Glenmorangie Nectar D’Or

When Worldcon was held in Glasgow in 1995 I was too young to attend but promised myself I would go the next time it came to the UK. But in 2005, when it returned to Glasgow, I found myself utterly alienated from fandom and stayed at home. The pendulum swings and in 2014 I found myself very much part of fandom establishment and attending my first Worldcon. It was great.

My article on Loncon 3 is up now at the Los Angeles Review Of Books. It is mostly about the Hugos (with a little bit about the British bust) so if you want a proper con report to give you a flavour of the event, I’d recommend this one by Aishwarya Subramanian (who it was lovely to finally meet in person).

The article is also a tribute to the late Iain Banks which is slightly ironic because my last act at the convention was to slag him off on the ‘Dropping The M’ panel on Monday morning. This consisted of five fans of the man’s work nonetheless grappling with some of his manifest failings. It was enjoyable but everyone in the room was clearly winding down. Likewise, my first panel – ‘Big Anthologies: Bookends or Benchmarks?’ on Friday – seemed like a warm up. This consisted of three major anthologists plus me in the role of reader. But since moderator Jo Walton occupied the same role, I was a bit superfluous. This was rather cruelly confirmed when the panel ended and the audience rushed up to get their books signed by everyone but me. However, my two back-to-back Saturday panels – ‘YA on the Big Screen’ and ‘Just Three Cornettos’ – were bloody brilliant. A great mix of panelists, sensitive moderation and a hugely engaged audience. As David Hebblethwaite has said, it is a wonderful and unique experience.

Coshed

I just downloaded the 1939 Retro Hugo voter package which means I now have two unread packages to read before voting closes at the end of the month. It’s gonna be tight. Once I finish that, I’ve got two whole weeks to complete my next tranche of homework: preparing for my panels.

Big Anthologies: Bookends or Benchmarks? (Friday 16:30 – 18:00)

There’s a genre tradition of doorstop-sized anthologies that attempt to synopsise a period or style: Ascent of Wonder, The Weird, Twenty-First Century Science Fiction, and others. What makes these anthologies successful, or not? Does ‘success’ mean summarising a past conversation, or influencing the conversation that’s still going on? Or are they always and inevitably doomed enterprises? Is it possible to TOC an age, or a genre? Or are these sorts of anthologies in fact arguments, rather than snapshots?

• Jo Walton (M)
• Ellen Datlow
• Jonathan Strahan
• Jeff VanderMeer

YA on the Big Screen (Saturday 15:00 – 16:30)

The YA publishing boom has been accompanied by a boom in film adaptations, but while some have seen commercial success others have stalled. What does it take to transition from book to film? Are there any special considerations when working with a young adult story? Modern YA is a genre with distinctive tropes — how are these being transferred to the screen? How is “classic” YA adapted in that context? Is this to the original story’s benefit or detriment? Which YA books have successfully made the transition–for good or ill? What stories would make great films, but haven’t yet been done?

• Carrie Vaughn (M)
• Amy H. Sturgis
• Erin M. Underwood
• Thea James

Just Three Cornettos (Saturday 16:30 – 18:00)

The Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Edgar Wright “Cornetto trilogy” concluded last year with The World’s End, following Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. What is the trilogy’s place in British SF? The panel will discuss why the films’ endings are so unconventional, what the trilogy had to say about topics such as society and consumerism, masculinity and maturity, and the British landscape … And they’ll decide which fence gag is best.

• Nick Hubble (M)
• Paul Cornell
• Rachael Acks
• Philippa Chapman

Dropping The M (Monday 11:00 – 12:00)

We customarily divide the work of Iain (M) Banks into his sf and his mimetic fiction, but much of the mimetic fiction slips and slides into the fantastic. What if we threw this division out: what other ways of understanding his work can we find? Macro and micro fictions, fictions of family and of friendship, fictions of thinning and fictions of recovery?

• Farah Mendlesohn (M)
• Jude Roberts
• Tony Keen
• Anna Feruglio Dal Dan