Tag: public appearance
FantasyCon 2014
After the impressive vastness of Loncon3 and the London Film and Comic Con, FantasyCon proved to be smaller and more relaxed, with a friendly, approachable atmosphere. It was held in the rather attractive Royal York Hotel, next to York’s railway station.
My first panel was “Gentlemen Thieves, Lovable Pirates and Sexy Tricksters”, wittily moderated by James Barclay, and my co-panelists were Joanne Harris, Kim Lakin-Smith, Libby McGuigan and David Tallerman. We discussed the glorification of criminals, whether they were a gender slant in their depiction, the appeal of subversion and rebellion, and whether sympathic crooks needed to have potential for redemption. A good, thorough description of the panel can be found here.
Later that day, I appeared with Gollancz editor Gillian Redfearn, Tom Pollock, James Oswald, and Joanne Hall in the panel “The Chosen One”. Personally, I’m wildly allergic to Chosen Ones in fiction, and said so at some length. The conversation touched on the inspirational effect of such characters, the class implications of notions of ‘birthright’, the question of who the Chosen One was chosen by, and the fact that quite a lot of ‘Chosen Ones’ seemed to be white males. Joanne Hall has a description of the panel here.
(I realised afterwards that I had neglected to embarrass Tom Pollock by mentioning Filius Viae from Tom’s excellent The City’s Son – both a ‘ Chosen One’ and a really interesting subversion of the trope.)
In the evening, I competed in a live, SF-and-books-themed game of ‘Just a Minute’, skilfully compered by Paul Cornell. Scores were read out by Tea and Jeopardy‘s butler extraordinaire, Latimer (AKA Pete Newman). My fellow contestants were Gillian Redfearn, Kate Elliot and Stephen Gallagher, and we had proper buzzers that buzzed and lit up.
I’d never played it before, and hadn’t predicted how much fun it would be. Several times contestants fell prey to ‘hesitation’ because they or the audience were laughing too much. I learnt two other things as well. 1) I am capable of prescient challenges. 2) Audiences like it if you offer to kill them all.
Stephen Gallagher was victorious, and I came second (with Gillian Redfearn barely a step behind).
Altogether, a lovely convention. On the Sunday I even had time to scamper all over York, like a history-obsessed squirrel…
FantasyCon Schedule!
This weekend (September 5-7th) I shall be in York attending The British Fantasy Convention, and the organisers are inexplicably allowing me to appear on things and talk at people.
Here is my schedule:
Saturday 6th, 12:00 noon
Panel: Gentlemen Thieves, Loveable Pirates and Sexy Tricksters
Panellists: James Barclay, Joanne Harris, Kim Lakin-Smith, Frances Hardinge, Libby McGuigan
Why are untrustworthy characters and criminals among SFF’s most beloved characters? Does sympathy for the underdog shade into idealising predators?
Saturday 6th, 3.00pm
Panel: The Chosen One
Panellists: Gillian Redfearn, Tom Pollock, James Oswald, Joanne Hall, Frances Hardinge, Helen Marshall
From Neo to Barack Obama. Many works of SFF place the fate of the world on the shoulders of a single, pre-ordained hero, who often possesses some magical trait. The panellists discuss ideas and subversions of the One in SFF and beyond. Are there echoes in real world politics? Is the concept stale and regressive, or can it be redeemed by a more diverse range of Chosen Ones in pop culture?
Saturday 6th, 5.00-5.20pm
Reading – extracts from Cuckoo Song
Saturday 6th, 8.00pm
Just A Minute
FantasyCon’s resident quizmaster, Paul Cornell, hosts this classic panel gameshow.
Paul Cornell, Kate Elliott, Stephen Gallagher, Gillian Redfearn, Frances Hardinge
Hope to see some of you there!
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…
Young Adult Literature Convention
On 12th and 13th July, the first Young Adult Literature Convention (YALC) spread its wings and took to the summer sky. And it was glorious.
It was also very, very popular.
YALC took place as a part of the much larger London Film and Comic Con (LFCC). I first had an inkling that there might be more than a couple of people turning up to the combined conventions when I arrived outside the Earls Court Exhibition centre, and found that the huge forecourt was completely filled by one enormous, snaking queue.
I felt a little guilty as I bypassed the queue, using my special guest pass. (Though I also felt a bit like a member of the a secret society as I was shown in through a back door, which made me feel better.)
Within the halls, LFCC was crowded, hot as a pressure cooker, spectacular and beautifully distracting.
The YALC events took place in the Book Zone, the slightly cooler end of Earls Court 2.
I was on “Bring Me My Dragons! Writing Fantasy Today”, a panel discussing YA Fantasy. My co-panelists were Jonathan Stroud (The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Lockwood & Co.) , Amy McCullogh (Oathbreaker’s Shadow) and Ruth Warburton (The Winter Trilogy), and the panel was ably chaired by Marc Aplin of Fantasy Faction.
We discussed the characteristics of YA heroes, and Jonathan came up with a particularly interesting answer, defining them by their smallness, lightness, perception and quickness of motion and wit – advantages they need against those who are larger, stronger and ostensibly more powerful. Discussing whether darker elements should be excluded from YA fantasy, Ruth pointed out that our notions of what is ‘safe for children’ are specific to our own place and time. Throughout history very young children have been forced to work, fight or die, and in many countries this is still the case. Fantasy is an opportunity to portray this honestly.
The question of ‘moral messages’ was raised, and in different ways we all said that we didn’t feel a need to thump our readers over the head with an ideology. As Amy said, you can explore issues without telling the reader what to think.
(By the way, I am still not used to being live-tweeted. It’s a little like making an offhand remark, and then realising that not only is the nearby microphone on, but it has just transmitted your words to every speaker in the world.)
One thing most of us YALC authors hadn’t realised was that we would be sharing the Green Room with the celebrities of LFCC. Over the weekend I spotted Princess Leia, R2D2, William and Lee Adama, Faramir and Cersei Lannister, not to mention the 8th doctor having his photo taken by Giles from Buffy. (Yes, I am aware that all of these people have real world names, but it’s very hard to remember that when you catch sight of them across the room, munching a sandwich.)
Throughout the weekend, YALC had an enthusiastic, buzzy, sugar-rush atmosphere that has left most of us a bit giddy even now. I think this was partly due to sharing space with LFCC, and the alchemy the occurs when you pour related fandoms into the same flask and stir vigorously. Co-habiting with LFCC also meant that there was a high cosplay count, and our audiences were liberally sprinkled with resplendent Khaleesis, Captains America, anime characters and Doctor Octopuses. (Doctor Octopi? Doctors Octopus?)
Many thanks to Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman, Booktrust and everybody else responsible for organising such a fantastic event!
Just because I can, I will end this post with a few examples of the wonderful costumes at LFCC/YALC.
BSFA/SFF AGM and Mini-Convention
On the 7th July, the mighty forces of the British Science Fiction Association and the Science Fiction Foundation did unite, for a day of AGMs, panels, interviews and discussions of matters speculative and fantastical. The BSFA was kind enough to invite me as their guest of honour.
The weather was less kind, to the point of being downright unsporting. My walk to the venue was considerably more aquatic than expected. Fortunately my little paper map held out, and only collapsed into a papier mâché tatter just as I reached my destination.
I did at least manage to catch part of the first panel, featuring the SFF’s guest of honour, Jo Fletcher of Jo Fletcher Books. It was a cross between a literary discussion and a balloon debate, the other panellists ‘pitching’ different books to Jo, who used her formidable editorial instincts to decide which ones she would ‘publish’.
Next it was my turn to be interviewed by Tom Pollock (The Skyscraper Throne trilogy). Tom was a generous, insightful and skillful interviewer, and managed to give some shape to my ramblings and digressions.
We discussed children’s fiction with a bodycount, ‘neat’ resolutions versus ‘messy’ complex endings, dead parents, questionable surrogate parents, hats, geese, whether romance in YA fiction can push out depictions of other relationships, and whether my worlds were dystopias.
Tom was also very modest, and did not mention
a) that his second book The Glass Republic had just been shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award,
or
b) that the very next morning he was throwing himself off the Broadgate Tower and abseiling 165m to raise money for St Mungo’s Broadway.
(It’s OK, he survived.)
After lunch, Sophia McDougall (Mars Evacuees, the Romanitas trilogy) interviewed Jo Fletcher, who described the journalistic and publishing career that has led to her running her own imprint. She also talked about the rise of internet vitriol, working with legends such as Ursula le Guin, and running a convention with a broken neck. When asked what sort of manuscripts authors should avoid sending her, she mentioned vampires (she’s seen enough of them for a lifetime) and dystopias (soon to be out of vogue).
The last item on the schedule was my panel with Farah Mendlesohn, Niall Harrison and Virginia Preston. My fellow panelists scared me beforehand by asking whether I would mind a “frank and free discussion of my work”. Since they are all terrifyingly intelligent, I had visions of my books being meticulously dissected while I hid quivering under the table.
In the event, my fellow panel members were actually fairly gentle with me, and no hiding was required. We discussed what constituted a ‘good’ character in my books, Farah suggesting that it was one who “would open doors that everybody else had told them should remain closed”. We also talked about rebels and rule-breakers, mentor-figures and ways that gaming has affected my writing.
Many thanks to everyone at the British Science Fiction Association and the Science Fiction Foundation for a very enjoyable day!
Character-Building at the Story Museum
I mentioned that I was looking for an excuse to go back to the Story Museum, didn’t I?
Fortunately the nice people who work there invited me over to run a workshop at the Museum.
On Wednesday 4th June, I worked with students from Shellingford Primary School, looking at ways of fleshing out a story character. The students came up with lots of really inventive and imaginative suggestions throughout. A character who fell into the sea, were munched by fish then grew gills! A hero whose most important relationship was with the villain, since without him he’d have nobody to fight! A character plagued by terrible flashbacks whenever they saw their nemesis!
At one point, we discussed the way things that a characters’ experiences could change them, and I asked whether anybody knew what had happened in Batman’s childhood. To tell the truth, I liked the “raised by bats” and “swallowed a bat” answers better than the real back story.
I was also pleased that “liking hats” was suggested as a character ‘strength’. (The student who suggested that was clearly adept at assessing his audience.)
Afterwards, all the students came up with their own brilliant characters, including a cookie-based hero (with raisin eyes and sesame seed buttons) questing for the rare Alien Cookie, a troll-hating rhino-rider, a mermaid doomed to be killed by a witch, Lava Man battling his nemesis Water Man, and a schoolgirl overcoming her fears of change and going to a new school.
Many thanks to The Story Museum for letting me come and play again, and to everybody at Shellingford Primary for sharing their ideas with me!
Fashionable Lateness at the FAB Cafe
On Thursday 24th, I could be found in Manchester’s FAB Cafe for a World Book Night event. (The alert amongst you may recall that World Book Night was actually on the 23rd. This, however, was a Fashionably Late World Book Night celebration.)
I had never been to the FAB Cafe before, and it turned out to be beautifully-appointed underground geek lair, complete with Daleks, Cybermen and sci-fi memorabilia. Indeed, my first reaction upon seeing it was to remark “Eeeheeheehee!” or something similarly eloquent, then run around like a madwoman photographing everything. I would defy anyone not to do the same.
The high point was the readings given by local authors and poets, including R A Smith, D A Lascelles, Tony Curry, Sarah Grace Logan, Anna Percy, Dermot Glennon, Zach Roddis and Jackie O’Hagan. There was a lovely mix of tones and subjects – gritty cynicism, macabre humour, dryly witty and subversive feminism, historical fantasy, and sheer chutzpah. I pitched in as well, giving a reading from the soon-to-be-published Cuckoo Song for the first time.
A far better and more detailed account of the evening can be found here, on D A Lascelles’ blog.
Ed Fortune (columnist and correspondent for Starburst Magazine) suggested that he record an interview with me, to be transmitted for FAB Radio International‘s The Bookworm programme, which he co-hosts with Ninfa Hayes. I agreed, and we found a small, quiet-ish cloakroom at the back of the bar in which to conduct the interview.
I couldn’t help noticing that the door clicked to behind us with a disturbing air of finality. Sure enough, it was an auto-lock. We were trapped in the cloakroom.
We gamely went ahead with the interview, ignoring the possibility that it might only be broadcast posthumously, after the discovery of the dictaphone with our skeletons months hence. In the interview (which can be found here) you may notice a slight hint of panic in our voices.
Fortunately the FAB Cafe staff were on the ball, and came to let us out…
Many thanks to everybody involved for letting me come and play. It was lovely meeting you all!
Hounslow Library Spring Fair
On 29th March, I dropped in at Hounslow Library to give a talk and reading as part of their Spring Fair.
I was given this comfy, colourful corner in the Children’s Section.
Many thanks to those who stayed to listen, despite all the other attractions at the fair. (I think my large, cuddly goose puppet was a bigger hit than I was.)
Kids Lit Quiz National Final 2014
On the 6th December, King’s College School in Wimbledon witness a clash of titans – the National Final of the Kids’ Literary Quiz. The Kids’ Lit Quiz is an international literature competition for children aged 10-13, and each year the team that wins the National Final has the chance to compete in the International Final.
This was a second time I had attended the National Final, and once again it was a lot of fun. Every team is given an author as a sort of mascot. It’s very relaxing for the author, because the team does all the hard work, whereas the author basically sits on the sidelines making supportive ‘woo!’ noises and occasionally eating cake.
I was lucky enough to be handed to the team from Finham Park School, who were fun and interesting, and had a tiny cow as a mascot. As it turned out they were also brilliant, and carried off the second prize after a nailbitingly close battle.
Many congratulations to all the teams who competed, and to City of London School for Girls who will be going on to the International Final!
ArmadaCon 2013
Last weekend, the appropriately named Future Inn opened its doors to the 25th ArmadaCon. This is Plymouth’s annual science fiction/fantasy/cult TV/anime convention. As I discovered, it’s also a den of colossal good humour, terrible jokes and swashbuckling geekery. And the attendees have all the best toys.
Aside from giving a couple of guest panels, I helped judge the ‘Masquerade’, where contestants were assessed on their costume, performance and flair. The overall winners were a duo who performed the whole of What’s Opera, Doc.
However there were many fine costumes that weren’t even entered into the Masquerade.
On Saturday morning I discovered that I had a stunt double.
On Sunday the lovely Anna came back with a costume based on my fifth book, A Face Like Glass. She even let me keep the goose and apron!
My fellow guest author David Wake spent the Sunday dressing as every Doctor Who ever invented, one at a time, including little known variants that had never reached TV.
Other high points over the weekend:
- The Turkey Readings. Dreadful books are read out, whilst the audience bids loose change to get the reader to stop, or continue in funny voices. Dire crimes against fiction are greatly improved when read in the voices of Winston Churchill, Jessica Rabbit, Gollum, Dr Evil or Dr Watt from Carry on Screaming.
- A stop-motion ‘silent film’ episode of Doctor Who, starring all the Doctors and featuring an entirely knitted cast. (Woollen daleks are unfeasibly cute.)
- The auction, where strange and wondrous things were sold to raise over £1300 for the RNIB’s Talking Books.
- Champagne and chocolate Tardises.
- Readings. Selkie tales, steampunk narrow escapes, and group readings/performances of scenes from The Derring Do Club and the Empire of the Dead and David Wake’s other works. (The latter included the confrontation of an evil Father Christmas, the perils of a particularly smart phone and an amusing case of steampunk hankypanky.)
- Tea duels
As a wonderful finale, on Sunday afternoon Mitch Benn arrived. He treated us to some of his clever, very funny and diabolically catchy songs, and was in some danger of being forced at sonic-screwdriver-point to sing all night. (I was privately delighted that he included my favourite, the “Bouncy Druid” song, but the miniature rock opera based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar is also required listening.)
Many thanks to everyone I met at ArmadaCon for a fantastic weekend!
