Post by Jason Whittle on Apr 11, 2012 22:15:37 GMT 1
Olympus 2012 – Eastercon
The 63rd British National Science Fiction Convention took place at the Radisson Edwardian Hotel, Heathrow over the Easter weekend, and I was lucky enough to be there.
Before the proceedings had officially got under way with the opening ceremony, I had been to a typically charismatic reading in the main hall from guest of honour George R R Martin, and lower key but entertaining readings in a smaller room from Danie Ware and Emma Newman.
The best panels of day one featured two heavyweight battles of wit; firstly Paul Cornell’s verbal jousting with Jon Courtenay Grimwood in a discussion about Pushing Boundaries, and then the always entertaining Joe Abercrombie and Gavin Smith being distracted by the presence of Sarah Pinborough at the Plot Holes panel, and thereafter rutting furiously for her attention. I’ll diplomatically judge both intellectual skirmishes to be high scoring draws.
I began day two by watching Forbidden Planet in the presence of Dave Lally, although the expert discussion that followed focused more on the loveliness of Anne Francis than anything else. I followed that with a talk on Philip K Dick, in which I collected a wealth of notes and quotes that should be useful on my Open University course next year, and the inevitable panel about genre v mainstream, where Jo Brand and Mariella Frostrup were criticised for their genre snobbery, and Richard & Judy were praised for adopting Alison Littlewood’s A Cold Season as one of their books of the year.
This was followed by the crucial talk about How To Get Published, and bad news for all you fellow NaNoWriMo winners; your 50,000 word novel is too short, and you have to write twice as much before anybody will be interested in publishing it. John Jarrold put the boot in further by claiming that they remember bad submissions from the past and never consider that author again, leading me to hope that my ragged first draft and abysmal cover letter that I sent him in 2009 got lost in cyberspace before he actually got to read it. Otherwise, as his fellow agent Ian Drury advised “Have a pseudonym ready.”
Things got deeply political in the War On Terror discussion, leading one disgruntled attendee to demand that the panel start talking about books again, before an eye-opening panel on alternate routes to publishing. Most of the focus was on Kickstarter, which I admit to never having previously heard of before, but seems to be worth looking into, especially as Emma Newman wounded me once again by referring to zombie novels as “A saturated sub-genre that no publisher will touch.”
Saturday night climaxed with the Hugo Award nominations, a star-studded bash televised worldwide with the cast of Game of Thrones in attendance and free booze available. I left early after only two glasses of wine to watch the highlights of Southampton v Portsmouth on TV, only for an injury time Pompey equaliser to make me wish I hadn’t bothered.
Sunday began with my speciality – a zombie panel. The expert opinions seemed to portray some of my ideas as more plausible than others, but I saw nothing that demanded me to change anything I’ve already written. Perhaps the E-books panel at the same time would have been more useful to me.
Next up was a presentation of the bids for the next two Eastercons, which should have been straightforward given that both were standing unopposed, but the 2014 bid came in for some fierce criticism for failing to promote gender parity at their convention. No such controversy for the 2013 bid though; congratulations and good luck to former Ghastly Door and jasonwhittlewrites.com interviewee Juliet McKenna for chairing next year’s convention.
I focused on entertainment after that, watching George R R Martin overcome two fire alarms to amuse the audience with tales of missed deadlines and equine misbehaviour, before watching the films Shuffle and Witchfinder General and attending a reading by Gareth L Powell. Less entertaining was John Meaney’s stand up routine, which threatened to empty the hall before Christopher Priest put recent controversy behind him to win the BSFA award for Best Novel, and the Personal is Political panel, which was drier than the Sahara Desert with a hosepipe ban.
I had an early departure on Monday, so only caught one panel in full. It was covering Story Arcs in TV series’, and the main thing we learned was that David Hodson hates everything that isn’t Quatermass. But my convention ended on a high note with the brilliant Paul Cornell treating a disappointingly sparse audience to outlines of promising pipeline projects, and mysterious stories about muffins being stolen from his mother’s house.
After that I headed for the coach station with the two muffins I had procured earlier, not from Mrs Cornell’s house but my hotel. It was a good convention all in all, albeit with possibly one or two too many duff panels, an ill-advised award ceremony preliminary, and perhaps lacking the all-embracing party atmosphere of last year’s FantasyCon (or maybe it was there but I just missed it). Most of all, it’s stoked my anticipation of this year’s Brighton event, where hopefully some of the Dark Minds collective will be in attendance. Warren, Jones, Watson, everyone; it’s over to you.
The 63rd British National Science Fiction Convention took place at the Radisson Edwardian Hotel, Heathrow over the Easter weekend, and I was lucky enough to be there.
Before the proceedings had officially got under way with the opening ceremony, I had been to a typically charismatic reading in the main hall from guest of honour George R R Martin, and lower key but entertaining readings in a smaller room from Danie Ware and Emma Newman.
The best panels of day one featured two heavyweight battles of wit; firstly Paul Cornell’s verbal jousting with Jon Courtenay Grimwood in a discussion about Pushing Boundaries, and then the always entertaining Joe Abercrombie and Gavin Smith being distracted by the presence of Sarah Pinborough at the Plot Holes panel, and thereafter rutting furiously for her attention. I’ll diplomatically judge both intellectual skirmishes to be high scoring draws.
I began day two by watching Forbidden Planet in the presence of Dave Lally, although the expert discussion that followed focused more on the loveliness of Anne Francis than anything else. I followed that with a talk on Philip K Dick, in which I collected a wealth of notes and quotes that should be useful on my Open University course next year, and the inevitable panel about genre v mainstream, where Jo Brand and Mariella Frostrup were criticised for their genre snobbery, and Richard & Judy were praised for adopting Alison Littlewood’s A Cold Season as one of their books of the year.
This was followed by the crucial talk about How To Get Published, and bad news for all you fellow NaNoWriMo winners; your 50,000 word novel is too short, and you have to write twice as much before anybody will be interested in publishing it. John Jarrold put the boot in further by claiming that they remember bad submissions from the past and never consider that author again, leading me to hope that my ragged first draft and abysmal cover letter that I sent him in 2009 got lost in cyberspace before he actually got to read it. Otherwise, as his fellow agent Ian Drury advised “Have a pseudonym ready.”
Things got deeply political in the War On Terror discussion, leading one disgruntled attendee to demand that the panel start talking about books again, before an eye-opening panel on alternate routes to publishing. Most of the focus was on Kickstarter, which I admit to never having previously heard of before, but seems to be worth looking into, especially as Emma Newman wounded me once again by referring to zombie novels as “A saturated sub-genre that no publisher will touch.”
Saturday night climaxed with the Hugo Award nominations, a star-studded bash televised worldwide with the cast of Game of Thrones in attendance and free booze available. I left early after only two glasses of wine to watch the highlights of Southampton v Portsmouth on TV, only for an injury time Pompey equaliser to make me wish I hadn’t bothered.
Sunday began with my speciality – a zombie panel. The expert opinions seemed to portray some of my ideas as more plausible than others, but I saw nothing that demanded me to change anything I’ve already written. Perhaps the E-books panel at the same time would have been more useful to me.
Next up was a presentation of the bids for the next two Eastercons, which should have been straightforward given that both were standing unopposed, but the 2014 bid came in for some fierce criticism for failing to promote gender parity at their convention. No such controversy for the 2013 bid though; congratulations and good luck to former Ghastly Door and jasonwhittlewrites.com interviewee Juliet McKenna for chairing next year’s convention.
I focused on entertainment after that, watching George R R Martin overcome two fire alarms to amuse the audience with tales of missed deadlines and equine misbehaviour, before watching the films Shuffle and Witchfinder General and attending a reading by Gareth L Powell. Less entertaining was John Meaney’s stand up routine, which threatened to empty the hall before Christopher Priest put recent controversy behind him to win the BSFA award for Best Novel, and the Personal is Political panel, which was drier than the Sahara Desert with a hosepipe ban.
I had an early departure on Monday, so only caught one panel in full. It was covering Story Arcs in TV series’, and the main thing we learned was that David Hodson hates everything that isn’t Quatermass. But my convention ended on a high note with the brilliant Paul Cornell treating a disappointingly sparse audience to outlines of promising pipeline projects, and mysterious stories about muffins being stolen from his mother’s house.
After that I headed for the coach station with the two muffins I had procured earlier, not from Mrs Cornell’s house but my hotel. It was a good convention all in all, albeit with possibly one or two too many duff panels, an ill-advised award ceremony preliminary, and perhaps lacking the all-embracing party atmosphere of last year’s FantasyCon (or maybe it was there but I just missed it). Most of all, it’s stoked my anticipation of this year’s Brighton event, where hopefully some of the Dark Minds collective will be in attendance. Warren, Jones, Watson, everyone; it’s over to you.
