Eastercon 2013, or “In which I am Ben Jeapes”

March 23rd 2013

Posted by: Simon Morden in: From the Author, News and Updates
Tags: appearances | Eastercon

All will become clear shortly.

My itinerary for eightsquaredcon, the Eastercon 2013, is as follows:

Friday, 9pm in Rowan – “Underground London” with Paul Cornell, Roz Kaveney, and Anne Lyle: Take one London. Add magical society hidden from most people. Mix in famous places from the city, and optionally garnish with police procedural. Why is this such a great recipe?

Saturday, 11am in the Conservatory: “Genre get-together: science fiction” with all the other skiffy writers.

Sunday, 1pm in the Boardroom: “Advice for Writers: Setting” with Darren Nash (moderator), Chris Beckett, Aliette de Bodard, and Gaie Sebold: Practical experience and observations on writing believable and detailed environments.

Monday 11am in Rowan: “Selling Space” with John Coxon, Tracy Berg, John Dallman, Anne Lyle: How do you fund space exploration, particle accelerators and other costly scientific endeavours? Why do countries do this, and why are corporations taking an interest? How does academia make its fund-raising media-savvy?

I’ll also be in for the BSFA awards on the Sunday evening, hoping to pick up a gong on behalf of Joey HiFi and the Jurassic London crew.

However, the Ben Jeapes thing: let me explain. Actually no, let me sum up. Ben is having a book launch at Eastercon with Clarion Press. Ben cannot be there. I am standing in for Ben.

All clear? Excellent: I’ll see you in the Conservatory at 8pm on Friday, then. I’m still uncertain as to whether I’m supposed to be signing them, but I could be persuaded…

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Eastercon blog 3

April 9th 2012

Posted by: Simon Morden in: From the Author, News and Updates
Tags: appearances | Eastercon

Sorry for lack of bloggage last night. But I have some time to spare at King’s Cross, having been delivered far more promptly than I anticipated by some excellent public transport (free bus from hotel to airport bus station, then tube to King’s X). Inevitably, a bloke on the bus (hello, Simon) said “you’ve been to Olympus, haven’t you?” So I talked about writing, and he talked about being a outside broadcast engineer, which is by far a more interesting job day-to-day. We also talked about Novacon (in Nottingham in October), and I’m seriously considering going anyway. It might be a sign.

Yesterday, then. Again, the will to go to all those interesting panels was subverted by long, involved conversations about the state of publishing, the rise of ebooks, creating income streams and such like. The publishing world is in a state of flux, and no one is quite sure how the chips will fall. Publishers getting it wrong is actually a good thing, as it not only means they’re trying, but it’s one less failure mode for others to test.
I met my UK editor Anna for drinks (tea, as going on a panel worse for wear is a, unprofessional, and b, a really, really bad idea. More on this later) and some mutual back-slapping. Editors do matter – they make books better, as well as all the other services that publishers provide, including at least a minimum bar of quality, which is becoming increasingly important. So winning the PKD isn’t just good news for me, it’s good news for Orbit too (not just that they get bragging rights over Gollancz for a whole year either…).

More conversations in the afternoon, but I also wanted to hear Cory Doctorow on the ebook panel, which I did. Lots of ideas there, regarding publishing models and DRM, which I’m going to have to think hard about. It would be easy to just steal Cory’s ideas, but there’s no guarantee he’s got all the right answers.

Then onto the BSFA awards.

Much has been said about John Meaney’s introduction. To say it was ill-judged would be charitable, but I’m a fairly charitable bloke, so I’ll say it was ill-judged and leave it at that. People did walk out. A lot more simply sat in their seats, cringing. That some of those who walked out, walked straight into my one and only panel on “The Personal is Political” will give those not present some idea of the trouble I was about to get into.

The panel. Difficult. Really very difficult. I don’t honestly think anything I say now will be helpful one way or another, so I’ll just make two observations. Firstly, I had prepared notes on the tension between creative freedom and social mores, on the ability of books to give vicarious insights and experiences for the good, as well as for the ill, and also on the problems of describing conflicting political and social institutions – you know, things I actually have experience on as a writer and why I presumed I was on the panel. Secondly, that wasn’t what the panel was about at all, as I discovered in the Green Room. It was a difficult, and ultimately frustrating hour. Sorry if I’m being cryptic but it wasn’t my finest moment.

So there was beer afterwards. Much, much beer and some very good company. Paul Cornell, Tom Hunter, another Simon, Emma Newman (whose book “20 years later” I bought) and and and, and even G R R Martin, briefly. Which was nice. A proper con-rounding off evening, in fact. The icing was someone (Rob, I think. I was a touch on the tipsy side by then) saying it was reading my blogs from last year that swung it for them to attend this year. Eastercon: well worth going to – next year it’s in Bradford, and it’s going to be brilliant.

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Eastercon blog 4

April 25th 2011

Posted by: Simon Morden in: From the Author, News and Updates
Tags: appearances | Eastercon

The final day of Eastercon. I think a lot of folk had already gone, or were going only. There was certainly the sense that fewer people were visible, and the number of wheeled suitcases disappearing out of the door leant an air of “is a fourth day of programming really needed?” It’s a difficult call – last year’s Eastercon seemed a little busier throughout the Monday, but the membership was higher than this year, and being London-based, perhaps people were prepared to hang around for longer. I stayed till the Tuesday in 2010, but this year I was off on the 16:38 from Birmingham International.

After the obligatory hotel fried breakfast, I packed my stuff up, checked out and put my case in storage (a huge ballroom with one very lonely member of staff on duty – who I remembered to thank) and did a bit of wandering. Inevitably, I ended up in the Dealers’ room, where I had a good browse without the intention of buying anything: my bags were pretty full as they were, and you know…

Then I spotted a big pile of Target Dr Who books on one corner of a table. I used to read them as a kid, and had dug them out recently so the Boy could try them for size. There were some duplicates – I’d already got The Day of the Daleks, and a couple of the others – but I thought I’d grab a few to add to the collection. When the bookseller said, “Take them all for a fiver.” I hesitated for a nanosecond before cracking open the wallet. I haven’t even checked them against my existing books yet, but I spent a very happy hour with a sandwich at lunchtime reading “The Seeds of Doom”, which when televised (Tom Baker as the Doctor with Elizabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith) scared me rigid.

Before all thoughts of Whoish delights, however, was my final panel: Nuke it from orbit – how to organise a planetary invasion. I was on with Mike Cobley, Charlie Stross and John Harrow, with Nik moderating. I’m afraid the Belgians came off very badly, and the conversations did keep turning back to stuff the British Empire had done already. Sorry world. However, I did try to inject a little humanity into the proceedings when I suggested that dropping massive space rocks on the natives to force their surrender might cause at least some putative astronauts to have second thoughts. Far better, I opined, to offer them peace, prosperity and a future full of promise: few governments could stand against that sort of invasion. I for one, etc…

Lunch, with the good Doctor followed, then I listened in to the Space Opera panel – fascinating stuff, and made me wish I’d looked in on other panels with David Weber. He’s worth listening to.

Then the mundane bit of trains and platforms and travelling. I was home by 9pm.

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