Friday! I had to be up early to do my art show tour (link available for members, I have not watched this because I’m too chicken, but presumably it isn’t so terrible they couldn’t post it). I ended up enjoying myself a great deal doing it, but I went in with some trepidation, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, when I’d initially agreed to do it I’d assumed it would be a streaming item, with interaction from the Discord audience, so virtual members could visit the art show in real time. A recording was a different proposition, the future audience …
Category: Newcastle
Back home from Worldcon
A week of Worldcon and a week of visting family and traipsing around LA is fun but exhausting, for now I’ll summarise: I did not win a Hugo, I did eat Mexican food almost every day, I beat my step goal consistently, admired art and bought some, attended panels, saw a bunch of friends old and new, danced, drank, and was merry. What I did not do is take any notes, so a trip report will follow over the next few days, but don’t expect coherence.
Gijón/Xixón!
Last weeke we visited my brother and his wife in Aller, an area in the mountains of Asturias. I had visited for the first time last year, when I met up with some of my siblings in the nearest city, which si Gijón, but I had not seen the countriside, and it was John’s first time in the region. We ate fabada, cachopo, picadillo, drank sidra, and hung out while trying to keep cool, and on the last day had a nice wander along the beach in Gijón itself and stumbled across a Roman thermal baths museum. We chose the …
HUGO CLAXON!
Last hours to get your vote in! Did I finish reading everything? I did not! No matter how good my early intentions, this happens every year – whoops. Anyway, please vote in the fan categories – obviously that the ones I have the most conflicts of interest, so I won’t do recommendations, but the packet makes it pretty easy to get a nice overview pretty quickly, compared to the fiction categories. Last category that I will share my top vote in, Pro Artist… always soooooo hard to decide in this category, and my rankings can easily change from one vote …
Walking the Wall, Part II
Yesterday we did another section of the Hardian’s Wall Path, just over a year from our first walk. We started in Newburn, where we left off last time, and walked around 22km again. This section had a lot less on it, passing through a lot of fields and farmland and with only one significant section of wall. We stopped at the Robin Hood Inn about 17km along and had a little sit down and a nice half pint along with our second passport stamp. The next section was all fields, with some admitedly lovely views but no real bits of …
Updating the Map for Worldcon
I’ve been adding things to the map in anticipation of being in Anaheim in August for Worldcon, I always make myself a little food and tourism guide anyway so it seemed silly not to. Here are a few cool things that caught my attention and I might feasibly get to during the con: There’s a stretch of West Broadway that has a fantasy-themed cafe, a romance bookstore, and an really cool-looking culture and art museum. Plus right around the corner there is a Japanese bakery with very cute sweet buns. And that’s not even counting lots of nice looking food …
TAFF Visit
Last weekend we hosted the 2026 TAFF delegate, Kat Templeton, on her way to Eurocon. I’ve linked to the explanation of TAFF, but short version is it’s an annual fannish crowdfunder to help a fan travel across the Atlantic. I met John while he was on his TAFF trip, so obviously we are quite fond of it. It’s also a sort of lifelong community sort of thing, people who win TAFF tend to be involved in it for the rest of their lives. There had been some discussion about going up to Edinburgh on Saturday, the city is a direct …
Hugo Watching: BDP Long Form
This is another category full of things I liked. There’s some horror, some superhero action, two musicals, animation, space adventure, comedy, originals, adaptations, franchises, all the things! But ultimately top of my list is going to Andor, which just knocked it out of the part in its second and final season. Logistically, I don’t know if it has a chance – yeah it’s Star Wars, but I don’t think a series has actually won in long form yet even when it was amazing (coughSeverancecough) and really deserved it.
Hugo Reading: Novelette
Intersting mix of subjects here; kaiju, vampires, magic, and self-aware machines (the old term is too loaded and too intentially muddled by llm-hucksters to be of any use to me now). The machines take the biggest slice, but each story has a very different focus, so that’s nice. Top of my ballot will go to Never Eaten Vegetables by H. H. Pak, which was wonderfully well rounded, using its relatively short length to pack a short novel’s worth of world-building and characterisation, and also delivers on the feels.
Achoo!
Well, this should have been a con report, or more Hugo reading posts, but instead I caught a cold and then maybe another cold, or a sinus infection, or some damned thing and missed out on the convention and a few other things as well. Satellite 9 was over the Spring Bank Holiday/Memorial Day weekend, but I was in no shape for it. I sent John off on his own, train tickets and hotel non-refundable after all, and to be honest the weekend was not too bad – it was sunny and I spent a little time in the garden, …