One thing I didn't mention in all of my Worldcon blogging was how I was carrying all of the various junk I was lugging around -- most days I had Scar Night by Alan Campbell (which will be a SFBC Selection in January, by the way), a magazine or two, the pocket program, my digital camera, and whatever else I had bought or people had given to me along the way. Luckily, I brought a bag -- I was testing out the new SFBC backpack. (Below is a photo I took the other day of the one I took to Worldcon, so you can see what it looks like after use.)

We did a backpack because our intrepid marketing manager, Theresa Romeo, noticed that a lot of people at Boskone (her first convention, early this year) were carrying them, and she thought it would be a nice choice for our next piece of logo merchandise., to join the baseball hat and recent T-shirt.

It fared pretty well -- I'm tough on bags (I went through at least half a dozen straps for my first messenger bag in the ten years I had it, among other repairs), and it held up to all of my abuse. The cell phone holder on the strap, which I'd thought was a silly affectation, was actually very useful and got my phone out of my pocket.

So, if you're looking for a smallish backpack for convention-going, school, or whatever, I can honestly say the SFBC backpack is a good bet. It's not one of those gargantuan rolling backpacks, and it only has one shoulder strap, but it can hold two books and a small stack of other things, and I found it very handy at Worldcon. I hope you will, too.