Really. To all of you.

And so do I. Thanks for the condolences, everybody. It’s cool, really. And well done, Bear. (I knew I was doomed as soon as I saw Hammered in an airport bookstore. :)) I couldn’t ask better than to lose to such an honorable opponent.

Best part of the Campbell part of the ceremony: So Stan Schmidt’s talking about the award, and reading the list of nominees, right? And on the stage about twenty feet behind him is a guy holding the actual plaque. And as Stan’s talking, the camera zooms in on it. And there’s ELIZABETH BEAR up there on the video screens over his head in letters two feet high. (Camera zooms out quickly, but — too late!)

It was such a relief, really.

(And we got a good laugh out of watching Stan — who I’m pretty sure had no idea about any of these video hijinks — digressing and fiddling with the envelope and trying to draw out the tension. Brilliant.)

Anyway: My airport hotel here in Heathrow, unlike the Glasgow Hilton, does have free wi-fi (insert joke about civilized England and barbarian Scotland here, only don’t ’cause you’ll probably get your teeth kicked in) but it only seems to work reliably when the computer is turned on its side. Which, even with me turned on my side, is not what you call an ergonomic typing position. Or maybe that’s not what’s going on and maybe it would work fine if I took it over to the desk again, but electromagnetic fields are the point where I stopped paying attention in high school physics (partly ’cause I didn’t believe in “field lines” but mostly ’cause I was too lazy to learn any equations I couldn’t derive from F=ma or PV=nRT) and it’s all a big mystery to me and I’m not going to risk it.

(But any net access at all feels like land after a shipwreck, God help me. It’s a very SFnal feeling. Like Case on the temperfoam in Cheap Hotel after the surgery. I miss everybody — even you folks I saw less than 24 hours ago, though not quite so much as the ones who couldn’t make it.)

So, more later. Maybe from JFK tomorrow evening, if my layover’s as long as it looks.