Boskone, part 3
Saturday. Caught the bus (which helpfully arrived just as I reached the stop) over to Boston in time for the “Not Just War Porn: The Best Military SF” panel. A similarly-named panel at Noreascon 3 was responsible for my discovery of Lois McMaster Bujold, so I had hope for this one. I wasn’t disappointed; I’ll have to check out both James MacDonald and Walter Hunt now.
A swing through the hucksters’ room and the art show, then into the gaming room for Chez Dork. This wasn’t nearly as much fun as Ninja Burger, however. Oh, the cards were cute, but it seemed like “draw good stuff, ‘buy’ it, get the Autographed card on your 3 point item that matches your obsession, win” was all there was to it. Nobody traded, nobody auctioned, nobody slipped on ketchup during combat.
The game lasted long enough that I’d already missed most of the noon panel I’d wanted to attend (”Why Not the War of 1812?” on alternate alternate-history turning points). I grabbed a quick lunch in the mall food court, then headed to Michael Flynn’s “Return of How to Lie With Statistics”. This was lots of fun, but he didn’t get through all of his examples, alas. Dropping something (the “write a bunch of Ts on a piece of paper” exercise could go) might have worked better. This was up against the Nielsen Hayden tag-team kaffeklatsch, too. That was an annoying pair of program items to have to choose between!
None of the 2pm panels sounded interesting, so I wandered back down to gaming. We managed to put together a game of Settlers of Catan (including introducing someone to it–how he’d managed to avoid encountering it by now is still a mystery to me), and then a game of Puerto Rico with the same four of us. After that ended, it was about 6pm and while I’d sated my “German game” fix, I was hungry and somewhat tired, so figured it was the better part of valor to head home rather than get caught up in the Steve Jackson Games tournament. The tourney turned out to run until about 4 am, so I definitely made the right choice!
I did miss the GOH speech/awards ceremony/charity auction, though, but missing the latter was probably safest for the wallet in any case.
February 19th, 2004 at 10:23
James Macdonald writes great stuff, solo or with Debra Doyle. I’m giving Hunt a try myself after this con.