Day 2, Saturday, was my very busy day at the convention. Now to be honest the day did not start off well. The first panel I attended, the subject being why are manuscripts dead on arrival, was one that presented very little information that I did not already know and my alternate panel had been canceled, but those are the risk of a convention.

The next block featured a panel in which I was a participant, the subject being Redshirts, body counts and drama stakes in story telling. The panelists were all lively and informed, our discussion ranged far and I think went to very interesting places.

After that I took in a panel on stealing from history, Shakespeare, and other sources. Any panel featuring both Harry Turtledove and Tim Powers is neatly always worth attending.

The rest of the afternoon was taken up with science presentations on the Dawn Mission, a read and critique workshop that I facilitated, and a bit to eat rather late in the evening.

My final event was panel that I had suggested to the programming chair, discussing Roddenberry’s failed pilots of the 1970s.. I had envisioned this taking place during normal con hours with a panel of 4 or 5. Instead it was scheduled for 9pm, and while the programmers had slotted two panelists, I was the only one that turned up.

An audience however did attend and so the show had to go on. Luckily the audience was willing to roll with just me up there and in the end I think we had a lot of fun talking about the pilots, the filmmaking of the era, and Roddenberry’s career before Star Trek.

With the last panel completed I spent the remaining hours, until well after midnight, in a lively hallways discussion with friends old and new.

A truly good end to a good day.