![[Con logo]](other/e2024.png "Con programme book")
The 75th British National Science Fiction Convention
29 March - 1 April 2024, Telford International Centre
GoHs: Jackie Burns, Genevieve Cogman, Michelle Sagara/Michelle West, Tade Thompson, Elsa Sjunneson, Dr. Srinarahari.
First time in the Telford International Centre
We drove up to Telford in our new electric car. I still have a little range anxiety, so when we stopped for lunch, I did give it some juice, despite the prediction we'd have enough left when we arrived. Note to self: when travelling on a Bank Holiday, charging points tend to be well-occupied. The hotel has four of its own fast (22kW) charging points for guest use, that are not quite as eye-wateringly expensive (70p/kWh) as service station chargers (~79p/kWh), so I will fill up tonight, ready for the trip home. A bit different from the 9p/kWh I can get at home on the overnight rate, though.
Our hotel is next door to the Telford International Centre (TIC), a new venue for Eastercon. The TIC is nice and spacious (great for social distancing) and well laid out. There are also nice gaps scheduled between items, so no need to teleport around.
The first panel we went to was SF/F and the Industrial Revolution, a theme of the convention, given that Ironbridge is just down the road. However, we were warned to remember that the Industrial Revolution wasn't all good, given it was capitalism exploiting the colonies for resources. Before the Industrial Revolution, India had 1/3 of the GDP of the world. Pride & Prejudice, if not read as a satire, gives an incorrect bucolic view of England; Steampunk is a very Western view of the Victorian era.
Next we went to a GoH presentation, Jackie Burns Paints! Live! She demonstrated (live!) watercolour techniques for painting planets, and a dabbing technique that looks like craters on a planet. You need multiple layers of colour to hide the brushmarks, so use high quality paper: 300 g/sm. Even so, you might get "cockling", which is the paper crinkling when wet. Don't use black for the sky -- it deadens it -- use indigo.
It's been 50 yrs since Mariner 10: What now for Exploration? Bill Ray gave an interesting talk on exploring the solar system. The reason we need to go and look, is because of the unknown unknowns; until then, we don't even know what questions to ask. The next 50 years are going to be amazing, despite the fact that 50% of USAns don't believe in the moon landing.
The panellists in Science Fiction Narratives and Science discussed whether SF gives an unrealistic view of the practice of science. It is dull and tedious: a PhD is 4-8yrs answering a very small question. But stories need drama, not the slow pace, the large teams, the constant setbacks; SF should be literature, not a training manual. And we do now do things better, such as making terraforming take a long time.
For our final event of the day, we went to Kari Spelling's talk, Imaginary Lines, about the rather diffuse ill-defined Welsh border during the Early Middle Ages. This had lots of interesting details about Bede, the Irish view on agreements, ap Llewellyn, Offa's Dyke, Vikings carrying longboats up rivers, Saxons as Roman mercenaries, Alfred the Great being a nerd, and more. It ended with a typical (and correct!) academic call: more archaeology is needed!
The view from our hotel window has the customary view over the car park; amusingly we can even see our car (now that I have parked it, after charging it last night), for that extra feeling of security.
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We started the day with a talk about forensics: So you're thinking about murder… Skeletons and fiction. We learned lots of interesting things. Right handed people have a larger left foot, and vice versa. Bones grow from the ends, and don't fully fuse until you are about 25. Male skulls are very different from female skulls: they have squarer chins, heavier brow ridges, heaver bone arches over ears, etc. However, older women start getting heavier brow ridges too, and their skulls may be misidentified as male. When you find a load of bones, first check if they are human: "the last time this bone was above ground, it was surrounded by cow". Then you need to work out how many different people there were, then find their age, sex, etc. In the past, food had grit and sand in it, which wore down teeth: "if you find teeth that look like calderas, they're medieval, not recent".
Next was a panel on Choosing Character Voice, about choosing first, second or third person narratives, and past or present tense. Older people (hi there!) were brought up on literature that is 3rd person past tense; modern YA tends to be first person present tense; 2nd person is very rare. These different defaults mean that readers experience different effects on breaking the defaults. Some people use person/tense as a gimmick, but it only works when used for the story. For a good example: Karin Lowachee's Warchild: part 1 is 2nd person, with no agency; part 2 is 3rd person past, telling what happened; part 3 is 1st person present, with agency. It works really well. You can get more inside character's head in 1st person, although you can do similar with very close 3rd person; more distant 3rd person helps with multiple PoVs. As well as person and tense, there is register: changing style depending on who you are talking to, code switching, etc.
Next up was John Clute's BSFA Lecture: Annals of Vandalism. He spoke about how the British Library had a practice of removing and destroying the dust jackets of the books deposited with it, and the amount of historical material destroyed this way. They no longer do so for fiction, but now allow ebook deposits, so the change will have no effect. However, they are maintaining this policy for NF, so Clute's new book on this topic, The Book Blinders, will have its dust jacket destroyed. Heartbreaking and infuriating in equal measure; vandals indeed!
Having been enraged by the British Library's practices, we went to a panel on What is the appeal of libraries for f/sf readers? This was meant to included the wide rand of fictional libraries in SF, but the panel talked mainly about their love affairs with real world libraries. "Getting an adult card which allowed 4 books a fortnight meant you were supposed to read 4 books a fortnight!" Real world libraries allow serendipity: physically waking through a library leads to unknown unknowns that catch your eye. But you can also be a member of many electronic libraries in different places all at the same time. Libraries don't stop book buying however: one panellist (and a certain member of the audience) will buy books they like, because they won't always be available from libraries.
Continuing the Industrial Revolution convention theme, we next went to Doctor Who and the Industrial Revolution. There was lots of discussion about different episodes that featured industrial revolutions and ecological themes, etc. The Green Death (1973) is a pending eco disaster. The Robots of Death (1977) uses machines to do the work, with the humans on top. The Mark of the Rani (1983) has the Master using the Rani to collect Industrial Revolution pioneers, including George Stephenson. I (re)discovered that some people have a frighteningly encyclopedic knowledge of Dr Who.
Next was a paenle on Educational safeguarding in SF and Fantasy, wondering what OFSTED might think of several fictional schools, which appear to be very dangerous! A somewhat cynical (although probably accurate) view is that safeguarding is a lot of paperwork, and training is watching a video then doing an easy multiple choice quiz.
The panel on The Good, The Bad, and the Buggy was mostly about software and people problems, where what is needed is more testers, unit testing, and integration testing. Given the focus on software, I was surprised no-one mentioned the Post Office Horizon scandal.
In her talk How (Not) to Become an Astronaut Emma King gave a fascinating account of here two failed attempts to be selected as an ESA astronaut. She gave lots of good advice: don't be too modest about your accomplishments; make use of available resources, such as Tim Peake's book, example questions for pilot training, the Discord group for the candidates, and more; keep trying! Even though she was not successful, she doesn't regret it, and it opened up opportunities for other successes.
Finally, we went to Invertebrates in Space! There are a surprising number of SF books in this subgenre, maybe because of the vast diversity of invertebrates: there are more species, and more biomass, than vertebrates, although but vertebrates can be bigger. They came out of the water first, and learned how to eat plants; vertebrates came out of the water later, and ate the invertebrates before they learned how to eat land plants. Invertebrates are limited in size on Earth, but could potentially grow very big in space. Having to moult your exoskeleton makes you very vulnerable, and is very stressful. Maybe this would encourage social behaviour, to protect those when vulnerable, or maybe they would evolve to shed a piece at a time. Breathing has several options, some quite efficient: wasps pump the air in.
Our first panel today was Exhibiting Fantasy, about the British Library's exhibition The Realms of Imagination. The exhibition was sponsored by a games company, so it includes a lot of games. Exhibitions are constrained by cost/space, but you can exploit those constraints. The panel then discussed their favourite concepts. One was to follow certain books over time, from their first appearance in their context to how they are perceived today. Another was to start in Lewis Carroll's study, go through a door, into Alice in Wonderland, or start in CS Lewis' study, go through a wardrobe to the wood between the worlds, etc (they admitted this might need infinite funding).
Next was a panel on Empire and SF. It started with a vigorous debate between two panellists on who was more oppressed. Most SF focusses on the British Empire and the Roman Empire, with less material based on other empires. Empires involve a lot of bureaucracy; but this is also true of any big government.
James Flanagan gave this year's George Hay lecture on Battling Cancer in 2024. He started with the cheering news that 1 in 2 people will get cancer. The biggest risks are: age, genetics, smoking, obesity, UV, infection, poor diet, lack of exercise, and inflammation. The UV risk in Britain is not from the sun, but from UV sunbeds. Blood tests look for bits of DNA from dead cancer cells. There is a big NHS study under way to see if shopping data can be used to detect potential cancer symptoms, for example, from increased purchase of pain medicine. We should have eradicated cervical cancer by 2040; it is already eradicated in young women because of the HPV vaccine.
We next went to a panel on Motherland Fort Salem: a complex allegory. This is a TV series that we haven't seen, which is "next to impossible to watch legally", but apparently has a dedicated fan base. This dedication includes such things as pausing the video to inspect maps and timelines. Amanda Tapping is one of the (many) Executive Producers.
Genevieve Cogman, author of the Invisible Library series, gave her GoH interview, which revealed interesting snippets. Her day job is as an NHS statistician. She also writes for games. She has a new trilogy coming out, Scarlet, about vampires and the French Revolution, but hints that there may be more stories to tell in the Invisible Library series
In Robes and Regalia we learned how there were sumptuary laws about who could wear what. Mostly this was so that jumped up nouveau riche couldn't trick themselves out like real nobility. But some were to protect local industry, for example, on the wearing of woolen caps.
We next went to a talk by Jesper Stage, The Logic of Empire, about the economics of colonialism. Pre 1500 it was about getting more agricultural land to support your armies. 1500-1900 it was about resource extraction: gold, diamonds, slaves, etc; there were also plantation settlers. Post 1900, there is no business model for one industrial nation conquering another: they have to destroy too much of the other's wealth to make it worthwhile. There are no short victorious wars. (Someone tell Putin, please.) Most SF books and films follow these existing historical patterns.
Nicholas Jackson gave one of his famous maths talks, here on Maths and Politics. He covered Arrow's Theorem, on how a "fair" voting system is impossible; numerical tests for Gerrymandering (and how the word is a combination of the surname "Gerry" and the creature "salamander"); how to use catastrophe theory to get what you want (argue annoyingly, then remove yourself, apparently).
To end the day on a light note, the panel on Horror in Antiquity discussed the emergence of horror in Greek and Roman literature. Greek tragedy has a slowly dawning awareness of the terrible deeds done, such as a mother killing her son and feeding him to his father. There is a lot of turning people into wolves, but no actual werewolves. There is no real distinctions made between myth, history, and stories. Romans saw a lot of death; not gladiators so much, but mostly the execution of criminals.
The final day of the con started with a panel on Bookselling: the trials and tribulations. The main take-away is that writing is not the same as marketing: an editor might love your book, but be unable to pitch it convincingly to Marketing. Then on to a panel on Detectives in Fantasy and SF, of which there are many.
The panel on Faery, folkore and fairy tale in fantasy discussed the use of myths and tales from before Tolkien. They emphasised that, although nothing should be out of scope, it should be done respectfully: use archetypes, not stereotypes.
We finished the day, and the con, with Clara Nellist's talk on The Particle Physics Frontier, about the Large Hadron Collider. It has examined the Standard Model, and discovered the Higgs Boson. The current ATLAS experiments have so far gathered 7% of the total data planned, so there is room for more discoveries.