The high point for me was getting to hang out a bit with Michael Dirda and talk literature.  I also caught up with Andy and Sydney Duncan, Scott Edelman, and Ed Schubert.  Most of the readings I wanted to see conflicted with my stuff, but I did get to hear Hildy Silverman read a fun piece about witches at the mall.  The panel on endings I served on suffered from an overly controlling, verbose, and opinionated moderator, so that the rest of us didn’t get much chance to say anything.  Appropriately, I just wanted it to end!  One of the side trails that panel went down, as well as a couple of others, is the battle between the academy and science fiction.  Each seems determined to demonize the other with pointless strawman attacks.  One panel Michael Dirda was on, Is Genre Good?  addressed the issue directly, and Michael was surprised at the level of lingering antipathy in the academy toward sf—surely we’d gotten past all that.  Afraid not.  But then sf folks hauling out the most absurd deconstructionists to be the norm of the academy doesn’t help the cause either.  Why can’t we all just get along?