Dragon*Con Report - An article by Ben Lesnick

CIC versus Atlanta!

We took a huge luxury SUV thing with a horse trailer to Atlanta. It took twelve hours. And Paula drove the whole way. And we drank a lot of energy drinks.

The CIC/OM booth under construction!

Paula runs the booth!

Here's me (and Tye, right) at the CIC booth.

These guys were everywhere -- apparently they were having the worlds largest gathering of Stormtroopers at some point.

Joe Garrity and TyeDyeBoy at the booth.

Joe shows off his Wing Commander III Premiere Edition to Hades and Tye.

Tye gazes philosophically at, presumably, some scantily clad woman across from him. Or maybe the booth full of swords.

Unfortunately, he recovered.

Death and I went to see Bill Fawcett, Forstchen and the guy who wrote the Doom Novels. Unfortunately, Forstchen was sick and didn't come. The panel was about weaponry in military sci-fi, but they mostly talked about anarchy. Bill Fawcett, who packaged the Wing Commander novels for Baen, said that the movie had killed any hopes of getting any more published.

I was trying to take a picture of Death that was better than the Tiger shirt one. But it didn't work out right.

The girl in the booth next to us was selling cloaks. I didn't have a cloak. I do now! I'm holding a big-ass Kilrathi gun from Wing Commander III.

John Rhys Davies was supposed to sign autographs the first day -- but his plane was late and he didn't get there in time. So he signed them for an extra hour and a half the next day... Death, Hades and I got 'em signed.

Death and I went to Syd Mead's presentation of... Syd Mead stuff. He talked about six or seven different projects he'd worked on -- and one of them was Prophecy! He was a very interesting speaker, and seemed to care a lot about continuity and such in what he was designing.

A Kraken -- he says it was supposed to be ten kilometers long. That's actually not me in the front -- it's some other guy with a similar taste in shirts.

A Nephilim! That's all I have to say about that.

A Moray -- Syd Mead said that the Nephilim grow new fighters in their carriers. Neat! Remember to buy his book.

A portrait of Richard Garriott sat next to me on the way home. Creeepy.

A crowd shot!

Hades and I set the kids internet thing at the Smithsonian to the CIC. It only had a trackball and a button -- but we got

GOOD JOB, CIC!