StarBase Indy is a Star Trek oriented convention that's held in Indianapolis on the weekend after Thanksgiving. This is a fun little convention with a focus on STEM technologies and the optimistic future that Roddenberry envisioned for the STrek universe, rather than the stars and personality cult.

I had a chance to talk with one of the serious experts in the AI field. We bonded over each publishing our first book with Academic Press, the second with Morgain Kauffman (after they bought Academic Press) and now being with Elsevier, who bought Morgan Kauffman.

This year, the convention teamed up with a small press (Dragon's Edge) to put out an anthology of up-beat stories. They accepted one of mine.

Part of celebrating the new book was a "meet the authors" reception, so I got to hang out with several folks I've met at other conventions and a meet new folks.

At the reception, they passed out the three awards for the anthology. One for best poem, one for best story, and one for best of show.

I got the Best of Show award.

It's a nice little trophy that's now gracing my display case.

You can see a picture of me with the award at the end of Chris Barkley's report in File 770.

My T-shirt reads "The great thing about writing is you can set your own schedule. Any 18 20 25 hours a day you like."

The somewhat bemused expression on my face is because I didn't expect to win anything. I've read half the collection and found a couple others that I'd have given the award to.

But, I can now claim to be a multiple award winner, which is pretty cool.

In less happy news, on Sunday I learned that an old friend, Leslie Fish, had passed. I was surprised to learn she was just my age. I thought she was at least 10 years older. (I'll be catty - chain smoking might have had a lot to do with her elderly appearance and pre-mature death.) Leslie was one of the early Trekkers, back in the days of mimeographed fan-zines.

I co-opted the start of a panel on Sci Fi poetry I was on to do a brief eulogy and sang "Hope Eyrie" one of her more popular songs. It celebrates the first moon landing.

IMHO, there's no more fitting place for a memorial to her than a Trek con.

Once that panel was done, I headed home, and despite blizzard warnings all weekend, I missed all the snow and had nothing but dry roads.

Kind of boring, but I'll take it.