So, how does a free trip end up costing $2,700?

San Diego Comic-Con International 2008 was extremely generous with Carolyn and me: since I was Special Guest this year, we had all our expenses covered -- roundtrip airfare for both of us from Toronto, five nights in the Omni right across the street from the convention center (where our suite number was 1701 -- the Enterprise's serial number!), and all our meals paid for.

And yet, I return to Toronto $2,700 poorer.

How, you ask?

By going nuts in the dealers' room! :) And very happily so. We only hauled $700 worth of stuff back with us; the rest is orders or pre-orders for merchandise that will be shipped later (with proper customs delcarations; I'll happily pay the Canadian tax when it arrives).

What kind of things did we get? Well, for one, the 15-inch statue of the Battlestar Galactica from Diamond Select Toys pictured above (we opted for this, the battle-damaged version, as it had more character than the pristine version). It's a good, not great, piece (I tend to agree with Sean Huxter's "B-minus" review over at Science Fiction Weekly), but we got a deal, and it's not like there's another large version of this ship available.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site