{"id":6599,"date":"2016-04-27T07:02:52","date_gmt":"2016-04-27T15:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=6599"},"modified":"2016-05-04T13:01:34","modified_gmt":"2016-05-04T21:01:34","slug":"ad-astra-and-the-battle-of-agincourt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=6599","title":{"rendered":"Ad Astra and the Battle of Agincourt"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know those dreams where suddenly you’re back in high school and it’s finals week and it’s just dawned on you that you never went to any of your classes? I just had one of those. Except I was awake.<\/p>\n

It was actually my first high-school appearance since a disastrous encounter with a bunch of bovine cheerleaders at one of those “alternative” schools, back around the turn of the century. (That actually turned out okay in the long run; the student who’d coaxed me into appearing eventually grew up, got his own PhD, and now provides me with free drugs.) This week’s iteration turned out somewhat better; for one thing, the science teacher who’d recommended me for the gig (and who, as it turns out, is a regular here on the ‘crawl) brought me a bag of homemade cookies to mellow me out before I started.<\/p>\n

\"Agincourt<\/a>

Agincourt students did this. I was still reading Star Trek books when I was their age.<\/p><\/div>\n

I gotta admit, there was some apprehension up front. I’m not bad at public speaking\u2014 even won the occasional award for it, in both scientific and popular arenas\u2014 but high school crowds are something different. And these guys had the potential to be an especially hard crowd. Agincourt Collegiate is the only secondary educational institution I know of with a functional space program for Lego People<\/a>, and science\/engineering isn’t even their star program. Plus I was talking to a mixed audience of science and creative writing students; target one demographic, you risk losing the other.<\/p>\n

\"Honestly,<\/a>

Honestly, I think they wrote him off as a hoax. Like the moon landing.
Maybe they’re right.<\/p><\/div>\n

As it turned out I needn’t have worried. The pictures of Banana the cat, and of me picking maggots out of the giant hole in my leg, seemed to go over well with both groups. (The slide showing details of US Patent #6,356,440 B1<\/em> didn’t provoke quite so many gasps of amazement, but I think they appreciated it in context.) I’m not entirely sure they believed the bit about Reagan. Based on their expressions I think at least some of them regard him as a myth. I can’t say I blame them; looking back, anyone who believed that there was no race problem in Ammurrica, that trees caused air pollution, and that eighties-era technology was up for the task of building a geosynchronous network of orbital lasers, particle-beam cannons, and autonomous battle computers was obviously way too sane, too down-to-earth, to have succeeded in US politics.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I got out of it alive, and relieved, and actually pretty pleased with the reaction (apparently I was “inspiring” to several in the audience). And now I have to delve into a couple of other myths even less plausible than the Legend of the Gipper. Now, I must turn my attention to Ad Astra<\/a>, the local con (if by “local” you mean way-the-hell-up-in-fucking-Richmond-Hill) that I’ll be attending this weekend. It’s vaguely possible I might finally get to meet Tom Doherty, the guy behind Tor Books and one of this year’s GoH’s (although it’s more likely I’ll just end up drinking with Sandra Kasturi and Brett Savory, two of the other GoHs and the BUG’s publishers).<\/p>\n

Of course, there’s also the possibility the whole thing’s just another cruel hoax\u2014 I note that two days before ignition, I’m still not listed on the panelist page<\/a>. But they’ve told me, at any rate, that I will in fact be sitting on panels. And they’ve told me that said panels will look like this:<\/p>\n