I can’t make it to Dublin this year. Indeed, I’ll be spending most of the weekend at a writing retreat here in Wales. However, I have agreed to do one online panel for Octocon. It is on Sunday Oct 8th at 13:30 and the subject is: “Who Reviews the Reviewers: Current Trends in Review Culture”. Full details here.
A Cooking Thing
This morning Jo Hall posted one of those question game things to Farcebook. You are supposed to re-post it on you own page with your own answers, but as I hate posting anything to Farcebook I’m doing mine here.
I should note that it is a very American quiz. Some of the questions make no sense unless you are familar with American cuisine. This gives me a slight advantage. Here are my answers.
Kevin – if I have forgotten anything I made for you, let me know.
HAVE YOU EVER:
1. Made biscuits (it means scones) from scratch? Yes
2. Cooked fresh okra or squash? Yes
3. Made Homemade soup? Clam chowder FTW!
4. Fried chicken? Yes
5. Made spaghetti sauce from scratch? Yes and I’m doing it this evening
6. Made Homemade rolls/cinnamon rolls? No, because I’d have to eat them all immediately
7. Baked a cake from scratch? Yes
8. Made icing from scratch? Don’t think so, too much sugar
9. Cooked a pot roast with all the veggies? That’s what a slow cooker is for
10. Made chili from scratch? So many times
11. Made a meatloaf? I leave that to Jim Steinman
12. Made potato salad? Salad is not cooking
13. Made mac/cheese from scratch? Nope
14. Made any pies from scratch? Yes, but pastry is a pain
15. Made sausage from scratch? No
16. Made fudge? No
17. Made cookies from scratch? Yes
18. Cooked a pot of dried beans? Probably not, I generally use tinned
19. Cooked a pot of greens? Why a pot?
20. Made cornbread from scratch? For the chili, obviously
21. Make a pie dough from scratch? See pies
22. Cooked a whole turkey? No, I’m usually only cooking for one these days
23. Snap’d green beans & cooked them? No
24. Made mashed potatoes from scratch? Only monsters make it any other way
25. Prepared a meal for 30 plus people? Might have helped cook a Far Isles banquet
26. Made homemade tortillas? Obviously I’ve made burittos (even cooked my own carnitas), but I haven’t made the tortillas
27. Made pancakes from scratch? Yes
28. Roasted vegetables in the oven instead of boiling them? Yes
29. Made pasta from scratch? No
30. Made tamales from scratch? Dont think so (Kevin?)
31. Made tuna or chicken salad? Salad, yeuch
32. Fried Fish ? Yes
33. Made baked beans? I have made meals with beans
34. Made ice cream from scratch? Yes
35. Made jam or jelly? No
36. Zested an orange or lemon? Obviously
37. Made grits from scratch? It’s a sort of porridge, of course not
38. Made an omelet? Probably
39. Made homemade pizza? Yes unless it means have you made the dough
40. Lived in a house without a dishwasher ? Yes
41. Salt cured a whole salmon? No
The Green Man’s Quarry
Juliet and I revealed the title and cover of the next Green Man book at FantasyCon over the weekend. The reaction of people to Ben Baldwin’s magnificant art was very heartwarming.
Pre-orders for the ebook edition of The Green Man’s Quarry are now available from Kobo, Amazon and B&N. Paper pre-orders will open soon. And we will be having a book launch on the Friday night of BristolCon (October 20th). Full details are available from the Wizard’s Tower website.
My FantasyCon Schedule
FantasyCon is only a week and a bit away now. I will be there, but I will not have a dealer table as I still don’t have a car capable to transporting books to a con, and the car hire cost would not be economic. So…
If you want a book from Wizard’s Tower, let me know so I can bring it with me. Usual convention discounts will apply, so paperbacks are mostly £10.
If you are wanting the new Green Man book, that’s not ready yet, but I may have e-ARCs and the book should be at BristolCon.
And now, my panel schedule.
Building Your Writer Website- Saturday 10.00am (Panel Room 1)
E.M. Faulds (Moderator) Steve Morgan, George Penney, Ryan Cahill, Cheryl Morgan.
Designing and maintaining your own space on the internet is part and parcel of being a writer these days. Our panel will go through some of the ways you can set up your website and offer advice on the dos and don’ts.
Fantasy: Where Are The People Like Me? – Saturday 2.30pm (Panel Room 3)
Cheryl Morgan (Moderator), Lindz Mcleod, Omar Kooheji, C. L. McCartney.
A panel that looks at how different readers can see themselves in the fantasy worlds of authors. This is a consideration of identity and formative inspiration.
I’m currently also listed on The Great British Monster Off, but that appears to clash with the banquet so I’m waiting to hear back from the con on that one.
A Lovely Review
The July 31st issue of Strange Horizons has a review of Imagining the Celtic Past in Modern Fantasy, an academic book in which I am fortunate to have an essay. It is a very lovely review. In particular, Debbie Gascoyne says, “Sometimes reading academic works can be a slog; there was no such problem here (indeed, Cheryl Morgan’s chapter was actually in places laugh-out-loud funny).” I am very proud of that.
If the high price of the book is causing you concern, please note that we are expecting a much more reasonably-priced paperback early next year.
August in Glasgow
Later this month I will be making the long train journey up to Glasgow for an event at the university. This is not anything to do with the Fantasy Centre, but rather a queer history thing that happens to involve Glasgow academics. The event is aimed primarily at early career humanities scholars, looking for ways to engage with professionals outside of academia. However, it is free, and will be broadcast on Zoom, so if you are intersted I’m sure you’d be welcome. Details are available here.
While I am in Glasgow I am hoping to swing by the SECC and do a quick check of the Worldcon site. It is a while since I was there and I know things have changed quite a bit.
Pemmi-Con – Day 4
I was hoping to see a bit more of Winnipeg yesterday, but the timing of various events didn’t give me a decent-sized time slot so I spent time writing and doing a bit of Day Job instead.
My final panel was about AI. I had two excellent co-panellists. Helen Umberger works for a company that tries to monitor AIs for accuracy and lobbies for proper regulation of the industry. Having been involved in industry regulation for energy markets and commondities trading, I wish her the best of luck. Shalya Elizabeth is a Winnipeg local and a member of the Indigenous Writers’ Collective of Manitoba. Her perspective was invaluable.
I attended the Closing Ceremonies because it was an opportunity to catch up with Kevin, and I was hoping for another performance from the First Nations drummer. Both expectations were fulfilled. We also had a bagpiper, apparently in recognition of the Mansfields’ Scottish ancestry. Linda is a Ross, after all, and that’s a very fine Scottish name.
I should have reported yesterday that Buffalo won the right to hold the NASFiC next year, when Worldcon is in Glasgow. Obviously I can’t attend, so I have not been paying much attention. However, I’m delighted to see a Black man chairing an official WSFS convention. Congratulations to Wayne Brown and his team. The full view of the Business Meeting at which his convention was officially seated is below, and you can find him around 9 minutes in, after Kevin has finished with the official stuff and Sharon Sbarsky has announced the results of the voting.
I’m now all packed and ready to head off to the airport. Thanks are due to my room-mate, Heather Rose Jones, for saving me a lot of money and providing companionship. And of course to the Pemmi-Con committee who did a good job under difficult circumstances.
Pemmi-Con – Day 3
I didn’t see much of the convention on Saturday. In the morning I took myself off to the Human Rights Museum, which is something you don’t get in every city you visit. It is, in various ways, amazing, heart-rending and disappointing. Certainly worth a visit, but equally a measure of who is deemed to have a legitimate human rights struggle and who isn’t.
The afternoon was spent taking care of some WSFS stuff with Kevin. If he gets a visa for China, he probably won’t be able to update the Hugo Awards website from Chengdu. I will be at BristolCon. Somehow we will get it done, though it will probably be behind places like Tor.com and Locus.
The evening saw the Pemmi-Con masquerade, which I went along to because my good friend, Sandy Manning, was running it. It was small, but very well done. I almost ended up on the judging panel, but thankfully Sandy found someone better qualified in time. They had four novices who had never been on stage before, including one young lad who had used a 3D printer to make parts of his costume. The journeyman category had a topically revived Barbie costume that had last been in competition in 1999. There were three master level entries. It is not often that you will see the Pettingers place third in a field of three, which should tell you a lot about the quality of the entries. The clear winner, by audience acclamation as well as by the jury, Best in Show in both Presentation and Workmanship, was the Baba Yaga’s Hut costume pictured above.
Today’s job, other than one panel, is to find the names to go with the photos I have taken so I can do a fuller write-up in Salon Futura.
Pemmi-Con – Day 2
Yesterday I was scheduled to give my talk on the Pre-History of Robotics. As per yesterday’s report, it had to be moved because I’d been put in a room with no screen or projector. I ended up in York 2 in the 5:30pm program slot.
This was progress in that I knew that room did have the necessary kit, but that’s only half the problem. Should I be sending my slides to someone, or could I use my own laptop? And what about the online part of the convention? I figured I should check the room out early. It turned out that the tech kit in the room was an Apple laptop that didn’t have PowerPoint, so I’d have to use my own machine. To do that I needed to be able to log in to Zoom as a panelist. I should have an email with a link, right? Er, no.
Apparently the links for the day were not send out until 1:00pm. Once I had the email, it all went fairly smoothly at my end. Sadly the same was not true for the online participants who had problems with the sound throughout. I don’t blame the tech guy in the room for this. Like many of the con staff, he was a very late recruit. And having to do set-up on a different machine for each program item is far from ideal, especially with only 15 minutes between panels. The Eastercon system of allowing 30 minutes between panels because the tech for a hybrid con needs that much time is sounding more and more sensible.
Anyway, I had a reasonable-sized audience and they seemed to enjoy the talk. My apologies again to the online audience.
The rest of my day was taken up with being photographed. There’s a Bay Area fan photographer called Richard Man who has a project to take high quality photos of prominent people in the field using a lovely old camera. It is one of those things where you have to slide a plate in for each shot, which puts a tremendous amount of pressure on getting each take right. My official photo was taken by Lou Abercrombie using a digital camera and she must have taken at least 300 shots. Richard told me he can only afford two per subject.
As it turned out, I ended up being done twice. Richard, having not been involved with Bay Area fandom when I lived there, hadn’t been entirely sure who I was. After the initial shot he did a bit more research as asked me if I’d come back for a photo using a Hugo trophy. There are three on display in the Exhibits area, one of which is Kevin’s which he got for being co-chair of ConJosé so there was no problem borrowing one.
It will be a while before I see the results as the plates need to be developed, but you can see some of Richard’s work here, and there is more available in this year’s Hugo packet as he is a finalist for Best Fan Artist. Y’all should vote for him ‘cos he’s lovely.
Pemmi-Con Program Update
My talk on the Prehistory of Robotics is now taking place at 5:30pm in York 2, so I should have a screen and projector.
Also I am on “How technology treats minorities and women differently” at 1:00pm on Sunday in York 3. For some reason that doesn’t show up on list view or tile view on the online schedule, but it is on the grid view.
I’d suggest trying the Speakers page to get a list of my panels, but I’m not listed as a speaker.
As a software professional, I’m a little aghast that it is possible for these things to be wrong in Grenadine.
Pemmi-Con – Day 1
I am in Canada, by the skin of my teeth. I am getting too old for travel nightmares.
When I booked this trip I was due to have a Noon flight from Heathrow on Tuesday, spend Wednesday morning with clients, and be on a 6:00pm flight to Winnipeg. That so did not happen.
On Monday morning I got a text from Air Canada saying that my flight from Heathrow was cancelled and they were trying to find me an alternative flight. I was due to see Roz Kaveney who is in hospital recovering from a hip operation, so I put the flight to the back of my mind and went on with my day. But while I was in the hospital I got another text saying that no alternative flights were available and promising a refund. Of course that would only be a refund from the London-Toronto, not the Toronto-Winnipeg. Plus no convention.
Once I’d handed over visitor duties to Roz’s partner, I went on to my hotel at Heathrow (which I had already paid for) and set about trying to fix things. I had been in the queue to speak to Air Canada for about 5 minutes when a new text came through. They had found me a flight to Toronto. It was leaving at around the same time, but from Zurich. So would I please get myself to Heathrow in time to catch the 6:00am Swiss Air flight to get me out there. That meant getting up at 2:30am. It is a good job that I had an airport hotel.
Anyway, I made it, and I got to see Zurich, if only from the air. I got to my Toronto airport hotel around 5:00pm local and went to bed at around 8:00pm as I needed to be up at 5:00am to get to my client’s offices. Somehow I managed to deliver a training course without falling asleep.
Some weeks back the 6:00pm Winnipeg flight had been changed to 6:30pm, which was fine. I was just leaving the client’s offices when a new text came in. The Winnipeg flight would be 7:45pm. We had two gate changes between my arriving at Pearson and the flight starting to board. Boarding began at around 7:40pm, but by 8:00pm we were all on board. And then we sat there, for over an hour. Waiting for I know not what. The pilot blamed it on the ground crew being slow loading the baggage, but it shouldn’t take over an hour to get that done. It was almost midnight by the time I got to bed.
Goodness only knows what will happen on the trip home. I expect to be stranded in Toronto on Monday night.
But before then I have a convention. Today I have watched online talks at the universities of Bristol and Glasgow, which were much more interesting than the programing here. Then I did a panel on diversity in SF&F in past times. I was looking forward to that because I’ve met no end of 20-something fans who are convinced that there were no PoC or queer folks in SF&F before about 2010. But, as it turned out, I’m actually in the younger half of attendees here. Many of the audience were older than me, and they knew a lot about old books, stories and writers. Anyway, I got to rant about Heinlein. My thanks to Nisi Shawl and Sandra Bond for being great co-panelists.
Tomorrow I am giving a talk on the Pre-History of Robotics. I can’t tell you where, but it probably won’t be in York 3 as advertised because that room has no screen or projector.
I get the impression that the concom here are doing sterling work with far too little money and ever fewer volunteers.
However, it has all been worth it because I got to see the First Nations woman perform at openening ceremonies. It was just her voice and a tympanum-like drum, but she was amazing. The wolf song was particularly impressive, you could really feel the drama of the pack chasing down its prey.
Winnipeg Ho!
I’ll be leaving for Winnipeg and Pemmi-Con early on Monday. Pretty much any overseas trip from Wales takes a couple of days. Also I’m spending a day in Toronto along the way to visit some clients. I should arrive in Winnipeg on Wednesday evening.
With the convention less than a week away, I’d assumed that I had not been allocated any programming. This isn’t a problem. I’ve not been to Winnipeg before and am looking forward to seeing the city. Also I haven’t seen Kevin since December. But in my email this morning was a message from the programming team. The schedule isn’t finalised yet, but I am doing at least two program items.
Knowing the Roots: Representation in the Genre before (provisionally Thursday 14:30 – 15:45, in York 2, Convention Center)
Modern SF is often considered to be inclusive. But when did the genre begin to include representatives of BIPOC and/or LGBTQ communities? Our panellists point out hidden examples of early SF that treat these communities with respect.
The Prehistory of Robotics (Friday 16:00 – 17:15, Charleswood B, Delta Hotel)
If you were at the Dublin Worldcon, or the Finncon I did it for, you will have seen this. But I’m guessing that most of the Pemmi-Con attendees will not have seen it. Hopefully they will come along and learn about ancient robots.
I will update this when I get a final schedule.
Welcome to Cricket, Americans
Most of my American readers are probably unaware of this. Kevin certainly was. But today is the opening day of the first season of Major League Cricket.
Cricket has been played in the USA before, of course. In particular there has been a lot of contact between the West Indies and folks in Florida. But this is something new. Big money is being thrown at the sport, and inevitably most of it is coming from India.
The inaugural season has six teams based in New York, Washington DC, Dallas-Fort Worth, Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Four of those teams are owned by IPL franchises. Indeed, the New York side is called Mumbai Indians New York. (They write it MI New York, but we all know what that means.) However, two are more locally financed. I think you can guess which part of the USA has sufficient wealthy Indian entrepreneurs to start a team.
The San Francisco Unicorns belong to a couple of guys who used to work at Amazon. They’ve doubtless done very well out of their shareholdings. For cricket expertise they have entered a partnership with Cricket Victoria, so expect to see a bunch of Melbourne-based players in their side.
Unicorns is an interesting name for the side. And when I tell you that their supporters’ club is called the Sparkle Army I think you’ll jump to the same conclusions as me about some of the people behind the team. This is San Francisco after all.
Currently there is only one stadium capable of hosting first class cricket. It is in Grand Pierre, part of the Dallas-Fort Worth conurbation. The other teams are all building their new homes, including one in San José, but this season’s games will all take place in Texas.
The games will be in T20 format, so they’ll be roughly the same length as a baseball game, but with way more action. Once they find out about the sport, I’m sure the American public will love it.
Today’s match is between Texas (Chennai) and Los Angeles (Kolkata), and is an evening game so middle of the night UK time. Tomorrow sees San Francisco v New York (Mumbai) and there is coverage on BT Sport starting at 9:15pm. In the USA you will need a Willow TV subscription to watch.
Enjoy!
Dear British Museum
I have had a Friends membership for several years now and have enjoyed many of your exhibitions. I have a keen interest in ancient history and am passionate about discovering and preserving knowledge about the past.
However, I am also involved in the publishing industry and have put considerable effort into promoting the work done by translators. There is much good work out there in modern fiction that is inaccessible to English-speaking readers without their help. The same is of course true of the ancient world, because no one wrote in English until comparatively recently in the history of language.
I was therefore deeply distressed at your shabby treatment of Yilin Wang in putting together the “China’s Hidden Century” exhibition. Translators should be acknowledged, and they should be paid fairly for their work.
I have given you some time to make things right, but all I have seen from you is a press release that is one of the worst examples of a corporate non-excuse I have ever seen. As someone who has been involved in diversity training, I’m astonished that a high profile organisation such as yours could be so bad at this.
Consequently I am resigning my membership of the British Museum Friends. I have cancelled my direct debit, and the money I would have paid for my next renewal has been donated to Ms. Wang’s crowdfunder.
Yours, deeply disappointed,
Cheryl Morgan
Kiitos Jyväskylä
This year’s Finncon took place in Tampere last weekend. At the closing ceremony they handed over to next year’s convention, which will be in Jyväskylä. A key part of the ceremony is the announcement of the Guests of Honour. Those will be Ursula Vernon (who needs no introduction); Tiina Raevaara, a fine Finnish writer; Jyrki Korpua, a respected academic who has shared the ToC with me in some of the Academia Lunare books; Tero Ykspetäjä, who has been a mainstay of Finnish conrunning for many years; and me.
That’s really incredibly kind of them. It is getting like Peadar O’Guilin being a permanent GoH at LuxCon, though for me it only happens when Finncon is in Jyväskylä because the con-runners there are sweet and lovely people who seem to like me rather a lot. (I should also note that it will cost them almost nothing as I pay for my own travel and will probably stay with friends while I’m there.)
Anyway, it will be fabulous. I’m particularly pleased for Tero. For context, if he was British, he would certainly have won the Doc Weir Award by now. Hopefully I will see some of you in Jyväskylä next year.
Lesbians in Spaaaaace!
Exciting news from Wizard’s Tower today. We will be publishing a lesbian space opera trilogy from the very wonderful Lyda Morehouse.
Long-time readers will remember that Lyda’s cyberpunk series, AngeLINK, was groundbreaking in featuring a transgender Archangel 20 years ago. Nowadays we can be much more upfront about queer content, and I am very much looking forward to seeing what Lyda does.
The full press release is here. I am thoroughly in favour of what Lyda describes as, “women of a certain age fighting fascism, sexism, and transphobia while rocketing through a terraformed solar system and having hella fun doing it.”
Oh, and just in case you were wondering, the next Alex Connor book from Lyda’s alter-ego, Tate Hallaway, also has a place in the schedule. More on that next year.
Byron & Ashurbanipal in Bristol
I will be back in Bristol for a day next Thursday. Bristol Pride is due up soon, and I have been asked to give a talk at Bristol Central Library. This one will be about how gender is seen differently at different times in history. The blurb is as follows:
Byron and the Lion King
In 1821 Lord Byron wrote a play called “Sardanapalus”. It was about an Assyrian king whose degeneracy and effeminacy caused the downfall of his empire. Byron relied on ancient sources, and thanks to modern archaeology we know that the man he was writing about was Ashurbanipal, the man shown bravely hunting lions on friezes in the British Museum. How did Byron get it so wrong? Or is our understanding of gender in ancient Mesopotamia confused? Cheryl Morgan takes us on a literary detective trail.
I’d love to see some of you there, though obviously it is a day time thing which is difficult if you have to be in an office. I’m afraid it is only in-person, not online. Booking details here. It is free to attend.
ESFS Awards
I missed the award ceremony yesterday as I was off communing with dead Vikings. The full list of ESFS Award winners can be found here. Special congratulations to my winner friends Sara Bergmark Elfgren (Best Written Work for Grim) and John-Henri Holmberg (European Grand Master).
Talking of John-Henri, I told him about the Sky documentary about Stig Larsson. He knew Stig well (and has written about Stig’s contribition to science fiction fandom). He’s not seen the documentary himself, but he said it sounds like mostly nonsense.
Introducing Archipelacon 2
Updated with correct year and Guests of Honour.
I’ve had a very busy day in Uppsala. Two panels went well. Martha Wells was on one and she’s as smart and lovely as I expected. But the main reason for this post is that our Finnish friends have confirmed that Archipelacon 2 will be a real thing. The dates are June 26-29, 2025. It is a Eurocon as well. I hope to see lots of you there. There’s not a lot on the website yet, but here it is.
What is now on the website is the list of Guests of Honour. They are:
- Jeff VanderMeer
- Ann VanderMeer
- Mats Strandberg
- Emmi Itäranta
Those are all very fine people. Please do not read Mats’ horror novel set on a Baltic sea ferry before travelling to Åland.
Hello from Uppsala
I’m here, and the convention is underway. The travel was very smooth, despite the train line being closed for repair. The bus was fine. If you are coming through Arlanda tomorrow, buy a ticket from the info desk, or one of the newsagents (it is 99 kr) and then follow the signs to the bus stops. You want stop 1 which is at the far end as you exit the terminal buildings. I have done my first panel, which I thought went very well. So far, so good.
Also Uppsala looks like a lovely town. There are plenty of places to eat, a lovely river, a splendid cathedral, and of course the university where the convention is being held and which dates back to around 1600.
In other news, yesterday’s experiment worked well with Mastdon, but not with Farcebook because apparently you can only cross-post to a Farcebook page, not to your main account. It is not called Farcebook for nothing.