Friday 22 August 2014

... and Con-trast

Last Monday, on leaving NineWorlds properly, I headed into London and met up with friends from York. Or, more specifically, three friends from York, one of whom was travelling from Northampton, and one friend from Huntingdon, who was travelling with the other two from York, and... yes, it started off a little complicated and went from there.

In any case, we Assembled in our flat for the week, and on Tuesday we headed out and painted the town red. Or something like that. There were entertaining (hahaha, yes) incidents with the exceedingly height-phobic member of the group (which ruled out further trips on the DLR, though a little late for that first one) and lots of fluttering about getting briefly separated by ooh shiny, but we all congregated together for the Fantasy In The Court event at Goldsboro Books. Whoo-ee, that was a crowd and a half for a little bookshop. I don't think I've ever seen the authors-per-square-metre count quite so high. We were all a little overwhelmed by that, and still tired from journeying (or previous con) and traversing London all day, so we gathered up the signatures to go with the books we'd acquired, I grabbed Liz de Jager a glass of water on my last squirm through the crowd since she looked so despairing when the bookshop staff didn't see her try to catch them, and we called it a night.

We spent a lot of Wednesday in Forbidden Planet... I bought posters wilfully and without care of consequence, along with, surprise surprise, another book, and cried off with one friend to go rest at the flat in anticipation of WorldCon starting the next day. That being said, three of us did sidle over on the DLR to the ExCel centre to hit registration while it was quiet, and ran into a long time friend there too. She lives about thirty miles from us, normally, so of course we only see her when we all go to DragonCon in Atlanta, or WorldCon in London, or... Yeah. We did a quick trip together on the Emirates cable cars nearby just for fun, then split again to get some sleep and recharge for it all kicking off on Thursday.

So. WorldCon.

Con attendance: 10,700, I heard someone say in passing...

Pre-con book count: 29

Six things to do at 3pm. On this page, anyway.

On Wednesday, I checked out the online web app for the schedule of WorldCon, and went through the 1171 listed track events, readings, and signings. I managed to narrow it down to 165, and went from there to the paper programme to narrow it further. Then, of course, it came down on the day and the time to, "What do I really feel like right now?" and "Can I even get into this tiny crowded room?" and "Should I maybe eat something today?" to decide what I actually attended. Now this, this was much more like DragonCon. Highlighting 7 events at the same time and knowing there's a strong possibility you won't make it to any of them because something else will distract you entirely. Looking at the list of vendors in the big dealers' hall and trying to keep the sheer avarice from gleaming so bright in your eyes your roommates won't be able to sleep. Planning which cosplay to wear on each day based around what appropriate panels you'll be trying to get into...

And then of course, life happens, and even the tentative plans go out of the window. Thursday morning, we split and headed into the ExCel separately, so our height-phobic wouldn't have to face the DLR, and then found that he and his partner couldn't get into the ExCel on foot by any obvious means... aside from crossing the lofty DLR footbridge. He could, of course, ask the information desk and the ExCel staff about accessible ground routes. As soon as he was inside. Some circular arguments there. In any case, he summoned help in the form of recently arrived online friends, who were darling and responded immediately, and I mocked him up a blindfold and he, to his eternal credit, made it across the bridge.

I think I went to the dealers' hall after that, to drift and admire and catch my breath. I did make it to swing dancing lessons, and enjoyed swirling about in my steampunk dress (which is astonishingly hot to wear, for having so little fabric in it), and got to two whole panels - pseudonyms, with Robin Hobb and others; and a gloriously genre-spun I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue that included Mornington Crescent with the addition of fictional stations, and some excellently done One Song To The Tune Of Another, and even a surprise appearance of Hamish and Dougal in Sound Charades (which truly, thoroughly confused those in the room and indeed on the panel who hadn't actually heard the show before). And then we fled again, too tired to stay for the swing dancing event and show off what we'd learned.

I have vague recollections of making it to the "Exceptional Girl Warrior" panel at 10am on Friday, and the notes to prove it, but that one's mostly got lost in the haze of double-con, I think. I remember the "Kill the Parents" panel moderated by Todd McCaffrey, not least because I bumped into two of my gang in there and hugs with Todd were exchanged. I also managed the "Writing SF/F in non-Western Modes" panel, and Elizabeth Bear and Scott Lynch's signings again (having not wanted to bombard them with a stack each at NineWorlds, though in retrospect that would have worked out quite well, it being such a little con), and even got to a little play. (It was called Mastermind, written by Michael Patrick Sullivan, and superbly acted by Rhys Lawton and an understudy for the female part, who was brilliant but not listed on the playbill as it was such a last minute change, and I didn't think to write down her name and am now cursing myself because she was excellent for being thrown in with little to no warning to the point where she still had the script in her hand. Somehow she worked around that so well I forgot she was line-checking most of the time.)

At six o'clock half our group reconvened for the panel we'd been waiting for all day: Welcome... to Night Vale.

Group cosplay always has more impact than single, but the reaction was still immensely pleasing. We were ushered to seats at the front, deference was paid to us throughout the panel ("Well, you have to be careful of those hooded figures - present company excepted..."), and quite a lot of photos were taken afterwards, both in the room and, better still, with a wonderful Cecil (who I'd snapped at NineWorlds) out in the corridor. I delight in a cosplay that makes people laugh and point and smile and compliment and photograph and appreciate the thought, and this one ticked all those boxes. A grand idea from my friend Legira. And the panel itself was pretty good, too, though wryly amusing as one panelist kept desperately trying to find ways to make NightVale make sense...

It did mean I missed the "Liveship Trading: Fantasy Economics" panel, though, so if anybody wants to fire me over their notes from that one I'd be rather grateful.

I should have gone to the Philharmonic Orchestra set; that sounded wonderful from the tweets I was seeing, but instead we rested up a bit and checked out the library in the Fan Village (comprised of tents promoting other cons and bids for as-yet-undecided locations for future Worldcons, gaming tents, chill-out tents, food van, and craft activity tent, all indoors and surrounding a big open green space for kids to wear themselves out playing on, and for tai-chi in the mornings, medieval knights duelling, and Quidditch or other wide games at certain times). We hit up the "You Write Pretty" panel, which was a fun examination of what makes a sentence memorable and appealing to different people, queued for a little while for the Ceilidh, then decided it was running too late and staying upright was starting to make everything ache so called it quits.

Saturday I was Quicksilver again, with Jim Croce on the hidden speaker once more, and running very late to get in to the ExCel. I missed the first two panels I wanted (at 11 and 12 respectively), missed Stephen Baxter's signing, missed breakfast, missed lunch, but managed to squeeze into a panel rather wonderfully called, "Your 'realistic' fantasy is a washed out colourless emptiness compared to the Rabelaisian reality. - Discuss." It was crowded and hot in there - so crowded that part way through one of the ExCel staff came in to herd out anyone standing against the walls or sitting on the floor, even though they were well out of the way and keeping the aisles and exits clear. This was also the start of the frequent mantra I heard all weekend, of how the Loncon staff were excellent, and the ExCel staff were... not, on the whole. He didn't bother to lower his voice as he ordered people out, repeatedly and unnecessarily, talking over the panelists, louder than their microphones, winding up everyone he was booting out and everyone he was leaving in. It was a shame, because the panel was interesting, and I would have liked to hear all of it, even if it looked like I was nodding off because pneumatic drills had kept me awake the night before and the room was warm and soporific. My notes would imply I was very much awake for all of it.

It's also a shame because looking back through the con booklet (more reliable than my dazed memory), that looks like the only panel I made it to at all on Saturday. Again, if anybody has notes for "Travel in Fantasy" or "Full-spectrum Fantasy" or "Meet the New King, Same as the Old King", I'd appreciate that. I was hugely tired on Saturday, and also thoroughly, pleasantly distracted by heading along to Todd's signing with my friends and having him suddenly introduce me to Anne McCaffrey's agent, eagerly pushing me forward and explaining how I write and should be talking to the People To Know, while of course I was going, "Ah. Yes. I would currently be dressed as a character from X-Men, wearing a silver wig and the kitschest jacket known to mankind. Now is definitely the best time to make a first impression on a renowned and experienced professional agent."

Oh well. She was lovely about it, effortlessly graceful and gracious, and didn't seem to mind chatting to us for an hour or so while Todd signed. I hope I will meet her again, when Dryden is edited and I am wholly prepared to start pursuing agents and publishers properly, and so will probably not be in full-on costume. She was also at a little Del Rey event later that evening, which was promoting new and upcoming releases, and followed up our conversation by presenting us with postcards for one of the books she'd mentioned, which was very nice.

At that little event, I chatted to quite a few other people, and notably ran into a freshly-published author with whom I shared a brief squee-flail over X-Men in general, the concept of her novel (One Night In Sixes, it's called, and it appears to be out now in ebook, and I shall have to get hold of it to see if the awesome of the concept carries through - if it does, expect me to get evangelical about it, as usual) and the concept of mine, which was kind of her.

Saturday's efforts to completely exhaust me continued with the 80s Night Dance when we wandered off from the Del Rey party - a rather different affair to the 80s Cheesefest from NineWorlds, where requests were gladly taken and even the Scissor Sisters got played since it fitted the bouncy, cheery musical theme and the mood of the dancefloor. At this one, rather, the playlist was genuinely limited to 1980-1989. And yes, I danced my heart out to Safety Dance, The Final Countdown, Thriller (oh help, people started following me and I immediately forgot the next moves), and Karma Chameleon, but requests for YMCA and the Time Warp never came through. Not from the right era, you see. And requests for Bon Jovi, or Queen, or Bowie, or Abba, or something more danceable than the strange electropunk that took over shortly before 1am were met with blank stares or outright hostility ("There's no way I'm ever playing Abba"), which somewhat soured the mood. We joked that the DJ was playing little-known and not terrible danceable stuff in an effort to clear everyone out and pack up early. Trouble being, when I went up to her with the next attempts at requests, that was actually exactly what she told me she was doing, since apparently she was a last minute booking and wasn't being paid for it. So we left.

The disco, moderately busy. Yup.
The trip back to the flat took far too long, too, since we'd missed the last DLR in the hope of there still being something to dance to (sorry, guys), and the next due night bus didn't bother showing. That did give us time to make sure anyone leaving the ExCel found the right bus shelter, since the one nearest the exit had the night bus listed but wasn't an actual stop, as the people there before us had found out to their cost, but still. It wasn't quite how the night was supposed to end, and I still feel guilty for persuading tired friends to stay late in the misguided belief we would have fun.

I made it into the "We Can Rebuild You" panel the next day, which was a really interesting look at how disability is represented in fiction, although marred by the common problem of the audience questions actually being long comments instead. The "insight into editing for writers" panel later in the day was brilliant, though, and turned into a detailed, professional discussion of how to approach writing on multiple levels, and how to approach publishing short and long term too.

I also managed to be at the HarperVoyager stall in the dealers' hall at the perfect time, and got my fangirl hands on a proof, paperback copy of Robin Hobb's latest, Fool's Assassin. That quite literally made my day and nearly made me cry - I don't tend to buy hardbacks, so I was wondering how I was going to get my hands on a copy to read ASAP. And it improved when, with my friends' help, I managed to get it signed by the lady herself later on. That made Sunday pretty awesome. I caught Stephen Baxter too, having missed his signing previously, which meant I successfully got every one of the twelve books I'd taken down from York signed by their respective authors.

By Monday, the last day of Loncon, I was pretty much exhausted, so I saved my energy to make it to the last panel I really wanted: "Robin Hobb: When Assassins Didn't Need to be Hooded". I ran into a friend from NineWorlds who I'd kept seeing at all the creative writing panels, which made that panel even better.It was also delightful to listen to Patrick Rothfuss, Kate Elliott, and Kari Sperring gush and fan-flail over Robin Hobb. It's interesting, to me at least, to see who other authors enjoy reading, and look at how that influences their writing and reflects their tastes.

Our group reconvened, slowly, agreed we were collectively exhausted to the point of zombification, and cleared off to pack, eat, fit in one dazed game of Ticket To Ride, and sleep.

The trip home was an adventure all in itself, what with diverted buses, appallingly rude Londoners and drivers - and amazingly lovely, kind, and caring Londoners too, other con-goers at the train station, and something like 200 books between the five of us, but I'm pretty sure when we've recovered we'll all be quite happy we went. It wasn't as obviously diverse and openly welcoming as NineWorlds, but it was still a friendly, happy con overall, and there were a lot of people working extremely hard all over to keep things running well. With a little more co-operation and understanding from the ExCel staff (some of whom were superb and engaging and got into the spirit of things, to be fair) it would have been even better.

I have a problem.
Post-con book count: 69

Time in a Bottle plays, over both cons: 319

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