The last time I went to Worldcon was 2009 (Montreal), and I posted a pictorial essay. The last time I visited Seattle was 2010 and I got some photos then too.
I just got back from the 2025 Worldcon in Seattle, and I took photos, so it's time for another essay, right?
(Photos now live on my photo page, but I'll link them from here too.)
You can see the mountains from the train as you come out of the airport. Mountains on the horizon are as startling to me as giant orbital rings in the sky. I've just never lived on such a planet.
The evening before the con, I walked around the waterfront and watched the sun go down. It was stupidly hot -- until exactly 7:15 pm, when a cool breeze rolled in from the Sound and everybody in sight took a simultaneous deep breath. After that it was regular Seattle weather and I was glad I brought my jacket. (The green hyperspace jacket.)
There's Mount Rainier peeking up in the second photo. The only time I saw it, except for one glimpse from the airplane.
The Seattle Convention Center is serious about daylight. The function rooms are all in the core. The hallways and escalators run around the outside, with glass curtain walls. As you see, even the expo floor gets sunlight. It's very heartening. Most convention centers are cavernous fluorescent hives once you get past the lobby.
(Montreal has a colorful lobby, which doesn't really fill the "lots of daylight" need. I see Worldcon is back there in 2027! Gonna have to take more photos.)
For some reason they mirrored the ceiling over the escalators. This is looking straight up, and therefore straight down.
Somebody brought their drum collection. Do I know why? Does there have to be a reason? You can hit the drums. Guenivere back there on the bench was playing the didjeridu.
I did not photograph the Masquerade, but I caught this excellent hall costume pair. (Didn't get their names, sorry.)
I took a day off to check out Seattle museums. (Just like 2010!) The Chihuly gallery was great -- or at least photogenic, which means great for you.
There were Chihuly pieces around the convention center too, and all the local hotels. The man (and his studio) blows a lot of glass.
The gallery has a garden which is planted with both silicate and carboniferous life-forms. The colors really do that in daylight. It's impressive.
Next up was the Museum of Pop Culture, a very silly place that I enjoyed. Here's Woody Guthrie's guitar. It's supposed to say "THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS", but the back is so scratched up that I couldn't make that out, so I just got a closeup of his name.
They also had a fragment of the guitar that Jimi Hendrix smashed.
Not to mention this air guitar, carefully set up on a stand. I absolutely touched it. Can't stop the signal, man.
(Don't laugh. Just across the room, an instrument was set up to mix different tracks when you waved your hand through laser beams. I figured the air guitar was rigged the same way! Or the stand could have been a theremin antenna. Okay, it wasn't, but I checked.)
On my 2010 trip, MoPOP had a terrific exhibit of classic sci-fi paperback covers. That's long gone, but they now have a lot of sci-fi/fantasy/horror movie props. This very fine display has props from The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. That's the 2020 Netflix show that died ignominiously after one season. It wasn't great -- I mean, it wasn't even good -- but there were some terrific scenes in there. Also, props!
(Check out this light fixture I made. My design, riffing on Dark Crystal art. I got it laser-cut at a local makerspace.)
MoPOP also had an "Indie Game" exhibit. Pretty solid. The exhibit is a few years old (2019?) but they rotate the games to keep up with the times. Here's the credits plaque -- lot of familiar names.
(They don't rotate the "oral history" video clips, though. Brandon Chung was talking about Quadrilateral Cowboy.)
Then over to the Seattle Art Museum, which had an extensive Ai Weiwei exhibit. A varied and talented man! The only photo I got was this pair of truncated icosahedra. Apparently they're constructed as wood joinery, no nails or glue or anything.
Finally, a visit to the fishies. The Seattle Aquarium has a new wing. (Fin?)
The benches are incised with a subtle reaction-diffusion pattern. Someone had fun with their CNC hardware.
I don't know what this fish is. It looks like a game designer tried to do "over-the-top exaggerated fish design", but failed, because fish are always weirder than you think.
And that was it for Seattle! Except for that "mountains from the train" photo at the top, which actually I took on the way back to the airport, sorry. Narrative design is a feast of lies.
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