The Escalated Route The Escalated Route A report on Chicon 7, the 70th World Science Fiction Convention, August 30/September 3, 2012 by GUY H, LILLIAN III, 5915 River Road, Shreveport LA 71105 * [email protected] GHLIII Press Publication #1133 * Photos by GHLIII and Rose-Marie Lillian Not all those who wander are lost. Said Tolkien. The best moment of Chicon 7? I was wandering. Rosy was at one of Peggy Rae Sapienza’s program moments, so I was alone, outside the convention, wandering the wrong way down Michigan Avenue. I didn’t find what I was looking for, but didn’t care. I just soaked in the energy and mystery of the city – All these monster granite buildings! Who lives their lives here? Who are all these people? Do they notice the gawking old man wandering amongst them? On Thursday, the night before!, Rosy and I had gone out to the Adler Planetarium on its Lake Michigan peninsula, and with others of our ilk regarded in awe the coral blaze of the night-lit skyline. First Night: awesome. I remembered Nancy Griffiths’ bitter song about Chicago “roaring like a Midwest hurricane.” The newspapers touted 344 murders in the Second City so far in 2012. Yet Chicago didn’t seem like such a terrible place that night. That night, and from here, the Second City seemed magical. I was falling in love with Chicago – again. The City of Big Shoulders and I share memories. In 1959 my folks went there for a wedding, and Dad took me to see the dinosaur skeletons at the Field Museum. (They were still in the same room in 2000, though they’d changed the skull on the Bront- … Apatosaurus.) In 1972 I’d curled up in the Henry Moore sculpture at the University to have my heart ripped out by Gail-the-girl-from-Brooklyn. Had attended a dull worldcon there in 1995, and spent many long afternoons in the midst of train journeys wandering the Loop and visiting the Art Institute. Once on a frigid New Year’s Day I’d met Ricia Mainhardt there and huddled in store doorways like the homeless. But my last visit to Chi-town had been to yet another worldcon, in 2000, where my life had changed forever for the infinitely better. Love Chicago? Why should I not? How could I not? Heading back to the Hyatt, dodging panhandlers with their pathos-rich signs, feeling the breeze down the river from Lake Michigan, in the midst of the life and the commerce and the crowd of Chicago, I exulted in it. But still … where was the Bean? THURSDAY The first escalations involved in Chicon 7 were those required to get me there. Flight. And not only flight, but twice as much as necessary. I’ll explain. When one of us – usually Rosy – almost always Rosy – flies, it’s out of Dallas. Flying out of the backwoods of Shreveport adds at least $200 each way to each ticket. Rosy, researching the Chicon flights, found that by making a stop en route, we could save fifty bucks a ticket. Go for it, I (nervously) agreed. Not thinking to ask where the stop would be. Atlanta. In an opposite direction. Instead of a shortish flight, we would have two shortish flights – and it turned out, the first would be through a hurricane. Because Hurricane Isaac chose worldcon weekend to bully its way through the Gulf of Mexico into the soft underbelly of the American South. A rain-rich, slow-moving plodder of a storm, Isaac flooded most of New Orleans (destroying part of Dennis Dolbear’s roof) before parking itself right over where we needed to fly. If you know my abject paranoia about air travel, imagine how this affected me. I was a literal shrieking freak. Only the promise of alprazolam, the excellent trank that got me through our last Australian adventure, enabled me to make the drive to Dallas the night before. Only her astonishing capacity for love kept Rosy from dumping me by the side of the road and going without me. (I did note the SFnal name of the offending storm. Surely, I said on fictionmags, a hurricane named for the good doctor – who also hated flying – would be kind to fans.) The morning at DFW was not promising. Ahead of us in line, a big black guy hit the ground with a coronary, necessitating the presence of EMTs. The Homeland Security X-rays found a forgotten pocketknife in my shaving kit – I was lucky not to have been arrested. Instead they let me mail the thing home in a pre-paid envelope – it arrived 9-15. Rosy had been smart enough and kind enough to get me window seats on all the flights (it’s important for a flight-o-phobe to keep an eye on things), and soon there was the deep grumble of the engines, the sense of quick muscular speed, and the liberating separation from Earth. I had taken half a mike of trank while waiting. I had five more in my pocket, wrapped in aluminum foil. Hurricane Isaac was a white wilderness, and passing above and occasionally through it was like swimming through milk. We encountered only minor bumbles. A map on the screen on the seat before me kept me abreast of our progress, which was cheeringly quick. Very soon we were on the ground in Georgia and rushing to catch our Chicago plane. It was on this plane that things really began to go right. “Rosy! You must have him really drugged to get him on this flight!” Eve Ackerman came up! She and Howard were on the same flight. Chicon 7 had begun. Almost symbolically, the clouds went away halfway there. Clear turf below. The engines groaned to signal a rapid descent, and Delta’s pilot made a pitch for AmEx cards as we touched down. Hey. We made it. We shared a cab with Eve and Howard to the Hyatt Regency, queen of the Magnificent Mile. Now I felt stoned, not to mention p.o.ed. Our luggage took another flight, causing me a moment’s worry about our mascot, the two-inch panda (with the red bow tie), Mib. Fortunately, it was delivered later by a kook who once brought William Shatner his bags, and got the door slammed in his face for his trouble. Me, I tipped him five and ensconced Mib on a lamp in our room. Said room – reachable by an escalator and a streetbridge and an elevator – was gorgeous , of course, with one of Chicago’s great views, the river, the Sun-Times, Lake Michigan in the distance. We photographed the room – Rosy loves to send such pictures to her mother – and headed down to Registration – elevator, footbridge, two or maybe three escalators. I was beginning to remember the Hyatt Regency from earlier experiences there. More escalators than a shopping mall. Oh, the glorious noise of that lobby. Early, but instantly identifiable. We were among The People. We signed in and got our Halloween-themed (huh?) bags; someone told me Chicon had gotten them free, and with the ease with they split, they seemed worth every penny of it. But inside, in addition to a pocket program and various sheets … I pulled the souvenir book halfway out of the bag and flashed it to my wife. She flinched away. She did not want to see Her book. For three solid weeks in July and early August, Rosy had slaved away at the Chicon 7 souvenir book, showing creativity and character that put me to absolute shame. Piles of extra progress reports were stacked neatly, my contribution to the convention, and they had burned me out – the bullshit I had gotten putting them together had so frosted me on the worldcon that I very seriously considered skipping the whole thing. But Rosy’s drive to get the big book done well and on time had turned my head 180 degrees. At the last, she had been at the computer for 34 hours straight. No sleep breaks. Only snacks to eat. Such dedication awed and shamed me. (I’d assembled the Hugo and WSFS pages for her, but felt I had fundamentally been of very little help.) And the book looked pretty damned nice, too. Of course, just like me after I finished the DeepSouthCon 50 souvenir book last May, she couldn’t stand the thought of actually looking at it. Well, others looked at it, and the first reaction came moments later, when we ran into Mike Resnick. Chicon 7’s pro Guest of Honor had read Rosy’s book, and he absolutely loved it. We escalated upstairs and joined Nicki Lynch for lunch. (At the Bistro in the hotel lobby – a place we’d see a lot of in the next four days.) Sitting at the next table was fictionmags Chum Robert Silverberg. “My wife did the program book,” I bragged to him. I’d be saying that a lot. First Night The Adler Planetarium looks like a stone tomb from the days of Byzantium – from the outside. Within, it’s a whirl of suspended planets and shapes and exhibits and views and wonders – the perfect place for a worldcon’s First Night. Rosy and I caught a shuttle bus there and began the serious business of greeting people. I admit I felt a little lost – so many people there I didn’t know! But it was fine to meet con chair Dave McCarty in the flesh, and scope out his fundamental role with Chicon 7: idea man.