Tag: london
Picocon 32
Picocon (so named because it is fairly small) is a science fiction and fantasy convention run annually by the Imperial College Science Fiction and Fantasy and Gothic Horror Society (ICSF). It’s designed to be handy for students and fans based in the London area, but in practice quite a few people seem to travel long distances in order to attend, and come back year after year.
I was the first act on the Saturday, and since the theme of this year’s con was ‘duality’ I decided to focus upon Cuckoo Song, and held forth about doppelgangers, doubles and changelings.
I was followed by the fearsomely eloquent Cory Doctorow, who talked about digital securiy, cryptography, surveillance and ways that one might lose personal control in a world based upon the Internet of Things. It was a fascinating talk and very entertaining.
Picocon’s fearless agents had hunted down some particularly reprehensible examples of tawdry merchandise. Such items were then paraded before the attendees, who could bid to save or condemn them (all money to charity). Those objects deemed irredeemably ugly or tacky were ceremonially frozen using liquid nitrogen and then smashed with a sledgehammer. Very satisfying.
I also ran into Autun Purser, and was childishly excited to find that his Fantastic Travel Destinations collection now includes a poster based on Caverna!
In the afternoon I appeared on a panel with Cory, discussing dystopias, the benefits or dangers of writing groups, audience avatars, writing YA and how to be a subversive aunt/uncle.
On the Sunday, the guests of honour were Kari Sperring and Ian McDonald. As it happened, their speeches worked well as a pair (which fitted the theme of duality). Kari’s talk was about new ways of regarding history, challenging the accounts written by the ‘winners’, and avoiding mindless repetition of the dominant narrative when writing historical fiction. Ian’s speech was about new ways of regarding the future, the Long Now Foundation, and their desire to move away from mankind’s disastrous short-termism.
Both talks were very interesting, and their panel in the afternoon covered a lot of ground, including gender and the emergence of fictional futures shaped by cultures that weren’t American or European.
All in all, Picocon is a warm, friendly, welcoming convention, and they look after their Guests of Honour very well. Many thanks to Stephen Ingram and the other organisers. Thanks in particular to Noor Mulheron for chaperoning me throughout the con, and making sure that I was fed and watered and didn’t fall down any holes.
Loncon3
The World Science Fiction Convention is nomadic, descending each year upon a different unsuspecting city like a benign but unpredictable mothership. This year it was London that found itself overshadowed by the con’s intergalactic bulk, and bathed in an eerie, blu-ish glow.
Well, it took over the ExCel centre in London Docklands anyway.
Over five days, the convention featured over a thousand programme items – panels, workshops, interviews, lectures, plays, games, parties, concerts, film and TV screenings, dances, science talks and a great costume competition on the Saturday evening.
I was on four panels, the first of which was Fallen London: Recreating London in Games, moderated by Christi Scarborough and featuring Jonathan Green and Kate Nepveu. We talked about London’s rich history, and the fact that so many London-themed games were set in the Victorian period. (A good writeup of the panel by Kate Nepveu can be found here.)
My second panel was You Write Pretty, in which we each chose a sentence from a fantastical work, and had to convince the audience that our choice was the best of the bunch. Greer Gilman chose a quote from Andrew Marvel’s The Garden, EJ Swift picked a sentence from Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and Christopher Priest took a line from Robert Sheckley’s The Specialist. The audience ultimately voted in favour of my quote from Jabberwocky, but I suspect that had more to do with Lewis Carroll than my arguments.
Where is the YA Humour was my third panel, with co-panelists Gail Carriger, John Hemry and Jody Lynn Nye, and moderator Suzanne McLeod. Our answer to the title question: ‘There’s quite a lot of YA humour actually, you just have to look further than The Hunger Games.’ (In other news, Gail Carriger wears excellent hats, and John Hemry owns a tribble.)
My last panel, The Education and Training of a Young Protagonist, featured Zen Cho, John Hemry and Gail Carriger, with David Luckett as moderator. We discussed virtual schools, boarding schools for “gifted” children, combat training, tailoring education to the metaphysic and whether classrooms and teachers would still have a place in the schools of the future.
I also gave a reading of extracts from Cuckoo Song and A Face Like Glass, and hosted a Kaffeeklatsch, which roughly translates to “hour-long natter over tea”. And in this case, biscuits. Lots of biscuits.
My spare time was spent roaming around and admiring people’s costumes and the displays in the Exhibit Hall.
Here’s “Jolie” the robot dog, who can speak Japanese, Spanish and English, and who sulks if she’s carried in a holdall or not given her bone toy.
Pigeon Simulator! It detects your motions, and by flapping your arms you can soar, swoop and bank, while the big screen gives you your pigeon’s-eye-view.
It’s possible that I now own more steampunk goggles than I did…
