More from me:
I'd second what Alchemist said: meeting chronites was definitely the icing on the cake (and probably half the cake as well), what we talked about would have filled twenty threads, but some minor regrets we were all too often rushing from hall to hall. But without that, the programme would have been lesser. It's very weird to go past Joe Abercrombie, Sara Pinborough and Scott Lynch in a corridor, and they're chatting just like normal people... Robin Hobb has a wonderful sense of humour and her intelligence shines through. Trudi Canavan needs to sit closer to the microphone (she's terribly quiet for an Aussie!) and Fiona McIntosh is gorgeous! She said she started writing as a Mid-Life crisis thing - yeah, right, only if that happened at the age of thirty! Ian Whates interview of Tanith Lee was the best 'guest-of-honour' interview I've ever been to. It was literally as though the audience were invisible and listening in to a gentle conversation between two friends - fantastic Ian, well done!
In the dealers room I saw a 1st edition hardback of Name of the Wind going for £700... I've got one that's autographed, so I asked him how much that would fetch and he said £900...
You could build a pension around books, if only you could foresee who was going to be the next big thing!
Alc, if you thought Joe's reading was good, you should have been at the Kaffeekleitsche, where he was like that for an hour. Gillian Redfearn has a really wicked sense of humour and speaks her mind intelligently. She was on a panel about 'What else have you got? What do Publishers and editors never want to see again?' and managed to be funny and convey a real sense of the sort of things they have to put up with: people writing to her and saying: "I saw the Gollancz blog, so can I send you my book?" when the next bit of the blog tells idiots like that HOW to send in their submissions. Those go in the bin, btw, she simply doesn't have time to reply to that, and she said she knew how that must feel to be ignored but puhlease, read the guidelines!!
The food in the hotel was awful, (bangers and mash that reminded me of primary school days, especially the catering gravy) but the sandwiches looked ok. Went out to eat after that. Springs and I just avoided getting caught in torrential rain, by being tucked up in the bar...
Best Panel? Hard-run thing, but it was between the worldbuilding with Patrick Rothfuss, Robin Hobb, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Robert Silverberg, Hal Duncan and Ellen Kushner (who definitely won the award for the best moderator - saw her twice and each time she got the best out of the panellists) and 'Elvish has left the building - is traditional fantasy finally over?' aka the Tad Williams show, as Alc (I think) put it. But Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, Trudi Canavan (quietly), Adrian Stone and Stan Nicholls did extremely well, and both panels were entertaining as well as thought-provoking.
Worst? well, I avoided the ones that didn't attract me, obviously, but Broads with Swords was so poorly moderated, that only Robin Hobb said anything vaguely interesting. The questions put by the moderator were boring, and not adressing the subject which was 'who are these new (female) writers embracing a once male-dominated field, and how are their books different from those of their literary predecessors?' The second half of that was not touched on in the slightest, and it was the main reason I went to it. It seemed to be the panel thinking of female writers (and I'm pleased to report Anne Lyle and Francis Knight were mentioned!) and naming them. Not a word on how they were shaping their craft, what barriers they were overcoming to do so, etc - all the interesting possibilities just weren't brought up. The Q & A session at the end of the panel was this: "Can anyone in the audience think of any other female fantasy writers we haven't mentioned?"
I went to the Secret Agents panel, telling you why you
did need an agent and had the thought that three of the panel of five had already rejected me...
One of the nicest things was you'd sit at any table, at any time, with total strangers and start talking to them about all things Fantasy and SciFi within a few seconds.
Oh yes: Hex will give Mouse a run for her money in the legs department...
Meet your heroes, meet your friends, learn something. That sums up my Worldcon. Brilliant.
