The-other-Carl, Colin and I were were there to witness the incredible spectacle that is Dragon*con. I’m trying to figure out how to describe how amazing it is and find myself coming up short. It isn’t just a science fiction convention, it isn’t just a big sf/fantasy/gaming convention, it’s freaking huge. It spans four large hotels turning Atlanta, Georgia into a writhing sea of geekness for four days. You must attend this convention before you die!

Probably the most notable aspect of DC is the number of fans in costume. The evenings in the hotel lounges and bars are giant costume parties. We hung out for hours, people watching and mingling with other fans in costume – oh, didn’t I mention that one of us was in costume? Yeah, I was a klingon. A blonde klingon. In a business suit. That’s me in the picture above…But I digress…The costume parade is wave after wave of characters from movies, tv and comics that takes more than half an hour to pass.

Here’s a Photo Gallery, I’ve got videos also, but It’ll need some editing. I’ll put links in the comments to this post.

There were dozens of fan and celebrity pannels. So many that it was often hard to choose between concurrent events. Fortunately, most of the most popular ones were repeated. A few of the pannels we attended included open Q&As with the stars of Star Wars, Farscape, DS9, SG1/Atlantis and Firefly/Serenity. We also attended smaller pannels with George Takei, Erin Gray, James Marsters and Cliff Simon.

Dragon*con is host to the official Miss Klingon Empire beauty pageant. Judgeing this year were Michael Dorn (Worf), Ethan Philips (Neelix), James Cawley (Peter Kirk in fanfilms), Domenic Keating (Malcolm Reed), and beauty pageant agent and veteran contestant Autumn-Sky Boothe. As I’ve mentioned here before, the winner of last year’s MKE, VarkNa B’traughH, is a very good friend of mine. She was in attendance as was MKE 1999, Gunner H’nter, the very first Miss Klingon Empire. And of course as  klingon myself, I was not about to miss this event. It was great fun, as expected, with one of the contestants, Lady Vik, reciting  a love poem to Michael Dorn, who climbed onstage to deliver her a long passionate kiss. I’ll put a link to video in the comments so you can find out who won.

Merchandise booths filled three ballrooms on two floors of the Marriott. There was lots of gaming; a large artists room; many guest authors and writer’s pannels; and the celebrity Walk of Fame where fans wait in line to pay $20 to meet a star and have them sign a picture (ok, it not really my thing, but lots of people like it).

It would be remiss of me not to give recognition to the Atlanta Police and other security personnel. The crowds were unbelievable – and everyone was there to party. Yet I heard of no police/security incidents, nor even any antagonism between police and attendees