Sunday at WorldCon - A Walk Along the Liffey

My room mate told me he'd been back late the night before because he'd been to the party for the Glasgow 2024 WorldCon bid - where the whisky had run out! It had been a bit of a shock to him that the main gate to Trinity College was closed. The gate had been closed when I got back too, I suppose because it was the weekend, but there was a sign up pointing to the entrance that was open, round on Nassau Street. All I had to do was follow the wall round until I came to the modern buildings on that side of the campus.

I decided to walk in to the Convention Centre that morning. The weather was overcast but dry, and I wanted to see a bit more of Dublin.
I found the Famine monument:

There was an information board telling the story of one particular group of over 1,000 emigrants who had walked to Dublin from the estate they lived on to be packed into the hold of a ship and taken to Canada, I think it was. Many died on the journey.
You could walk among the statues, and there are brass plaques set into the cobbles with the names of people who have donated money. They included ordinary people like "the Sullivan family of New York", and some very famous people like Bill and Hilary Clinton, Wayne Sleep the dancer, Pierce Brosnan, Richard Branson and politicians like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness from Northern Ireland. The money raised is used to help the homeless and people living in poverty today.

Near the statue is the Emigrant Museum - I'd seen it from the Luas line. Further along the river is the Jeannie Johnston, a square rigged ship which is also used to tell the story of the people who left Ireland because of the Great Famine.

It was very quiet - I was pretty much the only person walking along the river that morning - and very moving.

Saturday at WorldCon 3 - Introduction to Afrofuturism

This was such a fun panel, and it started with the panellists laughing at the very term 'Afrofuturism'. Brandon O'Brien, for instance, is from the Caribbean, so how does his writing fit in? The other members of the panel are black Americans. There are so many different sorts of black person that they can't all be lumped together as writers under the term Afrofuturism. Adding to the discomfort with the term, it was invented by a white man, so do they really want to be defined by that?
They did have words of praise for the film Black Panther, which has proved that a film with a primarily black cast can have universal appeal.
They also gave recommendations of SF and fantasy by black authors, such as Nalo Hopkinson, Phenderson Djeli Clark, An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon (one of the panel), Karen Lord, Octavia Butler and Nnedi Okorafor.

I took the Luas back to Trinity College after that - I was exhausted! I hadn't queued for a wristband for the Masquerade, which is just as well - I'd probably have fallen asleep. I've seen some of the photos of the evening though, and it looks like I missed a really good evening, with some excellent costumes.

WorldCon on Saturday 2 - Filk and Libraries

One of the fun things about dressing as the Jedi Librarian is that people come up to you and tell you cool things about the libraries they're involved in - which is how I got talking to a Canadian chap who told me about how he was involved in the IT set up for the libraries in his local school district, covering around 230 schools.
Later, I saw a fun t-shirt: "Do not meddle in the affairs of filkers, for they are not at all subtle, and people remember funny songs."

One of the events I was determined to get to was the 20 minute concert by TJ Burnside. Back in the distant past of the 1987 Brighton WorldCon, I had seen her on stage with the group she performed with, Technical Difficulties. The concert had been on at the same time as the Hugo Award Ceremony, which I hadn't been terribly interested in. I did buy the Technical Difficulties cassette tape, though, which I still have.
Technical Difficulties finally broke up when TJ moved to California - they were already living in three separate states, as one of their songs lamented, but California was even further away. Her husband is an actual rocket scientist, and she talked about a song he'd written where the third verse was just marked 'Classified'. She assumed it was a joke until he met up with another scientist and said "Now I can finally sing that third verse!" In the secure facility where no-one else could overhear them.
She also talked about a Con where he wandered into the filk room while people were singing one of the songs he wrote - he was formally dressed for a scientific conference at the time. One of the audience said to him: "This song was written by an actual rocket scientist, you know!" and he beamed and said "Yes - that would be me!"
She sang several songs, including Falling Down on New Jersey (to the tune of Old Maui) and one of the songs from that old cassette tape, which everyone joined in with - Lullaby for a Weary World.

I was going to go off and attend another panel, but I was getting too tired to move, so I stayed for Bill and Brenda Sutton's concert, which was enormous fun. I liked their Tea and Beer song, and Life is Better with Lots of Beer. There was a small child running round the room, and after the song about Terry Pratchett's Wee Free Men ("Crivens!") they joked that they had their own Wee Free Man running round. The kid's father said that they were trying to make a deal with the fairies for him - "but it's all right. I've seen Labyrinth; I know how to get him back!"

After all that singing about beer, I headed for the bar, where another lady chatted to me about libraries, and her friend 'George' who had gone to college to find that she had been assigned to a male dorm. She obviously couldn't stay there, and the only room they could find for her at such short notice was actually in the library. So they asked her if she would like to be the Night Keeper of the Library, which was her idea of heaven!
And there was another lovely lady on a mobility scooter, who said she was 4th generation Bay Area. We shared a common love of Diane Duane and Good Omens.

WorldCon on Saturday - Astronomy, Art and the Captain's Chair

The first panel I went to on Saturday was How Astronomy Might Break Physics.
One point that came up was that the universe was not expanding at the same rate in all directions, which was not expected.
There was also a good discussion about what might loosely be termed 'colonialism in space'. It is the case that only rich countries can afford the telescopes that are now studying the universe, so they tend to only look at the areas of sky above those countries, and assume that what they are seeing is universally true. However, there are lots of other directions to look in, and things might be different there.
They also talked about the sorts of things that telescopes couldn't detect, and someone in the audience shouted out "Phlogiston!"
"But that's combustible, so we'd detect it," was the immediate answer.
They also talked about the Hubble Constant, which is used to measure the speed at which objects are moving away from the Earth by looking at the red shift. However, the value of the Hubble Constant can change, so the panel said that it was more of a Hubble Tension, trying to make different measurements agree - and this could be the start of a change of understanding of the physics involved.

I thought it unlikely in the extreme that I'd be able to get into the next panel I'd planned to go to - Artemis: Apollo's Big Sister, so I went off to the Point to have a proper look at the Art Show instead. (This is where my plans collided with reality and the result was a totally different day!). I'd hoped to be able to buy a Jim Fitzpatrick print, as he was signing that afternoon, but I didn't see any at the print shop area of the Art Show. It was wonderful to see the pictures he did bring along to exhibit up close, some of which were also in this year's Con Book. There was a lot of good work there, by featured artists Afua Richardson and Sana Takeda (who is the artist for the Monstress graphic novels). Maeve Clancy had done a whole comic strip about Syrian refugees trying to find safety, which was very powerful. I think my favourite work of the whole show, though, was the Lady Astronaut panel, done like a medieval manuscript in English and Hebrew, with part of the Jewish Sanctification of the Moon prayer. It was stunningly beautiful, and the minimum bid for the auction was E1,000.
On my way out of the Art Show, I met some people from Blackpool, where I spent all my childhood holidays. I was dressed as the Jedi Librarian for the day, and the tall young man dressed as the Flash was really pleased to see someone else in costume so he didn't feel so self-conscious.
Off to one side a filk session was going on, by Kerri-Ellen Kelly - one song she performed was Carmina Burana in Latin and Klingon!

The absolute high point of my Con came a bit later in the dealers' room. USS Cuchulain are an Irish Star Trek group, and they have built the central part of the bridge of the original Starship Enterprise - and they were letting anyone who wanted to either sit in the Captain's Chair or at the Helm. They even had jackets in various sizes in the Starfleet colours for people who wanted to be in uniform.
So I now have several photos (slightly blurry) where I'm sitting in the Captain's Chair of the Enterprise, dressed as a Jedi Librarian! It was so cool!

WorldCon Philharmonic Orchestra

When we went to LonCon in 2014, one of the highlights was the WorldCon Philharmonic Orchestra playing music from SF films, games and classical pieces.
On the Friday night of DublinCon, the Orchestra came together again to perform a variety of Irish themed music, and it was glorious!
They started with the Game of Thrones theme (filmed, of course, in Northern Ireland), and followed it up with the Return of the King Suite from The Lord of the Rings. Then there was Seasons of War from Worlds of Warcraft.
After that a flute soloist came on stage, Eimear McGeown, to play a selection from her CD Inis, with harp and bodhran accompaniment.
That was followed by Night on a Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky, and then Princess Leia's Theme and Jedi Steps from the Star Wars films.

After the interval (the CD of Inis was available to buy in the foyer, but I didn't fancy battling through the crowds), the second half opened with a world premiere.
Mary Talbot wrote an acclaimed graphic novel with her husband Bryan called Dotter of her Father's Eyes, about the life of Lucia Joyce, the daughter of James Joyce, in parallel with Mary's own life with her father, a Joycean scholar. The graphic novel is being turned into an opera with dance, and three extracts were performed - a dance between Lucia and a young man, young Mary trying to get her father's attention (I didn't realise until afterwards, but Mary's father was played by James Bacon, the Chair of DublinCon) and finally Lucia's death in an insane asylum.
This was followed by Claire de Lune by Debussy, with scenes of the moon's surface projected overhead, for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.
The song How Beautiful are thy Feet, from Handel's Messiah, was included because the first performance of the Messiah was in Dublin! And the ladies attending were asked to leave off their hooped petticoats, and the gentlemen to leave their swords at home, so that more people could be crammed into the venue!
It was, perhaps, inevitable that Danny Boy was included, but it was very well done, and it was followed by Mise Eire 'I Am Ireland' by Sean O Riada.
Back to SF with the theme from ET, followed by Star Trek through the Years for Guest of Honour Diane Duane.
And then we came to the final piece, for which the conductor swapped his ordinary baton for a green lightsaber baton - The Throne Room and End Title from Star Wars A New Hope.
What a fantastic evening!

According to the programme booklet, the producer of the evening was also responsible for the 2014 performance, and the performance of Thomas Bloch and Pauline Haas at EasterCon 2017, which was also very enjoyable.
Gary Lloyd, who composed the music for the Dotter of Her Father's Eyes opera, also composed The Bridge Redux, in memory of Iain Banks, which was performed at LonCon3.

Friday at WorldCon 3 - Irish Legends

The first thing the moderator made clear at the beginning of the Ireland's Legends and Lore panel was "We are not going to be talking about Darby O'Gill and the Little People."
What they were talking about was the Irish Origin Story, which is basically waves of immigration to the island of Ireland in the myths, and emigration in historic times.
They were also talking about oral tradition - if you say it, that makes it part of the tradition, and therefore true!
They talked about books that had influenced them, including a series by Michael Scott starting with Windlord. There were meant to be four books, one for each of the elements, and Earthlord and Firelord came out - but there were members of the panel who are still waiting hopefully for Sealord to finish off the series!
They also questioned why stories of the old gods are becoming popular again, and came up with two answers. The first was "The world is dying and the old gods are resurging" and the second was that the Irish are not ashamed of their own culture any more.
People in the audience asked for recommendations of places to visit in Ireland, and Dowth passage tomb was mentioned. It's about the same size as the more famous Newgrange and Knowth tombs, and was built at about the same time, but is far less touristy.
Loughcrew was also recommended - one of the cairns is aligned towards the spring and autumn equinoxes and Lough Gur near Limerick is a prehistoric settlement with a stone circle.
Online, anyone interested can find out more at www.duchas.ie which is a unique Irish folklore collection. Other useful websites are celt.ie, an online resource for Irish history, literature and politics, and The Irish Pagan School. Lora O'Brien, on the panel, teaches some of the courses there.

Friday at WorldCon 2 - Angels, Demons and Tie-in Novels

A pause for lunch, and I found myself having a lovely chat with Ada Palmer's dad. He was very proud of his Hugo winning daughter (who was sitting with friends on the other side of the large round table)!
Then it was off to queue for the Angels and Demons: Christian Mysticism in Fantasy panel. This was the one where I was right at the end of the queue - I just managed to squeeze in by sitting on the windowsill!
The panel member I really wanted to see here was Brother Guy Consolmagno, Jesuit and official Vatican astronomer.
He related the story of a meeting he'd had with Lois McMaster Bujold at a previous Con, when she realised that he was a Jesuit, and hoped he wasn't offended by some of the things she'd written. He answered that he was also a physicist - and she had faster than light travel in her books....
One of the topics of discussion was what an author does when they leave religion out of their fictional societies. The obvious example (which I hadn't actually thought about before) was Pern. Who teaches the children? The Harpers! Who performs the rituals that people go through in their lives? The Harpers! Who keeps the memory of the planet's history? The Harpers! And then the question was asked - what if they were the baddies, manipulating Pernese society for their own ends?
Brother Guy also suggested that heresy was really the emphasis of one truth at the expense of others, which gave me food for thought. And he said that the religion in A Canticle for Liebowicz was too nice!
The panel talked about myth, and suggested that the stories were a way of describing the natural world so it made sense. For instance in Ancient Greek myth there is the Medusa with snaky hair. Could this also relate to the octopus?
In a previous panel on Cultural Appropriation there had been some discussion about taking parts of a culture without asking permission, and the same could be said about religions - taking the cool parts out of context. It wasn't such a problem for Christianity, which is not threatened, but it's different for minority religions.
Finally there were recommendations of books that dealt with religion in fantasy well, and these included The Sparrow by Mary Russell (Jesuits in Space), and Jo Walton's Lent.

I didn't need to queue for the next panel, which was Expanding the Storyverse with Tie-In Novels. This was the only chance I got all weekend to see guest of honour Diane Duane, and it was lovely to see her on the same panel as Pat Cadigan. I saw Pat Cadigan at EasterCon in Birmingham, and she was a brilliant speaker. Now, she was whizzing round the Con on a mobility scooter and introduced herself by saying "I'm Pat Cadigan, bitches!"
I love Diane Duane's Star Trek novels, so it was great fun to hear her talk about that. The panel also talked about difficulties they had had with the studios, like the one which read the tie-in novel and told the author she hadn't put a certain thing into it that they wanted in it - but they wouldn't tell her what it was in case the information leaked to the public before they were ready! Or the tie-in novels that all had to be 95,000 words, so the authors would go through the manuscripts taking out all the contractions so they got two words instead of one.