update, Matthew reports on a Gaiman press conference here and wraps up his thoughts about Worldcon here. (I should mention that the news conference also features Elisabeth Vonarburg, a Quebecois translator of s.f. who was being honored, though my interest is straight Gaiman.)
If you like podcasts, here are Matthew’s talks with the fantasy writers Lev Grossman, George R. R. Martin, and Felix Gilman. They get into some interesting stuff.
Martin is a lot more affable and down to earth than I expected. Without knowing much about him, for some reason I expected somebody prickly.
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Matthew talked to Gaiman here (which I already posted about) and also here. At the second link Gaiman talks about where he is in his worklife and career, and he says this:
I’m essentially the first member of my generation to be a Guest of Honour at Worldcon. … It definitely has significance for some people that I’m doing this. And it has significance for me, I think.
I hadn’t known about the generational first, mainly because I don’t follow s.f. fandom. But this same year we have a president born in 1961 and a Worldcon guest of honor born in 1960, and in each case that’s something new. (For the presidency it’s very new: Clinton and George W. were born in 1946, which makes for a big jump to 1961. I can’t find a rundown on Worldcon g-of-h ages.)
So, whatever. As a side note, Gaiman and Obama have some similarities. They both appear a bit slim and wandlike to be so imposing, etc. Gaiman gets called “emo,” and James Carville and others tried to girlify Obama during the ’08 primaries.