Day 4 had some errands and non-con stuff, but my day included some con-related highlights, too. First, we attended Neil Gaiman and Gary K. Wolf's "conversation" in which they chatted off-the-cuff about assorted science fictional topics, such as the mutli-layered nature of Gene Wolfe's work— how it can be enjoyed in a whole new way on a second read, because then you can see how the writer constructed the story to reveal information to the reader in a specific way. Neil also talked about the difference between a critic and a reviewer: a reviewer tells you whether you might like the book, and a reviewer tells you something that makes you understand the book better.

At the end of the day, we had an early Chinese dinner with scottedelman, my friend Karen, Steven Desjardins, maryturzillo, and geoffrey_landis. Then we rushed over to get a seat for the Hugos and found a line of folks waiting to get in.

We got decent seats, though, and the presentation was nice. No major snafus with the AV or sound. Here's the short list of pro fiction category winners:

 Best Novel: The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman

 Best Novella: The Erdmann Nexus, Nancy Kress

 Best Novelette: Shoggoths in Bloom, Elizabeth Bear

 Best Short Story: Exhalation, Ted Chiang

Wall-E won for long form and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog won for short form, totally beating out both Dr. Who episodes, which I thought was a shame.

I ran into my fellow ebook panelists (and enthusiast) James Bryant and he showed my his Cybook Opus, which is a pretty cool eReader— remarkably light and with an excellent screen, but no wireless and no good way to organize the ebooks on it. It also lack a sleep mode. But the variable fonts are great.

All in all, it was an exciting night.