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hawkwing_lbYou may or may not recall that I was traveling to foreign English lands in order to attend Nine Worlds 2014, and LonCon3: the 2014 World Science Fiction Convention. Many were the adventures of your intrepid correspondent! Much did she travel! Far did she wander on untrodden paths...
...Well, maybe not so much with the untrodden.
Nine Worlds 2014
I arrived at Heathrow early on Sunday morning, after about 30-45 minutes' sleep. In between the neighbours' dog shutting up, and my alarm going off, there was not all that much time - so I don't actually recall all that much from Sunday. I had a panel to participate in. I arm-wrestled Geoff Ryman (and won): he is a very clever tall skinny geek. I met the very smart Zen Cho, and blurrily encountered Jared Shurin and Anne C. Perry, and Jenni Hill, a lovely editor from Orbit UK. I recall having lunch with Elizabeth Bear and Alex Dally MacFarlane, and meeting Scott Lynch in passing, but I was seriously out of it.
Cambridge
Towards the evening, the amazing writer and historian and all-around lovely person Kari Sperring and her man Phil bore me off to Cambridge, where I got to meet their cats, among them a very affectionate half-grown catling who wanted All The Attention.
I am immensely grateful to Kari and Phil for their impeccable and delightful hospitality - and for introducing me to young Michelle Yeoh in Hong Kong action movies. They are truly wonderful people.
Some tourism (and bookshop tourism) happened on Monday, when I received a whirlwind tour of Cambridge and environs, including the famous Soup Pub (whose real name I cannot now remember). On Tuesday D. of Intellectus Speculativus and their partner Zoe trained down to Cambridge and I spent the day with them, doing tourist stuff like looking at buildings:
And inside museums:
...where we agreed that it was sometimes nice to be able to look at stuff that had nothing to do with any of our subject areas (all Classicists/ancient historians, us) and just admire it as a collection of pretty objects. (The museum did try to educate us about the objects in the collection, but we were having none of it. Bad historians were bad on Tuesday.)
And repaired to a pub called the Maypole, where many beers were on offer and I sampled only one.
Wednesday contained a lot of wibbling on my part and attempts to convince myself that LonCon3 would not actually be terrifying.
LonCon3
And then Thursday was con-going. Were it not for the amazing Kari and the amazing Phil, I doubt I would have made it to and across London: the Tube attempted to kill me, and proved rather confusing to hideously apprehensive me. But I survived the journey in time to check in to the tiny green-coloured Ibis (the middle grade of Ibis, I understand) near Customs House DLR station, and to make it to the convention centre in time to register for panels.
I arrived sometime before 1130. The queue was immense. Props to the volunteers (especially to Oscar and Katherine [sp?]) who were keeping things moving, and who, as it approached 1230, took me out of the line down to registration proper so I could get badged up for my 1330 panel.
I did not get my Hugo nominee stuff at this point in time! But I went back for it the following morning.
The 1330 panel was titled "The Changing Face of the Urban Fantastic," and had a 1330-1500 timeslot. It was my first ever Worldcon panel, and my first ever gig as moderator. I had done no prep, but with Sophia McDougall, Paul Cornell, Robin Hobb, and Freda Warrington as panellists, I didn't have to do much work at all. At 1345 approximately, the skies opened and we had a very dramatic thunder and lightning storm as our accompaniment: dramatic soundtrack!
I do not actually at this remove remember what was discussed on the panel, only that I had a lovely chat with Sophia (and Liesel Schwarz and Laura Lam and maybe some other people) in the green room after the panel ended, before I went to meet Kate Elliott and Mahvesh Murad, whom I'd arranged to meet before the con for coffee/drinks/chattings at 1600. We repaired to the Aloft bar and talked endlessly for two hours - they are lovely smart people, both an utter delight to have conversation with - before I had to leave to meet some people from Tor.com for dinner.
Irene Gallo and Carl Engle-Laird are just as lovely in person as they are on the internet. So is Justin Landon, who is bizarrely tall and broad of shoulder - people are so much more three-dimensional in person than they are on the internet, it's quite weird. Then I ran into Fran Wilde and some of her people after dinner, and later on found myself beside the Cool People Table in the fan area, where I met Max Gladstone, Django Wexler, Ann Leckie, Roz Kaveney, Charlie Stross, and Tom Pollock, among others. They are all startlingly lovely people - and Tom, at least, stands out in a crowd.
At some point, I made it back to the Ibis, and there I met my roommate-for-the-con, the utterly amazing Aishwarya Subramanian, for the very first time - and we talked a lot before finally deciding we'd better sleep.
In the morning, we were to discover an unusual feature of our hotel...
"An experience not to be missed. But not to be repeated."
The Ibis London ExCel Docklands Hotel is a budget hotel. It is apparently the middle grade of Ibis: the Ibis "Budget" is even less fancy, while the Ibis "Styles" is slightly less compact. Aisha and I discovered, upon investigating, that the shower of our Ibis was inhumanly small. (On Sunday night Aisha made a video of tiny shower: somewhere PROOF EXISTS of its tiny dimensions.) The experience of showering was rather akin to sealing oneself inside a torpedo launch tube. Keep your elbows tucked and don't try to turn around.
As I said to Aisha, when I emerged (slightly more claustrophobic than before), "That's an experience not to be missed, and also not to be repeated. Except it has to be repeated, or we'll turn into Cat Piss People."
"Tiny shower is our nemesis," became the refrain of our morning convention experience. "Hello, Tiny Shower! We meet again. Who shall have victory this morning?"
Spoiler: not us. It came as something of a relief on Monday morning to be able to say, "Farewell, Tiny Shower! We shall never meet again and I WILL BE VERY HAPPY WITH THAT."
But I get ahead of myself.
Sad breakfast
Thus Friday began. I discovered that the hotel, much like the convention centre, did not believe in fruit. Breakfast was a slightly sad affair for me. It would only become sadder over the weekend, for on Saturday and Sunday the array of yoghurt on offer - not very vast - grew more pathetic.
It was lovely to meet Wes Chu and Justin Landon in the breakfast room, though one wonders how Justin coped with the Tiny Showers. Shortly, I shuffled off to the convention, where I saw the Dealers' Room (so many pretty books) and inflicted myself on the magnificent Amal El-Mohtar at her signing. She didn't seem to mind me camping out for a gossip session alongside her, because shamefully few people came along to worship her awesomeness. I met Ibraheem Abbas and Eng. Yasser Bahjatt, who were signing at the table beside the amazing Amal, and they were lovely too.
Two lunches and free cake
First lunch was with Amal and Tansy Rayner Roberts and Julia Rios and Jo L. Walton. (I think.) Second lunch was with Fran Wilde, in which we encountered Michael Swanwick and did a LOT of talking. Then somehow it was late afternoon and I wandered back into the Dealers' Room for Tansy Rayner Roberts' signing - where she had shamefully few people come to get books by her signed, so I camped out at her table and gossiped away. She is just as lovely in person as she is on the internet, and everyone should be reading her very fun MUSKETEER SPACE serial.
Then it was dinner time, and my friend Martin who lives in London now came to have dinner with me. It was really lovely to have a break from meeting ALL THE NEW PEOPLE and be able to relax and have dinner with someone I'd known in person for longer than an hour. So we had dinner, and then we went on a tour of the parties - Jo Fletcher Books, Tor UK, and Titan Books were all having parties in the Fox bar, and it wasn't a badged area, so Martin could come visit too. We ran into D. and Zoe, and Charlie Stross and Féorag, and I talked Martin into buying a book I hadn't even read. (Also the JFB party had free cake.) After Martin left to get home to his partner, I hung out at the party a little longer, where Joe Abercrombie and Mark Charan Newton ganged up on me at the bar to twit me about that old review of Michael Sullivan's book on Strange Horizons, and I met Jared and Anne while I was actually awake, and Justin introduced me to George R.R. Martin (and I shut my teeth on anything beyond "Hi, nice to meet you," because I don't much like his books). And then I fetched up - while trying to extricate myself from party - at a table with Aliette de Bodard and Tricia Sullivan and Sophia McDougall (among others) and Much Was The Talking.
I do not think I managed to attend above four panels besides the ones I was scheduled to be on over the course of the convention, but I sure as hell talked to a lot of people.
At some point over the weekend up to Sunday afternoon, I met any number of lovely people whom I've forgotten to mention to date, like Sophie Calder (of Gollancz) and Joe Monti, a very nice bloke who works for Saga, and Lee Harris (of Angry Robot and now Tor.com) and Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, and briefly in passing Ada Palmer and Madeleine Robins and Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden. And C.E. Murphy and Sarah Rees Brennan and Ursula Vernon. And Abi Sutherland. And Tobias Buckell. And probably bunches of other people whom I'm forgetting I was introduced to.
I did not realise heretofore that if you were vaguely acquainted with all the lovely people from the internet, a convention is actually a multi-day party. Now I kind of understand the appeal.
from some other encounter
[caption id="attachment_1100" align="aligncenter" width="660"]
Scott Lynch and Zoe Johnson.[/caption][caption id="attachment_1099" align="aligncenter" width="660"]
Zoe attacks Scott for books. That man is a very good sport.[/caption]The Dealers' Room calls
After "Seeing the Future, Knowing the Past," I stopped into "A Queerer War," a panel featuring Tanya Huff, Ann Leckie, and S.J. Groenewegen, and moderated by Duncan Lawie. Question time seemed to devolve a little into 101, but on the whole I enjoyed the panel...
...and then I broke my resolution and went to the Dealers' Room. I acquired rather more books than I intended, especially since I also visited the Library area of the fan village, where books were being given away with great enthusiasm. I picked up another... three? free books. YAY FREE BOOKS. (I will list acquisitions later.) OOPS SUITCASE PACKING.
I don't really remember who I was talking to Sunday afternoon. I dropped in on the Hugo Rehearsal (ie: stand here, walk this way, don't fall over if you win) and ran into Aliette and Foz and Mary Robinette Kowal there, and then... Laura Lam at the green room, maybe? And Amal. Almost certainly Amal. At some point I know I ate half a rotisserie chicken from the chicken place on the ExCel centre's Boulevard, and shortly thereafter was afraid I'd get lost on the way to the Hugo Reception. So I went to find it early, and ended up waiting for 30 minutes.
All The Party
Hugo Reception was amazing fun. Props to the volunteers and organisers for getting things as smoothly run and organised as it was. I spent most of the time hanging out with Foz and Max Gladstone and his partner Steph, I think, with occasional hanging out with Kate Elliott and Abigail Nussbaum and Neil Harrison and Nic Clarke. There was free food, and it was very tasty. And there were FAMOUS PEOPLE.
We were very uncool when Peter Davidson showed up. Very uncool. It was the amazing brave Amal who lead us in a posse over to him eventually to shake his hand and say "I like your work," and he seems like a lovely guy.
The entire room was really uncool a short while later, though, when David Tennant showed up. The poor man. Mobbed by geeks who wanted to shake his hand. He was an exceptional good sport about it, but one does feel a little sorry for him. (Not so sorry that I did not go shake his hand and say "I loved your performance in Hamlet," though.)
Then it was HUGO CEREMONY TIME.
Wow. So ceremony. I ended up sitting beside Amal, near Max and John Chu and Wes Chu and Ramez Naam, directly behind George R.R. Martin. Justina Robson and Geoff Ryman did an excellent job as hosts, as did the other guest hosts, and seriously, it was a really pleasing ceremony. That Kameron Hurley, what? ON FIRE.
The whole ceremony is on ustream somewhere. What the recording does not show is how three-quarters of the auditorium stood up to applaud Ancillary Justice's victory, when Ann Leckie made her way to the stage.
Being in the auditorium for the ceremony was an awful lot like being part of an extended group hug. And not just because Amal is a really great person to be seated beside if you are a very nervous nominee.
And when it was all done, it was Hugo Losers' Party time. And that was exciting. Because there were FRUIT PLATTERS.
The Hugo Losers' Party was an awful lot of fun. There was a lot of going EEEEEE at the statistics (I came fourth) and excited gushing, and FRUIT. And also little chocolates and tiny chocolatey cake things, but I was most excited about the fruit. I got to meet E. Lily Yu (who is lovely) and finally talk to Jenni Hill for more than three seconds, and have a conversation with HUGO-AWARD WINNING NOVELIST ANN LECKIE, who is kind of amazing in person and looked pretty happily dazed. Kate Elliott and I had a long conversation about editing as a learned skill, particularly editing other peoples' work; and I had a brief conversation with Roz Kaveney about how she and Kameron Hurley need to divide up the genre between them to make ambitious messes with genre furniture.
But mostly there was a lot of sitting around in circles eating fruit and drinking drinks (Tansy Rayner Roberts, Alisa Krasnostein, Rhiannon Rasmussen, Kate Elliott, Ann Leckie, Foz Meadows, Jenni Hill) and talking about how amazing the winners were and how brilliant Kameron Hurley's and John Chu's and Sofia Samatar's speeches were.
Then I went back to my hotel room, quite late in the evening. And found Aisha already there. And I was rather hyper from copious amounts of caffeine and there was a lot of bouncy talking and at some point we thought it was a good idea to record the tininess of Tiny Shower for posterity.
And I tried to pack. It involved a lot of pushing on the suitcase. The suitcase needed duct-tape, because the seams split. Fortunately, I travel with twine, duct tape, and electrician's tape.
And mostly a penknife with a flashlight and compass attached, yes, I may be weird. BUT YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU'LL NEED.
(Mostly I need the bottle-opener for other people. And the scissors.)
Monday morning comes too soon
I recall waking up at 0530, while Aisha was doing something, muttering "Dawn. Fuck that," and rolling over to go back to sleep. I had an 1100 panel - with Aisha, too - on "Critical Diversity in Science Fiction," and somehow we made it to the green room in advance of the panel, where we met Fábio Fernandes and Erin Horakova before repairing to our panel room, where we were joined by our moderator Andrew Butler. I had caffeined up, and was possibly a blithering hyper idiot: mostly I remember that the panel opened with a mic test that sort of turned into, in Erin's words, "the inadequate filking panel."
I'm not sure how much of the meat of critical diversity we actually managed to cover. It was Monday morning. Forgive me: I was out of it.
even more people
Afterwards, some of us repaired to lunch with Maureen Speller and Paul Kincaid, at a table on the Boulevard that just kept expanding to incorporate more people as they drifted up against us and stopped. I know at one point the table included Aisha, D. Franklin, Zoe, me, Maureen, Paul, Erin, Fábio, Lal, David Hebblethwaite, Kev McVeigh, and STILL MORE PEOPLE...
...then I left for the fan village to try to meet up with Niall and Nic, and got sidetracked by meeting Kate Elliott and Rhiannon Rasmussen and Michelle Sagara, and some others (including Alex whom I'd met at Liverpool last year. Sorry, Alex! I have forgot your last name) and had a long discussion about books and book reviewing and things.
I did finally fetch up against another table, encompassing Niall and Nic and Erin and Abigail and Aisha and OTHER PEOPLE whose names I do not now remember or never caught, and had much fun discussions. At this point, though, I was punch-drunk. I don't really remember what we were actually talking about, apart from Tiny Shower and DubCon jokes.
Eventually I extricated myself - with great sadness - from the convention, collected my bags from the hotel, and got the DLR to the Ibis Docklands Canary Wharf, where I had a room for the night so I could sleep before traveling home. The Ibis Docklands Canary Wharf is a red-coloured Ibis and is Slightly Less Budget. The shower was not inhumanly small! I had a whole comfortable double bed to myself, not a tiny plank of a bed. And god, I slept.
I had no idea how long it would take me to get to Heathrow in the morning, though, so I ended up getting up far too early to trek across London, and fetched up at LHR before check-in and bag-drop for my flight even opened. But it was all good! Once I made it through security I had a delightful breakfast of ham and cheese croissant, followed by vanilla croissant, at a café called Cappuccino. Very tasty.
I slept on the plane. My mother picked me up at the airport. I got home, unpacked, shoved things into the washing-machined, showered, and went to bed for five hours. I woke up long enough to eat tea and check my email, and went back to sleep for another fourteen hours. And it was glorious.
And that is the story of my adventures.
