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LoneStarCon 2 delivered what it promised and 4,650 attendees went home happy. They got a convention center and two excellent Marriotts perched over San Antonio's Disneyesque Riverwalk, and a program steeped in Texas traditions. Though the committee struggled in advance of the con with staff turnovers and pulled off last-minute saves in many areas, fans detected little out of place once the con began.

Some areas were very well prepared. Most impressive were the evening events: the funky and entertaining Opening Ceremonies, a masquerade worthy of wizards, a successful Art Show reception and a proper Hugo Awards Ceremony. Super tech support came from Bill Parker and company, including onstage fireworks at the beginning of the Hugos.

Equally impressive was the quiet efficiency that prevailed in areas whose invisibility is a sign of effective area heads, such as registration and facilities.

The two Marriotts had nicely contrasting styles. The blue-collar Marriott Riverwalk had a miniature food court in the lobby, featuring Burger King, Pizza Hut and a Gourmet Bean coffee stand. (It also had a regular coffee shop). The uptone Marriott Rivercenter had pricier hotel restaurants, and the Nordstrom-esque touch of piano music on the mezzanine.

As the baby grand player piano automatically tinkled away its own kind of muzak, sitting on the piano bench was a man-sized stuffed aardvark in a black tuxedo and cape, fingers hovering over the keys. Seth Breidbart approved: "I like their idea for peacebonding a piano." (By Monday, someone had affixed to the aardvark's cape a LoneStarCon membership badge and the red rosette of a Hall Costume award winner.)

The convention needed its hotels and tourist attractions to take up the slack, because LoneStarCon kept "short hours." The problem was not that the Dealer's Room closed at six (a standard time) and the art show at seven (a little later than at many Worldcons), but that all other programming ended at six. The kind of evening panel programming that has been a major feature of Worldcons for over a decade was nonexistent at LoneStarCon. There was not even a film/video program available after six.

While the Con Suite in the Rivercenter Marriott was open evenings,  fans were  mystified why it did not open until 5 p.m. Perhaps with 90% of LSC2's daytime schedule concentrated two blocks away in the Convention Center, the committee thought the Con Suite would be in low demand. Whatever the reason, the Con Suite's hours were the butt of many ironic comments. Never underestimate the scorn of a fan who has failed to find a free lunch.

Still, any fan who didn't have enough to do could find endless shops and restaurants on the Riverwalk.

The Riverwalk is a wonderful progression of stylish restaurants and bars all speckled with holiday lights and roaring with music. In contrast to the raw, ancient sleaze of the French Quarter, the Riverwalk was as tame as a shopping mall. In the humid night air, the barges full of sightseers passing slowly on the narrow waterway under low bridge arches, the cafe-style dining on the sidewalk, and the throngs of pedestrians reminded me of being inside the Blue Bayou restaurant at Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

Getting There: Fans waiting in Denver to connect with United Air Line's flight to San Antonio staged an impromptu convention around Bob Silverberg. Bruce Pelz and I listened to his stories about a trip to East Germany. There, science fiction writers used to subsidized apartments and regular paychecks are shocked by life in reunified Germany: they now struggle as free lancers paying real rent. Worse yet, West German publishers won't buy their stories: they only publish American sf, and mostly Star Wars at that.

Bob also said he visited an East German collector and asked to see all the pirated editions of "Robert Silverberg." The collector said there are none. Bob seemed unsure whether to be happy they didn't rip him off or sadder that none of them had read his work. "They were so East German they didn't steal!"

Bruce Miller and a friend soon joined us, bringing a touch of Cancun with them. They let two pet parrots out of carrying cases to run up and down their arms, chattering. Tourists' curious children were allowed to hold the birds, who methodically walked up the kids' arms and onto their backs. The kids instinctively bent over to give the parrots a level walking surface, which tickled Miller because he's learned from experience that the parrots are great manipulators.

Aboard the plane, the parrots in their carrying cases were stashed under their owners' seats. Squawks, chirps, and the occasional "Hello?" pierced the background engine noise all the way to San Antonio.

Registration: People's first in-person contact with a convention typically happens at registration. The experience inevitably makes an impression that carries over to the rest of the con. LSC2's registration process worked well.

Registration was turned over to John Lorentz only three weeks in advance of the con. He borrowed Boskone's equipment and recruited out-of-town computer help. How good a job he did can be measured by the complete lack of notice given to his department.

Registration had only one disconcerting moment. On Thursday morning, when the committee went to set up the registration area, they discovered the convention center staff had already opened the doors and hundreds of obliging fans had invented their own lines.

Paraphernalia: The membership badges were not up to the same standard (but Lorentz said someone else produced them.) The badges were one of the con's many last-minute saves, given to an outside company that printed names in a too-small, too-unreadable font. (It illustrates the problem to point out that when we met, Sharon Mellby had to explain to me that she was from Plano, not Piano.) Badges came in plastic inserts with the name of the city in a big purple rectangle. Robert Sacks joked that a careless person would think everyone at the con was named San Antonio.   

Then, Hugo nominees' rocket-shaped pins were not ordered in advance of the con. Instead, there were black buttons imprinted with a silver-colored rocket outline. However, for a change double-Hugo nominees did get two. Most Worldcons have been unwilling to distribute an extra pin to multiple nominees, although committees will make an exception for Mike Resnick, feeling it's a small price to pay for an unconstricted windpipe. (Only kidding, Mike!)

However, the Souvenir Book looked gorgeous with its keynote Don Maitz cover and streamlined design. Maitz line drawings were lavished on the interior pages. Good introductions to GoH's Moorcock, Maitz and Tackett were written by John Clute, David Cherry and Richard Brandt. I didn't understand why GoH Algis Budrys and toastmaster Neal Barrett Jr. wrote their own introductions, unless they insisted upon it. It's problematic to run autobiographies as Souvenir Book GoH introductions because it leaves an impression (however untrue) that the committee didn't dig very hard for friends of the guests who could do the job.

Also well done was Bill Childs' pocket program for LoneStarCon. He continued the highly successful spiral notebook design originated by ConFrancisco and refined by Shaun Lyon for L.A.con III. Besides program descriptions and schedules, the booklet contained much useful information about local sources for meeting all kinds of everyday needs. Childs did an excellent job.

Childs would have been frustrated to hear that a number of fans gave up using his booklet because they believed false rumors that too many program changes had rendered it obsolete. Though false, the rumors seemed believable for two reasons: 

(1) The Monday before LoneStarCon, workmen in the Convention Center broke a sprinkler and water damage to two meeting rooms made them unusable. Karen Meschke told people, "It's Disclave all over again," an allusion to indoor flooding at D.C.'s Memorial Day weekend convention. Loss of the two rooms forced relocation of a number of program items, nobody knew how many. It wasn't actually that many, but one was the daily WSFS Business Meeting, biasing SMoFs to believe the number was large.

(2) Neither the pocket program nor the registration packets contained grids, the schedule spreadsheets that display program titles, times and room assignments. One of the staff spent all night Wednesday publishing grids with an up-to-date schedule, and these were distributed on Thursday. Amy Thomson gave me a set from the box-full she was carrying, waving the new schedule sheets in her hand and saying, "This is hard sf. The grid in the program book is fantasy." Issuing the schedule grids after the start of the convention reinforced fans' belief that they replaced an inaccurate pocket program.

However, these grids only supplemented the pocket program: we used the same arrangement at L.A.con III, though fans got all of the materials together in their registration packet. My guess is that the grids came out late at LoneStarCon because they were another last-minute save.

And the fact is there weren't all that many program changes. As a test, I compared the Saturday schedules from the grids and pocket program. I found only six discrepancies out of more than 150 items, and nearly all of those were panels that had to be relocated from the damaged meeting rooms. Of course, individual programs had problems for various reasons: Rick Foss reports that he pursued for days a panel about the Russian Space Program that was rescheduled twice during the con before being cancelled.

Events: Opening Ceremonies: Dusty Britches, the singing cowboy led us through a "Knock, knock" joke ending, "Little Old Lady Who?" By the time the audience echoed that back, it was too late to do anything about it: we'd been duped into yodeling.

He was followed by Doug Whitaker, a quick-drawing cowboy who looked a little like actor Tom Skerritt. Doug told us, "They beamed me up from the Wagon Wheel Ranch." He showed us his gun and explained, "This is my Texas credit card." He told us to expect being frisked in San Antonio bars: if we didn't have a gun on us, they'd give us one. 

Doug did stand-up comedy while showing off some dextrous six-gun- twirling. He imitated a "confused gunfighter" who drew two guns and twirled them in opposite directions. He also imitated the trademark gunplay of movie and tv cowboys from Gene Autry to Richard Boone. 

The evening closed with trick-roper Kevin Fitzpatrick lassoing volunteer Sue Francis with loops of rope until she was immobilized. Then Doug returned onstage for a demonstration of bullwhip accuracy. Kevin put Doug's six-gun in Sue's outstretched hand and inserted a few pieces of spaghetti in the barrel. Doug cautioned, "Now, ma'am, it's very important that even if I hit you, you don't drop my gun." It was hyperbole, of course. Doug easily snapped the spaghetti in half with no harm done to Sue. Sue got huge applause and was famous for the rest of the weekend.   

The cowboy acts were more skillful than they were corny, and the fans who feigned to be too sophisticated to tolerate cowboy yodeling were outnumbered a hundred to one.

The only drawback of an otherwise lively Opening Ceremonies is that they failed to give the GoHs a high-profile introduction. At one point, Dusty read off the names of the GoH's seated in the front row as a spotlight picked them out for the audience, (Dusty pronouncing one's name as "Mooncock"). I feel that wasn't enough. Opening Ceremonies needs substantial participation by the GoHs to help members recognize them later in the con.

Someone explained to me that the hotel offered to provide a stage on risers; however, since the audience would be seated on a level floor this still would not have provided them with an unobstructed view. Therefore, the committee spent extra money to have a higher stage constructed. The fire marshal dealt the con an early blow by refusing to approve the rickety staircase at the front of the stage: it had to be torn down. 

When I passed the Worldcon gavel to chair Karen Meschke, I confess the stage didn't feel entirely solid beneath my feet. I was afraid I was destined to make an exit similar to that of the villain in the movie Charade, through a trapdoor of my own creation. 

Masquerade: Prior to the masquerade, reports that there were less than 30 registered entries stimulated debate among conrunners whether the staging and technical support for a Worldcon masquerade cost more than it is worth to please too few costumers.

But when I actually saw the LoneStarCon 2 masquerade, I was convinced all over again that the bean-counting approach to the masquerade is wrong. Incredible energy and anticipation surrounds a Worldcon masquerade, not just among costumers, but among many hundreds looking forward to what is literally a tournament in fannish creativity. The desirability of the event cannot be analyzed by dividing the cost by the number of participants, as if it was a kaffeeklatsch. This will always be a thematic peak of a Worldcon, so long as there are enough good costumes and it is well-staged. 

Peggy Kennedy's crew took a little over two dozen entries (though with multiple participants, there were over 50 people in costume) and, with the masterful and witty Susan de Guardiola as emcee, packaged them into a 2-hour masquerade that is one of the most enjoyable I've attended. 

(A knowledgeable committee member thought $60,000 was in the ballpark when asked about several figures rumored as cost of the masquerade. Just the same, that's very difficult to believe, and the same person agreed some of the costly equipment and construction, like the temporary stage, was used by all the major events.)

Hugos: Anything about the Hugo Ceremonies that had been orchestrated by Lori Wolf and company worked well, whether it was the food served at the nominees' reception, the published program, or video displays. The way the toastmaster handled himself onstage was not so great.

The indispensable requirement of a toastmaster is poise, which Neal Barrett, Jr. utterly lacked. The first couple of times Barrett announced that he didn't know what was supposed to happen next I was inclined to believe it was part of his act, partly because he had sailed through his humorous set-pieces, and partly because all of us holding copies of the program knew what was supposed to happen next, so why not Barrett? 

Once it became obvious Barrett really didn't know, I wondered whether someone was going to have to save him. I thought of Philip Marlowe's line (in The Big Sleep) about a stained glass image of a knight rescuing a maiden: "I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn't seem to be really trying."

There's a magnitude of difference between a personable humorist delivering rehearsed stories and a personality (like Silverberg, Resnick or Willis) who plays off the unexpected in a way that makes an audience feel things are actually under control. When the Seiun Award presenters wanted Barrett to cross the stage as a proxy accepter for the missing winner, he had to be repeatedly prompted, at first appearing as if he had not been paying attention, then as if he was afraid to move away from his podium. He was at a loss when Clayburn Moore didn't immediately answer a cue to display his design for the Hugo base. And he kept looking into the wings as if expecting award presenter Roy Tackett to emerge, even though tech had appropriately decided to have the wheelchair-bound Tackett participate from the foot of the stage.

Work, Work, Work: A wheelchair need not be any barrier to participating in a con. Early at LoneStarCon, when Judith Ward passed by in hers, she demanded of everyone listening, "Didn't I tell you that I wouldn't run the Con Suite?" Ed Wilson, a fan attending the con from Qatar, returned the obvious question, "So, you're running the Con Suite?" Judith snarled, "Yes!"

A great deal of physical work goes into assembling the exhibit areas of a Worldcon. Hearing that Bob Eggleton had helped set up the art show raised his reputation even higher. It became front page news when Randall Shepherd quoted Bob as saying, "I really like all this screwing and shoving."

Bill Parker ran Tech for LoneStarCon. The Hugo Ceremony wasn't the only place Bill had to supply fireworks that weekend: he commuted to Houston in the middle of the con because he had to supervise fireworks and lighting for the WNBA Houston Comets. Bill had this schedule conflict only because the Comets made the playoffs; the regular season ended before Labor Day. In case you care, the Comets won the league championship.

Bill also received credit for the first convention-related injury when his two-foot-long pet iguana clawed his arm. Kids, don't try this at home, these people are professionals....

Stu Hellinger did another good job racking up ads for the souvenir book, enough to cover the cost of the book. He quashed a rumor that he was told to stop selling because the committee set rates that didn't cover the cost of publishing them. Stu said the only problem was that the rates were not set until June and that kept him from selling all the ads he might have.

I wrote for Tom Becker's daily newzine, whose title was either Newsbringer or Domino, depending upon which side was up, given its Ace-Double-inspired design. Tom gathered a very interesting constellation of talent to assist him. His Thursday morning staff meeting involved Dick Russell, Robert Sacks, Doug Faunt, Benoit Girard, Spike Parsons, Leslie Mann, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Moshe Feder, Lise Eisenberg, Beth Moursund, Bill Humphries, Adina Adler and Alice and Ken Spivey. Tom envisioned that various combinations of these people would take charge of editing each of the 11 projected issues. Nearly everyone had a good time, after all, editing the daily zine is the second best job at a con. (The best job is running the green room, when the budget allows enough creativity to keep the pros from permanently retreating to the SFWA Suite.)

Tom carried over to Newsbringer/Domino the successful features of his vibrant, highly-readable daily zine for the El Paso Westercon, like digital photos (snapped by James Daugherty) and fannish columnists. Yet LSC2's daily zine didn't attain the same energized feeling. The format may have been a barrier. The zine was composed of four pages created by folding a sheet of paper. In that scheme guest articles filled most of a page and, unlike pieces of similar length in letter-size editions of the Westercon zine, looked "too big to read." The Ace Double format also grated after a couple of issues -- it probably was a "funny once."

Most of all, Newsbringer needed more fixed distribution points. Apart from a prominent drop-off at the freebie boards in the exhibit hall, fans were never sure where to find a copy. Too many fans didn't find the