Friday at FantasyCon

As a newcomer to FantasyCon, I'd intended to go along to the New to FantasyCon meeting at 4pm.
Then I got distracted. The Blogging in Genre Fiction panel started at 3.30pm, and looked interesting - and I'd already seen two familiar faces by the registration desk. I first met Babs at Baskerville Hall near Hay, at one of the regular Wednesday night music sessions, with her friend - they're both from Holland. And then Russell Smith dashed by in a Red Cloak vest (they're the stewards for the convention). I first met Russell at LonCon 2014, though I only got to speak to him properly at the Dysprosium EasterCon, when we were both at a panel about swords (the speakers brought some really cool swords along for people to handle).
So, Blogging in Genre Fiction it was, then, moderated by Kit Power, who writes for Gingernuts of Horror (it was the first panel he'd moderated, and he was quite nervous). Another panellist was Alisdair Stuart, who writes for the Doctor Who RPG (he said the background info on the Tenth Doctor nearly killed him!), and then there was Kate Coe, and Micah Yongo (who is from Manchester, so instantly endeared himself to me). On the basis of this panel, I later went off and bought Kit Powers' book containing some of his columns for Gingernuts of Horror, and Micah Yongo's novel Lost Gods.
I bought a lot of books in the dealers' room over the weekend....

The next panel in the same room (the Edward, right at the end of a maze-like corridor) was on The Role of Class in Science Fiction and Fantasy, with some more interesting panelists. Alison Baker (she pointed out this was her posh name - she's usually Ali) is a researcher in children's literature, and introduced herself by proclaiming "Hogwarts would never pass an Ofsted report - buy a drink and I'll tell you why!"
The conversation was fascinating, discussing working class characters like Ser Davos Seaworthy in Game of Thrones, who came from Flea's Bottom in King's Landing and is raised to be advisor to Stannis Baratheon without really wanting the honours. Another good working class hero is Commander Vimes in the Discworld books, who is slightly embarrassed to be raised to the nobility when he marries Lady Sybil (and wouldn't it be interesting to get those two characters together for a chat?).
The books of Patrick Ness were also recommended.
The discussion went on to talk about the Chosen One (in so many fantasies, and Buffy, of course), and it was suggested that the loss of the apprenticeship model has led to writers emphasising innate talent over learning a skill, and led to the rise of the Chosen One in fiction.

Russell Smith was one of the panellists talking about Robot Companions in Film and Television in the Albert, the other room down the maze-like corridor, for the next panel I went to. One of the thoughts I brought away from that panel was - never be a villain with a robot sidekick, because they always turn on you in the end, the classic example being Maximillian in The Black Hole! The conversation bounced around from Metropolis to the present (was it this panel where they hated KITT from Knight Rider? Or thought he was insufferably smug?).

At 8pm it was time to go to the Jubilee Room for Welcome to FantasyCon, down another long passageway. This was more modern, leading to the new extension to the hotel at the back (the King's Suite) and had specially built niches in the wall on one side to display the armour of several ranks of Roman soldiers (and a gladiator) suspended over real Roman column bases on loan from the Grosvenor Museum in Chester.
The first thing the organiser said was: "I'm very sorry."
This was because the printed programmes had not yet arrived, so they had been giving out sheets with the programme details on them. He went on to talk about the good will that Conventions such as this run on - the people prepared to be on panels, the Red Cloaks, and so on, working together to make a good, smooth-running convention. Then he introduced two of the Guests of Honour, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Farah Mendlesohn. I'd seen Adrian before, at EasterCons - he's quite tall and has a distinctive dark beard, and I've even read some of his Shadows of the Apt series.
Farah Mendlesohn is a historian and has written a book about Robert Heinlein, and a book on Children's Fantasy Literature, amongst other things.
The third Guest of Honour, Claire North, wasn't due to arrive until the following morning.
In the queue for the prosecco, I met Teika Bellamy, who has edited books of modern versions of fairytales - and her name means fairytale in Latvian (she is half Latvian and half Russian in origin), and we had such an interesting conversation that I ended up buying three of the fairytale collections in the dealers' room the following day. The series title is The Forgotten and the Fantastical. And I discovered later that she is actually Doctor Bellamy - there were such a lot of very intelligent, articulate, and interesting people at the Convention, I had to work hard to keep up!