By the last day of a con, everyone is starting to get a bit weary, and understandably so. There were a number of people who were particularly… weary… post-Hugos. Me, I was doing fine. So I completed my not-stalking of Alastair Reynolds by going to his book reading, and I’m glad I did because he chose a short story he’d written for Barclays Bank, on the issue of data security, which is unlikely to get much exposure elsewhere. The story was good, but seriously: can you imagine being asked to write an sf story for non-sf readers working in a bank on data security?? Tough gig . Oh, and that came after another little fangirl moment, when I was chatting to Jonathan and got to meet Garth Nix….

The only other panel I got to was the second half of one on maps in fantasy writing, with three writers who all do their own maps. One of them was David Cornish, whom I’d met a couple of days before, having interviewed him for both Snapshot ’07 and Snapshot ’10. The discussion was actually more interesting than I’d expected, about what to include and why, and the sheer number that these three, at least (Cornish, Ian Irvine, and Russell Blackford), produce for their own interests and the sake of the narrative which never then appear in a book. Reading list: The Selected Works of T.S Spivet (which I’ve been meaning to get for ages).

The rest of Monday involved helping Alisa, Terri, and Tehani pack up their section of the dealers’ room, with able assistance from Mitch and Rohan. After the bazillion boxes were loaded up and taken down to the loading bay, and picked up by the freight company, Alisa and I staggered back to Tansy and Finchy’s place with Trent in tow to debrief somewhat, after farewelling Tehani with hopes that she wouldn’t get done for excess baggage. And then I managed to get home not tooo late.

Bonus extra Aussiecon4 day
Although Monday was officially the end of Aussiecon4, Tansy and Alisa and I managed to draw it out for another few hours by catching up on the Tuesday to record some final, face-to-face Galactic Suburbia. So we did a Hugos round-up, like we did for the Ditmars; and then we did a worldcon wrap-up too. Our subscribers are going to be totally overwhelmed….