I spent Saturday in Cheltenham getting my first taste of a major literary festival from the inside. Here are a few thoughts from the point of view of someone who is far more used to large science fiction conventions.

Cheltenham itself seems very nice. The railway station is quite a way out of town, but there is a lovely footpath most of the way into the town center which appears to be at least part-based on an old branch line. I’m not sure that I’d want to use it after dark, but during the day it is very pleasant. The town, once you get there, looks very expensive, perhaps even more so than Bath. I was told that the charity shops there are a good place to shop for designer clothes, so I may have to go back.

The festival covers two large Georgian squares and some of the civic buildings in between. The venues are mostly tent-based, but they are big, serious tents that are probably proof against anything but the most serious weather. They could have done with a few large signs with maps of the layout, but mostly it was easy to navigate. I suspect that the lack of signage to what they called the Authors’ House and what I’d call the green room was deliberate.

The organization was excellent. Everything ran to time. There were helpful staff to make sure that we got to where we needed to be, when we needed to be there. They even did sound checks. Of course it is easier to do that if the programming is fairly light. Venues were not run back-to-back, but instead had hour or more gaps in between sessions so they could be turned round without any crush.

The idea of taking panelists off to do signings immediately after their panels worked fairly well, though the Waterstones tent, where the signings took place, got very crowded at times. Margaret Atwood, bless her, had a queue stretching half way to Bristol. They could perhaps have done signings in the venues, given that they were empty for quite a while after each event, but that would mean moving the books and providing someone to sell them, and anyway people like Atwood needed far longer than an hour to sign.

Inevitably many of the people appearing at the event were celebrities. We were a very bookish crowd in comparison. I was rather looking forward to being able to strut in and thumb my nose at the lobster & Bolly crowd, given that I was on program too, but Caitlin Moran had gone by the time I arrived. The only person I noticed who might have been offended by my presence was Jenni Murray from Woman’s Hour.

All in all, it was a very pleasant experience. I’d certainly go back if asked, though I suspect that’s not hugely likely. I’ll write more about the panel itself shortly.

Tomorrow from 5:30 to 6:30 I shall be chairing a panel at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature. It will feature Ken MacLeod, Chris Priest and Jane Rogers, and the title is: What is the Lure of Dystopia. Here’s the blurb:

Welcome to the world of the dystopia: of government and society gone nightmarishly wrong. From 1984 to The Handmaid’s Tale, this image has been a gripping cautionary force. Ken MacLeod (Descent), author Chris Priest (Adjacent) and Jane Rogers (The Testament of Jessie Lamb) join chair Cheryl Morgan to explore fiction’s greatest nightmare visions and their enduring appeal.

I know that not many of you are likely to be at Cheltenham, but if there’s any chance of you being there please do come along. It isn’t often that such a major festival has clear SF&F programming and we need to support them when they do.

Hopefully there will be some back channel action for those of you who can’t attend. The hastags are #cheltlitfest for the Festival, and #dystopias for the panel. I’ll be tagging everything with both.

If you want to suggest questions for me to ask the panel, please do so below (or tweet me tomorrow). Here are a few themes we’ll try to cover:

• What is dystopian fiction? How is it different from post-Apocalyptic fiction?
• Are certain types of dystopian themes popular in certain time periods?
• Are modern dystopias anti-left, anti-right or something else?
• Are dystopias written by straight-white folks different from those by non-straight-white folks?
• If we enjoy reading/writing dystopias, what does this say about us?
• Does dystopian fiction do harm or good?
• Why do publishers appear to use “dystopia” rather than “science fiction”?

And if you can’t make it there tomorrow but can do Friday 10th, you could go along and see A Celebration of Sci Fi and Fantasy, featuring Ben Aaronovitch, Joe Abercrombie, Mitch Benn, Sarah Pinborough and journalist David Barnett.

The program for BristolCon is now live (a whole 3 weeks before the convention, y’all). This is what I’m doing:

10:00 – 10:45 Music in my Writing: Music might be even harder to write about than Sex or Death, and yet it’s a really important part of the process for most writers. Many authors write to music or put together soundtracks of their own books. How does music seep into and influence our work? With Tricia Sullivan (Mod), Gunnar Roxen, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Kim Lakin-Smith.

19:00 – 19:45 Steampunk and the Class System: Does steampunk ignore what goes on below stairs? Is it all top hats and parasols, or should we be looking more at the dark underbelly of industrialisation and Empire? With Robert Harkess, Scott Lewis, Roz Clarke, Adrian Tchaikovsky.

I’m very pleased that JCG is on the music panel with me, because I can thank him for introducing me to some fine Arabic music. As to the steampunk panel, I guess I should read this before the convention.

There’s lots of other good stuff going on too. Check it out here.

In the morning I had a panel on untranslated books, which I ended up moderating because I was the only monoglot on the panel. I have a lot of recommendations from that, but I’m going to save posting them until after the other international SF panels today.

In the afternoon I interviewed Guest of Honor, Ylva SpÃ¥ngberg. She’s a fascinating person. She joined the Swedish Tolkien Society at the age of 11 and was editing their fanzine a few years later. She’s chaired four conventions, and as a translator has brought a wide range of different English-language fiction to Swedish readers. We managed to fill up around 3/4 of the generous 2 hours that we had been given for the panel.

In the evening there was the traditional fan party. This year it was somewhat hobbled by a decision of the hotel, just a couple of days before the con, to not allow unwrapped food or alcohol over 40%. This meant everyone ended up serving candy and beer. Given that most people would have been in transit when the rule change was announced, other things may well have been available. I have no idea how strong the Ukrainian honey pepper vodka was, but it tasted great, in small quantities.

I have also managed to spend time talking to people, which is a vast improvement on the madness that was Worldcon.

The site selection results are in, and the 2016 Eurocon will be in Barcelona. It was apparently a very tight race, and the Polish bid was very good indeed. Against that Barcelona is truly world class city, Spain has never had a Eurocon before, and the Polish convention clashes with the Kansas Worldcon. Having said that, I can’t go to Kansas, and the Polish convention will take place anyway (it is already a seated PolCon), so I may go to both.

The website for Barcelona is here. The Guests of Honor are Aliette de Bodard (France), Richard Morgan (UK), Jun Kiyazaki (Hungarian fan) and Enrique Corominas (Spanish artist). The date are November 4-6 which should be the weekend after World Fantasy. It is probably also the weekend after the Lucca Comics & Games Festival, which Maurizio Manzieri was enthusing to me about at Worldcon. It should be pleasantly warm in Italy and Catalonia at that time of year.

I have an update to my Eurocon schedule (meaning that they have given me another panel). The full schedule is below:

Friday August 22nd, 9:00pm – BOYCOTT!
Does boycotting a creator’s work or an event actually make an impact or just give them more publicity? Is there any point in boycotting dead creators?

Saturday August 23rd, 11:00am – Mocking the Monoglots: Untranslated Hidden Gems
While technology advances the universal translator is still dodgy at best, which means that so many stories are unavailable to those who only know one or two languages. The panel aims to discuss the best of hidden, single language stories and why you should definitely fire up DuoLingo to learn to read them.

Saturday August 23rd, 4:00pm РGuest of Honour Interview РYlva Sp̴ngberg
Ylva Spångberg interviewed by me.

Sunday August 24th, 10:00am – “She wrote it, but…” – Invisible Women Creators
Women have been profoundly important and influential creators since the very foundation of Speculative Fiction, so why are they often left out of the academic texts, the awards lists and the reprint market? And what do the panel and the audience do to alter this trend?

Sunday August 24th, 11:00am – The Science Fiction from Beyond Seas and Mountains
Science Fiction is a many splendoured and the stories vary hugely from country to country. Our panellists will talk about SF from all across Asia and Latin America and introduce you to some new & wonderful tales.

I note that I had the pleasure of chatting to Ylva Spångberg at Worldcon and I think I can promise the attendees a fascinating conversation.

I’m not going to do a full-blown report on this year’s Worldcon. I didn’t have the time to do all of the investigative journalist stuff, and anyway I’m sure that the angry white men of UK fandom will be busily telling us what a utter disaster the event was any day now. I wouldn’t want to confuse them with actual facts. However, a few brief comments and thanks are in order.

Registration – we know how to do this, Worldcons should not be messing up that badly on such a basic function.

Programme – by far the most interesting programme of any Worldcon I can remember. Some of the room assignments went badly wrong, but that’s really hard to get right.

Dealers – everyone I spoke to was very happy. I know I sold 9 of the 10 copies of Airship Shape that I brought, so I am really pleased.

Exhibits – this was magnificent. I’m sure much of it was down to Farah’s energy and enthusiasm, but I suspect it also shows that having someone in charge who has a high profile and respectable academic job makes a huge difference to the willingness of people to be involved.

Art Show – it looked good to me. I was pleased to see many artists from all over Europe.

Masquerade – I missed it, but I have heard good things about it and am eagerly awaiting the video.

Hugos – went very smoothly for the most part, and some excellent winners. I was so very relieved.

Fan Village – a highlight of the event for me. It was so much better than room parties. However, I note that being able to do something like this is dependent on having a venue prepared to allow it. I have no idea how a convention center in another country would react to a request to allow fan groups to serve alcohol independently of the official bars.

The venue – I got a lot of exercise, and ate surprisingly well. Special thanks are due to Mint Leaves for being open so long. The one thing that was an issue was the fact that the professionals tended to socialize at the Fox while the fans tended to socialize in the Fan Village, which resulted in far more separation than I’m used to at Worldcon. Special thanks are due to Mary Robinette Kowal for taking her Hugo straight to the Fan Village after the ceremony, and encouraging others to do the same.

The people – another highlight. There was a much more diverse membership this year than any Worldcon I can remember. (I note that I did not attend the Japanese event).

It makes me very happy to see lots of other folk going on about how diverse the membership was, but I have a feeling that it would have been even more diverse, and much younger, had Nine Worlds not lured a lot of people away.

I also note that next year will be very different. Even many of my American friends are saying that they won’t go to Spokane. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if they get more than 3500 attendees. Most of those people will be older Americans. So if you want the Hugo winners to be as good as this year, and in particular if you want another magnificently international Worldcon in Helsinki in 2017, you need to buy a supporting membership and vote in site selection. All of the good things about Loncon 3 could so easily be lost.