EasterCon 2019, Or The Fear Of Over-Exposure

Last weekend I was at Ytterbium, the 70th annual British science fiction convention.  It’s run each year by a committee of volunteers, and is a huge endeavour that attracts around 1,000 people.  It’s my fifth year attending, since my first, Dysprosium in 2015.  And it was far and away the best EasterCon I’ve been to in those five years.  So much so that it’s taken me nearly a week to get over my concrash enough to consider writing a con report.

Me with Gareth L Powell after he won with BSFA Best Novel Award for Embers of War

Over the last five years my personal involvement in SFF communities has increased significantly, as has my confidence in these spaces.  Reflecting back to Dysprosium, I spent a lot of my time feeling like an unwelcome outsider.  I was a Muggle at Hogwarts and none of the cool kids would give me the time of day.  Now, I know far more people in the community, and have found/built my little subset of the tribe to hang out with.

Me (l) with friend Ida (r)

Building that community has taken time.  I have one friend who has that fierce brand of confidence that means that she can walk into any room, be the centre of attention, and emerge feted.  That is not me.  I joke that I grow on people more slowly, much like mould, until I become part of the furniture.  A wise friend always remarks on my networking ability.  Professionally, part of my job is to know lots of people and understand the connections between them.  I have slowly learned that not everyone works that way, and I’ve also learned that it’s something I unconsciously bring into my personal life.  But I’m not always good at deepening those connections beyond the superficial, however much I might want to sometimes.  (Fierce, confident friend had to have a few goes at it before I finally twigged what she was doing.  Two bottles of wine and the sharing of many confidences one evening, and the rest is history.  Wise friend invited me for tea and cake with astonishing clarity, and then patiently and explicitly explained to me over said tea and cake that it was because she liked me and was interested in deepening our friendship.  The rest is history.)  And I forget – unless reminded – that the flip side of being the person who knows lots of people is that I’m a person known by lots of people.  I struggle with that, largely because inside my head I think of myself as pretty boring in comparison to all the amazing and interesting people I know.

All of that made this a bit of an interesting EasterCon for me.  This was a weekend where it felt like I was everywhere.  Being on six programme items was, by any measure, a lot.  And it led to the surreal experience of having people keep coming up to me to talk about them.  Plus having lots of the organising team loudly calling me a hero and trying to buy me lots of gin on Sunday night, after I stepped into the breach at short notice earlier that day (see below).  I’m not used to that kind of attention.  Really, I’m not.  I’d already gone into the weekend worried about being over-exposed.  I’m not a famous writer or fan.  I don’t work in publishing.  I’m just me, who sometimes dresses up as characters from Doctor Who and runs a relatively low-traffic book review blog.  So this is a weekend that has messed with my head and my self-perception quite a bit.

Six programme items.  I was on three of them because I’d suggested them.  But the rest were down to accident, the programme scheduling gods, or not moving quickly enough.

SF-ing Clue. L-R me, Helena McCallum, Tony Keen, Tiffani Angus, Tlanti.

SF-ing Clue.  In homage to a popular radio comedy show, this was a team-based panel game, done as a con warm up event on Thursday night.  It had been deliberately set up with an all-woman set of contestants, to help counter the idea that men have the monopoly on doing funny things at conventions.  In line with its inspiration there was a premium on puns and witty wordplay.  We had only 48 hours to prep the rounds, which was harder than you might think.  They included the Umbridge English Dictionary (giving existing words SFnal definitions, such as “Revoke: to turn back into a Klingon”) and YA Film Club (“To Kill A Mockingjay”).  I won’t be giving up the day job.  And the moral of this story is never to agree to do something in the pub when you’ve had a lot of wine after a long day.

Planning For The Apocalypse.  I’d suggested this because it seems that my friends and I have fairly well developed apocalypse plans, and it’s a regular topic of discussion.  I’d had in mind a kind of Choose Your Own Apocalypse type thing, but I had not envisaged the chaotic, surreal hour that followed.  Someone described it as three feminists on a panel with Alan Partridge.  Someone else wondered if it was a scripted radio play.  Regardless, it defies description or summary.  You had to be there.  All I can say is that Tiffani and Helen, my fellow panellists, are goddesses of deadpan humour and witty comebacks.  I was mostly corpseing with laughter.

The Art of Reviewing.  Much less eventful.  And a chance to meet and spend some time with the wonderful Maureen Spellar of Strange Horizons and fantastic book-tuber Claire Rousseau.  We got into the democratisation of what ‘good’ is, and the role of reviewers as influencers.  Claire and I spent a lot of time talking about how lovely Runalong Womble is.

Conflict Without Violence panel. L-R John Scalzi, Aliette de Bodard, Juliet Kemp, Brian Atterbury, me

Conflict Without Violence.  This was the panel I’d been most anxious about all weekend.  It was my first time moderating.  I was doing it in the big room, with John Scalzi `(one of the Guests of Honour) and Aliette de Bodard, two writers I really admire, plus Juliet Kemp and Brian Attterbury, a professor specialising in SFF literature.  And on a serious topic too – the prevalence of stories about physical violence in SFF, when there are so many different ways of telling stories and resolving conflict.  Much of it is a blur, but I think we explored the topic fairly well.

I walked out that room congratulating myself and feeling in desperate need of a cup of tea and the chance to decompress.  I bumped into one of the organisers, who was in a massive panic because the moderator for one of the panel items had pulled out at the last minute.  Stuff happens to us all, but there is something inexcusable about letting down volunteer organisers at short notice and without good reason.  It creates a horrible mess for them to have to sort out.  I’ve been in that organiser’s position, and there’s no way I could leave them with a crisis on their hands.  So …

The 2019 Hugo Award Shortlist.  I ended up moderating this with 10 minutes notice.  10 minutes.  That was long enough to Google the shortlist, try to work out what areas to focus the panel on, introduce myself to the panellists and take it from there.  I think I got away with it.  But a badly prepared moderator is not a good thing, and bad moderation can ruin a panel, however good the panellists are.  I’m incredibly grateful to an understanding audience and the panellists for their tolerance, and for enabling us to have a great discussion.

Me looking exhausted and very hungover (l), Charlie Stross, Kate Towner (r)

Administering Fantasy Worlds.  My final panel on Monday lunchtime was a struggle.  I was exhausted and panelling is Hard Work.  But I poured my remaining spoons into it.  This was a re-run of a panel a few of us had done at Nine Worlds last August, looking at governance and bureaucracy as world-building issues in SFF.  My friend Kate (an accountant) moderated, and did a fantastic job helping us to cover a lot of ground.  The other panelists were Wendy Bradley (retired tax inspector) and author Charlie Stross.  Kate and I have been fans of Charlie’s for years, so were having to suppress our inner fangirls whilst talking about the lack of proper procurement frameworks for laser guns, or the logistical challenges of handling taxes paid in live chickens.

me (l) with Ida (r)

The programme as a whole was excellent, and the organisers should be congratulated for that in particular.  Diversity was built in right from the start, with none of those awful “Women in SFF”-type panels that compartmentalise people who aren’t straight, white, able-bodied men into discussions only about their protected characteristics.  The team did an amazing job in building thoughtful panels of knowledgeable people that brought different perspectives to issues.  Big name authors were mixed up with debuts and subject experts, leading to rich discussions.  Inclusion was built into the event from the ground up, in panelist/moderator guidance, with the use of pronoun badges, and badges to signify access needs, including invisible ones.  It feels like the best parts of events like Nine Worlds were taken account of.  It’s in marked contrast to previous years and ha set an incredibly high standard for next year’s EasterCon.  I hope next year’s organising team have been paying attention and deliver the same standards.

Andrew Wallace performing from Celebrity Werewolf

Other stand out items were a performance by SF author, songwriter and comedian Mitch Benn, who performed his new song Zombie Jesus Chocolate Day.  Rapid-Fire Info Shots was a gloriously chaotic mix of three-minute segments by willing volunteers on subjects as diverse as why Captain Benjamin Sisko is the leader we need right now; how to draw the perfect demon summoning circle; and the problem with Lembas bread.  All while having (vegan) marshmallows thrown at them.  I also saw author friends read from their work, and went to their book launches.  I’m sad I missed so many other great items for scheduling or energy level reasons – including a couple of brilliant-looking Doctor Who items.

me (r) with Magnus (l)

But the best part of the weekend was the bar-con.  I met and hung out with loads of amazing people, some of whom I’ve known in passing for a while, but got to know better over the weekend.  One friend made a special trip to come down for the Sunday night.  There was dancing.  There was gin.  There were many hugs.  Nights were late.  Feet were sore.  Heads were sore the following morning.  The craic was mighty.

Roll on Dublin in August.  Roll on EasterCon next year.

 

FO: Ella Funt

There’s another outbreak of babies in the office.  And I have a rule, as you, know, that anyone who works for me gets a baby cardigan knitted for their new arrival.

This is Ella Funt.  Because colourwork elephants are awesome.  The pattern is by Pamela Wynne, and I used Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino from stash.  Apart from the teal and the grey for the elephants, the remaining colours came from bits of leftovers from other projects.  The buttons were in stash, and probably from Textile Garden.

What’s interesting about this year’s crop of new fathers is that both of them have chosen to take Shared Parental Leave, as it’s the right thing for their families.  And I cannot be more excited to have two such trailblazing men working for me.

They’ve both been really thoughtful about their reasons for taking Shared Parental Leave, and the impact it has had on them personally.  The recipient of this cardigan has been open about how hard he has found it to do in the face of gendered social expectations and anxieties about the impact on his future career.  He hasn’t even felt able to tell his parents yet that he’s taking 5 months off to look after his son.  He explicitly mentioned that it isn’t lost on him that these are the choices and consequences that have historically faced women in the workplace.  The other expectant father in my team has said that one of the reasons he is taking Shared Parental Leave is to challenge assumptions about fatherhood, for the sake of his daughters.  He is frustrated by the teasing he gets for the time he already spends looking after his daughters, which devalues his role, and that of his wife.

I firmly believe one of the best ways we can smash the patriarchy is by changing these assumptions that damage people of all genders.  It brought a tear to my angry feminist eye talking to them both, but I feel more optimistic about the future.

On Blakes 7, 40 years on

40 years ago marked the first transmission of the first episode of a television show that has shaped my life in a whole host of ways.  

I was 9 months old when Blakes 7 started, and 4 when it finished.  It’s one of my earliest memories of television, and is something that has been a part of my life throughout.  Lots has ben written about the significance of this bit of 1970s BBC science fiction: its place in a world shaped by Thatcher and IRA terrorism, its gritty aesthetic compared to the other new kid on the block in Star Wars, its ground-breaking attempts to tell whole-series story arcs, its low budget character focused story lines, and its famously down-beat ending.  I won’t attempt to replicate any of that.  Go and read one of the excellent histories or essays about the show if you need to.  This one on Strange Horizons, which was nominated for a BSFA Award, is particularly good.  

As well as being one of my earliest television memories, Blakes 7 has cropped up at two other key moments in my life.  

Imagine if you will, impressionable, hormonal, teenage me, finding repeats of Blakes 7 on UK Gold.  Dimly remembered, but not seen since early childhood, watching it again felt like rediscovering something strange-yet-familiar.  Week after week, I’d sit there on a Saturday lunchtime, to the bemusement of my family, watching an old tv show play out.  Week after week it got more and more familiar.  People joke about Servalan being my first female role model, and shaping my career choices; about my fondness for bad boys dressed  head to toe in leather, preferably ones with razor-sharp cheekbones and a good line in cutting remarks.  (Little did hormonal teenage me realise that her dreams of one day having Avon in her bedroom would one day be fulfilled.  Albeit with seven of us, warm white wine, crisps and a lot of bad jokes about nuns told in an Irish accent.) More significantly though, Blakes 7 has shaped my tastes in fiction and drama towards the dark, complex, tragic and political, starring adult characters with histories that complicate their present lives.  I look at my book and DVD shelves and see those stories reflected back at me.  (Seriously – the gut-punch of ‘Rumours of Death’ and the tragedy of ‘Blake’ are positively Shakesperean, and I’m a sucker for UST wherever I can find it.)

Imagine if you also will, a time around six years ago.  I was coming out of a rough patch, and one of the signs that I was coming back to myself was an unprecedented appetite for story.  I was consuming it like it was going out of fashion, desperately craving box sets to binge on.  This was the moment when long-form story-telling was beginning to hit its stride of being the place where really interesting things were happening.  In a very short space of time I’d gone through Battlestar Galactica (having missed it when it first aired for some reason), Mad Men, Sherlock and Borgen.  I needed something to tide me over until the 6 Nations rugby started again that February.  A kind friend loaned me her Blakes 7 DVDs and once again I’d found what I needed to fill that story-shaped hole.  

One of the other things I was doing at that time was mixing up my social life a bit.  I’d got stuck in a rut, and frankly it was getting pretty boring.  Id used to have adventures and done exciting things, but for some reason that had all slipped away.  One of the things I did was adopt a rule of saying yes to everything unless I had a very good reason to say no to it.  That combined with some idle Googling found me taking a day off work to go to Hastings for a charity lunch.  One thing led to another and Blakes 7 fandom opened the door to an amazing group of wonderful people that I am proud to call friends, and some fantastic experiences.  

Tonight I will sit down and watch ‘The Way Back’.  I haven’t watched Blakes 7 all the way through since that last rewatch six years ago.  Who knows what it will bring for me this time?

On the lived experience of being a woman

Every year in October my employer does a survey of all staff to do a healthcheck of the team’s experience.  Every year I pause over two questions: in the last year have you personally experienced discrimination/bullying or harrassment?  I pause not because I’m trying to decide whether to click yes, but because I ask myself how many instances of discrimination and harrassment I would report if I had the chance.  And each year my employer clutches its pearls in horror when it sees the survey resuls on these two questions, without ever doing anything to address the underlying causes.

My dilemma is particularly acute this year, as the survey rolls out against the backdrop of the allegations and revelations about Harvey Weinstein.  It’s sadly still all too common that so many of us are experiencing discrimination and harassment.  But what is truly shocking is that it has become so normalised for so many of us that we often just treat it as part of the background noise of life that we have to deal with, while the rest seem genuinely surprised that it’s still an issue.  After all, we have equality now, don’t we?

To give you just one example of something that happened to me within the last year –

I was attending a work event with some key stakeholders.  There was an evening dinner.  I found myself sat next to a senior person in that organisation that I’d not met before that day.  He tried to get me drunk, asked intrusively personal questions, ‘admired my necklace’ (code for staring at my breasts) and then propositioned me.  I made my excuses and left.

Some will no doubt suggest I should be flattered by the attention.  That I’ve ‘still got it’, whatever that means.  Others will laugh if off as just one of those things that happens.  Or, worse, deny it ever happened.  Surely I must be imagining it or making too much of a fuss about it?

But this is a failure of basic, respectful treatment of others.  I have to have a working relationship with this person, but they’ve added an uncomfortable sexual dimension to it.  I’m now left having to manage that dynamic, trying to keep things professional and make sure to avoid circumstances where I could find myself facing the same situation again.  I now have a whole plan to make sure I never have to sit next to him at dinner again.  And instead of focusing all my energy on work, when we are in the same place I will need to expend a good proportion of it managing the interpersonal dynamic, shutting down further overtures from him (yes, there have been some).

It also exposes the shocking sense of entitlement that some people feel.  They see nothing wrong in behaving this way.  In part that is because it is so rarely challenged.  We let it play out as if there’s nothing wrong with it.  Or else it takes place away from the public gaze, so that those in a position to act never see what is really happening.

[I’m not saying it’s never possible to make an intimate connection with someone you meet professionally.  But it’s tricky territory and I’d urge you to get to know the person first and be damn sure there’s mutual attraction before raising the prospect of anything else.  If you make a habit of propositioning people you’ve just met  or who are patently not interested, you’re a creeper, and it’s not my job to educate you about how not to be one.]

In many ways, this kind of obvious and overt harassment is easy to deal with because it’s so obviously beyond the pale.  What is much harder to deal with is the insidious kind of discrimination.  The differential treatment. The mansplaining.  The being talked over, marginalised and ignored.  The unconscious bias that creates a culture of Great Men doing Great Things, while the women do the office housework that will never make their careers.

In all those cases there’s plausible deniability.  You are left wondering whether you are imagining that you’re being treated differently or whether there’s some other cause, like that you’re just not good enough.  And while each incident may be a mix of complex cause and consequence, it’s highly likely that there’s something gendered going on under the surface, whether those responsible realise it or not.  But the net result is that you are left doubting yourself or fighting a system stacked against you.

Of course, I’m relatively lucky.  I’m a woman, but I’m also white, heterosexual and without disabilities.  So I don’t have the multiple, intersecting areas of difference that enable a much more multi-faceted experience of harassment and discrimination.

I hope that if some good is to come out of the current debate it is a greater awareness of the need for respectful and inclusive spaces that are free of this kind of harassment and discrimination, and the need to tackle the power structures and institutions that have enabled permissive environments to thrive.

The Lions of Al-Rassan – Guy Gavriel Kay

I view things through a narrative lens.  I construct my life as story, with myself as chief protagonist.  I make my way through life looking for narrative threads, foreshadowing, inciting incidents and dramatic denouement that I can edit into a compelling narrative.  Those stories of my life are a mash-up of genres: screwball comedy, action-adventure, kitchen sink drama, or tense political thriller.  They are stories of love, friendship and achievement, often in challenging circumstances.

In times of crisis I reach for story as a way of processing my thoughts and feelings about something.  Story written by others (whether on the page or on screen) is both my chief comfort and my main source of inspiration.  Four years ago I binged on books and drama as a way of finding my way out of a difficult time.

So, last night, in the midst of an emotional storm about the outcome of the UK’s referendum on the EU, I found myself reaching for Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Lions of Al-Rassan: a fictionalised retelling of the last days of Moorish Spain.  It’s one of my favourite books, and each time I read it I find new layers of meaning and relevance.

Kay’s Al-Rassan is a place of beauty, art and culture.  It is not a paradise.  It suffers from political instability and is ruled by a powerful elite who are quick to resort to violence and persecution.  But in comparison to its neighbours it is a place of religious tolerance that has permitted a diverse culture and civilisation to blossom.  It is bordered to the north by three states where the prevailing religion is an increasingly fundamentalist strain of the Jaddite faith.  To the south and across the sea are Al-Rassan’s Asharite co-religionists, whose harsh life in the desert breeds an extremist interpretation of faith.

Al-Rassan exists in a fragile bubble between these two cultures.  The temperate climate of the peninsula makes life for the Asharites easier, and a civilisation flourishes.  That civilisation is enriched by the diverse flows of people through the region, through interchange with the Jaddite kingdoms of the former Esperana to the north, and through its (albeit limited) tolerance for those of the often-persecuted Kindath faith.  The tension between the desert to the south and the Jaddites to the north has enabled that place of palaces, poetry and fountains to thrive, but Kay’s Al-Rassan is also a place on the brink of decline and collapse.  After the assassination of the last khalif, Al-Rassan has become a place of warring minor kings, increasingly beholden to desert tribes wanting to advance a more extremist agenda.  There are threats from the north too: the Jaddite kings of Esperana are pressured to put aside their differences and unite in conquest and crusade.  The tragedy of the novel comes from the inevitability of the collapse of the fragile, but beautiful, Al-Rassan as a result of these competing pressures.

The Lions of Al-Rassan examines the geo-politics of the Iberian peninsula at that moment through the lens of a love triangle between Jehane bet Ishak, a Kindath physician and two men: Rodrigo Belmonte, a fictionalised El Cid, and Ammar ibn Khairan, a courtier, soldier, poet, assassin and spy.  Both represent the pinnacle of their respective cultures and civilisations.  Although both are ultimately thrown into conflict against one another as the peninsula descends into war, for a brief, shining moment they find themselves on the same side.  Both are sent into exile by the rulers they serve, and find themselves working as mercenaries for King Badir of Ragosa, where Jehane has also found shelter.  Belmonte and ibn Khairan form a friendship and partnership of great creativity and ingenuity, which makes their ultimate opposition all the more painful.

One of the strengths of the novel is the way it depicts the choices and actions that ultimately lead to war, conflict and the collapse of Al-Rassan.  Good people are forced into making decisions in difficult circumstances.  Those choices are often pragmatic, political ones, where the hands of the powerful are tied or forced.  In many cases those choices are underpinned by some toxic religious and nationalist ideologies that the powerful ironically find themselves unable to challenge.

Kay explores the fate of nations through a single set of relationships, but manages to also represent that story in microcosm during one single night.  Ragosa’s Carnival is a night of wine and revelry, but it is also a night of masks that both conceal and reveal, as people use them to make statements about themselves.  This Carnival is particularly febrile as Al-Rassan moves on its trajectory towards war.  Jehane wanders through the city, considering and discarding options about how to spend her evening.  Finally, she is approached by a man in the mask of a lion (Ammar ibn Khairan).

“It is late now, Jehane,” said this man who seemed to have found her in the night after all.  “It may even be too late, but shall we walk together a while, you and I?”

That single piece of dialogue encapsulates the whole novel for me, freighted as it is with layers of meaning and significance.  It is indeed late in Carnival night when this exchange takes place.  But Ammar’s hesitancy also comes from the depth of personal history between him and Jehane.  His actions have contributed to the personal tragedy of her family, including the maiming of her beloved father.  That may be too much for her to get past, despite their attraction to one another.  But Ammar ibn Khairan is also the man who killed the last khalif of Al-Rassan, and in no small part has contributed to the chain of events that is sending the peninsula towards war.  With conflict on the horizon there may be no space for love at all.

The choices Jehane makes in The Lions of Al-Rassan are ultimately ones of pragmatic self-interest.  As a relatively powerless member of a persecuted minority she chooses the way that offers the potential for greatest safety for herself and her family within some terrifying circumstances.  There are no perfect options.  Jehane’s choices are made in the full knowledge of the flaws and challenges of the options before her.

Right now, we must all be like Jehane.

Goodreads rating: 5*

 

2015 In Review

It’s traditional at this time of year to do a bit of a retrospective, looking back at the year and reflecting on it.  And who am I to ignore that trend, even if the day we change our calendars is a pretty arbitrary choice?  So, as well as this run-through of 2015, with some nerdy statistics and awards, I’ll also do a little look ahead to 2016.

2015 has been on the whole pretty awesome, if marked by sadness at the end.  It’s been a year of cons and cosplay, of time spent with friends, exciting trips to great places, the publication in a real book of my first essay, and the making of many lovely things.  There are things I probably should have blogged about, but haven’t, including our holiday in Prague in September and the prizes I won in a work craft competition.  Sorry about that.  Life kind of got in the way.

One of the biggest things to happen in 2015 is this blog.  As I explained back in February, I started it as a bit of a personal challenge during the 6 Nations.  Since then, it’s become an established part of my routine, with a growing number of followers (*waves*) even without me making strenuous efforts to publicise it.  A large part of the blog has been about recording book reviews, and that has led to me writing slightly longer reviews than the brief notes I’d previously captured for myself.

One of the most rewarding things about doing this has been pointing people towards books they love but might not otherwise have found.  That, if nothing else, makes the whole thing worthwhile.  In particular, one friend bought an overlooked treasure on my recommendation, and keeps telling me just how amazing it is and how much he loves it.  You’re welcome.  I hope I can do the same for many other people too.

Statistics

Goodreads does some pretty awesome statistics.  As well as offering you a curated ‘year in review‘ page, there’s also the scope to delve into things in a little more detail.  As a geek, I love some good statistics!

The headlines are that in 2015 I read 60 books, totaling 22,452 pages.  The average rating I gave was 3.7, which is higher than my overall average of 3.67, and lower than the Goodreads average of 3.89.  (What can I say?  I’m a tough marker ….)

This screen grab shows all of the 60 books I read this year, broken down by the star rating I gave them.  There is even a pie chart of the ‘shelves’ those books fall into (though I’d prefer a Venn diagram, to be honest, given that so many books fall into more than one shelf).

Some interesting points for me from this:

• Of the 60 books I read this year, 29 were written by women.  That’s not bad, but I know it felt like quite an effort over the course of the year to read that many books by women.  I had to go out of my way to do it.
• Related to that, of the 12 books I rated 5*, only 4 were written by women.  3 were books I’d read before.
• 28 of the books I read this year (just under half) were review copies.  14 were book club books.  So that leaves only 18 books that I chose to read for myself.

This chart is also interesting too.  It shows the publication year of the books I’ve read.  You can see a marked change in my reading habits this year: far more of the books have been newly published (the three outliers from the 1960s are Dune, The Master and Margarita and Solaris, all three of which were book club books).  Much of that – but not all – will be down to half of all the books I read being review copies.

Awards

And now for the fun bit: some entirely arbitrary awards in made-up categories.  Which I may or may not repeat next year.

Best novel: Hild by Nicola Griffith.  This really is an astonishing book: multi-layered, rich, profound and a true pleasure to read.  It’s Hilary Mantel does Anglo-Saxon England.  Seriously.  Go buy it and read it.  Tell your friends.

The Michel Houellebecq Award (for an amazing book that will only appeal to a niche audience): A Man Lies Dreaming by Lavie Tidhar.  A novel about the Holocaust that includes BDSM sex scenes involving Hitler that are played for laughs will not be to everyone’s tastes.  But I loved it.

Best genre novel: The Crippled God by Steven Erikson.  This year, I finally made it to the end of Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen series .  It’s a truly epic undertaking spanning ten novels, the last of which alone is 1,200 pages.  But despite parts of the series feeling like a slog, I had all the feels at the end, sobbing as I read the ending on my way into work one morning.  It’s a fitting end for an astonishing feat of writing.

Most promising debut: The Vagrant by Peter Newman.  Peter’s writing shows real talent and The Vagrant is fresh, exciting and interesting.  I can’t wait for the sequel.

Best YA novel: Uprooted by Naomi Novik.  I don’t read much YA, but I loved this novel with its fairytale style and setting for its empowered themes of finding ones own way and female friendship.

Strictly Season

I love Strictly Come Dancing.  It’s the perfect thing to cheer up dull autumn days, with its mix of glamour, competition and fascinating journeys of personal growth and discovery.  Each year, the start of Strictly – just like the beginning of a new series of Doctor Who – is one of the signs that autumn is here and we’re in the run up to Christmas.

I’ve danced Latin and Ballroom on and off since 2002.  Albeit with more enthusiasm than talent. It’s something I adore doing, and always wanted to do as a child (though my parents couldn’t afford lessons).  My primary school used to do English country dancing (though a suspicious number of ceilidh dances and American square dances seemed to sneak into the mix) and it was one of my favourite things, even if I had to dance with Kevin diMarco (he had horrible scaly hands and his face would go red when he danced, which clashed with his ginger hair).  So I had to come to dance lessons later in life, filled with dreams of being Tara Morice in a ruffled red dress with Paul Mercurio doing a dramatic knee slide across the floor.

I’m not someone who has ever experienced the alleged endorphin rush one is supposed to experience from exercise (I just feel hot, sweaty and uncomfortable), but dance lifts my spirits and gives me a buzz like no other.  I’ve danced my way through break ups, and even after a dance school weekend away, and several classes in a short space of time found myself having a near-religious experience on the dance-floor at an office Christmas party.  One of those moments where self is completely sublimated, time seems to slow and there is just music and movement.  And no, I hadn’t been drinking.  And I hadn’t taken anything.  But it was awesome.

But my dancing has definitely been more off than on recently.  Since moving back to London it’s been difficult to fit it round work and the rest of my social life, and I’ve struggled to find a class with timing that suits my schedule since my last class was cancelled as numbers dwindled.  But I can say I’ve danced with a Strictly professional.  One of the owners of my local dance school, JJ’s, is John Byrnes, who danced with Claire Sweeney back in the heady days of series 1 (they were eliminated in week 5).

All of that makes me a terrible person to watch Strictly with.  I’m that person with just enough knowledge to be a dance bore, but at risk of embarrassing myself in front of anyone with proper knowledge.

So, in honour of Strictly starting again tonight, here’s my fantasy playlist if I were ever to dance on the show.

ChaCha – A very easy one, even though the ChaCha is a very crowded field.  This is my song.  In These Shoes by Kirsty MacColl.

Waltz – A satirical song about BDSM is perhaps not entirely appropriate for prime-time Saturday night telly, but it has to be Bang Goes The Knighthood by the Divine Comedy.  If they won’t let me have that (boring!) then it would be Eddi Reader’s love song to Glasgow dance halls: Wings On My Heels.

Quickstep – Mr Blue Sky by ELO.  Possibly the happiest and most smile-inducing song ever.

Jive – Sweet Home Alabama.  Nothing like a bit of Lynyrd Skynyrd to mix things up.

Samba – Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones.  Yes, it really does have a samba rhythm.  If it’s still banned by the BBC I’ll obviously need to think again.  In which case it’s Us Amazonians by Kirsty MacColl.

Tango – I’m a bit old school when it comes to my tangoes.  So it will have to be Por Una Cabeza.  You may recognise it as the tango from Scent of a Woman and True Lies.

Rumba – We haven’t had any cricket pop on Strictly yet, so it’s The Nightwatchman by the Duckworth Lewis Method.

Foxtrot – Moondance by Van Morrison.

Viennese Waltz – The Bed Song by Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra.  A Viennese Waltz that will break your heart.

Paso Doble – Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes.  You need a big thrashy noise and a driving beat for paso, and this delivers in spades.

American Smooth – Probably Diana Krall’s Peel Me A Grape.

Argentine Tango – Like I said, I’m old school.  So it’s something like Comme Il Faut or A Media Luz.

Salsa – It’s a party dance, so it needs a party song.  And the ultimate party song is Groove Is In The Heart by Dee-Lite.

 

Nine Worlds Geekfest 2015

Over the last few days I’ve been at Nine Worlds Geekfest.  It’s the third year it’s happened, the third time I’ve attended, but the first time I’ve stayed in the main hotel.  In previous years I’ve commuted in each day (2 hours each way …), aiming to get there for the second panel of the day and staying as long as I could (usually to tea-time) before going home.  Which makes for a very exhausting way of doing a con, without any of the evening fun which would at least give one a reason for feeling tired.

Of all the cons I’ve been to, Nine Worlds feels the freshest, most energetic and most welcoming.  It prides itself on its inclusive atmosphere and has programme tracks dealing with feminism, LGBTQIA issues, race and culture as well as tracks on books, films, comics and tv shows.  Panels contain a mixture of famous names and new voices.  People from various minorities are not just confined to their own programme tracks, and there is a huge amount of cross-over, with programme items crossing over more than one track.  But this approach to diversity and tolerance goes beyond programming.  Panel members are briefed not to refer to audience members by their gender during Q&A sessions, and prounoun badges are available so that the transgendered and gender-fluid can indicate in a more subtle way how they wish to be referred to.

All of that is in marked contrast to other cons I’ve been to.  LonCon3 (WorldCon) last year felt like East London had been colonised by the USA for five days.  Marvellous as it was to see and meet so many big names from the States, it would have been even better if they’d made some concessions to not being in their own country.  (I recall Jeff VanderMeer giving me the side-eye when I spoke about the cognitive dissonance I was feeling from all this US cultural imperialism.  Of all the people there, I thought he would get it.)  EasterCon (the BSFA’s annual event) feels like the redoubt of a certain generation of fans: a cliquey gathering that it’s very difficult to break into, full of in-jokes and making little or no effort to welcome new people, beyond exhorting them to volunteer to help run the con.

So, I was very excited about going this year, and particularly that I’d managed to persuade some of my geeky friends to come along to.  As I’d learned last year, staying over at a con is only fun for me if I know you have a core of people to hang out with.  Evenings are no fun if everyone else is enjoying themselves and you have no-one else to talk to.

Cosplay

Cosplay was a big part of my Nine Worlds experience.  Having had so much fun dressing up at LonCon3 last year, I wanted to repeat the experience, and Nine Worlds has a much higher density of cosplay than any other con I’ve been to.  So, on the Friday I dressed up as Missy.  (Regular readers will have seen the series of posts documenting the process of making my costume).  I was expecting to be only one of several Missys – every set of con photos I’ve seen recently seems to have included a mandatory group of Missys.  But it turned out I was the only one there.

One of the items on the programme that day was a panel on Gender Fluid Time Lords, and I bumped into the moderator and another of the panel members, both of whom insisted I come along.  When I walked in the room for the start of the panel they gave me a big cheer.  (The photos in this post were taken at the end of that panel).  I was quite struck by something Laurie Penny said in that panel about Missy looking a bit like a suffragette.  So I think the next step will be to add a suffragette sash and rosette to my Missy costume.  Instead of “Give Women Votes” I think it will have to read something like “More Women Time Lords”.

Knitted Wonder Woman, with a mini Power Ranger

On Saturday I reprised my Nyssa costume, from last year.  Which led to the writer Simon Guerrier (the one I’d fangirled at about his Blakes 7 audio dramas at a Doctor Who event at Conway Hall a few days before) confessing that Nyssa had been his first childhood crush, a fact an old friend of his had once accidentally confided to Sarah Sutton (without knowing who she was) at a party.

There were some amazing costumes there, ranging from the clever and witty, to the laboriously screen accurate.  The sheer level of creativity on display was astonishing.  I have very few photos,  I’m afraid (having too much fun …) but some of my favourites were knitted Wonder Woman, a woman who came as the bowl of petunias from Hitchhiker, an amazing Imperator Furiosa, a clutch of Peggy Carters and a woman who came as Sherlock’s wallpaper (dress with a black and white damask print on it, with a yellow smiley face embroidered on it).

My friend Georgie’s Aeon Flux

Programme items

There were many, many amazing programme items, ranging from the deeply silly to the very serious.  The hotel’s lack of chairs (yes, really) meant that it sometimes proved difficult to get into some of them unless one was very early indeed.  But there were plenty of alternatives on offer.

Some particular highlights:

• The Gender Fluid Time Lords panel I mentioned above.  It provided a fascinating insight into how Missy had been received by people from the transgender community.  It was interesting to hear their anxieties (boob jokes, a fear that the gender swap would be presented as a consequence of the Master/Missy being crazy and unstable etc).
• A fantastic gin-tasting from Jensen’s gin.  Their Master Distiller and one of their Brand Ambassadors took us through the history of gin and their distillery.  While plying us with gin.  £5 well spent.
• A talk by Dr Lewis Dartnell, author of The Knowledge, a book about how to reboot civilisation after an apocalypse.  He’s a very engaging speaker and brought along lots of toys to play with.  And who knew that you could prove the heliocentric model of the solar system using just Miley Cyrus (with her wrecking ball) and a watch.
• Death in Genre.  A discussion of death and violence in fiction, including its anthropomorphic personifications.  You haven’t lived until you’ve heard Joe Abercrombie suggesting Death could be a squirrel, hoarding acorns, each of which is the soul of the departed.
• The F-word in Fantasy.  This was a late night panel on sex in fiction, which had me laughing myself silly.  But one of the best parts of it was seeing Laurell K Hamilton (who was playing it as if it were a serious panel) being gently teased and deconstructed with a very British sense of humour.
• Dancing with Imperator Furiosa while Peggy Carter was singing Bon Jovi.

Coping with the awesome

Cons are exhausting places to be.  There is no denying it.  The sheer quantity of people, and the amount of content in the programme can be overwhelming at times.  I think I’m still struggling to find the right balance so I can have the maximum amount of fun while staying sane and not collapsing with exhaustion.

As one of life’s outgoing, confident introverts, rooms full of people are fun, but incredibly draining.  Add to that a lot of programme content that one needs to pay active attention to, and it’s an exhausting mix.  Much as I love that mix of people and content, I need a lot of downtime to re-energise.  Half an hour of fighting my way through the crowds to get to the next panel is not going to cut it.

Some of the best parts of the weekend were the times I got to spend quietly with just a few friends: a quiet dinner with a friend and her baby, or sitting outside the hotel in the sunshine with a few other friends.  I need to find ways to build those times into my weekend in the future, and not be afraid to skip a panel to grab a nap or get some quiet time so I can enjoy the evening entertainment.

Ironically, while cons are the best places to meet fellow geeks and hang out with them, the sheer overwhelmingness of the con environment means you will never find me at my best or most engaging.  I’ll probably be struggling to some degree or other with the scale of the event, punchdrunk and trying to wrestle my introvert self (with addded Imposter Syndrome) into some semblance of sociability.  Last year I bumped into one friend, and I was so spaced out all I could do was hug her and squee incoherently.  Conversation was entirely beyond me.

Finding a route through all that is definitely still a work in progress.

 

Self-care

I’ve been having a tough few weeks (but I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel now, thanks) and it’s got me thinking about self-care.

We all have particular ways of looking after ourselves, and dealing with adversity.  Some of those behaviours are positive ones.  Others, while providing temporary relief, can potentially be self-destructive if we’re not careful.  I’m looking at you, retail therapy, comfort eating and wine.

For me, as one of life’s introverts (albeit one of those confident, outgoing introverts) if things are proving difficult I need even more time to recharge.  I love my wonderful friends.  They can be fantastically supportive and  spending time with them definitely helps.  But if I’m feeling a bit ground down by a situation I’ll probably want to keep my head down and keep myself to myself even more than usual.  I can practically become a hermit, struggling to muster up the energy to even reply to emails.

But there’s another big aspect of self-care for me: doing creative things and being surrounded by creative people.  I’ve written before about all the evidence about the impact of creative pursuits on people’s wellbeing, but for me, they are the thing I will immediately reach for in reaction to a tough period.

Some examples of things that have helped me get through difficult times:

• Art and colour.  I remember when I was dealing with some family health issues and had just finished a particularly challenging project at work I went to see the Roy Lichtenstein exhibition at the Tate Modern.  There’s something wonderfully peaceful and restorative about an art exhibition, even if it’s rammed with people.  I think I’m wired to respond to colour somehow – even a visit to a yarn shop to bathe in the colour and texture is incredibly soothing.
• Making things.  I will instinctively reach for the tools to make something.  And not just knitting.  I had a particularly horrible day at work once – I’d been blamed for getting something wrong by someone who didn’t have the courage to admit they’d changed their mind about what they wanted.  So rather than wallow in self-pity, I went home and made a cake.
• Story.  I have a pretty voracious appetite for story.  And there’s nothing like immersing myself in a narrative of some kind to help me forget my troubles, whether it’s a book (you might have noticed that I read a lot of books), film/tv or audio drama.   Talking about story helps too:  I love the book club that I go to, and going to book-related events.

What helps to keep you resilient?

Blake’s Heaven

Many of you I know in real life will know I have a passion for one particular TV series from the 1970s.  I was 9 months old when Blakes 7 started, and by the time it finished when I was nearly five years old it was my favourite programme.  I’ve had a life-long relationship with the show, made some amazing friends through its fandom and had an awful lot of fun.

About 18 months ago in the bar at Nine Worlds (which is where all the magic happens) I was talking to Jackie Emery of Horizon (the Blakes 7 fanclub), and she mentioned that someone was putting together a collection of essays by fans about the programme and was seeking contributions. I went home and drunkenly pitched an essay to the editor that very evening.

The book – Blake’s Heaven – is now out and available for purchase, with all profits going to Children In Need. It’s quite exciting to have something published under my own name.  So, if you want to read my self-indulgent ramblings about an iconic bit of British SF, please go buy it and read.  It is for a good cause, after all.