How Did We Get Here?

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

One of the more common questions I’m getting asked on social media is why WSFS is not incorporated, and why is there so much resistance to it being so. I’m not really the right person to answer that, because I only started going to Worldcons in 1995. The fannish war over incorporartion had been going on for some time by then and was deemed mostly settled against the idea, but I will give it a go.

In 1995, incorporation was clearly still a hot potato. Most people back then thought that the Business Meeting was a load of boring nonsense, but the one thing I was told was guaranteed to get everyone out of the program sessions and into the BM to vote was a cry of, “WSFS Inc.! To the Barricades!!!”

So why exactly does Worldcon fandom have this horror of incorporation? It has become clear to me over the years that many people involved in running Worldcons despise WSFS and would be much happier if it went away. Part of that is sheer selfishness. Once they have got control over the shiny toy for a year they want to be able to run it however they want, not be constained by some stupid old constitution. But there is also a very real fear among con-runners of mechanisms that might come back to bite them.

Worldcon is a massive undertaking staffed entirely by volunteers. It is questionable as to why anyone would take on such a responsibility if they thought that there could be serious consequences for them if they got it wrong. Worldcons routinely take out insurance against being sued for various reasons, but having legal obligations to WSFS would be harder to avoid.

(Updating this because a couple of people read it in a way I didn’t intend. Individual Worldcons incorporate. They have to, and they have to do so under the laws of their host country. What Worldcons do not want is for WSFS to incorporate. Nor do they want to have to sign legal agreements with WSFS in exchange for the right to run Worldcon.)

Some of the responses to my suggestion for fixing the Hugos also cast light on the issue. Some people have responded that the Mark Protection Committee is the wrong body to take on the responsibility because the current members are all incompetent arseholes. Well, that’s an opinion, but that’s why I suggested that people might want to amend the motion to have them all stood down and new elections take place.

Heather Rose Jones has made some very good points about the dangers of having such a body, and she’s dead right. There are ways in which it could go bad. Democracy only works if we are constantly vigilant and prevent it being subverted.

But then there are people who say that it can never work because the wrong people will always get elected. That’s much more of a Libertarian viewpoint: all government is bad, because anyone who gets to be in government is bad.

That brings us back to the early years of Worldcon, and a time when many of the attendees were hard core Heinlein fans. Resistance to incorporation is, I think, at least in part driven by the idea that risking an occasional individual Worldcon going rogue is far preferable to creating an official body that might itself go rogue and then could not be stopped. If you agree with that assessment then you too should be against any proposal that creates an oversight body.

Up until now, of course, it has worked. Worldcons have mostly done the right things and followed the rules, even though they could not be forced to do so. Chengdu has changed all that. And I note that, when Kevin and I explain that there’s nothing that Glasgow can do about it under the Constitution, a common reaction is that they should just do it anyway. Going rogue can be infectious.

Decoupling the Hugos

~ Cheryl ~ 26 Comments

In amongst all of the discussion as to what to do about the Chengdu Hugo issue has been one suggestion that can actually be implemented, albeit over a number of years. That is decoupling Hugo Award Administration from the host Worldcon, so that the laws of the host country cannot interfere with the voting process.

I explained my ideas to Kevin, and he kindly drafted a resolution that could be put before the Business Meeting in Glasgow. You can see that here, but it is long and legalistic so I’ll describe the basic idea. (If you want a DOCX or RTF version, ask me.)

WSFS already has an organization called the Mark Protection Committee (MPC), which is responsible for maintaining the service marks that WSFS owns (in particular “Hugo Award” and the logo). I suggest renaming this the Independent Hugo Award Administration Committee (IHAAC) and giving it, rather than Worldcon, the job of administering the voting process. The IHAAC would recruit experienced administrators in much the same way that Worldcon does, but there would be a lot more consistency from year to year.

Worldcon would still have the option of staging a Hugo Award ceremony, and creating a distinctive trophy base, but equally it could decline to do that and pass the job back to the IHAAC.

Kevin and I cannot take this proposal forward ourselves. Kevin is a member of the MPC, and I effectively work for them in maintaining the WSFS websites, so we both have a vested interest. Our involvement could easily be portrayed as a power grab. But we are happy to provide help and advice to anyone who does want to take this forward at Glasgow.

It would also benefit from input from people who have good experience of Worldcon budgets. I don’t know how much running Hugo Administration costs, and the IHAAC would need a share of WSFS membership fees to cover that. Some of that should probably be paid well in advance, just in case the Worldcon later goes bankrupt. Input from people who understand international data sharing laws would also be useful.

There are also changes that might be needed to ensure broad support for the idea. For example, people might want the current MPC members to resign and stand for re-election because their role has changed. They might want IHAAC members to be elected by online ballot of the WSFS membership rather than at the Business Meeting. It might be easier for Worldcons if the IHAAC administered Site Selection as well, and so on. The current motion represents what we think are the minimum number of changes required.

Neither Kevin nor I are wedded to any particular version of this. We are simply putting it out there to help people get started on a change that at least some people appear to want.

Of course there will also be people who think that this will inevitably lead to WSFS being incorporated and having a board of directors. That is entirely possible, and I expect such people to oppose any change of this type. But I also think it is incumbent upon them to propose a better idea, or to explain to fandom why the current chaos is preferable to WSFS Inc..

A Better Analogy for Worldcon

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

The social media drama about this year’s Hugos continues unabated. Kevin and I are still getting a fair amount of pushback to our attempts explain what can and can’t be done. A lot of this falls into two camps. Firstly there are the people who assume that we must be lying and are probably part of the conspiracy. And then there are people who quote bits of the WSFS Constitution at us as if this was some massive gotcha because of course we can’t possibly understand it ourselves. Neither of these groups are worth engaging with.

However, there are people who are prepared to listen. And one (thank you, Joseph), led me to what I think is a better explanation of how WSFS and Worldcon work.

Traditionally, people have compared Worldcon to the Olympics. Cities bid for the right to hold it. When one wins a bid, the local organising committee is largely responsible for running the event. But this analogy has two flaws. Firstly the International Olympic Committee actually exists. And secondly, they do have some limited power over how each year’s Olympics are run. In contrast, the “Hugo Board” does not exist, and no one has any power over a seated Worldcon.

A better analogy, I think, is that of a parliamentary election. We, the people (i.e. WSFS members), vote for a party to govern us. Once that party is elected, it may or may not do what is promised to do during the election. And it may do things that we definitely didn’t want it to. But, short of taking to the streets and protesting, there is little that we, as electors can do.

Of course a functioning democracy should have checks and balances on the power of the government. There might be a separately organised upper chamber, or a head of state, or a supreme court, or any combination of these. There may also be a written constitution. The only one of these that WSFS has is the constitution. But if the government acts against the constitution, what can be done? Typically you go to another branch of government to rein them in. However, WSFS does not have any other branch of government. In practical terms, the only thing preventing a Worldcon committee from acting against the WSFS Constitution is the shame that will befall them if they do so.

As we are seeing in real democracies, shame is no longer an effective check on elective dictatorship. The UK is a good example. The King is effectively powerless. The House of Lords is being subverted by the Tories by the simple expedient of given lots of their corrupt buddies peerages. (This is helped by their rapid turnover of Prime Ministers, as each one gets to have a Resignation Honours List.) As for the Supreme Court, when they tried to rein in Boris Johnson, he and his allies in the media branded them “enemies of the people”. The current big issue in Parliament is the government ramming through laws that say that the UK has the power to ignore international law, specifically over the policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda. Rishi Sunak insists that he is doing this to protect “the will of the people”, despite opinon polls consistently showing that the people actually oppose this policy.

The Tories, at least, do have to worry about the next election. But Worldcon is an exhausting thing to run, and usually no one fan group will bid more than once every 10 years. By that time there will probably have been substantial turnover in the people involved, and fannish memories are short.

That, I’m afraid, is where we are with WSFS. Once seated, a Worldcon can pretty much do whatever it wants. There is no effective sanction on its behaviour. It is possible, and that is a separate discussion, that Chengdu had very good reasons to do at least some of what they did. But now that they have shown an apparent willingness to flout the Hugo rules, I expect future Worldcons to feel empowered to do so with no reason other than that they want to. I am, I hope obviously, very unhappy about this.

Outrage Season

~ Cheryl ~ 10 Comments

We have finally got the nomination statistics for the 2023 Hugos, and understandably there is a great deal of concern being expressed. Some very strange things have gone on. Believe me, I’m not happy either.

Fairly inevitably there are plenty of people who know little about how WSFS works who assume that there must be some overriding authority who could, and should, have prevented Chengdu from doing what they have done. Kevin and I try to explain, but often we are met with incredulity because it seems crazy that any organisation would work that way. I’m not happy about how WSFS works either.

What does confuse me, however, is the way that people assume utter idiocy by those involved as the only explanation. For example, Kevin and I have been beset by demands that it is our duty to find out what happened. Do people really think that we don’t want to know? And haven’t asked? I guess they do.

Stupidity is also being ascribed to the Chengdu committee. If I wanted to fix the results of the Hugos, there are two ways I would go about it. The first is that I would put out an entirely falsified set of nomination statistics. After all, the ballots will have been destroyed by now. How would anyone know that they were false?

The other option is to simply not issue the nomination statistics at all. Sure, they are supposed to, but there is no effective comeback if you don’t do it, and the outrage at them not doing so is likely to be far less than what is happening right now.

Instead they have chosen to put out a set of nomination statistics that makes it very clear that shenanigans have taken place. Maybe we should be thinking about why they did that.

February Looms

~ Cheryl

And that means that LGBT+ History Month is on the horizon. Interest in this sort of thing seems to have waned a bit over the past few years. That’s partly because the sorts of institutions that put on events are increasingly demanding something recorded that they can use for years to come. The problem with that is that you have to ensure that your presentation is free of copyrightable images, and that takes a lot of effort. Also, of course, there’s a good chance doing such things, especially if they involve trans issues, is likely to become illegal soon, regardless of who wins the next general election.

However, the lovely folks at M-Shed in Bristol are still doing good work. They have a fine program of talks scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 24th, and only one of them is by me. Excitingly there will also be a talk by Mark and Jack, the Museum Bums boys. I’m looking forward to it. I’ll be talking about the search for trans people in Celtic Britain. OutStories Bristol has a long post about the various talks.

I will be doing a couple more talks, including one at Oxford University, and one online for a university in Canada, but I don’t yet know of anything else that will be open to the public. If something turns up, I will let you know.

Farewell Duolingo

~ Cheryl

I have cancelled my subscription to Duolingo. It has been a good run, and I think it has helped quite a bit in my efforts to learn Welsh. However, I reached the end of the Welsh course some time ago and the app isn’t teaching me much new any more. The course I’m doing through Carmarthenshire Council is now much more useful.

I was quite tempted by the music course, but it turned out to be something like a platform video game. If you don’t have the hand-eye coordination to get it right the course is a waste of time.

December Salon Futura

~ Cheryl

As I say in the editorial, this was a strange issue. For a variety of reasons most of the SF&F reading I did in December was now reviewable, but there was a bunch of other stuff that I could put in. Highlights of the December Salon Futura include:

There may be no issue in January because I still have a heap of Crawford reading to do, and work is still very busy.

Introducing Speculative Insight

~ Cheryl

On the assumption that a lot of people won’t be paying much attention to the internet over the holidays, I’ve been queueing up a bunch of posts, so apologies for the unusual flurry this week.

To begin with I’d like to draw your attention to a new online critical magazine for SF&F literature. It is called Speculative Insight, and it is edited by Alex Pierce whom you may know from Galactic Suburbia, Letters to Tiptree, Luminescent Threads, or even Locus. Alex kindly asked me to write something for her and, much to my surprise, it ended up launching the magazine.

“What is Fantasy Anyway?” is an essay-length version of the talk I did at Bristol Central Library in support of their contribution to the British Library Fantasy exhibition. It is basically me having a go at the people who are heavily invested in policing genre boundaries. Hopefully some of you will find it interesting.

Speculative Insight will continue with a mix of paid and free articles over the coming months. I’m looking forward to seeing what it produces. And remember when you look at the prices that an Australian dollar is only worth a little over 50p.

Here We Go A-Wassailing

~ Cheryl

Around this time of year I generally post a jolly seasonal ditty from the very wonderful HP Lovecraft Historical Society. However, in recent years I’ve been running out of good ones and didn’t want to repeat myself. So here, instead, is Steeleye Span with a traditional wassail from around here.

The lyrics are great.

Festival Cheeseboard

~ Cheryl

Yesterday I shared a photo of my holiday feast cheeseboard on Mastodon. That’s reproduced above. I promised a blog post explaining what the various cheeses were, so here goes.

Right at the top is something that should be familiar to all of you. That’s Colston Bassett Stilton. It is widely available, and very good.

Bottom centre and right are two of my favorite cheeses: Gorwydd Caerphilly and Pitchfork Cheddar from Trethowan Dairy. The Trethowan brothers started making the Caerphilly on their family farm in West Wales, but with success came the need for better milk supply and they moved to Somerset. Their two signature cheeses thus reflect the dairy’s twin heritage. As I never tire of telling people, the Caerphilly has won the gold medal at the World Cheese Awards, so it can truly claim to be the best cheese in the world.

Bottom left is a British Brie: Baron Bigod from Fen Farm Dairy in Suffolk. My tasting notes from the cheesemonger say it has hints of wild mushroom. Can’t go wrong with that.

Centre left is something very squidgy. It is Eve, a goat’s cheese washed in Somerset cider brandy and wrapped in vine leaves. It is made by White Lake Cheese in Somerset. I’m not sure I want my cheese quite that liquid, but it certainly tastes good.

In the centre is my favourite discovery of the year. It is Witheridge in Hay, made by Nettlebed Creamery in Oxfordshire. The cheese is quite literally aged in a wrapping of hay. I’m not sure that it is quite as strong as mature cheddar as the website claims, but it is quite robust and very tasty.

Finally we have centre right which is Abaty Glas from Caws Penhelyg near Aberystwyth. It is a mild blue cheese which is again very tasty but inevitably suffers from being next to the Stilton. I think maybe I should have it earlier in the tasting sequence.

I should note that many of these cheese are made with rennet and/or unpasteurised milk, and may not be suitable for everyone.

Happy Solstice!

~ Cheryl

Because the universe is not neat and organised, it will not actually be the Solstice in the UK until a little into Friday. Today is Solstice day for the Americas though. Presumably similar issues apply in the Southern Hemisphere where it is summer. Here, however, we shall celebrate the defeat of the Dark and look forward to the return of the Light. And tomorrow night I will have a special date with a ghost horse.

Hereabouts actual Solstice celebration is being deferred until Saturday when, with any luck, I will actually get a day off work. Which is more than I can say for next week, I suspect. But that’s being freelance for you. You take the work when you can get it.

Meanwhile, here is a card for you. As usual, it is by the very talented Dru Marland. You can buy her stuff here.

Fantasy in London and Bristol

~ Cheryl


A major exhibition on Fantasy will be opening at the British Library next week (Friday 27th) and will run until Sunday, February 25th, 2024. The curation team included Neil Gaiman, Aliette de Bodard and Roz Kaveney, so you can tell it will be very good. There are a whole bunch of events planned around it as well. Full details are available here. Many of them are online. I’m particularly keen to see Natalie Haynes interviewing Susan Cooper, and the Black to the Future event. I might also try to get to London for the full day of events on December 9th (or not, it is sold out, but online is available).

For those of us out west, I am delighted to see that Bristol Central Library is joining the fun. They have a bunch of events of their own. That includes co-hosting the Neil Gaiman livestream on November 20th, but also a bunch of events of their own. The following are part of their Lunchtime Lectures series.

Thu, Nov 9, 12:30 – Fantasy and the Cotswolds – a talk by the wonderful Cathy Butler. Who knows, it might feature Juliet McKenna, given that she lives in that part of the world.

Thu, Nov 30, 12:30 – Dianna Wynne Jones – I don’t know Henrietta and Lydia Wilson, but any talk on Dianna is likley to be a lot of fun.

Thu, Nov 16, 12:30 – What is Fantasy Anyway? – Oh, that’s me. Here’s the blurb:

Literary critics and booksellers are fond of dividing books into smaller and smaller categories. Is this book epic fantasy or sword & sorcery? Urban or rural? Historical, folklore or mythological? How can we tell? Authors, however, are much more slippery than those who seek to categorise their work would like. Books tend to slip and slide between genres, not just within fantasy, but outside of it as well.

In this talk, Cheryl Morgan, will look at how books at categorized and, with the help of some fine example works, make the argument that pretty much all fiction is fantasy of a sort.

For those of you who can’t get to Bristol, this talk will be getting turned into an essay, for publication in a venue I can’t tell you about yet.

There are also a couple of events at Bedminster Library. The full list is available here.

My BristolCon Schedule

~ Cheryl

BristolCon is this weekend. Things will be happening.

Most importantly, Juliet’s book launch for The Green Man’s Quarry is FRIDAY NIGHT. I can’t see anything on the convention website that makes this clear. Juliet will not be at the convention on the Saturday, so if you want to see her, or want a personalised signing, you need to be there on Friday night.

Signed books will, of course, be available in the Dealers’ Room on Saturday. I’ll be there most of the day.

However, at 13:00 I will be in Panel Room 2 for this:

How to make AI socialist?

AI and machine learning are set to transform the knowledge economy in the same way automation changed the manual labour economy. How can society learn from the mistakes of the past in not disempowering the workforce and putting lots of people out of work?

With peter sutton, Stephen Oram, Roz Clarke and Piotr Swietlik (M)

In a Business Meeting Far, Far Away

~ Cheryl

Worldcon is due to start in just a couple of days time. Kevin is on his way to China to keep some of the wheels of WSFS turning. Part of that, of course, involves the Business Meeting, which will have a very different flavour this year as the majority of attendees will probably be Chinese.

Chinese fandom has taken the whole thing very seriously. There are a whole load of new motions listed in the Agenda, many of which have been proposed by Chinese fans. Some of them are good ideas. For example, I’m very much in favour of adding a specific clause to note that works are eligible for the Hugos regardless of language. This has always been the case, but so many people refuse to believe it, and even firmly assert that it is not true, that we could do with some specific langauge.

It is also a good idea to have a specific rule about converting word counts into something that works in non-Western languages.

With several of the other proposals, I suspect that people will suddenly decide that the rule that changes to the WSFS Constitution must be passed by two successive Business Meetings is a good idea after all. But there is only one that I am actively worried about. That motion proposed deleting section 3.4.2 of the Constitution, which reads as follows:

3.4.2: Works originally published outside the United States of America and first published in the United States of America in the previous calendar year shall also be eligible for Hugo Awards.

The commentary on the motion reads:

The original clause reveals a tendency towards regional arrogance and a possibility of discrimination. We strongly recommend a revision to remove it, for impartiality.

I can quite see why the proposers of the motion should feel that way. It certainly seems odd that a particular part of the world is singled out in that way. It also looks like the rule favours American fans, because it gives them two opporunities to vote on a favourite book. However, that’s not what the rule is there for. The Hugo rules don’t, for the most part, care about fairness to fans. They do care about fairness to creators who might be eligible for awards.

The reason that 3.4.2 exists is because it is acknowledged that every year (possibly until now) the majority of voters in the Hugos are Americans. If a work in English is published in the USA, fine, no problem. The voters will have access to it. But if a book is published in the UK, in Australia, Nigeria, India, or any other country with a substantial English-language publishing industry, there is no guarantee that it will be published in the USA in the same year. If the book is successful in its home country, it may then be picked up by a US publisher in a later year, but by that time it will have burned its Hugo initial eligibility. No matter how much US fans like the book, they wouldn’t be able to vote for it if not for 3.4.2. And thanks to 3.4.2 it will have a much better chance of winning than it would the first time around.

No one really likes this rule. It would be much better if all books were published internationally at the same time. But that isn’t going to happen. Indeed, publishing seems to have got more insular of late, not less. So we are kind of stuck with it.

What I’m wondering is whether the same might apply to Chinese-language books. Suppose there was a science fiction small press in somewhere like Vancouver that has a large Chinese population, and it chose to publish a book in Mandarin. The book would sell very few copies in Canada, but it might be picked up by someone who took it back to China and showed it to a publishing house there, resulting in publication in China a year later. Chinese fans would find that they could not vote for it. If we are going to have a significant number of Chinese fans participating in the Hugos in years to come, the right thing to do might be to amend 3.4.2 to be about English language works published in the USA or Chinese language(s) works published in China. Longer term we might want to identify major markets for works in, for example, Spanish and Russian as well.

My hope is that, even if the motion passes in Chengdu, it will be kicked out in Glasgow. After all, Ken MacLeod is someone who has benefitted from 3.4.2. However, given the tendency of British fans to assume that the Hugos are rigged in favour of Americans, it would not surprise me to see the argument being put forward by the Chinese gain traction in the UK too. It would be ironic if a UK Worldcon did something that actively damaged the chances of UK authors winning Hugos, but it could happen.

My Octocon Schedule

~ Cheryl

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

~ Cheryl

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

~ Cheryl


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

~ Cheryl

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

~ Cheryl

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

~ Cheryl

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.