I took the entire day off for Condor 2012 and it turned out to be a very good decision. This entire week at my day job has been a very busy and fairly stressful time, sleeping in on Friday allowed me some much-needed relaxation time.

After rising and a simple breakfast, I watched about an hour of bonus material for The Return Of The King that I had not seen before – stuff tat was not on the old DVDs but was on my new blu-rays, and ten walked down to the trolley.

The first panel of the day was a discussion of humans as the invaders of alien worlds and it was a lively panel, though there was a little took much high-jacking of the panel by audience members.

The second panel was more fun, a discussion of religion and science-fiction, not just the portrayal of religion but the interlace between people and fans of faith with the SF movement and community.

Panel de third was on SF and horror and this was the first panel of the con where I was a panelist. This one went off very well, my friend and fellow Mysterious Writers Group member J.M. Perkins took moderating duties onto himself and performed a spectacular job.

The next two panel slots turned into hanging out at the con suite, having a running conversation with my friend Brad and shorter a conversation author Verner Vinge, and meeting up with my sweetie-wife when she finally made it to the convention.

Next was a presentation about the conceptual changes coming upon the world due to recent and soon to come discoveries in the heavens. Apparently last year there were a 2300 possible extra-solar planets discovered, many of them small rocky worlds. The presenter thought it as likely in less than ten years we might have evidence – by way of spectrographic data – of life on another planet. (Free oxygen is pretty much life.)

After a short break for dinner – hmm steak – we headed into the final panel of the day, a discussion of the rise of the Zombies and how to survive it. There was very little new ground covered, but it was a fast, and funny panel with plenty of entertainment from then panelists – I did my bit as this was panel number two for me – and from the audience. A very good way to end day one.