My science advisor was invited to participate in this year’s DragonCon, the huge SF and media convention in Atlanta, famed for the amazing quality of the costumes on display. Some have called it “Nerd Mardi Gras” and it’s not a bad summary. I tagged along, partly because Baen Books always has a pretty good presence at DragonCon and it would give me the chance to discuss some projects with my publisher.

We got up at the crack of dawn on Thursday, September 3, and drove to Bradley Airport in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, the usual jumping-off point for our travels. The direct flight to Atlanta was not too long and mostly uneventful. It was still mid-morning when we arrived.

Since we planned to spend the whole time at a convention downtown there didn’t seem much point in renting a car, so instead we relied on Atlanta’s MARTA system. If you’re going someplace along the subway lines, MARTA’s very convenient. If you need to get someplace else, it might be simpler to get a cab or an Uber. Like some of the subway systems we used in Australia, MARTA no longer bothers with tickets, tokens, or transit cards. You just tap in with your credit card or phone.

We rode from the airport past downtown to our hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn Midtown. It was . . . okay. A fairly reasonable price, convenient to a MARTA station, and located in an area with some good restaurants. There were downsides. That reasonable price means your room only gets made up every couple of days, and the location put the hotel right next to the massive I-85 north-south freeway — which is very loud at all hours of the day and night. Apparently there are a lot of cars and motorcycles in northern Georgia with bad mufflers.

Having checked in, we went up the street to an excellent conveyor-belt sushi restaurant called OiShokudo. Since we’d skipped breakfast in our hurry to the airport, both of us were ravenous. We put away about a dozen plates of sushi plus bowls of miso soup. Excellent — easily equal to the conveyor restaurant we tried in Tokyo back in January.

Fortified and hydrated, we rode the subway back downtown to pick up our badges. They were already paid for, so it seemed like a simple errand. We got in line. Then we discovered that the line doubled back on itself twice before wrapping around the entire block, including a long loop up an alley to an interior parking lot, then back out and back around the block in the other direction before crossing a street to the hotel where badge pickup was located.

For three hours we shuffled slowly along in the Georgia Labor Day weekend sun, trying to avoid sunburn or sunstroke. Finally, after a second blood-sugar crisis event, my science advisor decided to swallow her pride and go in search of the Disability Services line. By then we were close to the end so I stayed in the regular line until she phoned me to join her. Ultimately I don’t know if it really made a difference: when we finally got our badges we bumped into the same two gentlemen who’d been right behind us in line since 1 p.m. High fives all around.

After that we were both tired, hot, footsore, and very thirsty, so we took advantage of the hospitality of my publisher, Baen Books, and the private suite they maintained in an undisclosed location to entertain Baen authors, staff, and assorted other Illuminati.

Dinner that night was at the Metro Diner, a good example of its type, with Charles Gannon. Things were discussed which will be made known when the stars are right. And after that, we were in no mood for anything but a MARTA ride back to Midtown, showers, and bed.

The second day of the convention (Friday the 4th) included two panel appearances by noted science communicator Dr. Diane A. Kelly. The first panel, “Halloween Skeletons — Are You Okay?” looked at the bizarre decorative skeletons available at Home Depot or Spirit Halloween for the season. How do skeletons have ears? Why does the rooster skeleton have a bony tail? What is that octopus skeleton, anyway? She and a panel of other scientists gamely tried to explain how such skeletons might arise. (It was only when the panel was over that I realized the purpose of the octopus skeleton: it’s not a skeleton at all — it’s a calcified suit worn by octopuses for extended visits to dry land.)

The second panel took place late at night because it was for adults, kind of: “The D&D Monsterotica Manual.” Romantic fantasy has started going in for “spicy” romance pairings with various monstrous beings. Vampires and Fae, of course, have a long romance-novel history, but now they are joined by such unlikely studmuffins as minotaurs, zombies, gill-men, and velociraptors. This panel took it a step beyond, confronting the assembled scientists with creatures from the D&D Monster Manual and asking the simple question: “Would You or Wouldn’t You?”

Dr. Kelly announced in advance that she mostly Wouldn’t, but one other panelist who shall remain nameless was alarmingly enthusiastic about the erotic possibilities of mind flayers, gelatinous cubes, gnolls, and beholders, to name a few.

In between panels we had time for dinner at a lovely Mexican-inspired restaurant in Midtown called Habaneros, which had some really remarkable dishes, including a roasted marrow bone topped with seafood, and prime rib tacos. All quite excellent.

Saturday featured the famous DragonCon parade through downtown Atlanta. In mid-afternoon I participated in the Baen Books Travelling Roadshow, a three-hour extravaganza in which Baen editors and authors talked about current and upcoming books. I got to puff my latest novel, The Ishtar Deception. The cover art by Dominic Harmon was nominated for a Dragon Award, but sadly did not win.

The rest of that evening was devoted to meeting with friends and trying not to get rained on as a line of thunderstorms passed over the city.

Sunday I had an afternoon signing session in the immense dealer space, at the booth of the bookstore The Missing Volume, which had agreed to host Baen authors all through the con. It was, I’m pleased to say, a roaring success. I sold a bunch of books — oddly, more copies of The Godel Operation than the newest novel, but I don’t mind. I got to chat with some nice people and sign their copies, and appointed several of them as special Agents of Deimos with access to classified information about another one of Sabbath Okada’s exploits.

That evening we met more friends and had another slap-up dinner at a place called South City Kitchen, which turns Southern staples into gourmet dishes. Recommended.

Monday morning we checked out of our hotel, left our bags with the concierge, and shuttled back to the dealer space at DragonCon for some serious shopping. I was a little disappointed at how few actual book dealers there were. Lots of vendors selling anime and online game inspired merchandise, film and cartoon merch, swords, t-shirts, leather crafts, comics, original drawings by comics artists, but hardly anyone selling books. Either this means Amazon has made it possible for anyone to get any SF or Fantasy titles they could ever want without having to seek them out at conventions — or it means the center of gravity of fandom has shifted away from print. Maybe both.

We wound up having a second conveyor-belt sushi dinner, then collected our bags and MARTA-ed to the airport for the flight home. After an annoying bit of gate-switching, we got aboard and flew north.

Overall? I had fun — though a lot of that was due to the friends we saw at the convention and in Atlanta. The convention itself was certainly entertaining, though the sheer scale of the event means that it does involve an awful lot of shuffling slowly forward in lines. I did get to do a little costume-watching. Probably the best one I saw was a man in a boxer’s robe with his head and shoulders encased in an odd sort of transparent polyhedron of irregular panes. He was, of course, “Rocky.” That kind of mashup costume is something I absolutely love about DragonCon.

I guess it will be time to start making reservations for next year soon . . .