(And a Hugo for John!) I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it is taking me longer to write about Worldcon that it did to experience, but we’re finally at Hugo night! The pre-Hugo reception was described as having hors d’oeuvres, but was basically a hot dinner buffet so that was quite nice, as was the free wine. There were many delightful outfits, standouts that I remember were GUFF winner Kat Clay, Ruoxi Chen, Kelly Sue Deconnick, Charlie Jane Anders’ excellent skirt, Adri’s hat, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s spider brooch. Olav Rokne took the finalist photos, which are excellent, and you can …
Category: Conventions
Con reports
I Went to Worldcon and All I Got Was These Excellent Friends – Part Two
(And a bunch of stuff I bought in the dealers room too, I guess) We were staying at the Village, across the bridge from the SEC and Crowne Plaza, which had a decent breakfast buffet but more importantly was also where Liz Batty and several Third Row folks were staying – meaning the days started with a nice little breakfast hangout. It was also the hotel where the business meeting was taking place, which was convenient for John who wanted to look in on a few of those sessions. I made a brave attempt to see a panel on Saturday …
I Went to Worldcon and All I Got Was These Excellent Friends – Part One
Well, and covid. Which is one reason why this update is a bit later than I had hoped. The lead up to the convention was the usual flurry of last minute art prep, overpacking, and in my case fan lounge prep. I had already volunteered with Committee Care before being asked to run the lounge, and figured I could do both since the lounge is usually pretty low effort. This time, for reasons too tedious to get into, the lounge ended up quite a bit of stress actually, and sucked up a lot of pre-con energy plus most of my …
Hugo reading: Short Story
Past the voting deadline now, but figured I would complete the set. Short story, fun category this year! Often the case actually, brevity being the soul of wit and all that. However my top pick was “The Sound of Children Screaming”, which you wouldn’t call a comedic tale even if there is a hint of grim gallows humour here and there. There are good genre stories, and there are stories that use genre to good effect, this one is both.
Hugo reading: Novella
I titled the last post “short takes” and then forgot to take on anythign but my top pick, whoops. But as the voting deadline fast approaches and I scramble through the packet, that seems fair enough. For novella there was another “oh yes, this one” standout for me: Arkady Martine’s Rose/House. This one just worked for me on every level, and feels very different from the Teixcalaan novels. It maintains a dreamline atmosphere from start to end and feels like nothing else on the ballot so far. It isn’t a sequel or an update to The Haunting of Hill House, …
The Castle
One of the neat venues in Newcastle is the Castle. The eponymous New one, that is. If you’ve never been, it is right in the city centre, visible from the train station platform. Small and square, it’s more like a child’s drawing of a castle than some of the more impressive English Heritage sites with their gardens and decor. Newcastle Castle is keep and a gatehouse, a stone fortress that means business. Or it did, once upon a time, not it’s quite a fun venue that shows movies and has lots of creative events. We went last weekend to see …
Worldcon approacheth
Two months till the Glasgow Worldcon, and in addition to everything else I am also now running the fan lounge! It doesn’t take very much running to be fair, and there’s a bunch of folks helping out so it should leave me time for previous commitments, Hugo stuff, and enjoying the rest of the convention – which is shaping up to be a good one! So that is eight weeks to get the lounge ducks in a row (mostly done, really), sort out art for the art show (not even started), sort out costumes (done unless I get a new …
Late Shows – Central & Gateshead
The second night of the Late Shows we started on the other side of the river with the Open Submission 2024 at the Baltic, then crossed back and climbed up to the Castle for mead and storytelling, in this case a delightful story by Marie de France, who I had not previously heard of. Grainger market was next on the list, for some fried chicken, vermut, and espresso martinis, plus music and odd but entertaining projected animations. We nearly got lost on the way to the Tyneside Irish centre but eventually made it up to the top floor for some …
Conventions
Despite the dearth of posts here, its been a reasonably busy few months for me. Starting with a trip to LA in February for Gallifrey One, which was as amazing as ever, followed by a week with in Santa Monica visting family and enjoying the sunshine. Then at the end of March it was time for Levitation, the 2024 Eastercon, held at the Telford International Convention Centre. I had a really great time, really should have written a proper trip report but have fallen out of the habit really. The whole convention was great, there was some mutterings about it …
The Holidays So Far
The holiday season kicked off for us with a trip down to London for Thanksgiving with friends, bookended by excursions in the city. Being up north now, we don’t find ourselves going throuhg the capital on our way to other places much anymore, so we try to make a point of taking advantage when we are down there. On this ocassion we visited the London Mithraeum, glimpsed the London Stone around the corner, then took the tube to Crystal Palace to see the Victorian dinosaurs basking in their ponds. Along the way we had excellent pizza, cardammom buns, salt beef …