S. Worthen | Weblog

Apropos of the forthcoming Eastercon, I've been thinking of doing some variant on this image for a while.

I'm back from Eastercon. It was a good, fairly tranquil weekend: lots of reunions with rarely-seen friends, including some from Toronto, some excellent lectures, some good panels.

Top tip for designing convention panel discussion questions: don't make it a yes-or-no question.

And then the other three days of Eastercon happened, and we all went home again.

Let me back up a little. On Sunday, I gave the BSFA's inaugural academic lecture at Eastercon, on practical, sensible, strange, and weird things having to do with time and its depictions in the Middle Ages. I'm happy to say that it went very well, even if, as an ignorant colonial, I'm unable to pronounce Michaelmas correctly. Also, I had incentive to mention the Hedgehog of the Destruction of Ninevah, which is always a good thing.

On Monday, I was part of the Hugo discussion panel, which worked satisfyingly enough because our reading tastes were largely complementary. The panel happened in between two Punch & Judy shows happening in the same room, so we had a theatre and puppets hanging out while we discusseed the provisional Graphic Story category and other Hugo-related things.

( Panels, lectures, and other events )

I didn't go to anywhere near as many panels as I would normally in a convention, spending half of the rest of the time tweaking my lecture slides, getting sleep, or trying to get to the convention hotel. In between everything else, I caught up with friends and met lots of new and intriguing people. It was an excellent convention; its only real challenge in my experience of it was that many of us were staying in the city center, a maze of one way streets which I never traversed the same way twice. There was a shuttle bus service, but not always often enough, and taxis were often complicated by losing them to other aspiring passengers. Other than that though, it was impressive: friendly staff, cheap and decent food, a good variety of well-used spaces, lots of bars, and an excellent program.

Two hours of Bank Holiday weekend traffic delays, and an hour of going in circles in Bradford later, I made it to Eastercon. Not nearly enough of us are able to stay at the con hotel this year, but at least there are shuttles to take us back and forth.

I began, notably, with my first science fiction convention panel ever. Fortunately I had good and interesting company on it, including la_marquise_de_ and desperance. The topic was technically "Re-creating History", but we took our madate liberally, exploring the interrelations of history, fiction, and world-building. I don't think it's possible to build a world without it having history. I also had never before been struck by how very odd it is that one of romance science fiction's three subgenres is one in which the background is specifically background; futuristics are novels in which the romance is central and the science fiction is window dressing. Surely, this is the only vaguely formal subset of SF/F in which background as set is a feature, not a bug. The panel was very well-attended: standing room only at the back!

After that, I could gradually relax. No more running late. No more being caught in traffic. No more needing to be in front of the audience until Sunday. I had a lovely (and very inexpensive) dinner at the hotel with friends, saw lots of even more rarely-seen friends around and about at the hotel, and ended up at more panels and talks than I'd intended to: world-building was dominated by Stress and Doctorow. "The Faces of the Moon" was a history of artwork of the moon in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by the artist guest of honor. The marketing panel had a lot of people with great job titles on it, and did a decent job at an ungainly topic. One of them writes blurbs for a living which, at least in theory, is really neat profession to have!

I haven't even looked at the program for tomorrow. For tonight, a tweak or two more to my slides, and a brief browse of something Hugo-nominated before sleep.

Thought: Is it possible to write didactic SF/F for adults, or does being didactic automatically label a book as young adult?

I went back to Glasgow again last weekend, the second time in a year, both times with events held in the same time, both times for science fiction conventions. The world of British SF fandom doesn't actually revolve exclusively around Glasgow; there was simply efficiency in organized both WorldCon and Eastercon in the same place. The British National Science Fiction Convention is called Eastercon - a good thing, when the alternative is the ungainly acronym BNSFC. The name doubles as a handy date mnemonic.

Eastercon was dense and good. I went to lots of panels. Guest of Honor and special guest slots were particularly good. I loved the corset panel - comparative corset history with all the corsets under discussion being worn by models/volunteers. I bought books, I coveted a lovely etching in the art show, and I networked. (A German historian of science at the con recognized me from the Halifax conference.) I ran into long-lost friends (makyo), long-misplaced friends (guyelfkin, paul_skevington, and S.), and met lovely new people (including wishus). Thanks to London pub meets, I also knew a decent swathe of other attendees.

( Excessive detail... )