Apparently I won’t be the only person doing live coverage from Bristol Comics Expo. The Geek Syndicate will be there too. I want to meet those guys. (Click through, you’ll see why.)
Conventions
Guardian on DWJ
In today’s Guardian Book Blog Imogen Russell Williams writes about Diana Wynne Jones. She mentions the upcoming conference in Bristol, but doesn’t give a link, so here it is. I’m still thinking about whether I do the whole thing or just pop up for a day.
Bristol Comics Expo Live Blog
I’ve set the live blog for tomorrow up on a separate page so that I can have it ready in advance but not have it disappear in the usual flow of blog posts. You can find it here. I’ll do another post tomorrow before I leave for Bristol to remind you all.
I’m delighted to announce that Paul Cornell will be at the Expo, and he’s agreed to let me add his twitter feed to the report for the day. Others may be joining us as well. Stay tuned.
(And yes, this is good practice for what I hope the Worldcon coverage will be like.)
Update: Tony Lee added to coverage team. Yay!
Update 2: Simon Gurr joins live coverage team. Yay!
Bristol Comics Expo
I shall be spending Saturday in Bristol at the Comics Expo. I’d like to encourage you folks to come along as well, but the event is sold out. For some reason, probably to do with the economy, the event has been downsized this year and is taking place only in a hotel. For safety reasons there is a membership cap. I’m not sure what it is, but I shall try to find out.
However, somewhat confusingly, there is also a Small Press Expo on at a nearby hotel at the same time, and some of the guests are attending both. The Small Press Expo is apparently still open to day members. That might be a good way to catch up with some of the star attendees.
Anyway, there is a fine guest list. I shall doubtless be hanging out with the likes of Eugene Byrne, Simon Gurr and Liam Sharp. I am a little disappointed not to see Veronique Tanaka in attendance, but there you go. I’m not sure if there is anything specific I need to be looking out for, but if there is I am sure that Pádraig or Joe will tell me.
Also Attending
One of the perennial complaints about Worldcon is that there is no point in going because they have so few guests. This is, of course, a misunderstanding arising from the different use of the word “guest” at different conventions. Anticipation’s PR#4 has just been released (you can download a copy here) and I’m pleased to see that they have released an “also attending” list of over 130 writers, artists, editors and media people who will be at the convention. Some of these are new to the business, or write in French, and so won’t necessarily be familiar to you, but here are some highlights:
Ben Bova, David Brin, Charles Brown, Pat Cadigan, Ellen Datlow, Cory Doctorow, Scott Edelman, Esther Friesner, Marc Gascoigne, Donato Giancola, Laura Anne Gilman, Karen Haber, Joe & Gay Haldeman, Janis Ian, Hiroaki Inoue, Guy Gavriel Kay, James Patrick Kelly, John Kessel, Mary Robinette Kowal, Nancy Kress, Donald Kingsbury, Jay Lake, Geoffrey A Landis, David D Levine, Kelly Link, Sean McMullen, Farah Mendlesohn, Steve Miller, L E Modesitt Jr., Larry Niven, G David Nordley, John Picacio, Mike Resnick, Geoff Ryman, Robert J Sawyer, Stanley Schmidt, Karl Schroeder, Gord Sellar, Josepha Sherman, Robert Silverberg, Melinda Snodgrass, Charles Stross, Michael Swanwick, Cecilia Tan, Amy Thomson, Jo Walton, Robert Charles Wilson, John C Wright.
You can find the whole list on page 57 of the progress report, and it is now out of date because people keep on joining. You can, I think, add Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Daryl Gregory, Anne Harris, John Scalzi, Ann VanderMeer, Connie Willis and Gary K Wolfe to that list. There are also a lot of top class academics attending this year, which I’m very pleased about.
Apologies to anyone I’ve missed out, but the basic message here is, you don’t get that sort of guest list at just any convention.
NZ/Aus Tour – Taking the Plunge
Thanks to a kind offer of crash space in Auckland, and discovering a whole pile of Hilton points I didn’t know I had, I have taken the plunge and booked hotels and convention memberships for the trip Down Under. The dates are still as listed here.
For May 28th I have booked into the Hilton next to the new Melbourne convention center so that I can check the area out and hopefully shoot some video. The facilities are all brand new since 1999 and I’m looking forward to seeing them. I’m also looking for recommendations for a restaurant for that night where I can catch up with any Melbourne fans who won’t be going to Adelaide.
Talking of Adelaide, I have booked into the Hilton in Victoria Square. It is roughly the same price as the con hotel, and it not that far away according to Google Maps. I have a twin room, and am still hoping to find a room share.
Aus/NZ Tour Update
Things are sort of looking up on this front. No news on the business venture, so I’m still very worried about my pals out in NZ, but I have found a possibility of somewhere to stay in Auckland, and it appears that I have rather more Hilton points than I thought I had, so I’m feeling a lot more confident about the trip.
I could still do with a room share in Adelaide though. Is anyone reading this going to Conjecture?
Montréal in Pictures
I now have a whole lot of images of Montréal online. You can find the video diary here, and below is a link to the photo album. Please note the profusion of restaurants. Foodies are going to love Montréal.
[shashin type=”album” id=”22″ size=”medium”]
Another One Sees The Light
Diana Rowland has been to the Romantic Times Convention in New York and has come away enthused by the idea of encouraging the general public to take an interest in your books. Sadly, short of Kevin or I winning a lottery and being able to afford to run Worldcon again, I can’t see this ever happening. Between fiscal conservatism and the “not part of our community” crowd, Worldcon seems doomed to stay in its ghetto.
But at least I can report on what happens.
A Successful Event
Kevin and I are very pleased at how well the Nebulas live blogging event went last night. As I recall had 118 people check in during the show, and 53 watching for more than 1 minute. Those numbers have since gone up to 136 and 79, so clearly people are checking out what they missed today.
We are definitely planning to do more of these, in particular coverage of the Hugo ceremony at Worldcon. And there I can add the good news that Kij Johnson has volunteered to be our fashion correspondent for the evening, so we plan to have lots of photos of fabulous outfits as well as all the award news.
Before then, however, I want to explore how the technology can do other things, such as more general convention reportage, and live panel discussions.
NZ/Aus Tour Update
One of the less fun things that happened on the trip to Montreal was discovering that the business reason that I had for doing the New Zealand and Australia trip had fallen victim to the credit crunch. It isn’t officially dead yet, and a great deal of talking to venture capitalists is going on. More importantly two very good friends of mine are now suffering serious financial viability worries.
My problem is less serious, but none the less still a problem. I have paid for the plane tickets and they are non-refundable. I want to go. But I no longer have a good business reason for going and there are still convention memberships, hotel bills and the like to pay for. Without the business reason for making the trip I don’t think I can justify the extra expense. But the venture capitalists probably won’t make up their minds for a week or two, if that. It is all a bit complicated.
Right now I’m not sure what to do, but if anyone in New Zealand or Australia has any good excuses for me going, or is able to help with hotel bills (for example a room share for either convention) I’d be very pleased to hear from you.
Imaginales РTout Pr̻t
I have my train tickets (except the ones you have to get from a TGV ticket machine in Paris), I have my hotel reservation (I’m in the Ibis – many thanks to Jean-Louis Trudel for the help), I’m all ready to go. There will be a con report, and I’m told that Epinal is a beautiful city. Allez!
Montreal: Eating, Tourism, Supplies
As we had a few hours before Kevin needed to leave for the airport we took walk around the city. It was very productive. I have a lot of photos. Meanwhile here are some highlights.
The breakfasts at Eggspectation continue to be awesome.
The archaeological museum, Pointe-à -Callière, will be having an exhibition about pirates during Worldcon.
Old Town (Vieux-Montreal) is well worth a visit. There’s a long stretch of Rue Saint-Paul where every second or third shop is a restaurant. We found a Polish restaurant, a Portuguese restaurant, several places that advertised good beer and so on. Really, it is hard to go hungry here.
After that we checked out the IGA grocery store just up the road from the Holiday Inn. It has everything you need for party supplies, and if the order is over CA$50 they’ll deliver for CA$4.75. It also happens to back on to a large shopping mall with a big SAQ (government liquor store) if you don’t like the wines and beers in IGA.
There are also several small grocery stores in Chinatown.
The short version is that Montreal is starting to look like a really good Worldcon venue.
Kevin has his own assessment here.
Ou Est M Roberson?
As we all know, Chris Roberson is in the bar. But which bar, exactly? Where are people going to gather to drink in Montreal? That was one of the questions Kevin and I have been trying to answer today. We are not having much luck.
The obvious places to look were the Intercontinental and Embassy Suites. Both hotels are very close to the Palais, and experience from Denver suggested that the drinking crowd would not want to have to walk all the way to the party hotel. However, the Intercontinental is currently undergoing renovations and we didn’t even manage to find a bar in there. The Embassy Suites does have a bar, but it is way too small for our group.
Google is not much help. A search for pubs in Montreal didn’t find any sponsored links within easy reach of the Palais, but there are a couple of non-sponsored possibilities that we need to look into. So I guess it is out onto the streets again for us.
Update: Well, that wasn’t hugely successful. Here’s what we found.
The bar in the Holiday Inn has a fair amount of good seating space, but the beer selection is poor. It would be a good place to meet up if you are planning an expedition into Chinatown, but I don’t think it is a good prospect for serious drinking.
Also at the Chinatown end of the Palais is a small, boutique hotel called Place D’Armes. It boasts a lounge bar called Suite 701. It looks like a place for serious martini drinkers, and is probably quite expensive.
The main entrance to the Intercontinental is on Rue Saint-Jacques, and by going in that way we found a small bar attached to an expensive restaurant. Again it doesn’t look like a serious drinking venue, but at least poor Jonathan won’t expire.
Across the road is a place called Pub St. James, but it looks like it has gone out of business. There’s also a tapas bar, but it advertises DJs, and free drinks for women on Tuesdays, which I think tells you everything you need to know about its purpose.
So we went back to the Delta. The bar there is OK. There’s a fair amount of seating space, and it has a better beer selection than the Holiday Inn. It is only about 5 minutes walk from the Palais, and the evening programming and parties will be there. We explained to the manager than in August we’d be bringing along a large number of crazy British beer fanatics who would drink her establishment dry and she didn’t faint with shock.
There are a couple of Irish pubs a bit further away, but unless anyone has any better suggestions it looks like the Delta will be the bar of choice.
Montreal – Day #3
Good morning world. Kevin and I are off to check on the quality of the local dim sum here in Montreal’s Chinatown. Yes, I know, it is a tough job, but someone has to do it. Our local food guide, Jo Walton, has proved wonderfully effective to date and we are very much looking forward to this. There may be some twitterage on the live blog.
Hugo Voting Package Released
While we were in the Anticipation committee meeting someone else was sending out emails to members informing them that the Hugo voter packages are available. The message doesn’t say what is in it, though I gather from a tweet we caught that Anathem is not included. Scalzi hasn’t posted anything, last I looked. I don’t fancy trying to download it on the fairly slow connection in the hotel here, or on mobile broadband back in the UK, so I probably won’t get a copy until Friday. Hopefully I’ll find out what is in it before then.
Montreal Watch
Here is the promised live coverage window for the Montreal site visit. Kevin and I won’t be online all day, but this should take Twitter feeds from anything we say and anything tagged #worldcon.
Where to Eat #worldcon
Kevin has found a LiveJournal community that is dedicated to places to eat when you are at Anticipation. Kudos to whoever thought of this. You can find it here.
Montreal – Getting There #worldcon
I was too tired last night to do a proper post, so here’s a quick recap of the arrival at Montreal.
Firstly I was very impressed with Air Canada. Their flights from the UK are very conveniently timed, their have the best in-flight entertainment system I have yet seen, and the food was edible. Of course despite there being 20+ movies available there still wasn’t much I wanted to watch. The categorization was a bit odd too. Why is Citizen Kane “contemporary” rather than “classic”? Why is a TV documentary about Jean d’Arc “nature/science” rather than “history”? And with echoes of AmazonFail, Milk was hidden away in “avant garde” (which appeared to be a category for any movie with explicit sexual themes – Doubt was there too).
In addition to having edible food, quite a rarity for airlines, Air Canada served us a snack dish was was essentially a lamb pasty. It was a more convenient shape for packing than the Cornish thing, and the packaging claimed it was traditional Savoyard food. It was a good idea for serving on a plane.
Customs and immigration at Montreal were very easy. There is a little form to fill in, but there are no silly questions about genocide and you don’t need a visa if you are coming from the EU or USA. Montreal is clearly a busy tourist city as the baggage area had plenty of guide pamphlets available (Quoi faire en Montreal?) Apparently it is the 40th anniversary of John & Yoko’s sleep-in, which took place here. I am tempted to try to emulate them, but the food is very good so I think we’ll go out.
The taxi to our hotel was CA$38, so quite reasonable if there is more than one of you. However, there are apparently buses that are cheaper. Robbie Bourget and John Harrold were on the flight with me and they took the bus in to get to meetings while I hung around waiting for Kevin’s flight to arrive.
The Holiday Inn Select appears to be very nice. We have a fabulous room thanks to Kevin being a platinum member of their loyalty program. I shall take some pictures later, but Kevin has just woken up so it is time to check out the shower and get breakfast.
Montreal = Win
So far so good. Of course it always depends on what you want out of a Worldcon site, but here’s why we are happy.
From the front door of our hotel (the Holiday Inn Select) we can see the back door of the convention center across the street. Our hotel is on the edge of Chinatown, and this evening we had a very nice Chinese meal for around CA$15/head (including tip) at a restaurant that is open until 4:00am.
Chinatown: every Worldcon should have one.
More in the morning. Right now we need sleep.