WORLD SF CONVENTION

I have been fortunate indeed that within the last year we have had both the World Fantasy Convention (see my reports via the sidebar categories) and the World SF Convention here in the UK.

Over the last few days a number of people at Loncon3 have asked me if I enjoyed it. Well, the jury is still out on that one. To be fair, I haven’t been to an SF WorldCon before, so I didn’t really know what to expect. The only WorldCon I’ve been to before was the aforementioned FantasyCon – a ‘serious literary convention, dahling – no costumes, please!’

So the problem for me with Loncon was that it was neither literary enough, nor fannish enough.

There was lots to do (too much, really), covering everything from literary panels, to costume workshops, an amazing art show, film and TV screenings and fan events, not to forget the Masquerade and the fan village with bar. An excellent selection of authors, artists, workshop subjects, and a brimming programme with near on 1000 events to choose from (see what I mean about too much?). Oh, and you never knew who you might run into next!

AUTHORS WHO IMPRESSED

These are the authors who impressed my in terms of character, wittiness and downright straightforward talking, as opposed to those (quite a few) who seemed to feel the need to impress, with either their knowledge of certain subjects (more on that in a later post) or their ability to spout long words and leave me feeling like an ill-educated twat.

Robin Hobb (aka Megan Lindholm)

George R.R. Martin

You never know who you might find sitting at the next table at lunchtime!

Connie Willis, Joe Abercrombie, Kate Elliot, Scott Lynch and Charles Stross.

There were others, but these were the ones who stood out from the crowd.

I will cover several of the panels I attended in more detail in another post, suffice it to say that most rooms were stuffed beyond capacity with ‘elf ‘n’ safety police removing any poor conventioneer that failed to snaffle a chair in the initial rugby scrum (who seriously allocated rooms according to subject interest, without taking into account which authors were on the panels?) With around 9,000 attending, it was always going to be a challenge, and the ExCel building should have had sufficient capacity if room allocation had had a little more consideration (sorry organisers, I know it’s a thankless task, but no one expected to be unable to attend certain panels due to simple overcrowding, especially when many had flown from as far afield as the US, Australia, Scandinavia, Japan to name but a few). And in many ways, the size of the building led to rather a lack of atmosphere, but that’s another story…

Now convention-goers – there was the real joy of the event (aside from getting up close with favourite genre authors and illustrators), and I have a range of pictures I plan to put onto Pinterest as soon as I can find time. In the interim, here are a few for your enjoyment:

   Storm Trooper beware – Luke’s behind you!

   Interesting juxtaposition of historical costume and Star Trek science officer!

 Seven of Nine

 Who left this box here?

 Interesting ears…

 Even angels (or is that a demon?) need coffee 🙂

THE THIN MAN (Masquerade entry)

 These wonderful guys and gals were mugging people raising money for the charity DOG’S TRUST

 Yours Truly – not precisely a costume, but not an outfit I get to wear everyday.

How about you? Have you been to any Conventions? Did they meet your expectations?