Conventions

Health Update

~ Cheryl

Still sick, still testing positive for COVID. Not the best way to spend a birthday, but at least I am able to have a fairly quiet day, which I very much need.

Looking forward, a few things are becoming obvious.

Firstly, attending any mass event such as a convention is going to require accepting a very high likelihood of contracting COVID. People have given up taking precautions, we have very little reliable public data, it is hard to protect yourself if you go.

Having said that, COVID no longer seems deadly. I’ve not had any difficulty breathing. My senses of taste and smell have been unaffected. Judging from the puzzle games I play regularly, I don’t seem to have suffered any congnitive impairment. Obviously things might be different if I had one of any number of high risk conditions, but I’m lucky.

But, and this is a big but, if you are going to risk getting COVID, you have to allow for at least two weeks, possibly three, of recovery time, and that creates scheduling issues.

Clearly my plan to go to LuxCon immediately after Eastercon was a recipe for disaster. I might make it to HistFest at the end of April, but I’m not certain.

May is just the Tolkien lecture, and there’s plenty of time to recover before Eurocon. I was going to see a couple of talks at Hay at the end of the month, but I doubt that I’ll have a new car by then.

Finncon and Pemmi-Con being close together is another potential disaster. I trust the Finns to run a safe con, but I’d be travelling through Heathrow to get there and that’s likely to be an infection hot-spot.

FantasyCon and BristolCon are sufficiently far apart to both be possible. But if I have no car I can’t bring books to sell, and that reduces the attraction of going.

All of which, I guess, will be good for my carbon footprint.

Health Update

~ Cheryl

Thus far I seem to have been very lucky. Least ways, I am much less ill than Juliet is reporting being. Of course that could all change. This is a new experience for me.

I’m not going to waste tests until the obvious flu-like symptoms go away. In any case, the NHS guidelines are to isolate for 6 days from a first positive test, so I’m isolating. Tesco delivered some groceries today.

There are now over 70 reported cases of COVID from people who were at Eastercon. I suspect that the true number is much higher. In contrast, last year’s Worldcon, which was a much larger event, had 64 cases. There are a whole bunch of reasons for this, which I will get to when I do my con report, but I don’t think I’m the only person seriously reconsidering in-person attendance at future Eastercons. Especially when this one did hybrid so well.

Eastercon Saturday

~ Cheryl

Well that was a good day. I sold lots of books, and caught up with a bunch of old friends, many of whom I’d not seen since before the pandemic. Last year’s Eastercon felt a bit small and strained. This year feels like a proper convention again. Progress, I hope.

Also there were a bunch of good award winners, from some very strong fields. Most importantly, Aliette won the short fiction, so Asmodeus will not feel that he has to murder us.

Adventures in Publishing, Eastercon 2023 Edition

~ Cheryl

So, yes, I am at Eastercon. I also have a dealer table. This may come as a surprise to many. It certainly was to me. Here’s the story.

As you may remember, a few weeks back my car broke down. As I had no idea when I might get it back, and no other means of getting books to the con, I had to decide what to do about the dealer table. Farah told me that she had a waiting list for places and she needed to know as soon as possible. So, reluctantly, I relinquished the booking.

The plan had been to take a few books with me on the train, and I posted about that here. That was seen by Catherine Sharp who these days also lives in South Wales. She was due to be down my way last weekend, and she offered to ferry some books for me. I gratefully gave her a couple of boxes containing a selection of paperbacks.

On Tuesday I finally got the car back. It seemed to be running fine, but I had no time to give it a shake-down as I had a lot to do between then and the con. I was happy to still be traveling by train. In any case I had bought my ticket.

Yesterday morning I figured I should check the Transport for Wales website, because other people on the Eastercon Discord were reporting last-minute train issues. And lo, the train that Roz Clarke and I were planning to catch had been cancelled. This is the Heart of Wales line. There are only about 4 trains a day. It was either drive, or wait to the next day.

So I drove, and aside from the M42 it was a good trip. The car ran fine, and Roz & I arrived earier than we would have done had we caught the train.

This morning, after my first panel, I was looking round the Dealers’ Room and buying too many books. I found Farah who had said she might have some room on the SF Foundation table. It turned out she didn’t, but she did have a table that was unexpectedly free. I grabbed it. Catherine arrived with the books in the afternoon, and now I have a table set up to do business tomorrow.

Publishing it is not as easy as it seems.

Off to Luxembourg

~ Cheryl

Today I am heading to Birmingham for Eastercon, but that won’t be the end of my April travels. When I get back I have one day to get turned around and then I am off to Luxembourg where I will be a guest at Luxcon. I am very grateful to Jean Beurlet and the rest of the crew for the invitation. I’ll be traveling by train all the way, which means I should get a lot of reading done.

My Eastercon Schedule

~ Cheryl

The programme for this year’s Eastercon is now live. You can find my schedule here. And for those of you who don’t want to click through, here’s the list:

Friday, 7 April 2023 12:00 – SF In Antiquity

The strange and wonderful SFnal origins of the genre from bronze men in Greek myth to telescope viewings of men on the moon

Gladstone-Churchill Room, with: Clare Goodall, Chris McCartney, Marcus Rowland, The Fossil

Friday, 7 April 2023 16:30 – No Simple Binaries

Characters and settings who’ve just said ‘no’ to gender binaries. From Martha Wells’ Murderbot to Ursula LeGuin’s Gethenians and Mary Gentle’s Ortheans; a look at the history and future of non-binary characters (and where the human non-binary characters are)

Gladstone-Churchill Room, with Sandra Bond, Juliet Kemp, Mike Brooks, Edmund Schluessel

Sunday, 9 April 2023 12:00 – Non-European Middle Ages

Eurocentric lore has been a goldmine for fantasy and historical fiction writers. But what was the rest of the world doing?

Balmoral (ex-Earls) Room, with David Stokes (Guardbridge Books), Oghenechovwe Ekpeki, Stew Hotston, Gillian Polack

Sunday, 9 April 2023 15:00 – Who, Why and What do we Award?

The role of awards in fandom ecology and SFF economy

Salisbury-Wellington Room, with Niall Harrison, Nick Hubble, Nicholas Whyte, Gareth Worthington

Monday, 10 April 2023 12:00 – Travelling Fans

Fans travel a long way to go to conventions, especially Worldcons. International exchanges help build fan communities, but how important are they in the virtual modern world? And how environmentally sustainable?

Sandringham (ex-Dukes) Room, with Carolina Gómez Lagerlöf, Marcin Alqua Klak, Angeli Primlani, Suzanne Tompkins

In addition to those, and not yet on the convention website, I believe that I’m also involved in this:

Saturday, 8 April 2023 16:30 – Book Launch: Roz Kaveney’s Rhapsody of Blood Volume 5

Roz Kaveney’s extraordinary Rhapsody of Blood series reaches volume five, released in April 2023. Join us to celebrate the launch.

Pavilion Room, with Roz Kaveney

Also, please remember that, due to a lack of a working car, I won’t have a table in the Dealers’ Room. If you want a book from Wizard’s Tower, please let me know in advance so that I know to bring it with me.

Regarding Eastercon

~ Cheryl

Eastercon is happening in a few weeks time, and I had a dealer table booked there. However, my car is currently sick and definitely not up to a lot of motorway driving. The fix isn’t huge, but it is time-consuming and I have no guarantee that I’ll have a fully working car come Easter.

I’ve looked into car rental, but I’d need it for at least 6 days and there’s no way I can justify the cost.

Also Eastercon has a long waiting list for dealer tables. Farah needed to know asap whether I would be using my booked place.

So I decided to hand back the booking and plan to travel to Birmingham by train.

That doesn’t mean I can’t sell books. It just limits the quantity I can take with me. A couple of people have kindly offered to help with book transport should I need it. And of course if I do get the car back in time I can take more.

So, if you want a book from Wizard’s Tower, and want to take advantage of convention pricing, I need to know in advance so I am mostly packing books that are actually going to sell.

To make things easy, I’m keeping the convention pricing very simple. Paperbacks are £10, hardcovers are £15; except for the bigger fantasy novels (the Tales of Einarinn series, the Aldabreshin Compass series, and The Tangled Lands), which are £12 and £18. I do expect to have copies of A Dark Way to Glory available, but they haven’t been delivered yet.

If you want books, please let me know, either here, by email or by social media. Contact email addresses for Wizard’s Tower are here. Pay me at the con. I will probably be spending some time at the Science Fiction Foundation table in the Dealers’ Room, and may be on panel.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

My Octocon Schedule

~ Cheryl

The lovely Irish people have been very kind to me this year. You can catch up on my interview with translator, Julia Meitov Hersey, and on the launch event for Juliet McKenna’s The Green Man’s Gift, via their Twitch stream. The convention itself is just a week away, and the programme for the weekend has been released. It is a hybrid event and I’m part of the online entertainment. Here’s what I will be doing.

Saturday, 15 October – 17:30

Found in Translation – There’s so much amazing SFF we would love to read but that wasn’t written in a language we know. Fortunately, translators can bring those stories to us by choosing just the right words to convey the nuances and flavour of the landscapes, characters, and dialogue of worlds beyond our experience. Our panel discusses the secrets behind the linguistic alchemy of translation. With Jean Bürlesk, Faranae (M) & Julia Meitov Hersey.

Sunday, 16 October – 10:00

Monarchy and Nepotism in Fact and Fiction – “Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.” Divine right, heroic lineages, secret legacies and cronyism are all often used to explain why a character is important within a story, whether they – or the audience – know about their birthright or not. But considering we find it hard to tolerate these ideas in our own societies, what are the alternatives in fiction to the random lottery of inherited power, wealth and privilege? With Jean Bürlesk, Aliette de Bodard, Ian Moore & Gillian Polack. I am moderating.

Memberships, both virtual and in-person, are still available from the convention website. A virtual membership is only €20.

Octocon Presents (me)

~ Cheryl


I’m delighted to report that, on Tuesday September 20th, I will be participating in the Octocon Presents programme for 2022. This is a series of online events leading up this this year’s Irish National Science Fiction Convention. I will be talking to Julia Meitov Hersey, a translator who works with Russian language books. She is the translator for Ukrainian authors, Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko, and the winner of last year’s Rosetta Award for SF&F translation. The show starts at 8:00pm Irish time which, miraculously giving how stupid my government is, is exactly the same as British time.

My FantasyCon Schedule

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

As promised, here’s what I will be up to at FantasyCon:

Saturday 17th, 11:00 – Angry Robot Room – Non-fiction Genre Writing – Reviews and Critiques (with John Dodd (m), Maura McHugh, Steven Poore, Kit Power)

Saturday 17th, 16:00 – Atlantis 1 – Writing in Collaboration (with Emily Inkpen (m), Gary Couzens, LR Lam)

Sunday 18th, 10:00 – Atlantis 2 – Writing Older Characters – What happens when the chosen one grows up (with Jen Williams, Gabriela Houston, Liz Willams, WP Wiles)

If you are wondering about the writing in collaboration one, I’m told that the panel will encompass many different ways in which that happens and I’ll be talking about sensitivity reading.

I think this is the first time I’ve ever been put on an old person panel, though it looks like everyone else on it is younger than me (and in some cases a lot younger).

Hopefully I will see some of you there.

Worldcon Approaches

~ Cheryl

I see that Chicon 8 has now published their program schedule. I’m not on it. I did apply for programming, and I was offered three interesting panels. However, two of them were potentially quite controversial, and something happened that made me not feel 100% safe to be involved, so I withdrew from participation.

I’d like to note that this is unlikely to be an issue for the vast majority of people. I’m an easy target, for a whole variety of reasons, and I have a very high comfort threshhold. I’m still happy to do smaller conventions, and indeed have three panels at the upcoming FantasyCon which I will write about in a day or two. But I am thinking very seriously about being involved in Worldcons in future because they are so high profile and therefore get targeted by people who want to cause trouble.

Imaginales in Crisis

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Long-time readers will remember that I very much enjoyed my trip to Épinal (the ‘home of comics’) in France for the Imaginales festival. It had a lot of the feel of a traditional science fiction convention, but was run in conjunction with the municipal authorities which meant that it was a) free and b) very well attended.

Well, it was good while it lasted. The trouble with working with local government is that the people you are working with can get voted out and replaced by people with very different attitudes.

Thanks to friends from France (primarily Aliette de Bodard and Lionel Davoust) I have learned that the new mayor, Patrick Nardin, has fired Stéphanie Nicot, the Creative Director of the festival, and many other staff are leaving in protest.

Stéphanie was the founder of Imaginales, and has been in charge since it started. She is getting on in age these days, but had put a succession plan in place. Possibly more importantly in this case, Stephanie is a trans woman, and one of the better known advocates for trans rights in France. I’m hearing of various women and people of colour complaining that their role in Imaginales has been reduced since the new management took over.

M. Nardin has also accused Stéphanie and her team of being unprofessional. Having been to the event, I’m happy to say that’s absolutely not the case. However, I suspect that what is meant here is not ability to do the job, but desire to make profits. My guess is that M. Nardin wants to see Imaginales run more like San Diego ComicCon, and have the festival bring in big money for the town. If that’s the case, he certainly won’t be interested in the top quality literary guests that Stephanie used to bring to the event. He’s also going to have to find a whole lot of fans daft enough to work for free to make money for him.

There’s an interview with Stéphanie (in French) here.

It is all very sad, but probably kind of inevitable given the rightward drift of politics around the world. I hope that French fandom rallies round and finds somewhere to put on a new event. They may not be able to do it in conjunction with a local council, and they might have to charge for memberships, but at least they’ll be in control. Hey, they might even bid for a Eurocon…

Westercon Updates

~ Cheryl

Westercon #74 starts tomorrow, and as always there are a few programme updates. In particular I’ve stepped in to moderate the Gulf Futurism panel because Cristina has been dragged away for other things. I know very little about SF&F from the Arab world, but I have some excellent panelists to talk to. Also I’m going to be interviewing Stark Holborn for the SF Westerns panel, because none of the other ornery varmints wanted to be on that panel.

Kevin tells me that membership sales are closed now, because the registration staff are to busy at-con. However, if anyone is desperate for a virtual membership, I’m sure I can sort that for you. The virtual program schedule is here, and anything listed here as being in the Blue Room is also being streamed.

Coming to Tonopah?

~ Cheryl

Westercon is a traveling convention that usually takes place somewhere on the West Coast of the USA. This year it will be “in the middle of nowhere”. That’s a Finnish joke. The Finns have a saving that means “in the middle of nowhere” but actually translates as “in the middle of Nevada”, which is exactly where this year’s Westercon is.

It is actually remote even for the USA. Tonopah, Nevada is 200 miles from the nearest airport. It is a nice little town, with an interesting history, and an excellent value convention center. Some people will be there in person. But it will be a BristolCon sized event: small and friendly. For those people who can’t make it in person, there will be an online component.

The virtual program, which I helped curate, will take place early in the morning, Nevada time. In-person attendees can watch it over breakfast, but it is better timed for people on the East Coast, in Brazil, or in Europe. We made a point of not using North American panelists. Everyone is from Europe, the Middle East and South America. You can see the list of panels here.

In addition, one stream of in-person programming will be broadcast (and have some virtual participants). That’s everything listed in the Blue Room here.

If you would like to watch the virtual program and/or the streamed content, you can do so with a Supporting Membership, which costs just $20. Buy here.

Airship Nebula Ahoy!

~ Cheryl

The 2022 Nebula Conference starts tomorrow, with the award ceremony on Saturday evening (US time). Thankfully I don’t have to be up for that, but I am on programme.

Indie Publishing for LGBTQ+ Authors
Sat, May 21, 2022 6:00 AM to 7:00 AM
Indie publishing is a new frontier for many authors, but what does breaking into this space look like for members of the LGBTQ+ community? Join us for a discussion of ideas, advice, and the personal experiences of independently published queer authors.
With Maya MacGregor / M Evan MacGriogair, Sienna Tristen & Sarah Loch (M)

I hope to see some of you there.

My Eastercon Schedule

~ Cheryl

Just a couple of days to go now. The full programme for Eastercon has been released. I will be in the Dealers’ Room for most of the convention, but I am doing two panels (and moderating both of them). Here’s the details:

Publishing in the Pandemic
Saturday 16th; 10:30; Bleriot
The Covid-19 pandemic proved tough for publishing. Paper shortages, distribution issues, and alterations to working patterns all brought massive change to the industry. The panel discusses the good and bad, and what might last. With Tiffani Angus, Francesca Barbini, Marcus Gipps & Joanne Hall.

Reclaiming Ourselves: What Does It Mean To Reclaim Our Physical Bodies?
Sunday 17th; 10:30; Endeavour
Lockdown living meant seeing far fewer people face-to-face – which for some of us meant the opportunity to change how we dress, look, or otherwise engage with our bodies, relatively free from external judgement. (Plus, unable to get a haircut.) What can our responses to lockdown living tell us about our attitudes to our bodies and what we are ‘allowed’ to do with them? What about those of us who were already constrained in how we engaged with the physical world, eg through disability? With FD Lee, Stewart Hotston, Juliet E McKenna & Lee Swift.

New Locus – Contains Me

~ Cheryl

A new issue of Locus was published yesterday, and it is probably the one that people most look forward to each year because it is the one that contains the Recommended Reading List. As usual, I had a part in choosing the books in some of the categories. There are a lot of other people involved, and nothing gets on the list just because I say so. Equally there are books I recommended that didn’t make it. No one is going to think the final list is perfect, but it contains a lot of very good books and stories. You can find the full list here.

This issue also contains an article by me. This coincidence is an artefact of the December Worldcon. I generally write them something about the WSFS Business Meeting, so if you have the magazine you can read that too. Liza and the team have my deepest sympathy for having to do a Worldcon report and the Recommended Reading List in the same issue.

The Saturday Panel Lives

~ Cheryl

After some hard work by the programming team, the “What Do We Look for in a Fanzine?” panel has been re-constituted as a fully-online event. It will be in Harris at 10:00am EST (15:00 UK). The description for it is as follows:

Everyone on this panel writes fanzines. What that means has changed over the years, but they are all passionate about them. The panel will talk about what excites them, what delights them, and what makes them nominate something for a Hugo.

The panelists are: Erin Underwood, Guy Herbert Lillian, Jaroslav Olša, Jr., Joe Sherry and Sarah Gulde; and the moderator is me.

Tune in tomorrow.

Worldcon Starts Tomorrow

~ Cheryl

Well that crept up on me. It is all too easy to miss the excitement when you don’t have to travel to the convention. But Worldcon does start tomorrow, and I have panels. The schedule that I was given is as follows:

  • Wednesday 15th 16:00, Kress Room: Fanzines and Meta Fandom
  • Thursday 16th 10:00, Kress Room: Planning and Running a Virtual Fan Event
  • Saturday 18th 10:00, Calvert Room: What Do We Look for in a Fanzine?

Those time are for Washington DC. For UK times add 5 hours.

The first two of those are definite. The Saturday one may not happen for me because it has not been scheduled as a virtual event. I don’t know how that managed to fall through the cracks, but watch this space.

Of course I will also be online on Saturday night because I have a Hugo to lose. I shall be sad for my CoNZealand Fringe pals, but Related Work is a very tough field this year.

By the way, I see that Twitter is busy discussing accessibility issues again this year. This is not good, obviously, but it is hard to see what can be done.

Worldcon facility contracts are a big deal and are generally signed soon after a Worldcon wins site selection. If the facility isn’t accessible at the point, there’s very little you can do.

So we should only be picking sites that are accessible. And people do ask questions about this at bidder presentation sessions, but there are lots of other things that people care about in terms of site selection. In any case, the bidders have probably taken the facility’s world about it being accessible, and haven’t sent a team of experts to inspect it.

OK, so maybe all bidders should be more responsible and ensure that their facilities are accessible before they start. But finding a local facility that is the right size and affordable is really hard, and fan groups are unlikely to decide not to bid if their accessibility isn’t up to scratch.

Besides which, they don’t have to care, in that they are only in this for one year, and if they screw up it doesn’t matter because it will be Worldcon that gets the bad rap, not the people who failed to run it well enough.

The bottom line is that accessibility is never going to be done right except by good fortune, or because we have a group of people who are responsible for running Worldcon year after year and see such issues as important.