Eastercon, Part 1

As part of the Illuminations launch process, I spent a significant chunk of this weekend at Orbital, this year’s British National Science Fiction Convention, and my first tentative stumble into the world of fandom.

Heathrow’s Radisson Edwardian is an unexpected hotel. Walking through the rotating doors and into the lobby was like finding a medieval castle inside a shipping container. Having found some way of converting time into corridors, it was definitely larger on the inside. This isn’t something that I’m entirely sure I entirely trust in a building.

Clearly, the only logical explanation is that some form of alien life, utterly ignorant of human culture and society, won the building contract. Provided with a photocopy of the dictionary definition of ‘hotel’, an infinite quantity of marble, and the complete Jeeves & Wooster, they were given absolute control over the project and left to their own devices.

Heathrow’s Radisson Edwardian was the result.

Saturday

Keynote: China Miéville

At some level, I’d assumed that the baroque, high-pressure vocabulary was a question of literary style, but no, he actually talks like that. The talk attacked the idea that books should be insulated from intellectual criticism or analysis. Here, the claim that “It’s just a story” is, at best, a lazy way to avoid engaging with the multiple layers of the text. At worst, it ascribes the book with a peculiar innocence, in contrast to both guilt and experience, which are then linked. A fascinating line of argument, drawing on a wealth of examples from mythology, the popular press, and – in particular – children, children’s literature and the baggage that we’ve come to associate with childhood. The notion of the “little angel”, and how that links into the notion of perfection / perfectibility.

For me, this raised some interesting questions about the definition of ‘serious fiction’, which is allowed to fall prey to critique and analysis, and how this links to genre. Intellectualizing trash? Seeing patterns in static? Of course, I’m a fine one to talk. In a moment of weak will, I bought a copy of Science Fiction and Empire from the dealer’s room. Post-colonial theory + science fiction? *drools*

It helped that China may just be the most charismatic speaker in existence. Ruthless and unrelenting in pursuit of his argument, I don’t think that I’d have been able to deal with him in one-on-one conversation. In the keynote, however, there was enough humour to keep him human, and his responses to the follow-up questions showed a warmth and playfulness that kept me from drowning in language and ideas.

Fantastic London

Neil Gaiman, Geoff Ryman, and a couple of other chaps exchanging weird urban anecdotes. Didn’t really expect Ryman to be so … Canadian. I mean, I knew he was Canadian, I guess I just hadn’t really assimilated it’s implications. In terms of accent and so forth.

Although, on reflection, perhaps not too closely.

And now I really need to read The Child Garden. *adds to list*

Someone (probably Ryman) commented on the fact that London’s green belt prevented it from sprawling ever outwards in the same way as cities in the US. In this light, perhaps London’s rich literary potential comes from the fact that it has a (relatively) clearly defined boundary, and has been forced back in on itself, putting down layer upon layer of cultural and architectural accretions. Like, y’know, London is deep, man.

Of course, me and Shaun ended up spinning out a pitch for a story in which Mary Poppins (“the witch) and Sherlock Holmes (“the addict”) are spat out by London as an auto-immune psychic response to the 2005 attack on the city’s transport network. Not quite sure where I’m going with this, but I like the idea of Poppins, in a fighter jet, attacking reptilian megafauna (representative of Islamophobia and, more broadly, the post-millennial Zeitgeist). With rockets.

Watch this space.

Flash Fiction

Other than Shaun, with who(m) I have a semi-regular pub thing, Saturday was the first time I’d met the other co-authors of Illuminations – Gareth D. Jones, Martin McGrath, Paul Graham Raven, Neil Beynon, and Gareth L. Powell. I bumped into the latter first thing on Saturday, while waiting for a badge to be printed. May have accused him of being composed entirely of HTML and, as such, not a real person.

*sigh*

Further evidence for the embargo, in which I’m not allowed to initiate conversations with strangers before lunch.

Still, even with the whole safety-in-numbers thing, I hadn’t quite expected to end up on a panel, let alone a panel with more audience members than panellists. Surprisingly good fun, and probably the moment at which I began to relax and enjoy myself. Wrote the skeletal structure of something that definitely has longer-term potential. The use of pen and paper (considering how I’m normally Captain Keyboard) nicely illustrated how my writing process is spatial rather than linear, with lots of arrows and weird angles.

Religion and SF

A diverse and representative panel does not alone a good discussion make. That said, the lack of microphones can’t have done them any favours.

Futher convention adventures can be found here.

And – apart from spending the best part of an hour lost in Heathrow – that was my Saturday.