Most of the conventions I go to have special guests that I either never get to see, let alone meet. It's a strange curse, indeed, but I always managed to find a way to mis them. Even when I do run into them, the moment is wrong, I'm in a hurry and cannot chat, or some elder creature from beyond is otherwise interfering.Let's looks at my track record...
At a Star Trek convention I met George Takei and what did I have for him to sign? Star Wars ship blue prints. I do hope that he didn't feel that was a slap in the face.
Norwescon. Not only did I totally forget that Harry Turtledove was there, but I thought it was a different author and brought the wrong books.
Another Norwescon. Ended up on an elevator with Jack Horner but it was so late and I was so tired I doubt I could have said t-rex let alone made intelligent conversation.
Mike Pondsmith has been at several GameStorms and I despite me having been a complete Cyberpunk 2013/2020 fanatic back in the day as well as Castle Falkenstein, I have never been able to get a word in with him (not his fault).
Not a stellar record with the celebs.
Anyhow, this year I managed to be in the right place at the right time to run into Michael Stackpole.
What a nice guy. A buddy at our table had brought several books to have signed by him, but didn't have them with him. Michael was cool enough to stand and wait and engage in conversation with me while he waited for my firend to get back. We discussed his books and more interesting to me, as I'd not read many of his books, we talked about his work on Tunnels & Trolls back in the day. We discussed what he worked on and what he was going for and how he liked the T&T system. The conversation was brief but he was just a great guy to talk to.
As a humorous close to the encounter, my buddy finally gets back with his books only to have Michael open them and laughs as he's already signed them years before. He wasn't upset or anything. we all laughed and got a kick out of it, said our thank yous and good byes and that was it.
A fun little encounter, though I'm not sure how many X.P. I get for it.
-Eli
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Nice! He wrote some great Battletech fiction!
ReplyDeleteApologies but had never heard of him before this but he sounds like a good guy.
ReplyDeleteHe's written several novels both gaming-related and otherwise for franchises like Battletech/Mechwarrior as well as Star Wars.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I did not know was that he did a study of legal cases connected to gaming try to dispell the fears that gaming was a corrupting influence back in the day.
-Eli
I too am a fan of his Battletech fiction. In fact I only need to find five more titles to have the complete Battletech novel line. Woohoo! Michael Stackpole is a pretty prolific (ie... well publish) author of sci-fi and fantasy. I would have loved to chat it up with him. If you were ever finally going to break the celeb threshold with someone he is a good one to do it with. Grats Eli.
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