Pemmi-Con – Day 2

~ Cheryl

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

~ Cheryl

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

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

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!

~ Cheryl

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

~ Cheryl

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

~ Cheryl

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

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

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!

~ Cheryl

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

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments


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

~ Cheryl

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

~ Cheryl

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 Ã…land.

Hello from Uppsala

~ Cheryl

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.

Test Post

~ Cheryl

The main reason for this post is that WordPress finally has an official cross-posting facility for Mastodon. Previous I have been using a special plugin, which worked, but is not an ideal solution. Hopefully the official system will also work.

WordPress no longer cross-posts to Twitter because the Musk Rat is an arsehole and doesn’t understand how social media ecosystems work. Given that it doesn’t, and that not enough of you are on Mastodon, I have reluctantly re-connected Farcebook. So this is a test for that as well.

Finally, because I shouldn’t do a post with no news, I am writing this from a hotel at Heathrow because I have an early flight to Stockholm tomorrow. If all goes well, by this time tomorrow I will be in Uppsala and will have done my first panel.

Two Requests

~ Cheryl

I have a couple of requests from friends that I’d like to bring to your attention.

The first is from Alistair Simms of Books on the Hill. As you may know, Alistair has made quite a splash by publishing a series of books that are dyslexic-friendly. As a result, he has been nominated for a couple of awards. If you’d like to vote for him, the ballot is here. The two awards he is up for are the Community Shining Star Award (20+) and the Entrepreneur Awards (18+).

The other is from Jo Hall. One of the farm dogs is very ill and needs some expensive tests before she can have treatment. You can donate at Jo’s Ko-Fi page.

New Salon Futura

~ Cheryl

I’ve made it to 50 issues, which is something of a milestone. In the new issue there’s a little extra content to celebrate, and an absolutely fabulous cover by Iain J Clark. You will find reviews of the following books:

  • Infinity Gate by Mike Carey
  • When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
  • Hel’s Eight by Stark Holborn
  • The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
  • The Cleaving by Juliet E McKenna
  • Descendant Machine by Gareth L Powell
  • Celtic Wales by Miranda Aldhouse-Green and Ray Howell

In addition we have TV and convention reviews:

  • The Peripheral – Season 1
  • HistFest 2023
  • The 2023 Tolkien Lecture
  • Swansea ComicCon 2023
  • Willow – the TV Series

Enjoy!

My Eurocon Schedule

~ Cheryl

Updated because I missed one.

In just over a week I will be in Uppsala, Sweden for this year’s Eurocon. I will be on panels. Here’s what I’m doing.

Thursday, 8 June 2023: 18:00 CST
Using Speculative Fiction as Your Research Ground — Speculative fiction is the fertile soil from which we’ve grown a thousand ideas, while simultaneously acting as the lens through which we study those very same ideas and theories. But what does research in this field imply? Is there opportunity, funding, and support? Or is the trajectory of the research marred by the long-term stereotypes concerning the genre itself — that sff just isn’t “good enough”? — with Anna Bark Persson, Niels Dalgaard, Karolina Fedyk & Merja Polvinen.

Friday, 9 June 2023: 13:00 CST
Alternate History — Alternate History is a fictional subgenre telling history the way it could have been. What if de Gaulle was killed in that attack? What if humans landed on the moon much earlier than the 1960’s? There are many intriguing books to read! This panel talks about Alternate History books and discusses them. What is your favorite? Is it Fantastic literature or just cool? — with Jean Bürlesk, Rasmus Häggblom, Jukka Halme & Martha Wells.

Friday, 9 June 2023: 15:00 CST
The Emperor’s new book — Sometimes a book just doesn’t live up to the hype. Our panellists share their unpopular opinions about books they feel have been praised without actually being worthy. Are we missing something, or are some popular books just bad? — with Jukka Halme, Stefan Högberg, John-Henri Holmberg & Gunilla Rydbeck.

Saturday, 10 June 2023: 12:00 CST
Families of the future — The nuclear family is a relatively recent invention. Going into the future, families may be something very different. In science fiction there are many descriptions of unconventional family structures. How do we imagine the families of the future today? How have these been explored within the SF genre? — with Saga Bolund, Eva Holmquist, Jane Mondrup & Nina Niskanen.

The full programme schedule can be found here.

New From Luna Press

~ Cheryl


Yes folks, it is another Academia Lunare project. This one is called Follow Me: Religion in Fantasy and Science Fiction. I have an essay in it about queer gods. There’s lots of other excellent content too. For full details and to pre-order, click here.

April Salon Futura

~ Cheryl

I’ve got the April issue online a little earlier than usual as I’ll be busy for the next few days. This one contains:

  • New reviews of fiction by Ken MacLeod, Francesco Verso and Susan Cooper
  • A review of a fabulous history book about native Americans travelling to Europe in the 16th Century
  • My Eastercon report
  • Reviews of the third seasons of Picard and His Dark Materials
  • An update on the future of the Astounding Award

It’s me, yn Gymraeg!

~ Cheryl

As part of my process of getting to know the local cultural landscape, I have made friends with a lovely bunch of people called Inclusive Journalism Cymru. They are a group of media professionals who understand that marginalised people are very badly served by the UK’s media landscape, and are seeking to improve things in Wales.

I have written them a little blog post about why trans people, in particular, need this sort of help. Excitingly, they have published it in English and in Welsh. I am not yet good enough at Welsh to have done the tranlsation myself, but I’m very pleased to have it. As far as I’m aware, this is the first piece of writing with my byline on it that has been translated into Welsh. Here’s hoping for a lot more.

Health Update

~ Cheryl

Still sick, still testing positive for COVID. Not the best way to spend a birthday, but at least I am able to have a fairly quiet day, which I very much need.

Looking forward, a few things are becoming obvious.

Firstly, attending any mass event such as a convention is going to require accepting a very high likelihood of contracting COVID. People have given up taking precautions, we have very little reliable public data, it is hard to protect yourself if you go.

Having said that, COVID no longer seems deadly. I’ve not had any difficulty breathing. My senses of taste and smell have been unaffected. Judging from the puzzle games I play regularly, I don’t seem to have suffered any congnitive impairment. Obviously things might be different if I had one of any number of high risk conditions, but I’m lucky.

But, and this is a big but, if you are going to risk getting COVID, you have to allow for at least two weeks, possibly three, of recovery time, and that creates scheduling issues.

Clearly my plan to go to LuxCon immediately after Eastercon was a recipe for disaster. I might make it to HistFest at the end of April, but I’m not certain.

May is just the Tolkien lecture, and there’s plenty of time to recover before Eurocon. I was going to see a couple of talks at Hay at the end of the month, but I doubt that I’ll have a new car by then.

Finncon and Pemmi-Con being close together is another potential disaster. I trust the Finns to run a safe con, but I’d be travelling through Heathrow to get there and that’s likely to be an infection hot-spot.

FantasyCon and BristolCon are sufficiently far apart to both be possible. But if I have no car I can’t bring books to sell, and that reduces the attraction of going.

All of which, I guess, will be good for my carbon footprint.