By Rich Lynch:

BUT FIRST, LAST NIGHT’S PARTY.

This was the best party of the night.

It was also the *only* party of the night.

The view from the party room was really nice

Looking westward to Lake Erie.  Terrific sunset.

THE HOTEL. An interesting building (more on that a bit later) but I don’t think it was truly ready for the convention.  I was told that it had run out of food last night — if so, not so good planning on its part. And one of the three elevators has been out of service since about 3-4 days before the start of the convention with no estimate when it will be repaired.

As for the elevators which do work, there’s an interesting steampunk vibe with the room floor display.  

THE WONDERFUL OLD GENESEE BUILDING. The building that is occupied by the Hyatt Regency opened back in 1923 as a multi-tenant office building.  It survived various boom and bust cycles over the decades until, in 1976, it went into bankruptcy.  Hyatt reached agreement with the city of Buffalo to have a hotel in the space the building occupied, but there was enough community resistance to the original plan of razing the building to make way for a characterless glass-walled tower that an enterprising architectural firm came up with a way to include the building into a new and better overall design.

There was an addition of a new atrium and the new Hyatt hotel opened in February 1984.  The facade of the old building is still a prominent feature that segues the atrium into the hotel proper. It’s a grand space.

The original building facade.

PANEL: THE MOTE IN GOD’S EYE +50. Friday morning panel looking back at the Niven-Pournelle novel from 1974.  Another partly virtual panel with (l-r) Donald Wyatt, Jr., Entwife Judy, JMac, and two online participants. Oh group mind, help me with who they are.

Overall, a pretty good retrospective.  It wasn’t a Motie-esque dissection, but it did delve into a lot of the details and nuances of the novel.

BEHOLD THE FANZINE LOUNGE! It’s located next to the gaming area, which itself is only marginally busier.

Still, this is an improvement from yesterday, when the fanzine lounge was locked up the entire day.

BUFFALOS EVERYWHERE. As you might expect, statues of bison are fairly common here in Buffalo.  This one is “Molly” and she’s located on the walkway over Pearl Street between the hotel and the convention center.

(Photo by Andy Porter, but since it’s my phone he’s doing it as a work for hire. In this case he works really cheaply!)

PANEL:  BOOKS TO FILM.

(L-R) Vaughne Hansen, Catherine Cohen, Alan Dean Foster, Lawrence Connolly, and Richard Sparks

Pretty informative and interesting, from a nuts-and-bolts deep dive perspective.  Lots of useful information for prospective screenwriters interspersed with many amusing anecdotes.

THE DEALERS ROOM, ART SHOW, FAN TABLES, AND FREEBIE TABLES AREA

All these are in the Convention Center.  There is still a huge amount of unused space, probably enough to stage a fannish softball game like the one at the 2013 Worldcon in Texas.

PANEL: GALAXY QUEST +25

(L-R) Joshua Palmatier, Randy Hoffman, JF Garrard, Ira Nayman, and John-Allen Price

The panel went out of its way to avoid movie trivia associated with the film.  Instead, there was a lot about how the movie affected the career path on some of the actors and how fandom embraced the film.  But the most memorable thing that happened was when the real-time voice recognition onscreen text kept pranking Nayman.  The first time he had the microphone it interpreted him as saying “penis 45 penis 45 penis 45”.

The next time, it captioned him “shut up shut up”, and the time after that “more country music please”.  Didn’t quite upstage the panel, but it came close.

PANEL: HEINLEIN: HOW DOES HE HOLD UP TODAY?

(L-R) David Gerrold, David Ritter, Entwife Judy, and Stephen Wilk

As expected, the panelists drew a dividing line between the early Heinlein who wrote entertaining and sense of wonder so-called “juveniles” and the later Heinlein who wrote bloated and self-indulgent novels. The panel did a good job dissecting many of Heinlein’s stories and novels, and the consensus seemed to be that, yeah, it all does still hold up today, even though some of it is obviously retro. We’re all still fans.