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September 05, 2004
A Second 2004 Conference Report
By Regina Cross:
In case none of my co-conspirators writes, I feel a certain responsibility to put our story in the newsletter. Hopefully, someone got a pic of the See-No-Evil, etc. bit onstage.
Wednesday night at the opening reception, Don Morse announced a quiz, written by Brian Aldiss, which would help fund a special award to Bob Collins at the Saturday banquet for his history of service. We distinctly remembered hearing Don say something about probably needing to ask around for some of the answers, so Kathy Davis, Stefan Ekman (he of the Malfoy-clone looks), Sharon Emmerichs and I decided to help each other out.
Between my free internet access (thanks to Wyndham ByRequest), Sharon's willingness to schmooze with and be goosed by Brian, Kathy's quick thinking and Stefan's long-distance call to Sweden to look up our last answer, we managed to find all the correct answers, only spending about 4 1/2-5 hours working on the darn thing. We figured any ties would be drawn from randomly, so we'd have 4 chances out of however many, and quite probably end up splitting the $100.
We were wrong. Late Saturday afternoon, as Sharon and I were desperately trying to get anyone in the hotel to let us order some food, Brian comes up to us in the bar with a conundrum he found himself in. It seemed that four people had exactly the same score on the quiz, what do you know? We confessed, figuring that the easy answer for him would be to just let us split the prize as we had intended....but NO! There was going to be a "shoot out" at the banquet, where the four of us would have to think on our feet.
But there was one problem beyond the intimidation of public performance--none of us were planning on attending the banquet. Three of the four of us are graduate students looking forward to spending considerably less than $35 on a meal (no, it was not free, as Brian intimated at the "award" ceremony). The fourth had an incredibly early flight to catch Sunday morning. After some serious guilt-work by Brian, we agreed that we would do our best to make it back to the hotel by 10 to accept our fates.
We had a sinking feeling there would be more to it than just some easy question...that Brian would perhaps try to embarrass us for having the gall to do actual research. So we began to plot and plan, eventually coming up with at least 3 or 4 possibilities, including, at one point, having an uninvolved graduate student create a diversion (Thanks again for the offer, Charlie). We settled at last upon the See-No-Evil, Hear-No-Evil, Speak-No-Evil routine, modified with Stefan's "not at liberty to divulge" answer. And it was a darn good thing, too, since Brian gave us a non-existent work for our first try.
To be entirely honest, after two titles that I had no clue on (partly because I'm horrible at remembering names), I was ready to start guessing "Brian Aldiss" on every title. Luckily, Sharon, who was preparing to take her comprehensive exams the second week after the conference, remembered whichever Jonson it was and got us our prize money, which we promptly divided. The whole ordeal led, in turn, to a free round of drinks courtesy of Tom Shippey, a great chat with Tom, Brian and others pre-reception, and a great story to tell.
Posted by ChrissieMains at September 5, 2004 11:35 PM