Conventions

Loadsa Photos

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

One of the jobs I have been working through this weekend is processing the photos that Kevin took while he was over here at Eastercon. My apologies for him for having taken so long. Hopefully his mom, sister and nephew can get to see them now.

We have a selection of photo albums taken in London:

And couple taken at the convention:

The Admiralty Ball ones, of course, include pictures of us in costume.

Finally I have posted my own photos from Alt.Fiction. These are actually taken in and around Derby, in particular the magnificent exhibition of Rolls Royce engines in the Old Silk Mill.

Survived

~ Cheryl

I have done panels, had meetings, supported Nalo and Richard, and MC’d the masquerade. I am still alive. This is a miracle.

My feet beg to disagree about the “alive” thing.

Huge thanks are due to Richard for taking over running the masquerade judging while I made a fool of myself on stage. Thanks also to some great contestants.

Sleep now.

In Full Swing

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Otto, Paula and I have invaded Harald and forced the staff, at axe point, to slaughter various animals, vegetables and trees for our culinary enjoyment. Sadly there was no one in anime costume in the restaurant, which would have been quite funny, though later there was a stag party with the unfortunate groom dressed up as a viking maiden. We didn’t stick around in case they ordered spam and started singing.

Besides, we had another engagement. There is a microbrewery here in Turku, in a building that used to be a school. Much of the furniture, from maps on the walls to desks to chalk boards, is still there. It is a strange and lovely place, and the beer is good.

I finally caught up with the local paper, in which Nalo and Richard have a full page spread. It is good to see the Finnish media machine still working well.

I also picked up a special English language issue of Spin, Turku’s local fanzine. It isn’t as polished as Tähtivaeltaja, but it is older, dating back to April 1977. Pasi Karppanen has an article in this issue about Finnish fandom, which is essentially an expanded and updated version of the article Jukka Halme wrote for Emerald City many years ago.

The Hordes Arrive

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

This morning I did the meeting with the literary agency and discovered that the main staircase at this hotel is drunk. If you want to know what that’s like, imagine taking a corner in a car when the road has adverse camber. Now imagine walking up a staircase that does a similar thing. It is very disconcerting, especially when you are half awake.

The papers this morning covered a range of topics from the writing of Nalo Hopkinson and Octavia Butler; to Donald Duck comics; to myth creation in Middle Earth. At one point we ended up having a conversation about Tolkien-based religions. My new friend Sophie, who studies comparative religion and did her PhD in “Messiah figures in science fiction”, says there is a guy in Denmark doing his doctorate on the Jedi movement and a couple of Tolkien-based religions. I want to meet this chap.

Lunch was in a very nice Indian restaurant. A “hot” vindaloo in Finland is pleasantly flavorsome to an English palette, but it was only 8 Euro including a salad starter, rice, dahl, naan and a tea or coffee. Good value.

By the time we got back the convention was in full swing. There were people in anime costumes everywhere. Toni Jerrman reports that a local Japanese restaurant had to close because they ran out of food, being deluged with a crowd of people obsessed with everything Japanese. Cat ears are few and far between this year, as are “free hugs” signs, but I have seen some very impressive wolf heads.

The Turku committee is a bit young and green, and has managed some of the con-running equivalent of, “hey, let’s re-invent the wheel, I bet none of those old fogies thought of making one square before!” There are, ahem, some very strange scheduling choices, and the program book has the panels listed in alphabetical order. However, everything appears to be running with the customary efficiency and I’m looking forward to it getting into high gear tomorrow. I’m doing three things: a panel on selling translated fiction; a panel on this year’s Hugo nominees (which I expect we’ll scrap as it is scheduled against Richard’s GoH speech and one of the few Swedish language items); and MCing the masquerade.

In Turku

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Last night we had a little event at Jukka’s place, during which much sushi was consumed. Then this morning we packed up and lit out for Turku. These days there is a fine, modern freeway between the cites, complete with several very impressive tunnels, so it was a very easy drive. Huge thanks to Jari Käkelä for making a large Volvo available and driving us over. Apparently the car is the usual transport for Jari and his band, so it had plenty of room.

This afternoon we had the first day of the academic conference, including my good friends Irma Hirsjärvi, Merja Polvinen and Liisa Rantalaiho. Jari talked about his PhD on Asimov and American expansionism, while Mika Loponen talked about the use of stereotyped “evil” races such as orcs in fantasy novels as stand-ins for real-world groups that the author wants to other. They had a couple of last minute cancellations, so Merja and I filled in the gaps. She talked about teaching SF (including her forthcoming sojourn in Shanghai), while I read my Trans characters in SF&F paper.

This evening we ate and then headed to a local bar called The Old Bank. (UK readers please note it was a very nice pub, not a trendy wine bar.) Then it was back to the (very nice) hotel to check email and blog. Sleep next, as I have a breakfast meeting with a literary agency about publishing translated fiction.

Richard and Nalo have been out amongst the islands, and if all went to plan have been to the local Harald restaurant. Those of you who have been guests at Finncon before will know what that means.

Helsinki, Media, Jet Lag

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Here I am, safely arrived in Helsinki. It is warm and sunny — much nicer than the UK, I gather, having seen Al Reynolds’ tweet stream today — and Finncon is slowly coming together. This morning we did the traditional press conference. It was fairly quiet, but Jussi from Helsingin Sanomat (the most prestigious newspaper in Finland) did turn up and do an interview with Richard Morgan. Nalo Hopkinson’s books have not yet been translated into Finnish (and if you’ve read them you’ll have a good idea why) so she’s a harder sell with the national media, but I’m sure she’ll be a big hit with the fans.

After that we had a lunch meeting with a lady from the Finnish Cultural Institute to talk about how Finnish writers can get more exposure in the English-speaking world. Much to my surprise, we found Val Grimm in the same restaurant. She’s over here on business and won’t be able to make the con, so it was great to catch up.

Nalo and Richard have been whisked off to Turku by train in the company of the ever-efficient Tino and are getting a tour of the Ã…land archipelago tomorrow (weather forecast excellent, thank goodness). I’m staying on in Helsinki for another night to get some work done, and to try to get my head into Finnish time. Fortunately I have no problem cat-napping. Falling asleep is something I’m very good at.

Parliamentary Procedure In Action

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

People often scoff at the formal parliamentary rules used at WSFS Business Meetings, and in many cases we could probably get away without being so formal. However, as soon as a real dispute arises, having formal rules pays off very quickly.

Yesterday at Westercon Kevin had to chair a very difficult business meeting. There is a good precis of events by Petrea Mitchell here. The short version is that in site selection the single legal bid managed to annoy the voters so much that they voted for a hoax bid instead. The hoax wasn’t eligible to win, having not filed papers, so by Westercon rules no one had won and the decision was forwarded to the Business Meeting.

I followed the whole thing on Twitter, and was very proud to see how many people were complimenting Kevin on his management of a potentially very fractious meeting. I was also interested to see a positive use of the “Reconsider” motion. This motion is sometimes wheeled out to try to overturn contentious votes later in a meeting after most of the supporters of the winning side have left. This is regarded as a dirty trick, and SMOFdom has occasionally had to be reminded not to use it unless they are prepared to face the wrath of ordinary fans who turned up to the Business Meeting in good faith but did not want to stay after the issue that brought them there had been decided.

In this case, however, Reconsider was exactly the right tool for the job. In order to be selected, a bid needed 75% of the vote. There were four options altogether: the original legal bid from Portland; the hoax bid, Granzella (run by my pals Kevin Roche and Andy Trembley, who were offering to actually run a con as they had so much support); the Utah bid for 2014 who kindly offered to move up a year if this was necessary to find a solution; and a last minute entry from Hawaii. None of them achieved 75% support. Granzella got closest, with an 83-29 vote. Rather than have no convention, one of those 29 people asked to Reconsider Granzella, and on a second vote the required 75% support was achieved.

I have no idea why 75% is needed. Kevin may know.

I feel rather sorry for the Portland people, who must have come to the convention expecting to win, but they do seem to have shot themselves in the foot rather. I quote Kevin:

Hint: When you’re trying to get three-fourths of the people in a room to vote for you, and when you know there’s a pretty good chance that many of them are the people who voted for your opposition back when you only needed a majority and didn’t get it, you are not helping your cause when you say that anyone who voted for your opposition should be ashamed of themselves and start personally insulting the opposition’s leadership.

Quite.

Alt.Fiction Reminder

~ Cheryl

I’ll be heading off to Derby tomorrow. My involvement is as follows:

  • Saturday 10:00am: The Digital Revolution
  • Saturday 3:00pm: Al Reynolds meets My Little Space Pony (and GoH speech)
  • Saturday 10:00pm (approx): Locus Awards live from Seattle
  • Sunday 3:00pm: The Value of Literary Awards

And one thing you can bet I am going to bring up on that Sunday panel is that winning awards gives authors an opportunity to speak out, like this. Fabulous stuff, Patrick.

Locus Awards Live?

~ Cheryl

So, here I am back home. It took rather longer than expected, because my flight from Stockholm was almost an hour late landing, resulting in my missing the last train home. Many thanks to my back-up plan, Jen and Gideon, for rescuing me (and My Little Space Pony, of course).

Not that I have much respite, because on Friday I’ll be off to Derby for Alt.Fiction. I’ll remind you about my panels there tomorrow, but the thing I want to talk about here is a semi-official event that will probably take place in the bar on Saturday night.

While we are busy in Derby, the Locus Awards will get handed out in Seattle. The nice folks at Locus have asked about the possibility of a CoverItLive event, and Alex has confirmed that there is good Internet connectivity in The Quad, so it should be possible. The ceremony will start around 10:00pm on Saturday. If you are at Alt.Fiction you should be able to follow things on your own devices, or by peeking over my shoulder. There are UK writers in all of the long and short fiction categories so hopefully there will be a lot of interest.

The show will probably be hosted on the Locus website. I’ll provide a link as soon as I have one.

Oh, and My Little Space Pony will finally get to meet his owner on Saturday afternoon.

All of which should give Tom Hunter and I plenty to talk about in the Awards panel on Sunday afternoon.

Live From Stockholm

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Well, approximately live anyway. After a couple of days of a fun convention there is a certain zombie air to proceedings around here. What’s more I have had to be intelligent all morning as I have been at work. But let me start from the beginning.

Firstly the convention went very well. My congratulations to Carolina and her team who not only managed a very well-run event, but also created the largest SF convention ever to be held in Sweden, by a very long way. The final warm body count was apparently over 700, which is also quite big for a Eurocon (except when it is in Finland, or combined with a UK Worldcon).

The awards ceremony went very smoothly, and the results of the first ever SF&F Translation Awards have been published (details here). My congratulations to Hannu, Georges-Olivier, Edward and everyone else involved. A press release will go out as soon as I hear back from Hannu who was surrounded by adoring fans for Saturday evening and then had to dash off.

The ESFS Awards were also given out, and much to my surprise one of them went to Wales. No, it wasn’t me, or Langford. It was, of course, Al Reynolds, who was voted Best Author by the assembled national delegations. The Swedes, in the form of artist Nicolas Krizan, produced some marvelous trophies based on the famous Dalahäst wooden toy horse that is so popular with tourists. These are not traditional Dalahästs though, they are SFnal. One was a robot, another was green and had three eyes, a third had eight legs. And Al’s? Well, Al got My Little Space Pony.

My Little Space Pony

He’s very cute, and as I was the only British person daft enough to be doing Eurocon and Alt.Fiction back-to-back I was given the job of looking after him and taking him to Derby.

There will be a full con report later. Right now I need to do other things as I am working here in Stockholm today and tomorrow. There is a major energy economics conference going on, and I’m meeting up with a few colleagues. I’m not going to say too much about that here, partly because I get very bored with having my job mansplained to me by people who have never worked in the field, and partly because it will attract cl*m*te ch*ng* trolls from both sides of the debate.

Eurocon Update and Question

~ Cheryl ~ 8 Comments

The Eurocon program has mutated a little, as a result of which my Saturday has become a bit busier. Here’s the new schedule.

  • 11:00 “E-books – the current development and the future”, which I am on
  • 12:00 A session about next year’s Eurocon in Zagreb
  • 14:00 A panel on Feminist SF, which I’m not on but which should be interesting
  • 17:00 ESFS Awards Ceremony, including me announcing the winners of the translation awards
  • 18:00 Charlie Stross interviews Hannu Rajaniemi
  • 19:00 Group discussion: Books From My Country Which Should be Translated, on which I want to report
  • 20:00 “The Hugos Today and 40 Years Ago, A Comparison”, which I am on

And after that there will be the UK in 2014 party. And I’ll need to update the translation awards website, and send out a press release.

Finally, if anyone from Stockholm is reading this, I’d appreciate some transport advice. It looks pretty easy to get into Stockholm from the airport, but the Arlanda Express goes direct to Stockholm Central and I need to get to Östra. I can think of three possible options:

  • There may be commuter trains from Arlanda that stop at Östra
  • Or local trains from Central to Östra
  • Or I could get the Metro red line from Central to Tekniska högskolan

Any recommendations? Bearing in mind that I will have a fairly heavy suitcase.

Worldcon Memberships For Sale

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Frank Wu and his wife, Brianna, are unable to attend Worldcon in Reno this year. They are offering their memberships for sale at $150 (or nearest offer). Their Hugo final ballot voting rights are unused. The current price from Renovation is $195. If you are interested, comment here or email me, and I’ll connect you with Frank.

Toutes Mes Félicitations, Stéphanie!

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

A couple of days ago I wrote about the French convention, Imaginales, run by my friend Stéphanie Nicot. Now I am even more annoyed that I could not go this year, because I learned from Rose Fox on Twitter that Stéphanie has just got married. What’s more Rose saw the story in Le Figaro!

Why is that so? Surely the French are not that interested in speculative fiction editors, are they? Well, no. Stéphanie’s wedding made the papers because she’s a lesbian. They don’t have gay marriage laws in France, but Stéphanie is trans, and apparently this allowed her and Élise to marry. I’m not sure what the status of trans rights legislation in France is, but reading the article in Le Figaro I get the impression that Stéphanie turned down the option to legally change her gender so that she and Élise could marry, thereby striking a blow for lesbian rights. That sounds very like Stéphanie to me, she’s a wonderful activist.

Anyway, my very best wishes to Stéphanie and Élise. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to offer my congratulations in person last weekend, but I hope you had a wonderful day, and will have a very happy life together.

Trudi in France

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Had I not run into some fairly severe financial problems, I would have spent last weekend in France. As it turned out, I had a lovely time in Oxford instead, but my Melbourne friend Trudi Canavan did make it to Epinal (she’s on a book tour) and she has posted some lovely pictures of the Imaginales convention. You can find them here and here.

In particularly like this one of my friend Lionel Davoust with some Napoleonic re-enactors:

Lionel and soldiers

My report on my own trip to Imaginales two years ago can be found here.

And I should remind you all that Imaginales is run by by friend Stephanie Nicot who is one of France’s leading fantasy editors and also a proud trans activist.

Finncon 2012

~ Cheryl

Mostly the event invitations that I get on Facebook are for things in the US that I can’t attend. Today, however, I got an invitation for Finncon 2012. It will be in Tampere over July 20-22, and the Guests of Honour will be:

  • Lois McMaster Bujold
  • Liz Williams
  • Irma Hirsjärvi

I am so happy, especially for my good friend Irma.

My Eurocon Program

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

The draft program for the Eurocon is now available here. There will inevitably be changes, but as far as I know my stuff is firm. Here’s what’s going on.

My flight is scheduled to arrive at Arlanda at 17:20 so I’m afraid I’ll miss Tanja Tynjälä’s SF in Latin America talk at 18:00, but I hope to get to the con in time for the Worldcon panel at 20:00 and I should definitely be there for Pierre Gévart on SF in France at 22:00.

Saturday should keep me very busy:

  • 11:00 “E-books – the current development and the future”, which I am on
  • 12:00 A session about next year’s Eurocon in Zagreb
  • 14:00 A panel on Feminist SF, which I’m not on but which should be interesting
  • 17:00 ESFS Awards Ceremony, including me announcing the winners of the translation awards
  • 18:00 Charlie Stross interviews Hannu Rajaniemi
  • 19:00 “The Hugos Today and 40 Years Ago, A Comparison”, which I am on

Sunday is a little less frantic for me, but I will be at:

  • 11:00 Jukka Halme’s Guest of Honour speech
  • 16:00 “Women, men and neuters in sf and fantasy”, which I am on, together with Ian McDonald and Elizabeth Bear

I look forward to seeing some of you there.

Off to Oxford

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

It is convention time again. Tomorrow I will be in Oxford for the The Write Fantastic’s annual get-together. There is a fabulous line-up of guests including Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Pat Cadigan, Mary Hoffman, Stan Nicholls, Anne Gay, Ben Jeapes, Mike Shevdon, Ian Watson, Sarah Ash, Juliet E Mckenna, Kari Sperring, Freda Warrington, Liz Williams and Ian Whates. I hope to see some of you there.

I note also that I am not at BayCon, or Wiscon, because I can’t travel to the USA, and I’m not at Imaginales because I can’t afford it even though Europe is still willing to let me in. But Oxford is lovely, and much cheaper.

May Deadlines

~ Cheryl

Another month is drawing to a close, and there are a few things that we need to remember to get done.

Firstly, BristolCon has a price rise scheduled for the end of the month. Memberships are currently £15, and as of June 1st they will be £20. So buy now, here.

Secondly ballots for the World Fantasy Awards are due in by the end of the month, so if you have a vote, please use it. Two items in every category are reserved for member-voted nominees, so you can have an influence even though the winners are chosen by the jury. Should you wish to nominate Clarkesworld (or indeed Salon Futura), we are eligible in the Special Award – Non-Professional category.