Slightly over a week in, already tired of it. Closer to home it’s been not so bad though. Christmas was pleasant, twixmas quiet, and we had visitors for an at-home NYE and a few days after. Epiphany/Reyes/Little Christmas is usually Catmass in our house but the internet did not oblige with the gifts I had decided on for them, so they will get them when back in stock, luckily although they know the time of day they are fuzzier (hah!) on the calendar. First Thursday was Jan 1st, so we postponed to the 8th and that was clearly wise as …
Solstice
We are in the runup to the end of the year, marked mainly by top ten of the year articles, app year-in-review marketing campaigns, and roundup blog posts. So here I am doing my bit. Most of the excursions and adventures I’ve blogged about already. I tend not to review things much anymore, but ’tis the Season of Lists so some favourites in no particular order. Books: Private Rites by Julia Armfield, which I was rooting for to win the Clarke. A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall, which was the coziest without being slight. When There Are …
Enchanted City
Newcastle has been trying to make itself into a Christmas destination in the last few years, rebranding, making maps and signage available all over town, expanding the Christmas market itself, and adding on satellite events. Its not perfect, and not for everyone, but overall it seems to be working. One of the additions this year is Northumbria University’s Enchanted City. We went on the first night, a Thursday, and in the last entry at 7:45pm, so it was pretty quiet. There were just shy of a dozen exhibits, all space-themed and using a nice range of art including projections, music, …
HENGE
If you know me, you know I love a gimmick, so I was very excited to go see the space prog rock band Henge on their current tour. They call their sound cosmic dross, and I’d say their vibe cosmic utopianism, but nerdy. Obviously the main initial attraction for me was the theatricality of it all, the band has four members – of which only the synth player is human. Lead signer Zpor may appear human but is actually a billion year old alien from Agricular in Cosmos Redshift 7, he wears robes and a headpiece topped with a plasma …
Halloween, etc
We had a Halloween party again this year, cosmic horror themed this time. Almost everyone wore some sort of costume, and as Halloween fell on a Friday this time we had lots of trick-or-treaters to scare. My main project for decorating was an infinity mirror serving as a sort of void/vortex of stars but I had to scale it down because it turns out two mirrors boxed together can get quite heavy! Still, it was fun to try out and hopefully I can expand it next time around. November has been dark, cold, and rainy so far, but enjoyable all …
Bristolcon
I had been under the impression that Bristolcon was a newish convention, a decade or so old, but it has been running since 2009. For most of its run it was a one-day event, but last year it succesfully expanded to a second day, making it a much more attractive prospect to travel down to from way up north. So that’s exactly what I did this past weekend. John was travelling the whole week before, back home on Friday, and therefore understandably had no interest in immediatelly leaving again, especially for an unknown quantity, so for the first time in …
Hartlepool
My sister was visiting earlier this week, so we took the opportunity to visit Hartlepool’s Royal Navy Museum, she has some interest in that area of British history. I know Hartlepool primarily through the cheery-sounding but actually terribly grim Boothby Graffoe son, but have been meaning to visit anyway for a while. It’s an easy train ride from Newcastle, and I quite liked the similarly themed attractions in Portsmouth. The one in Hartlepool is essentially a small quay preseved and recreated as it would have looked (more or less) in the 18th century, with little shop fronts full of mannequins, …
It’s Not A Cult
I was excited to see a locally-set folk horror novel event while trawling through the Waterstones event page a few months back, there’s plenty of fiction set in the North East, but less in the genres I gravitate towards. Joey Batey’s It’s not a Cult manages to be very much grounded in the local area and its language, while also being about fame, infamy, parasociality, memes, internet culture, and creativity. I was not familiar with him before, but Batey is most famous as an actor, playing Jaskier on the Witcher – which I haven’t watched yet, and then also is …
Last and First Men
We went to see a dance/multimedia production of Last and First Men last week, which was pretty cool. Dance is one of those areas that I’m interersted in, but know very little about and have actually not seem a whole lot of, outside of your standard musical. Contemporary dance even less. I’ve also not read any Stapledon, as it turns out, so I fully intended to do that before the show, but of course got distracted by Hugo reading and other shiny objects The production is itself an adaptation, or maybe expansion, of a film by Jóhann Jóhannsson which Wikipedia …
The Rest of It (Virtual Worldcon Days 2+)
Hah, so it turns out even attending virtually, and not especially intensely, the post-convention fog is real. Day Two Virtual Worldcon This was my busiest day for panels. First off was Food and Fantasy, with Amadin Ogbewe, Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe, Uchechukwu Nwaka. It was a lively discussion covering fantasy, horror, folklore, and sf. This is a perennially entertaining panel topic, since each panel’s specific mix of people always leads to a fresh perspective. One thing I learned this time was about children turning into yams! Women of the Arthurian Legends with Brian Grinnell, Brittany Torres, Gina Saucier, Kim Iverson Headlee, Louise …