Here it is, then: Eastercon 2009 through the eyes of the BSFA committee (well, some of us at least).
Terry Jackman: The View from Registration:
As an Eastercon newbie, I envisaged something between Worldcon and Fantasycon, and was about right. Commenting from the outside in; the shuttle service between hotels was a real bonus and helped make on-site parking easier for others.
Also, thanks to those who chose the attractive venue. The airy rooms were welcoming. Two bars offered quick service and a wide choice, including hot drinks and decent snacks, and if you needed a taxi there was a free direct phone by reception. I wasn't wild about the 'works cafeteria' dining, but I'd still go there again quite happily for the rest.
Organisation-wise, I hadn't pre-registered as I wasn't sure how long I could attend, but if I'd arrived early Saturday, registered or not, I'd have missed the early programs anyway. For some reason, registration wasn't up and running for an hour after it should have been. The gophers, all volunteers, were there early, but not the entry badges (or the cashbox). Apologies to those waiting. This wasn't the best of first impressions, and seemed a real shame when other areas ran so smoothly. (Slap on the wrist for the guy I actually saw leave the office on the other side of reception with urgent, newly-printed passes, only to stroll all round and call in at the green room area for a chat before bothering to get them to the queue waiting to pay.) On the other hand, the signage everywhere was seriously good and really appreciated. If I can't get lost, no one can! And a special thanks to those people I met gophering; great people, one and all. There seemed a dearth of gophers at times, as if people thought this was work. To anyone who hasn't tried, you should consider it.
As for the program, the number of items and rooms available were impressive. I couldn't get to all the things I'd have liked. The author reading set-up was especially friendly, and families were obviously expected and welcomed, with items specifically aimed at youngsters.
Picking out highlights, on a personal front, one was being asked by one panel to tell everyone how our own Orbiters worked. Free publicity! And getting some serious feedback from a panel of ‘Dragons’ (i.e. agents and publishers) on my own writing was another. On a wider front, I'd have to pick out the BSFA Awards Ceremony. No, seriously, it was a superb double-act performance, very funny, and with zero flannel or speechifying. Also the National Festival Orchestra on the Saturday evening, playing a specially selected, SF-related programme to huge applause.
Would I go again? Definitely.
Ian Whates: The View from the Dealer’s Room:
My first impression was how much smaller and more intimate this dealers room was than the one at the Radisson last year. One of the first people I met on arriving early Saturday morning to set up was Tim Powers, who proved a delightfully warm and friendly individual. Soon after, I bumped into Jon Courtenay Grimwood, who long-ago proved himself to be the same. Two Guests of Honour in the first half hour – not a bad way to start a con!
Moderating a panel at 10.00pm on the Friday struck me as a daunting prospect, particularly on so serious a subject as ‘The Marketing of Novels’. Who would bother coming at such an hour? Who would be sober? In the event, I needn’t have worried. The panel was well attended and we even managed some decent debate along the way.
One reservation I had about this year was that I was not staying at the convention hotel but rather at the Hilton, in the centre of town. That first night, having missed the last shuttle bus, I shared a taxi back in the early hours of the morning, only to be side-tracked on the way to my room by a party of familiar faces in the bar. Nattering to one such – Gillian Redfearn from Gollancz – I learned that she missed not being in the dealers room this year. Apparently Gollancz had tried but failed to secure tables, which brought home to me how indebted we were to James Bacon for ensuring we had ours.
Saturday morning saw the NewCon Press ‘Bucks Fizz Book Launch’, with three new titles to unveil. I always get nervous before these – what if no-one shows up? What if nobody buys any books? In the event it went off very well, despite my forgetting to introduce Eric Brown to talk about his book and almost neglecting to let Ian Watson speak (now that would have been an achievement!). The books flew off the shelves (well, table) and continued to do so for the rest of the con. BSFA memberships seemed to go well throughout the weekend as well and we even had the tombola up and running out of a cardboard box by Sunday. Special mention to Neil Bond here, for his sterling work in promoting said tombola.
Being in the dealers room meant I missed much of the program I would have loved to attend, but they say that everyone passes through the dealers room at some point, and certainly between there and the bar I was able to talk to just about all I’d hoped to (if briefly, in some instances). Other highlights for me included the Awards ceremony, so expertly hosted by Paul McAuley and Kim Newman, the champagne enjoyed at a cozy room party, and Forbidden Planet’s Rock Band competition on Sunday night (which Danie Ware insisted I attend or else!). This proved a real hoot once the 12-year olds had shown everyone how the equipment worked. Also there was the mass curry outing on Saturday night, organized by Eric Brown, to the dingy basement of a restaurant where it proved impossible to spend more than £7.00 even with starter and main course. Ian Watson’s experience here was not a happy one, and he will doubtless dine out for months on the ever-more embellished tale of the visit.
One memory which will stay with me from the weekend is the genuine warmth and enthusiasm with which Steve Baxter congratulated Ken MacLeod, after seeing his own shortlisted novel lose out to Ken’s in the BSFA Awards. I remember thinking that this summed up so much about our ‘community’.
Over all, a great convention. The three bars never ran out off real ale, committee members were always available when needed, particularly the indefatigable James Bacon who seemed to be everywhere at once, the company was excellent, and even the shuttle bus system worked when required. Well done to all involved.
Del Lakin-Smith: The View from the Crowd
I came across conventions almost by accident. I knew they existed but never really understood what they consisted of and what sort of people went. Then my wife, Kim Lakin-Smith, finished her first novel and we looked for ways to meet other writers and genre readers. Kim had always been a fan of Storm Constantine, who was coincidentally appearing at a local writer's day in Derby called Alt.Fiction. Through meeting Storm that day, Kim found a publisher while I was exposed to the literati of the genre convention scene.
Now we're hooked and have been going to "cons" ever since. I have made countless friends, enjoyed numerous panels and discovered multiple works that I may never have come across otherwise. Some of my fondest memories are of spending many a late night talking to ex-strangers about a diverse range of intellectual, whimsical and downright weird subjects.
Eastercon has been given a firm place in our convention calendar. Having attended the con twice before, this year was a very different animal, not better or worse, just different. The general ambience was a lot more personal, with a large bar where most people seemed to converge between panels and meetings. Cedar Court was a friendly hotel with helpful staff, no major bar queuing and a restaurant that provided a cheap and almost constant supply of grub.
On arrival on Friday, we settled in, caught up with friends and had a few drinks. Then we ventured to our first panel. "The Marketing of Novels'" featured Ian Whates as moderator, Danie Ware of Forbidden Planet, Peter Crowther of PS Publishing, Ben North of Harper Collins and Colin Brush of Penguin. Bearing in mind that this was 10pm on the Friday night, the turnout was very good and lively debate ensued. This was a good start for us as normally we end up spending more time than not in the bar. The rest of the evening did not involve us going off and dancing like crazy fools at a school disco, I think that was some strange dream I had…. Ahem.
Saturday started with us doing our best to get to an 11am book launch that clashed with a panel our friend Paul Skevington was on. We just made the launch, but had to bail so we could sneak into the rather packed panel on "Entry into Criticism". This was a very engaging and interesting panel that could have gone on a lot longer, not least because Farah Mendelsohn and John Clute were participating from the audience.
Saturday evening saw the much-anticipated BSFA Awards ceremony, with Kim Newman and Paul McAuley doing a very entertaining double act. As usual, the awards were a spectacle and pretty flawless in their delivery - and even managed to distract the audience from the imminent showing of the Doctor Who Easter special.
Making a strategic decision, we missed Doctor Who and instead attended a panel ominously called 'We don't need no big name publishers'. The best thing about panels at conventions is you never really know what you are going to get; some are planned with a list of questions by the moderators, others are more fluid in their approach, and you can never gauge how the audience will react. I thoroughly enjoyed this panel and the opportunity to hear how independent presses are pushing the boundaries of innovation and dealing with the issues of financial and resource restrictions. This panel also brought out passionate opinions in people, with a few choice words expressed about the larger publishers and a member of the audience voicing frustration over the situation.
That evening we ventured out into Bradford city centre to grab a curry from a so called "famous" curry house. Cheapness being the only good thing about the place, we headed back to the hotel for a few beers in the bar and an early night in preparation of Kim's panels the next day.
Sunday morning was an early start as Kim was moderating a panel called 'The Appeal of Steampunk' featuring Tim Powers, Cory Doctorow, Toby Frost, Peter Harrow and Venetta Uye. This was a fascinating and packed panel (at 10am) exploring not only the aesthetic of Steampunk but also the underlying influence and attraction of the punk genres.
After this, we headed to the conservatory bar, where the sun actually made an appearance (as did the alcohol) and we chatted with friends as Kim prepared for her second panel of the day, 'Pacifism and non-violence in SF and Fantasy'. Lunch was spent with Colin Brush of Penguin and his charming colleague Hannah from Puffin chatting about Eoin Colfer who is embarking on keeping the Hitchhikers guide alive and kicking.
Once the panel came around (and an impromptu fixing of the audio system) Kim was joined by Nick Harkaway (author of The Gone Away World), Sam Kelly and moderated by Farah Mendelsohn. This was one of the most challenging panel subjects I have witnessed, where you had two Quaker pacifists (Farah and Sam) one agnostic (Nick) and one pro-violence in literary fiction (Kim). A very interesting discussion entailed, mingling religion, literary fiction, human nature and the A-Team.
By this point on the Sunday, we were feeling pretty frazzled, so we chilled in the bar with friends, I had a long chat with Darren Turpin of Orbit and then popped into Liam Sharp's book launch and bought his book God Killers.
We thought it would be fun to enter the Rock Band 2 competition put on by Dave Devereux and Danie Ware (sponsored by Forbidden Planet). So we formed our band: Kim Lakin-Smith and Sam Moffat on vocals, Tiff Lau on bass, Paul Skevington on guitar and me on drums. We were appropriately named Sleazy Diesel (thanks to Simon Gilmartin). Given that none of us had ever played Rock Band, we were slightly nervous. Then Danie asked me to stream the performance live, which did not help stem the nerves. The whole thing was a resounding success with much drunkenness and merriment (and we came second – yay).
Looking back, my overriding memories of Eastercon LX are of socialising with likeminded people, being surrounded by creative and dedicated writers and readers and spending too much time at the bar. I am already counting down to my next convention.
Donna Scott: The View from the Voting Booth:
Hats off to the LX committee for organising such a fabulous con. I’m sorry that I missed a chunk of it, being squirreled away in a room counting up the votes for the BSFA Awards for all of Saturday afternoon, but I have to say, that was an absolute privilege, and the ceremony was wonderful. It was very strange to be watching it from the front, but very exciting too, and I’m so happy for all the winners, Ken Macleod, Ted Chiang, Farah Mendlesohn and Andy Bigwood. Paul McAuley and Kim Newman’s presentation was really funny – if they’re interested in doing stand-up, I’ll give them a spot at my open-mic night! Huge thanks to Claire Brialey and the BSFA committee for their devising the ideas for the ceremony and to John Jarrold and James Bacon who put the whole thing together. Thanks too to Paul and Elizabeth Billinger for creating the stunning awards and, thanks to Tim Powers, Alastair Reynolds and Jon Courtenay Grimwood for presenting them to the winners.
I was only able to partake very hastily in the post-ceremony cheese and wine reception as I had to rush straight off to moderate a panel, We Don’t Want No Big Name Publishers (or any, as I would prefer...) with Ian Whates, Sam Stone and Andrew Hook. Such an innocuous-sounding panel title actually led to some lively debate, and I found that quite fun.
Having initially planned to go home on Sunday, I was persuaded to stay for the Rock Band competition, hosted by Forbidden Planet. I had never played this before, but thought a smattering of knowledge of how to play the guitar – badly – would help. The competition nearly didn’t happen, until some eight-year olds were found who could get the game started. My band, Scattering Granddad, managed to achieve the lowest score, with my guitar playing scoring the lowest score out of anyone doing the competition. So, yes, my bad guitar playing helped me to play the guitar badly. I felt I’d really achieved something there...
Tony Keen: The View from the Lecture Theatre
2009 saw the first BSFA lecture at an Eastercon. This was the idea of Tony Cullen, outgoing chair of the BSFA. The Science Fiction Foundation has for a long time organized the George Hay Lecture, in which a professional scientist comes and speaks to sf fans. Tony’s idea was that, given so many fans are interested in history, the BSFA should sponsor an equivalent history talk. The committee ran with that, broadening out the remit to a general arts/humanities basis, with the intention of bringing people that you might not see at an Eastercon, and/or talking on subjects that you might not hear them speak on.
The series was inaugurated by Shana Worthen, who gave a superb lecture on ‘Visualising Time in the Middle Ages’. In a talk illustrated with several examples of how mad mediaeval iconography could get, Shana revealed how many of the things we now take for granted – which direction is clockwise, hours of fixed duration, that the year starts on a given date – had to be negotiated before they became settled. We were pleased with the audience we got, and the healthy debate that followed, and particularly pleased with the subsequent reaction (Ken MacLeod blogs the event here: http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com/2009/04/existence-proof-of-von-neumann-machine.html). We thank Shana, and will definitely be doing this again.
Martin McGrath: The View from the Hotel Bedroom:
So, to be honest, I didn’t get to see much of Eastercon 2009. Having been unwell I was, frankly, a bit overambitious in attending, but let my determination not to miss out overcome commonsense.
Even so, I’m glad I went.
Fortunately, the two panels I was listed as taking part in were early in the convention so I was able to attend those. The first, which I moderated, was (and I confess I’m biased) tremendous fun and informative with a star-studded panel that featured Kim Newman, Ramsey Campbell, comic artist D’Israeli and Eoin Colfer talking about their roles in taking characters from the “classics” and working them into modern works. As moderator it was a pleasure to be able to let the conversation flow with relatively little intervention and to take part in something that was, I think, genuinely enlightening as well as fun.
My other panel was on the conversion of comic book properties to films – this was fun too though I’m not sure that much wisdom emerged from the panel, at least from the contributions I made. It did shock me to discover that there were real people out there who genuinely seemed to like Keanu Reeves’ Constantine...
I managed one evening in the bar and it was great to talk to friends old and new. I fear I may have inadvertently terrified the living daylights out of the very sweet Aliette de Bodard with an unnecessarily brutal hug.
It seemed to me that the LX Committee did a very fine job of organising the con – from the bar with its excellent range of reasonably priced goodness to the smooth running green room, the excellent range of the program and the general sense of wellbeing that seemed to exude from the happy fans I met – it looked like a great con.
By Monday I was a little better and did manage to make it in to a couple of program items and thought the standard was very high and closing ceremony was entertaining (well, I enjoyed the Bugs Bunny cartoon, anyway).
So a curtailed Eastercon for me, but there were still moments of pleasure that you simply can’t find anywhere else.
Kari Sperring: The View from the Green Room
Everyone goes to a different con; we overlap, we share spare and experience and yet none of us come away with precisely the same things, the same moments, the same memories. LX 2009 was something of the order of my 20th Eastercon. Twenty years of fragments, of talks I heard here, panels I watched there, of the same long-time conversations picked up and continued year on year. It was close to my 20th time working in Green Room, too – servicing the program and keeping it running, giving drinks to participants and keeping track of changes, rushing around with drinks’ trays and hunting frantically through the archives of our joint knowledge for replacements, substitutes, ways to bridge a gap. This year we did not have a room of our own, there was a wash of background noise, so that our radio was inaudible, our guests sometimes overwhelmed, our tables in danger of encroachment. This year, the program ran smoothly, the participants were charming and the hotel bar staff were a delight and a joy. No water broke through our ceiling (as happened on two different occasions in Glasgow), no-one vanished or had an emergency, no-one was broken that I know of. It was a good year, in Green Room.
It was a good year, too, for conversations, for catching up with the friends I see far less often than I’d like. We talked books and films, politics and sociology, beer and history. We gossiped and plotted and stayed up too late. I even managed to attend a few program items that I wasn’t on – a fascinating talk on writing process by Tim Powers, another, equally fascinating, on Spring-Heeled Jack; a panel on The Chalet School. I missed more than I saw, enjoyed both the seeing and the talking and working that caused the missing.
It was a first and a last con for me: both at once as it marked my transition from fan to pro (though I am still a fan, I can’t not be a fan, I have too many years of that to let go). My Green Room shifts were cut into by the need to turn from Kari (You know, Kari, the girl who doesn’t use her surname) to Kari Sperring from time to time. People asked me to sign books, asked about future projects and career plans. It was odd and edgy and it has not yet settled in.
It was a good con. I’ll be back next year, in Heathrow, for another con that is mine and everyone’s, unique and shared, split and coherent. I’ll see you there.
Martin Potts: The View from an Occasional Convention Goer:
At least I was able to make one day of Eastercon and with the location so convenient and the GoHs so appealing I was never going to miss it. The diverse program appealed to me especially as the mix of literature, music and gaming are all strong interests. The dilemma was what to miss. Reflections on that hectic day are all positive and include some significant firsts. In the end I managed to squeeze in two book launches, two panels, first time hearing Eoin Colfer talk (which was very funny and H2G2 wise – reassuring), my first BSFA award ceremony (which was entertaining and made me realise how significant this award really is and the pleasure of being involved even in a very small way), first time meeting the wonderful Tim Powers (which was during an extended kaffeklatsch and satisfied a twenty year ambition which exceeded my expectations in every way – a genuinely interesting, approachable and warm person) and the first time attending a convention with my son James. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday I’d say.
Thanks LX2009 committee – two very satisfied customers.