone enjoying another's delight, and said please, by all means keep dancing, in just a perfectly admiring way. He could tell how into it she was and completely approved but just wanted to get by. A vintage moment for me.
The final moment came on Sunday as we were trolling the band tables, hoping the violinist was still there (he wasn't) and wanting to pick up the latest Cruxshadows single they are attempting to get on the charts. Karen bought the CD, then got into line to get is signed by the lead singer. Now you have to picture us, me 40 something and balding, her with her very short hair and New England upbringing, both in jeans and button ups, both painfully normal looking amidst a crowd of 20 something Goths. The band's lead singer, stage named Rogue, is about my height, thin, with mascara applied like kohl from an Egyptian painting and hair spiked out in the back to nearly a foot, dressed all in black. For all the drama of his outfit, his music has depth and melody, his lyrics drawing heavily from mythology. There is a poetry about some of them. Each time we've seen him, he is talking to the people whose CD's he is autographing. He gives each person time, never seeming distracted, his attention focused completely on them. Anyway, Karen gets to the front of the line and I mention to him that we almost didn't get to see him this year. So Karen tells him about being diagnosed. And I tell him when she started treatment I asked her to focus on where she wanted to go when it was over as something to hold in her mind during the worst. Dragon Con and the Cruxshadows concert was what she came up with. I told him how much joy he had given me by playing the music what she was dancing to in the aisle the night before. He was really touched and spent the next five minutes talking to her, relating details of his life and how he'd almost died when he was in an accident when he was young. As he signed the CD, I could tell he was struggling for what to write. When he finished he looked up at Karen and said, I've written what I write on a lot of CD's but with you, I really mean it. Then he hugged her for a long time and whispered encouragement into her ear.
Sorry, I get a bit misty just remembering it. Rogue seemed like a genuine and decent individual for all our differences in dress and lifestyle. The encounter was powerful and meaningful.
As an added distraction, this year we brought 2 tiny, "disposable" digital cameras that my mother had given us as a gift, between 20 and 60 pictures each. We didn't really want the hassle of keeping track of the regular digital in the crowds. I decided that since there was no way to know what I was getting for a picture (like an old instamatic), I wouldn't take anything I cared if it didn't come out. They are very sensitive to movement and vibration. So I focused on textures and layers all weekend. Most of my 20 pictures were of the hotels, the repetition of level after level of balconies and railing (47 floors internal to the Marriott) that are so hard to describe to people who haven't seen them. They came out ok, not a lot of crispness. Between Karen and I, we got some decent impressions of the hotels and why they are perfect for this convention. We can send the thumbnails with explanations to anyone who is interested.
We did bring home some booty this year. Karen outfitted herself with two nice skirts, a peasant shirt and a silver bangled anklet (for her drum circle dance). We picked up the violinist's CD and two singles by the Cruxshadows. I picked up a book on space exploration by a NASA PhD who so wanted to autograph it and shake my hand because he thought no one would buy his book. We found a tactical fantasy warfare card game that looked interesting. I have another book called Gaming as Culture: Essays in Reality, Identity and Experience in Fantasy Games that I will order online (they didn't have it on sale at the con.) We found that the manufacturer of one of our favorite games (Aftermath!) is back in business with new supplements coming out this year and next. Karen found a couple nice pair of earrings, and we picked up two cat figurines, one bronze and one jade.
We even got to spend a little time with a couple friends, which was quite nice.
Ok, that's the "short" version of this year's trip. All in all a great trip if each night was increasingly short on sleep, from 7 hours Thursday down to 5 by Sunday. It was good to get home and have Smoke waiting by the door. It took a little coaxing to get Mara out, but she, too, seemed happy we were back, as did Tina. The weekend flew by faster than any has before. Even with all we did, there were a number of panels we missed due to conflicts, cancellations or just needing a break.
We look forward to hiking back into the unmapped margins once again next year and seeing what we find. Always the adventure.
© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III
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