Mia and I enjoyed Capricon 46. Unlike last year, it was held at the Marriott Chicago O’Hare. It was OK as a hotel, but compared to the Sheraton in downtown Chicago, it is in a culinary wasteland. There were no restaurants with in walking distance. We were stuck with the hotel restaurant (I hate monopolies) or what what we could buy from a well-stocked grocery store a quarter mile away. We did see some old friends again.

I fell on ice (the inanimate kind) last month and badly banged up my right knee. It has not fully recovered, and I prefer to use a cane when walking outside in winter. So I brought one to the con. This would have been fine, except that Mia managed to twist her right knee on Saturday, and needed the cane more than I did. So I walked very carefully for the rest of the con. After we got home I made another cane so we both can get around safely.

Panels, presentations, and other con events I attended.

• When What We Have In Common Isn’t Stories, It’s Joy

  With so many new things hitting our screens and bookshelves, it can sometimes be hard to find fandoms in common. Yet, some might argue that common interests is less important than expressing our unique variation of joy. Our panelists discuss the ups and downs of connecting with other fans when you don’t share the same fandom.

• The Lost Norse Myths

  Why It’s So Easy To Be Wrong About Vikings. We recently realized Heimdall is a tree! A new lost Loki story was discovered on the Faroe islands! It turns out Hel isn’t black on one side after all, she’s blue! Mixing storytelling with the latest discoveries, Ada Palmer discusses recent advances in Norse myth research, both what we’ve found and why it took so long to find it, a history which involves not only the Medieval sources but the nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarly debates, feuds, mistakes, and corrections in this live and rapidly-changing field whose constant new discoveries mean every decade brings new material to draw on for our own Norse Myth fiction projects.

• Atomic Bombs 101

  The real history and technology (so far as they’re publicly known) of nuclear weapons, and the ways SF gets them wrong — aimed at authors, techies, and interested readers.

• The Politics of Future Tech

  As the means of production falls into fewer and fewer hands and new technologies like GenAI arrive on our phones with unseen agendas and impacts, the value of thinking about the political dimensions of future tech grows. What political ramifications should we consider in our near future? How has SF commented on the politics of its futuristic technologies? Our panelists explore these and other political questions about the future we’re building now (and the future still to come).

  This panel reminded me that I need to read The Butlerian Jihad soon.

• Killer Asteroids, and What We Might Do About Them

  Near-Earth asteroids (and their cousins, comets) are interesting objects, possible future sources of metals and other materials… and potential threats to civilization and even life on Earth. The good news is, this is the only type of major natural disaster that we might actually be able to prevent. A look at what we know about asteroids (and comets), what sort of threat they present, and what we can do to anticipate trouble from them and maybe head it off.

• Moebius Theater Sketch Show

  Moebius Theatre is thrilled to return to Capricon with our new sketch show, Please Read the Terms of Service! The show is a mix of classic sketches from Moebius’s past, along with new sketches written for this show. Please join us to experience Moebius Theatre’s science fiction and fantasy infused sketch comedy as we celebrate the fifty-year history of the company!

• Concert: Sassafrass

  Sassafrass performs selections from their Norse song cycle “Sundown” and other compositions inspired by Renaissance polyphonic music.

• Interstellar Comets and Other Recent Space Happenings

  Bill and Henry fill you in on recent developments in space, starting with a look at the latest interstellar comet, Comet 3I/ATLAS (as seen mostly by spacecraft).

I took some notes about the panels and presentations and may write them up and post them in the coming days. I will update the above list with links as this happens.

At SF cons like this you often see advertisements for other cons, and bids for future Worldcons. What struck me this year was how many of the bids for future worldcons were from outside of the USA. This year the Worldcon will be in LA, but next year it will be in Montreal. Brisbane and Nuremberg are bidding to host the 2028 Worldcon. Both gave parties at this Capricon. I went to the Nuremberg party and enjoyed it. Dublin is bidding for 2029. The 2019 Worldcon there was great. Edmonton is bidding for 2030.

Throughout my life the majority of the Worldcons have been in the USA. That is changing, I suspect in reaction to the Trump administration’s customs and immigration policies. Foreign fans are now more reluctant to travel to the USA, and I cannot blame them. US fan groups who might otherwise bid for a Worldcon may be reluctant to ask their foreign counterparts to travel here. .