Planning Ahead - WorldCon 2014

It may seem to be a long time in advance, but I've just booked my tickets for LonCon - the World SF Convention 2014. (I'm very excited).

The reasons for my excitement go back a long way. In 1979, I read an article in the Manchester Evening News about the SF convention that had just been held in Brighton. I was just about old enough to have thought about going to it on my own (I even had savings, so I could have afforded it!). I read it and thought: "Why didn't I know about this?"
Not long after that, I started going to Star Trek Conventions - but in the back of my mind there was the thought that there was something bigger and better out there. Mostly in the US, of course, which put it right out of my reach.
Then in 1987, WorldCon came back to Brighton.

I went, of course. By that time, I was part of a Star Trek club, and all of us managed to get down for at least one day together (I still have a photo of us all in our club Tshirts somewhere).* I went to my first (and only) rock concert - Hawkwind were doing their Elric of Melnibone music. Elsewhere in Brighton, there was a Philip Glass opera going on.
I discovered filk music (and still have some of the cassette tapes I bought there), and saw Michael Moorcock across the hall signing autographs, and went to a writer's workshop run by Harry Harrison (who was wearing a Tshirt saying "I love the Stainless Steel Rat").
We saw Doris Lessing in the audience of the talk that Gerry Anderson gave, and somehow I managed to get the job of room steward for a showing of Doctor Who The War Games (which was on a very bad tape where the picture kept sliding across the screen, but we still watched it all and enjoyed it!).
I met members of the SCA for the first time, and that started me thinking about historical re-enactment.
I bought a phaser and was then advised to hide it until I got back to the hotel, because there was a very strict no weapons policy for the convention (which rather cramped the style of one of the ladies I recognised from Trek Cons, who usually went around festooned with weapons as an assassin. She had long blonde hair, and also did a very good Alice in Wonderland!)
It was fantastic!

There was a half-hour TV programme made about the Con. Brian Aldiss, the Toastmaster, was interviewed, and several of the people who had made elaborate costumes. My mum and dad watched it, and about halfway through, dad said: "This is just the sort of rubbish our Lesley would go to." Mum knew that I'd been there, so she was on pins for the rest of the programme, in case I turned up in the background of one of the shots!

Another thing that happened during the Convention was that one of the authors attending got himself arrested! Iain Banks was found climbing up the outside of the hotel he was staying in to get to his room, after a rather convivial evening! (I'm sure it was Iain Banks, though I can't find any record of it now. It was in the local paper, and the article was stuck up on the information boards around the Con).

Next year, Iain Banks was going to be one of the Guests of Honour of the convention - but he probably won't be around to see it. The news about his cancer is very sad, and I hope he and his partner do wonderful things in the time that's left to him.

One of the other Guests of Honour is Bryan Talbot, author of the Grandville graphic novels, among many others. My Young Man is already planning an Inspector LeBrock costume, and if he's LeBrock, I'll have to take his arm as the Divine Sarah! All we need are the badger masks.

The other Guests of Honour are Chris Foss the artist, and John Clute, who co-edited the Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction and the Encyclopaedia of Fantasy (I have them both, but they're each about four inches thick, so I won't be taking them along to have them autographed!).
Malcolm Edwards is a publisher, who launched the SF Masterworks series of books and now works for Orion Publishing. He started off with Victor Gollancz, and went on to Grafton and HarperCollins, so he has a long and distinguished SF pedigree.
Jeanne Gomoll is this Con's Famous Fan - she's been active on the committee of Wiscon (the world's leading feminist SF convention, apparently - so much goes on in the US that I don't know about!) for 37 years, and she's written fan fiction and produced artworks that have had Hugo nominations.
The last guest of honour is Robin Hobb, prolific fantasy author - and of course there will be many other famous names wandering round the halls.
I wonder if I'll recognise anyone from 1980s Star Trek fandom?

*The name of the club was incredibly obscure - Ne'a'driar, which had appeared in a fan story that my friend, and founder of the club, Pat Keen, had written, and which was supposed to mean Little Brother in Vulcan - or even more precisely, Brother who is Seven Years Younger, taking the mechanics of pon farr as we understood them into account! We ran a couple of conventions in Shepperton in the 1980s, which were great fun.