Introduction

Hi there, and welcome to the post-Hugo-winning now traditional giant Worldcon report issue of Emerald City. This issue is a little light on books, but crammed full of stuff about Noreascon 4. If this isn’t to your taste, normal service will be resumed next month. But the Worldcon issue of Emerald City has had the highest hit counts of the year for some time now so I think I’m doing something right with this.

Not forgetting:

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

You guys are awesome. As Frank Wu once said, "I love you all!!!"

Due to the huge amount of Worldcon coverage, there’s no mainstream book or translated book in this issue. However, we do have the start of a new series. As part of the run-up to Interaction I am asking fans around Europe to write about science fiction (and fandom) in their countries. Interaction is, after all, a European Worldcon, not just a Scottish one. Our promotions office is in Ireland, our servers are based in Norway and one of the Co-Chairs lives in The Netherlands. With any luck, by the time we get to Glasgow, we’ll have a collection of articles about SF in twelve countries around Europe. We kick off this issue with Jukka Halme talking about Finland.

In this issue

Who, Me? – C’mon, pinch me, surely we didn’t really win a Hugo

Lobsters in Space – Worldcon reportage that doesn’t involve my doing Tigger impressions

Hugo Analysis – All of the other pointy, shiny things

My First Worldcon – Jeff Vandermeer sums up a new experience

Past Painting Future – Judith Clute looks at the N4 Retro Art Show

Regency Magic – Susanna Clarke provides some very elegant fantasy

Life’s A Gas (Giant) – Iain M. Banks contemplates life among the slow folk

War Against the Gods – Steven Erikson’s epic Malazan Empire series arrives in America

Once Upon a Bank – M.M. Buckner creates a fairy tale for the cyberpunk age

Sisters of Mercy – Rebecca Locksley creates an interesting family

Interview: Old Earth Books - Cheryl talks to Mike Walsh

Short Stuff – Short Fiction from Avram Davidson, M. John Harrison, Hannu Rajaniemi and TTA Press

The World of Finndom – Jukka Halme opens up our series on SF around Europe with a look at his native Finland

Miscellany – All those Worldcon awards, and more

Footnote – The End

Who, me?

Well knock me down with a feather. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

General comments on the Hugo ceremony will follow later. This, quite shamelessly and unapologetically, is about me, Kevin and Anne.

So there I was sat in the nominee section with Charlie Stross and Bob Eggleton. Kevin was busy elsewhere and Anne was off being Neil Gaiman’s brain. I’m looking down at my Palm as they announce the Best Fanzine nominees. After all, it isn’t done to applaud yourself. Suddenly there is this big gasp from the audience. I look up. Jack Speer is gamely carrying on with opening the envelope, but Neil is looking up at the heavens as if he’s about to be struck down by lightning. "What’s happening?" I ask people, "what’s all the muttering and laughter about?" No one will tell me. Then Jack announces that I have won and the whole incident goes out of my mind.

Sometime later I am wandering around the Sheraton and people keep asking me how it felt when I saw my name flash up. Slowly but surely the awful truth dawns on me. Some poor geek in Tech accidentally flashed up the winner of Best Fanzine before Jack had a chance to open the envelope. And I was the only person in the auditorium who didn’t see it.

So off I went up on stage. People told me afterwards that I looked deliriously happy. I certainly didn’t hear anyone cheering, even though many people told me that they had been. Beth Gwinn said I looked like it was a dream come true, and it was.

Up on stage, and away from the mike, Jack Speer looked at me mischievously and asked me if I really wanted the rocket. There was only one answer to that. And then I had to say something. I had actually scripted two speeches, one for each Hugo I’d been nominated for, but one was more important than the other and I had to do some quick edits. I also forgot a few key points. Here is approximately what I meant to say.

It used to be traditional for Martin Hoare to collect this award. That was in the days before Dave Langford moved himself up a weight class in his ceaseless quest to win more Hugos than Charles Brown. But it would only be appropriate if Martin were up here now, because this is all his fault.

Twenty years ago, when I was a young and naïve computer programmer, my boss, a long-haired, beer-swilling Oxford graduate named Martin, told me that I had the makings of a science fiction fan. "You should come to an Eastercon," he said, "you’ll enjoy it. I’ll introduce you to my friend Dave, he’s quite funny."

So I went, and I did enjoy it. I met John Brunner. And two young lads called Neil Gaiman and Kim Newman, who had just published their first book, something called Ghastly Beyond Belief. Dave was indeed quite funny, and also a tremendous inspiration to a young fanzine editor.

I didn’t go to many cons after that. There had been a Hawklords concert at the Eastercon and it took a while for my hearing to recover. But when I got a job in Australia I knew that science fiction fandom would be a good place to make new friends and keep in touch with old ones. As a result Emerald City was born. And now here I am.

So thank you very much to Martin, and to Dave, without whom I would not be here today. Thank you also to Anne Murphy, my proofreader, and to Kevin Standlee, without whose enthusiasm and encouragement I would have not have kept publishing this long. And thank you most of all to my readers, and everyone who voted for me. Thank you!

The post-ceremony photo shoot was a bit of a scrum, and having people shoot up at us while we are on stage makes me look like I have about twice as many double chins as I actually have. Anne was already about, able to leave Neil to the media for a few minutes, and Kevin got through the crowds in the end. Chris Barkley kindly took some pictures of the three of us. You have doubtless already seen one on the Emerald City home page. Frank Wu and Jay Lake were busy doing Bob Eggleton impressions with their hair, much to the delight of the assembled paparazzi. The press all wanted to talk to Neil. I don’t remember seeing Lois at all. I think she was submerged in happy fans.

Here’s a piece of advice for you. Even if you think that you have no chance whatsoever of winning a Hugo you have been nominated for, eat lots at the pre-ceremony reception. I was way too busy taking photos. But I hadn’t eaten since having lunch with Jeff and Ann Vandermeer, and by the time I got to the Hugo Losers’ Party it was heaving and there was a mob around the food. I went in search of something else, and discovered it was midnight and all of the restaurants were closed. Fortunately Farah Mendlesohn and Liz Williams found me and rescued me before I fainted. This is not a good way to celebrate winning a Hugo.

The next few days were decidedly crazy. My email in box filled up with messages of congratulation, many from people I had never heard of, and from all over the world. It was impossible to walk more than about 10 yards inside the convention center without someone stopping me and congratulating me. It was an amazing experience. Langford tells me that people start getting bored with you after the first half dozen wins or so. I shall try very hard not to get boring.

(I did actually consider retiring, but in his Guest of Honor interview Peter Weston revealed what happens when you fold a long-running and well-loved fanzine. "It is rather sad," he said, "but then people ask you to chair a Worldcon." I think I’ll just keep publishing.)

Which brings me to a very important question. Next year Kevin is managing the Events Division, and I am serving as his PA. He is not on the Hugo Administration Sub-committee, but he does have management responsibility for its operations. By WSFS rules, he cannot even see the votes, let alone influence them. However, fandom has a bad habit of seeing conspiracy everywhere and given the reaction in some quarters to my win (of which more later) I am anxious not to bring the Hugos into disrepute. I am therefore considering declining nomination, should I be nominated. I would appreciate your views on this.

On the one hand, were I a potential nominee, I’d not want my competition to withdraw. I have always maintained that I want to beat Dave Langford fair and square, not because he has taken himself out of the running (and that is an ambition yet to be achieved). But on the other hand I will be very busy at Interaction helping Kevin run Events and I don’t want that to suffer because I’m being distracted by being a Hugo nominee. And, as I said, I don’t want there to be any suspicion of voting irregularity. The success of the Worldcon, and the good reputation of the Hugos, is far more important than my winning a rocket. I would be particularly interested in hearing from past Hugo administrators and from my potential fellow nominees.

I always knew that if I won a Hugo it would be vastly unpopular in certain quarters. Having someone post a vituperative rant about me all over the Internet was no surprise at all. I should note to begin with that many people who produce fanzines are my friends, starting, of course, with Dave Langford. Mike Glyer and Bob Devney have also been good friends for some time. Steve Davies and Giulia de Cesare have stayed at my house and I at theirs. Guy Lillian has been hugely complimentary about Emerald City, and Richard and Nicki Lynch have always been very gracious fellow nominees. Alison Scott invited me to the Plokta Cabal’s post-Hugo party. Fanzine editors are, in general, very nice people.

Unfortunately there is a small group of people who think that they are the true guardians of fannish tradition, and that anyone who breaks their rules is a potential antichrist who must be opposed at every turn. Emerald City breaks just about every rule that they have. It is published on the Internet rather than sent through the mail. It is free, rather than exchanged for "the usual". It doesn’t have a letter column. And worst of all it is actually about science fiction. Having such a publication win the Best Fanzine Hugo is causing certain people to have major heart failure. The Whore of Babylon (that’s me) has triumphed and the End of the Fannish World is Nigh. How sad for them.

For the most part I’m trying to stay out of this. If people want to set themselves up as "trufen" and insist that everyone else produce fanzines the way that they say, well that’s their right. But I also have the right to ignore them. The only thing that really annoyed me was the guy who claimed that Bruce Gillespie’s SF Commentary was a proper fanzine because it contained real SF criticism whereas Emerald City just contained worthless book reviews. But there is a serious point behind all this, and it is as follows.

I don’t break sacred fannish traditions out of ignorance and a love of vandalism. I break them because I’ve thought about them. I had eight years of producing a paper fanzine, on a mimeo duplicator, which I posted to subscribers and traded with other editors. It wasn’t a science fiction fanzine, so the trufen crowd won’t accept that it was a real fanzine — one of the myths that sustains them in their bunker is that SF is the only community that ever produced fanzines. But I have done the fanzine publishing thing. When I came to start Emerald City I knew that I had neither the time nor the money nor the resources to do that again. Email, and later the Internet, allowed me to publish much more economically.

And I was right. Thanks to the Internet we are seeing a flourishing of fan writing such as has never been seen before. More con reports have been written about Noreascon 4 than any other Worldcon. Many of them have been by authors as well as fans. The trufen won’t recognize a blog or LiveJournal account as a fanzine, but what it contains is fan writing nonetheless.

Now you can quite fairly say that Emerald City is elitist in its own way. It doesn’t carry fan fiction, it rarely touches on TV or film or art, or even tie-in books. These are things that do not interest me much. But the difference (I hope) between me and the trufen is that I don’t maintain that what I do is the only way that fanzines should be. I revel in diversity. Emerald City might not be the sort of zine that everyone wants to read, but it will defend to the death the right of all science fiction fans to pub their ish on whatever subject they see fit, in whatever medium they see fit.

Lobsters in Space

Three years ago I commented that Philadelphia might have the perfect Worldcon site. Boston, however, runs it close. There are points in favor of both locations.

The Hynes convention center itself is an exceptionally boring building. The Philadelphia convention center is built into an old railway station and has a Victorian exuberance to its architecture. The Hynes is all blocky, bricky functionality. It does the minimum necessary to fulfill the needs. It is huge, but it is on three floors and can be a little confusing.

Where Boston scores is in the surrounding neighborhood. Downtown Philadelphia was somewhat intimidating, and the convenient market closed down over the holiday weekend. The Hynes is embedded in a high class shopping mall that has everything from Krispy Kreme donuts to Legal Sea Food (lobsters, yay!!!), not to mention some very nice shopping. If my bank account hadn’t been seriously in the red during the trip I would have spent a lot of money on clothes. The surrounding streets are full of restaurants of all kinds, and yet more shops. When packing to leave on Monday night I realized I had forgotten to buy the strapless bra I needed for the Hugo ceremony. At most Worldcon locations that would have been a disaster. In Boston I just trotted round to the nearest department store.

The convention was using two hotels, a Sheraton that connected directly to the convention center, and a Marriott that connected to the mall via a skywalk. I stayed in the Hilton, just across the road from the Sheraton, and I think I got the best deal. Of course I was there because I could get some nights free on Hilton points, making the stay cheaper than using the con hotels, but having seen the rooms that Farah Mendlesohn (Sheraton) and Liz Williams (Marriott) got I have to say that the Hilton was by far the most spacious of the three. It also had a very good corned beef hash for breakfast.

I have heard from several people that the bar in the Sheraton was terrible. The service was slow and rude, and they apparently ran out of Guinness on Saturday. Like many an Eastercon hotel before them, they had been warned how much fans drink, and they chose not to believe the warnings. There were also huge queues for check-in on Thursday (maybe Friday as well, I can’t remember). They double-booked Neil Gaiman with a wedding and the Gaylaxian party. They charged $9.95/day for Internet access whereas the Hilton charged $9.95/week. The video check-out system was broken on Monday and Tuesday. Lots of people apparently had trouble with their bills. There were reports of security problems. The performance of the hotel was so bad that Deb Geisler commented publicly on it on the convention blog. I hope that someone from Sheraton corporate HQ is reading this. I haven’t heard of such a poor hotel performance at a Worldcon in a long time.

The Marriott, on the other hand, appeared to get things right. And they had a sushi bar. I can forgive a lot for good sushi.

One serious problem with the site was signage. At the beginning of the con there was very little of it. More started to appear later on, but many people never discovered the direct connections between the third floor of the Sheraton and the second floor of the convention center (where the ConCourse and Dealers’ Room were). This wasn’t helped by the fact the Registration was on the first floor of the Hynes, so people’s first experience of the con was heading for there.

This was by no means entirely the fault of the convention. They had planned to have signs. Indeed, their space usage plans (and prime dealer space allocation) were all based on people coming in direct from the Sheraton. But the convention center wanted $30,000 to put up signs, so the con bought a sign printer. Which promptly expired on them and took two days to repair. Which is why the signage was all late. Sometimes you just can’t win.

In past Worldcon reports you may have heard me talk at length about what I call the Hall 2 Problem. Most Worldcons make use of three major open spaces: the Dealers’ Room, the Art Show, and the Exhibits Hall. In almost every Worldcon I have been to, the Exhibits area has been a disaster. David Levine quotes Teresa Nielsen Hayden as complaining that San Antonio had "too much white space", but it was positively crowded compared to the Exhibit Hall in Philadelphia. The problem is that most Worldcons just take in the Worldcon History exhibits, add a few fan tables, and don’t care much after that. ConJosé made the space look busier by putting autographing in it. But it was still very dull. It wasn’t an area where you would spend any great deal of time, except in a queue.

So Noreascon 4 decided to attack the Hall 2 Problem. I don’t think they killed it, but they certainly won by a knockout.

To start with they made a serious attempt to get exhibits in. There was a NASA stand, and a really good costume exhibit. The place was decorated, and pathways through it designed to make it look busy. They put the Fanzine lounge in there, and the Internet lounge. Because they had wi-fi access, and because of a lack of funds for computers, there were not many terminals, and unless you had mobility problems you had to stand to use them. There have been some complaints about this, but it sure kept people from hogging the terminals.

Another clever use of space was to put several of the con offices in Hall 2. Newsletter was there, as were Exhibits themselves. The Masquerade office was a table next to the costume exhibit (though there was an Events office as well for storage). This helped make the area look busy, made the con staff easy to find, and freed up rooms for use in programming.

But the best thing of all about the area, which N4 called the ConCourse, was The Mended Drum. Believe it or not, the con actually went through the effort of building a mock mediaeval tavern in Hall 2. They had reasonable food (though at the usual extortionate convention center prices - $2 for a Snickers bar!) and they did not run out of Guinness. Plus some mad people had loads of fun making up the scenery.

The tavern was used for a lot of programming. As well as Kaffeklatsches they had "Literary Beer" sessions in the Drum. And in the evening Tech piped live coverage of the major events into the Drum. Savvy con-goers quickly realized that the sound in the Drum was far better than in the auditorium so the place was packed every night.

All in all it was the best Exhibits area I have ever seen at a Worldcon. I think it could still do with a few more commercial exhibits, and a little more dynamism. I gather than Interaction has some interesting ideas along those lines. But N4 has raised the bar for quality of Exhibits. I hope that other Worldcons at least manage to live up to the standard they have set (and this is kind of appropriate because Kevin tells me that he thinks Noreascon 3 was the first Worldcon to have a specific Exhibits hall).

One of the first things that happens when you arrive at a Worldcon is that you get your membership badge and publications. This can often set the tone for the rest of the convention. I was pretty confident here. Sharon Sbarsky did a superb job on Registration at Chicon 2000, and with her in charge of the whole Member Services Division I was expecting everything to run smoothly. And so it did.

The only comments I have seen about N4’s Registration are that it was so quiet it gave the impression that the con would be very small, and embarrassingly that it was much better than ConJosé. Still, I’m not entirely surprised by that, and at least it means that people are starting to forget how truly awful Registration was at ConFrancisco.

The names on the badges were blessedly readable for once, though not quite as large as ConJosé’s. The badge itself was a large laminate with a clip being the only attachment option. Fortunately the badge was just small enough to fit into my handy ConJosé badge holder, which I now take to every Worldcon.

The Souvenir Book (and I am stopping calling it a "program book" because there are some foolish people out there who think it should actually contain the program — the production quality would suffer badly if it did), edited by Guy Lillian III, is a splendid example of the species. Toronto’s Souvenir Book was an absolute disgrace (I can’t say this too often: it was), both in its quality and the way in which it was deliberately rude to both its contributors and the World Science Fiction Society. In contrast Boston’s has just about everything right. It is quite beautiful, has nicely balanced content, and even has the "long list" of past Worldcons spot on, though of course Mark Olson would have died of embarrassment if it was not.

Sadly I can’t say the same for what N4 called the Convention Guide. You’ll note that the term "pocket program" has gone out of the window, and understandably so. Even Godzilla would have trouble getting this monster into his pocket. Most of it was the program schedule. The majority of fans were, of course, expecting some sort of small, light program grid that they could carry around with them. But, as Deb Geisler explained at the Gripe Session, there was so much program that they couldn’t manage to fit it onto daily grids. Is there such a thing as too much program at a convention? I think we may have just found a definition of when this might be so.

The other problem with the Convention Guide is that it tended to describe where important places were rather than state is clearly. You need to have a bunch of paragraphs explaining that there are such things as an Events office or a photo gallery, but you should say clearly at the bottom H201, or 3^rd Floor Corridor. This publication wasn’t up to the high standards set by the convention.

The restaurant guide looked pretty good, but to be honest it was almost superfluous. There were so many good places to eat just in the block around the convention center that no one needed to look further away unless they had serious dietary restrictions or were very short of cash. I’m told that several of the vendors in the mall’s food court shut down early on some days because they ran out of food, which just shows you how far people went to eat.

The newsletter was churned out on a regular schedule and there were always plenty of copies available, from the main stand in the ConCourse if nowhere else. It was functional rather than scintillatingly entertaining, but that is the curse of the Worldcon newsletter editor: you have a job to do and much of the time it is boring.

What I did miss was a decent hoax newsletter. The newsletter team themselves made a game effort, but they were a little busy and very tired so they can be forgiven for not producing something brilliant. I know that the Plokta Cabal are not doing the newsletter next year, so I’m looking forward to them doing something good on the hoax front.

Of course Worldcon just isn’t the same without the Daily Frefanzine. Sam Konkin, we miss you.

Something that N4 pioneered was a convention blog. They started up a month or so before the con with a bunch of announcements, but come con time they opened up a new blog with invited contributors, including author Michael Burnstein. Naturally those of us who were already planning to do blogs and Live Journals did so anyway, but Leslie Turek finally caught on to that and started linking through to other people’s coverage as well. As I think I have said already, this was the best-reported Worldcon ever.

Obviously reading Worldcon reports on the Internet can’t in any way replicate the experience of being there. Even if we did things like put up short video clips of masquerade entries and Hugo acceptance speeches I’m sure it would only whet people’s appetites for the real thing. I think the more coverage we can have, the more likely people outside North America will be to want to try to make it to the US and Canadian cons, and the more keen they will become on having a Worldcon of their own. Plus, of course, the American regulars will be less put out about overseas Worldcons. I’m hoping that Interaction can do a really good job here. Worldcon will always be an event that the majority of fans around the world cannot afford to go to. But giving it good Internet coverage will increase the numbers who make up their minds to get the money somehow, which will in turn help us lower prices, and it will make many more people feel part of the Worldcon community.

The convention started in the most embarrassing way possible: the auditorium wasn’t ready in time for opening ceremonies. A huge line developed at the door, stretching all the way around the rotunda and much further for all I know. Mike Glyer and I were stood halfway down the queue and were quietly giggling to ourselves. Oh, how the might of Boston fandom was fallen. Priscilla Olson scurried past muttering, "It’s a glitch, it wasn’t supposed to happen." Well no, I don’t suppose it was.

The reason for the delay is bound up with the nature of convention center-based Worldcons. In most cases there is no purpose-built theatre in which to hold major events. One has to be built in one of the exhibition halls, and that means building a stage, putting all the tech in place and so on. Despite working very hard in the past few days, N4 was about 20 minutes behind their final deadline. The Tech folks are not keen to take the rap for this, and that seems fair. One of the most commonly quoted problems with N4, if you talked to people working on it, was "horizontal communication", that is communication between the various divisions. The Tech people are inevitably the servants of many masters, and it appears that in the last few days before the con they had been run ragged with demands on their time.

The mark of a good convention, however (and I’ll probably say this several times) is not whether or not it has failures, but how it copes with them when it does. As I said, Opening Ceremonies were about 20 minutes late getting started. I don’t know how long they were scheduled to run, but probably some last minute cuts were made in the script because they got us all out in good time to go to the next set of program items.

I note with interest along the way that Peter Jarvis handed the Gavel of WSFS on to Deb Geisler (along with the traditional pile of silly presents). This is perhaps surprising because the word out of Toronto is that Jarvis has been kicked off the board of Torcon 3. See the Business Meeting section for more on this.

But anyway, N4 recovered well from an embarrassing start. And then, on Thursday evening, they blew us all away.

Normally nothing much happens on the Thursday night of a Worldcon. N4 was determined to do something about this, and they invented something called First Night. To a certain extent it was like the Wiscon Gathering writ large. Fan groups from all over the world were invited to reserve a booth and do something, anything, to entertain the crowds. All sorts of things were on offer. There was face painting, there was a magic show, there were blackjack tables, there was an artist doing a live demonstration, Ellen Kushner sang, Interaction ran a tombola, and Bob Devney was getting people to contribute to a fanzine.

Anne, who was working for the Science Fiction Oral History Association, had borrowed a few Hugo rockets and had set up a ring toss stall. Kevin tells me it was a lot harder than it looked, and of course no matter how well you did you could not win a Hugo that way. There were belly dancers (very popular) and quizzes and fortunetellers and a bouncy castle. One group was running an election for the "First Citizen of Fantopia." Rather parochially, if you voted they gave you a sticker with an American flag on it, implying that Worldcon was only for Americans. But most of their candidates were not American, and fandom duly voted Mary Shelly into the job. That’ll teach them.

It was phenomenal. I have never seen a Worldcon start with so much buzz. This didn’t just raise the bar, it put it way out of reach. I think it will be a long time before any Worldcon matches this. (Certainly we have no plans for such a thing in Glasgow.) Leslie Turek, whose brainchild this was, deserves enormous credit, although of course all of us con-runners were going round telling her how she had shown us up and given future Worldcons a target that they couldn’t hope to live up to.

Due to a breakdown of negotiations with this year’s Westercon, Locus ended up presenting the awards from the Locus Poll at N4 instead. But before they got started there was a brief interlude on behalf of the Cordwainer Smith Award. As I understand it, N4 had decided not to present this award at the Hugos, which is understandable because the Hugo ceremony is very long, but had then forgotten about it. So Charles Brown made space for it in his program slot. John Clute, en route to another panel, turned up to breathlessly announce that the award was going to the husband and wife team of Henry Kuttner and Catherine L. Moore.

I understand that from next year onwards the Cordwainer Smith Award will be presented at Readercon. I think this is a win-win for all involved. It is a great idea for an award (being presented to great writers who have been unjustly neglected) and Readercon is just the sort of place it will go down very well. And on behalf of the Hugo ceremony team at Interaction I have to say that we are much relieved. There are far too many people wanting a place in the Hugo ceremony for their award. No matter how good a claim they might have, we simply don’t have the space. Many thanks to Robert Silverberg, John Clute and the rest of the Cordwainer Smith team for coming up with this excellent solution.

So, on with the Locus Awards. Connie Willis was in charge once again. Some of the jokes seemed suspiciously familiar from last year in Seattle (even down to the Hawaiian dolls, which thankfully escaped unscathed this year), but I suspect that very few of the audience were at both events so it didn’t matter.

A more serious problem that Connie had was competition from a couple of British jokers, Mssrs. Gaiman and Pratchett, both of whom were in fine form. Latching on to the Hawaiian shirt theme, Neil apologized for wearing his usual black, something he does even in Hawaii itself. When someone in an elevator in Hawaii asked him if he wasn’t too hot in a leather jacket he responded, "But they told me at the airport I was in Denmark!"

Terry had a complaint. Well, two of them actually. He’s been writing books for adults for years, "with no more reward than a pile of money the size of St. Paul’s Cathedral." Now he has started doing books for kids, suddenly he is flooded with awards. Why? What’s wrong with his adult books? Furthermore he noted that despite the fact that Wee Free Men is full of miniaturized, foul-mouthed and scandalously behaved Glaswegian thugs, schools and libraries in America are actually recommending the book to youngsters instead of demanding that it be burned as they normally do. Terry is deeply disappointed, because having your book burned is really good for sales. Please contact your local Fundie group now and tell them to get their act together.

A less happy note was struck by the absence of Gardner Dozois. He and his friend Susan Casper had been in a taxi accident earlier in the week. Susan got away more or less unscathed, but Gardner’s shoulder was broken in three places, necessitating an emergency operation and a new titanium shoulder joint.

Cory Doctorow read his speech off a mobile phone. It took me a while to figure out what was going on, but some judicious monitoring of the airwaves revealed a highly compressed signal coming in from the direction of the Mended Drum. My spies later confirmed that Charlie Stross was sat in the bar frantically typing away and transmitting the speech to Cory in real time. Cory tells me that he is getting a Bluetooth implanted in his jaw and next time Charlie will be able to beam the speech directly into his mouth. Ah, the wonders of technology.

British jokers apart, the star of the show was Jennifer Brehl of Harper Collins. She is the editor for both Dan Simmons (unavailable to collect his Locus Award for Ilium due to being chained to a desk finishing Olympos) and Lois McMaster Bujold (delightedly accepting her Locus Award for Paladin of Souls and keeping her fingers crossed for a Hugo the next day). Brehl-edited books are doing an impressive job of sweeping up awards this year, and I’ve added her to my list of book editors who ought to be getting Hugo nominations. (And for those who are interested, she doesn’t look a bit like Tyreena Wingreen-Feif.)

Moving on quickly to Friday night, we come to the Retro Hugo ceremony. Knowing that the Retros are not exactly popular in some sections of fandom, N4 hit upon the brilliant strategy of combining the presentations with their Guest of Honor speeches. This meant that I had to be there to cover the event for Locus. Furthermore, Beth Gwinn told me that she was covering the Chesley Awards (a more regular Worldcon event) and that therefore I was official Locus photographer for the Retros. This meant that I needed to be seated down in front.

So I did the obvious thing and went to ask for a Press Ribbon so that I could get into the reserved seating area. And at this point we come to a lesson in Worldcon running. One of the defining features of a Worldcon is the vast number of volunteers it uses. It is great that so many people offer their time, but they don’t get much training and they can’t be expected to know everyone, even double-Hugo nominees. If Chris Barkley had been in the Press Office when I turned up I would have got a ribbon without any trouble. He was, after all, my boss at Press Office last year. Peggy Rae Sapienza, who was running it this year, would also have known me. But the ordinary staff are told not to give a press ribbon to anyone without evidence of their press status, and I don’t have a Locus business card (yet, please Charles…). They are probably also told specifically not to give press ribbons to fanzine editors, because young and naïve faneds are in the habit of trying to acquire press ribbons and even free memberships on the grounds that they are important journalists.

So, no press ribbon for me. I go looking for somewhere to sit up front, and very quickly a polite steward ushers me away from the reserved seating. What do I do? I pull rank. I go and talk to Deb Geisler who says, "Sure, sit behind me." Problem solved.

Not only that, but I learned on Saturday that the issue had been discussed at the Executive meeting and that my press ribbon was waiting to be picked up.

The lessons here are multiple. The most important thing is that sometimes things will go wrong simply because a volunteer doesn’t know who people are. Ideally you want well-informed people in the right places, but there are never enough of them to go around. Lesson two is, of course, that if something goes wrong then you try to fix it. And lesson three is for attendees. If you run into someone being obstructive it is probably because they have been given very simple instructions that they are not supposed to deviate from. In such situations, don’t get mad, find someone who knows you, explain the problem, and ask to get it sorted. In all probability it will be.

Meanwhile, back with the Retros. Given that we were going back in time to 1954, the obvious theme was time travel. Peter Weston tried gamely to conduct a session of interviews, but he kept being interrupted by Bob Eggleton (a.k.a. The Dude) who wanted to drag us back in time and present a few more awards. Suitable time travel music was presented by The Lothars, who had an actual theramin, the sort of thing that makes those spooky woo-woo noises that they used in SF movies before the synthesizer was invented. There are those who think that the theramin rivals the bagpipes for awfulness of noise, and I’m not sure I’d want to listen to one for too long, but as a time machine noise it was just perfect. The staging was good too. Susan de Guardiola and partner did a fine period dance, and all of the staff involved with the Retros were dressed in black and white.

It was in the interviews that we con-goers first discovered what a delightful and mischievous old fellow William Tenn is. Weston did, of course, have to ask him where the pen name came from. Phil Klass (his real name) explained that he just tried a different pen name with each story he submitted, and Tenn was the first name to achieve a sale. Once he had done so, of course, the editors wanted more "William Tenn" stories, so Klass was stuck with the name.

Tenn/Klass then went on to tell a succession of amusing stories about the great magazine editors, John W. Campbell and Horace Gold. Campbell, as usual, came out rather badly. It is well known that he thought rather a lot of himself. Gold, on the other hand, seems to have been a nicer fellow, even to the extent of advancing Klass $500 for an unwritten story to help him out with medical bills.

The Retro awards went largely as expected. There’s a full list in the Miscellany section, but I want to note a few things. It was a good move, I thought, to have James Bacon, the Irish TAFF delegate, to accept on behalf of James White, another famous Irishman who at the time was famous for his fan art, not his fiction. Arthur C. Clarke scored a notable coup taking the Short Story Hugo on a knockout (no redistribution of preferences necessary) and James Blish also did well, scooping the other two short fiction prizes. With so many of the winners being too infirm, or in many cases too dead, to attend, it was great to see Blish’s children, Ben and Beth, attend the ceremony on his behalf. Ray Bradbury won Best Novel fairly comfortably with Fahrenheit 451, and quite right too.

The final interview saw Terry Pratchett turn the tables on Peter Weston and interview him. This proved to be the best entertainment of the night. The two men had already warmed up when Weston interviewed Pratchett, and were well into a riff about their first Eastercon (was it 1963 or 64?). Weston revealed that an issue of one of his fanzines had sold on eBay for $250 because it contained an article by the young Pratchett. The star moment came when Terry started asking Peter about manufacturing the Hugo, something that Weston has done almost every year since 1984. "Don’t you have a spare somewhere?" asked Terry. "I have lots of money." The probably pre-planned skit ended up with Pratchett on his knees and Weston trying his best not to laugh and look horrified instead.

If there was one thing that went badly wrong at the Retros it was the photo session at the end. No one had thought that people might want to take photos, the winners ran off in all directions, and the auditorium lights never came up properly. I suspect that Charles Brown won’t be too pleased with my attempts at being the official photographer. That was one thing that there was no chance to fix later. Oh well.

Since the Retro Hugo results were announced (they are in the Miscellany section) there have been the usual complaints of "things were so much better back then." Doubtless the same will happen when we are old and doddery. I can just imagine us moaning away, 30 years or so from now. "Oh, you young folks, you go on about these hot young writers like Madelaine Gaiman, Jonathan Cain and Sierra Glyer. But I remember back in the 90’s. We had Lois McMaster Bujold then, you know. And we had to read books on paper. Turning the pages by hand, I’ll have you know."

Well, those are the breaks. It is the best looking Worldcon Dealers’ Room I have seen in a long time, and my bank balance is negative. Fortunately there were not that many books that I wanted to buy. But it was a good Dealers’ Room. And I did go delving for second hand stuff. I want to say a particular thank you to the folks from Eyrie House Books for trotting back to their shop on Friday night and fetching me everything they had by Phyllis Gotlieb.

The contents of the Dealers’ Room were more or less as expected. There were t-shirts, there was jewelry, there were costumes, there were videos, but most of all there were lots and lots and lots of books. It made me happy just looking at it.

What we could have done with was a map. There was a list of dealers in the Convention Guide, but no indication as to where they could be found. It took me a long time to track down Red Jacket Press, for example.

The dealers themselves always complain. It is traditional. They complained about the seats they had been given, for which once again ludicrous convention center prices can be blamed. (A Chicon 2000 staffer noted on the N4 blog that they had threatened to go and buy chairs from a store because it would be cheaper than the convention center rental fees, which is the sort of thing you have to do with convention centers to get the price down.) But mostly the dealers complained about sales. This year the complaint was "it could have been better" rather than "it was a disaster." I suspect that under the current economic conditions this is the best we could have hoped for.

Despite certain obvious distractions, I do think that I remember some of the Hugo ceremony. I spent most of the reception snapping pictures of the many fine dresses on show, the best of which can be seen in the photo section of the web site. Congratulations to Aynjel Kaye for winning this year’s Emerald City Fashion Award.

Talking of fashion, Neil looked rather splendid. As a man who is never more at home than in jeans, t-shirt and a leather jacket, he tends not to look his best in a suit. However, as well as acting as Neil’s brain, Anne had taken on the post of his fashion advisor and I must admit that he looks rather good in tails (which Anne tells me were Neil’s idea). Indeed, he looked rather like I imagined Jonathan Strange to look (despite Susanna Clarke’s protestations to the contrary, I just can’t see Strange with red hair).

Neil opened the show with a succession of Langford jokes. This went down very well with the audience, for whom Dave is a much-loved but little-seen figure. There was also a little interlude about use of language in which Neil warned nominees against embarrassing themselves by uttering profanities in their acceptance speeches. There was an amused silence, into which Neil said, "well, it was either that or say, ‘fuck, I’m MC’ing the Hugos.’" The entire audience collapsed, and Neil proceeded to have them in the palm of his hand for the rest of the evening.

The length of the Hugo ceremony is always a matter of great contention. With the Cordwainer Smith Award having decamped to Readercon that removed one item from the program, but there is still a fair amount of stuff to get through before you get to the actual Hugos. I’m sure that the First Fandom people haven’t always presented quite so many awards in their slot. But while one might occasionally question why some of those of those "other awards" are in the schedule, but I don’t think anyone would have wanted to deny a place in the limelight to this year’s Big Heart winner. Erwin Strauss (a.k.a. Filthy Pierre) has been attending Worldcons seemingly forever. He invented the voodoo board, he provides the racks in which clubs and conventions place fliers, and he compiles a nightly party guide. Most importantly, he turns up, does his work, never gets involved in fannish politics, and never asks for any reward. Worldcon could not ask for a more tireless and selfless worker. Many of us, including me, gave him a standing ovation. He deserved it.

Between the other awards and the Hugos, the N4 committee had scheduled a little light entertainment. It ran fifteen minutes over time, but no one complained. Indeed, nominees aside, we would probably have been happy to sit and listen to Robert Silverberg for another half hour. It turns out that Silverberg is the only person to have attended every Hugo ceremony, and he had a wealth of amusing stories about them, including the infamous Baltimore Crab Feast (although he politely refrained from uttering the awful word, Diamondvision). Hugo ceremonies are a lot quieter these days, and there’s a good reason why we don’t let the audience have food.

I want to put in a special word here about Jay Lake and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. A few people reporting on the convention on the Internet have commented on the fast that the phrase "not a Hugo Award" is always attached to reports of this award and have suggested that there is some sort of campaign to belittle Jay and/or the award. This is certainly not true. Think about it from the other angle. The award isn’t a Hugo. It is sponsored by Dell Magazines. What is supposed to be happening is that this is being made clear and Dell’s involvement is being highlighted. They deserve to be acknowledged.

Frank Wu made by far the best acceptance of the night, bounding onto the stage and yelling out, "I love you all!!!" before being led off in a daze. Ginjer Buchanan, in presenting Best Professional Editor, made a rousing plea for recognition of book editors. More on this in the Hugo Analysis. Gardner Dozois could, of course, not be present at the ceremony. Jack Dann, in accepting the award on his behalf, reported that he had spoken to Gardner on the phone that day and he was now back home and recovering well. Gardner is now officially bionic.

As with last year, no one from WETA or NewLine was able to attend the convention. However, a member of the Lord of the Rings team did collect the expected Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) prize. Norman Cates, the DUFF delegate, is a New Zealand fan who had worked on the film. To be precise, he had been responsible for making the elf ears. Every single one of them. This is a man who has intimate knowledge of Orlando Bloom’s ears. Not many people can claim that.

George Martin got to present Short Story this year, and carrying on the joke from Toronto he got out a tape measure to see whether there is indeed a Big One, or whether all Hugos are created equal. The real joke, however, is that this year’s Hugos are not all equal. The Hugo base, designed by Scott Lefton, features a copper and brass tower of flame on which the Hugo rocket is rising into space. Each set of flames was individually sculpted, so it is indeed possible that some of this year’s Hugos are bigger than others.

By the way, Lefton and Frank Wu are good friends. Having been involved with the bases, Scott knew that Frank had won a week or two before the con. Having been in a similar position regarding Neil’s Best Novel win in 2002, I know how hard it is to keep that sort of thing secret. My sympathies, Scott.

My heart goes out to Catherine Asaro. It must be every presenter’s nightmare to miss out one of the nominee names. And hey, she had six to read. That’s not normal. But to have your mistake compounded by having Tech flash up the winner before you can open the envelope (again!) must just ruin your evening. Full marks to Neil for spotting the error and telling Asaro in time for her to correct her part of the job. I think the Tech guys probably thought the extra name she read out was the winner, which is why they flashed up the winner slide.

Lesson for future Hugo ceremony organizers. Do not use PowerPoint unless you know someone who can program it to give you a preview of the next slide before committing to it going up. And ideally do not use PowerPoint at all.

And that was pretty much it. Lois McMaster Bujold won Best Novel, as I expected. The Jennifer Brehl domination of the world continues. We all got photographed, despite the lack of organization, and then it was off in search of parties and food.

Rumblings that reached me afterward were that Charles Brown was not happy at Locus only getting one rocket. Normally they get one per editor. Apparently the BDP winners only got one rocket each as well, whereas there is normally one each for the Director and Producer. This is a real shame for Jenni Hall who is no longer with Locus and might have expected a rocket for her good work last year. And it is odd. Ben Yalow has been heard arguing that the award is for the work, not the editor. But the Best Related Book winner had three editors and they got a rocket each. In the past Richard and Nicki Lynch have got a Hugo each for Mimosa. Given the budget of a Worldcon, the rockets themselves don’t cost a lot, and I think it is admirable that Charles is trying to spread some of the apparently inevitable glory around his team. This seems like a bad corner to have cut.

As usual, I had difficulty finding the time to browse the art show. I finally got up there on Sunday afternoon, by which time much of the display had been taken down for the auction. There was still plenty left, however, and I was very impressed with the quality of the work on show. Here are the web sites of some of the fine artists whose work I saw on display.

Jody Lee: http://www.jodylee.net/

William O’Connor: http://www.wocillo.com/

Ruth Sanderson: http://www.ruthsanderson.com/

John Picacio: http://www.johnpicacio.com/

Stephen Youll: http://www.stephenyoull.com/.

The star pieces in the show, as far as I was concerned, were Michael Whelan’s covers for Joan Vinge’s The Summer Queen and The Snow Queen.

As I’m not a great expert on art, I asked Judith Clute to write something for me. I’m delighted to say that she chose to concentrate on N4’s excellent Retro Art Show. You can find her piece later in this issue.

Aside from a slight difficulty in finding it, due to it being squirreled away on the third floor, I heard no serious complaints about the art show. There are always complains about opening times, but you can’t run the auction and keep the show open all day Sunday so making a fuss is pointless. Frank Wu, who has rather more interest in art shows than me, said he was very impressed. All in all it seems to have been a very successful part of the convention. I understand that the total revenue for the show was around $134,000, excluding tax. That’s very impressive.

This is where it gets potentially embarrassing. There were a number of problems with the masquerade at N4. Kevin and I, who were backstage soaking up as much of the process as possible before having to run Events at Interaction, were wondering what was going to go wrong on our watch next year. Given that we’ll be making a lot of the decisions, we’ll also be in line for much of the blame if things do go bad.

But there are decisions to be made. Having been backstage at the event, and sat through the traditional post mortem panel item, I now know why Richard Hill and his team made most of the decisions that they did. Let me try to explain.

In recent years there has been a lot of criticism that costuming is losing its attraction for fans and that consequently masquerades can be scrapped. The rumor was that Torcon 3 had only 9 entries registered before the con. And of course Boston costumers are sick to death of tales of the masquerades at L.A. Con II and ConFrancisco that seemed to go on forever. So they made up their minds to ensure that they got a big show, and they succeeded.

Prior to the convention Richard had 33 entries, which is quite enough for a decent show. But that is never the end of it. There are always people who turn up at the convention saying that their costume is almost done and if they can have just a few more hours they should be able to enter. Should you turn them away, given that they may have spent weeks or months in preparation? It is a hard thing for a masquerade director to do. So Richard kept registration open until late Sunday afternoon, by which time he had 50 entries (three of whom later scratched).

So we had a good show in prospect. In particular there were 12 kiddie entries and around 20 novices. That’s all new blood, which is wonderful. But the large number of entries has costs. Firstly, knowing that he had a big show, Richard chose to start at 8:30 rather than 8:00 to give everyone more time to get ready. Secondly, he held registration open so long that there was no time to print a program for the audience. And finally backstage was packed solid. Kevin spent much of his time doing "look out for me, I’m a big, clumsy bear" impressions. It was chaos.

If you have a late start time, the last thing that you want is a delayed start, but that is just what we got. Kevin and I were talking to Byron Connell in the Green Room when Richard came in with the news, so I know that Green Room wasn’t an issue. I very much doubt that audience load-in was a problem as the auditorium was open in plenty of time. Probably there was some sort of Tech delay. I do hope that a judge being late back from dinner wasn’t the issue, but it has happened before.

The kids were great. There were some fine Pratchett costumes. Eric Weingart as Death of Dust Bunnies, "The Grim Sweeper", got a huge laugh. Michael J. Perlow, as a Thunderbirds character escaped from his strings ("Gone Wireless") clearly had star quality – he was irrepressible. And Best in Class went to Stephanie Sue Kastan as "Death of Rats goes to Worldcon."

But in order to make sure that the kids get their prizes before they go to bed, you need to get them judged and awarded straight away. Some fill-in had been arranged, but it was nowhere near enough. Poor Susan de Guardiola improvised as much as she could (and we all love that vampire sheep, Susan, Baa!!!) but in the end there was nothing to do but leave the stage empty and wait for the judges to make up their minds. For Interaction we are seriously considering having a separate kiddie judge or two so that we can get the main show started while the kids are being judged.

The adults had a lot to live up to after the superb kids, and sadly some of them failed. I know that there were a lot of novice entries, but even novices need to know the basics. No matter how good your costume is, just walking around the stage with no music doesn’t cut it at Worldcon level. The kids got it right. Adults should too.

Then again, there were some superb entries all through the classes. Here are a few of my favorites.

Margaret Gentile, as "Commissar-Colonel Ibram Gaunt", from Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000, had a fabulous costume. I was delighted to see her get the Best Workmanship (Novice) prize. My friends back at Games Workshop were over the moon and are hoping for some more Warhammer-inspired costumes in Glasgow.

"Blight, the Unseelie Fey", by David Agro, had some of the best make-up in the contest. Again a great achievement for a Novice, and a well-deserved Best in Class.

In the Journeyman class Sionna Klassen’s "Dragon Priestess" caught everyone’s eyes backstage. She looked fabulous, and did a great presentation as well. But she had some really stiff competition.

"Adventurers in Time", a large entry by J. Clinton Alvord, Brian Culver, Amy Johnson, Bonnie Kenderdine, Karl Winkler, Cheri Winkler and Carol Jean Zelman, had an amusing presentation involving famous historical persons and a time machine, but the star of their act was the time machine itself. It was clearly a labor of love. Much of the detail on it would never be seen on stage. My photos really don’t do it justice. They won Best in Class (Journeyman).

And that was something of a surprise, because "Arctic Circle", another big entry featuring Janet C. Johnson, Jill Eastlake, Don Eastlake, Carol Botteron, Pat Vandenberg, Alan Kent, Kate Waterous, Rob Hupp and John Hatch, was very good indeed. It won Best Workmanship (Journeyman), but no presentation award.

On to the Masters. "The Future Ikons", by Sandy Pettinger, Pierre Pettinger, D. Jeanette Holloman and John R. Blaker, was one for costuming connoisseurs. Each of the entrants had a pair of wings and they were so cunningly constructed that they flapped of their own accord as their wearers walked. Very clever but, unusually for this group of superb costumers, not in the frame this year.

The funniest entry of the night was "Not the Usual Unusual" by Jennie Faries, Mark Van Name, Marty Gear, Bobbi Gear, Vicki Warren, Ken Warren, Jeff Poretsky and Ron Robinson. This was another Discworld entry, which for some bizarre reason involved Tom Jones. Terry gave it first place in the special Discworld contest (which brought with it a $300 prize). I’m not sure if that was for the jokes or because Marty Gear was the absolute spitting image of Cohen the Barbarian.

Second in the Discworld competition (winning $200) was "A Pale Rider" by Chris Kramer and Matt Ragsdale, featuring Death on a superbly detailed motorbike (check the photos again) and a radio-controlled "Luggage" that ran about the stage with great glee, snapped its lid ferociously, and even waggled its legs. Unsurprisingly they won Best in Class (Master) and Best in Show (Workmanship).

So who won Best in Show? Like the audience, you’ll have to wait.

After the contestants have left the stage they normally go through a "fan photography" area in which fans who are competent with cameras, and members of the press, get to take high quality shots of the entrants. In his Worldcon review in SF Revu Ernest Lilley complains that this area was without proper lighting. But Ernest wasn’t actually there on the night. He’d had to go back home. What I understand happened is that provision of lighting had fallen through the cracks, but a couple of experienced photographers helped get things back on track by the time the show started. Sadly this was another example of N4 falling down on the photography front.

The half time entertainment was provided by someone doing a one-man version of Star Wars. I didn’t see the show as Kevin and I were backstage at the time, but I understand that the guy capered around with great enthusiasm and got lots of laughs. Personally I don’t like having fixed-duration acts at half time. It means you can’t bring the judges back quickly if they finish early. But this guy seemed very popular and the judges were anything but early. Yes, I know judging a masquerade is hard. I’ve done it myself once. But the judges need to understand that they are part of the show too. If they take ages in deliberating they ruin it for everyone else. There was yet another embarrassing blackout. And by the time we got done with the presentations it was 1:30 in the morning. Not surprisingly, only 100 or so hardened costuming fans stayed to the end.

The workmanship judges did have one very interesting idea. They were accompanied in their work by a guy with a camera who took close-up photos of really good work. What they wanted to do was put up slides showing why they gave out particular awards. If it had worked it would have been great, but apparently it delayed the judging process, and it further lengthened an already-late show. I’m hoping that we can figure out how to make this idea work at Interaction.

So, back to the big prize. Kevin confesses to being quite confused. We had seen all of the big master entries come through and get prizes. Were the judges really going to give Best in Show to "A Pale Rider", as well as both Best in Class prizes? I had a theory. "Arctic Circle" hadn’t got any prize in presentation. I figured that something wonderful was about to happen, and it did.

Let’s be clear about this. No one enters a Worldcon masquerade at Journeyman level expecting to win Best in Show. It just doesn’t happen. Especially when some of the people in your group are only Novices. But at N4 the formbook was stood on its head. Janet is a long time friend of mine (I think she’s been to an Eastercon or two thanks to London postings for work) and I was absolutely delighted for her. And of course Kevin and I were delighted too for our friends Don and Jill Eastlake, veteran con-runners both. Jill had directed the Time Machine event on Friday night, and Don was once again Chairman of the Business Meeting. That has to be the most remarkable event of the entire convention: the Chairman of the Business meeting won Best in Show at the masquerade. Who says that SMOFs are boring? Of course, Kevin now has to match Don’s achievement.

To wrap up I have a few Tech issues. Firstly, sound in parts of the auditorium was awful. Thanks to the Pratchett prize, there were a lot of comedy skit entries. In many cases the voiceover was inaudible. I don’t blame N4’s Tech for this. One look at the exposed pipes in the ceiling of the auditorium was enough to tell you that they were screwed from the start. But if costumers are going to do a comedy skit they need to make sure that their tape is very clear indeed. And in most cases good costumers do not make good comedians. Stick to the knitting, guys. (Or sewing, or whatever.)

Secondly, I spent a long time on Monday night discussing video issues with John Maizels, a guy from Sydney who has done camera and video work at many Worldcons. This year the video guys did something brilliant. They had a magic box that could do frame capture on the fly. So as each entry left the stage they were able to flash up a couple of stills from the performance, overlaid with the entry name. John tells me it is easy if you have the right box, but it impressed the hell out of the audience.

The real issue with video, however, is that with the now traditional use of big screens to help the audience see what is happening on stage, and the use of remote broadcast to hotel rooms or places like the Mended Drum (which was packed out on masquerade night), audience perception of an act is heavily dependent on camera coverage. The judges are OK. They sit down the front and they watch what the contestants are doing on stage. But almost everyone else watches the big screen, and what they see there is determined to a large extent by the decisions that the camera operators and their director make during the show. I think the time has come for people entering a Worldcon masquerade to start thinking about how they want to be filmed. Not everything you want will be possible, but I think a quiet word with the camera crew during rehearsals could be very beneficial.

So how will we do next year? I wish I knew. Given the debacle over the masquerade at Eastercon this year, I worry about the number of British costumers who are going to compete. Thankfully many Americans came up to me in Boston and said that they were thinking of taking part. And I know how popular anime cons are in Britain, and how big their Cos-Play competitions get. Giulia de Cesare and I are currently working on an assumption of somewhere between 10 and 60 entries. Either extreme would cause serious problems. Running a Worldcon masquerade ain’t easy, folks.

As I have already commented, there was a huge amount of programming at N4. So much so that the committee found it impossible to devise quick-reference program schedules that fitted on normal-sized paper. There can, I think, be such a think as too much programming.

That said, most of the con reports I have seen on the Internet go on at some length about the excellent panel items that they attended. Clearly the members were happy, and N4 has to be congratulated for that. As do the panel participants.

Of course you can’t please all of the people all of the time. One of the areas in which N4 appears to have done a less good job is programming for young writers. I had my ear well and truly bent about this by one irate young lady on Monday night. There was no writers’ workshop. My contact says she tackled Priscilla Olson, the Head of Programming, about this during a panel on Worldcon Orientation for SF Professionals. Priscilla reportedly responded that, "we don’t want to run that sort of convention." David Levine, who was on the panel, confirms that something along those lines may have been said, but in Priscilla’s defense he points out that her intention (as stated in email to writers before the con) was "we’d prefer not to have the writers sequestered away for most of the weekend."  There were some writer-related program items, but perhaps not as many as he would have liked. Certainly the Convention Guide, which listed panels under innumerable topics from science to gaming to filk to education, had no section on writing-related panels. My contact said that as a beginning writer she felt she was being made unwelcome at Worldcon, which is not the impression we want to create.

Talking of being made unwelcome, the panel title that caught my eye was "The Risks of Recruitment", in which the panelists were apparently to discuss the dangers of allowing new people into fandom. WHAT!!!! This is absolutely NOT the sort of message we ought to be sending out. By all means have a panel in which you talk about how recruitment can be handled. There are, after all, real problems. But don’t pre-judge the issue by assuming that things will go bad. This was an absolutely terrible panel to be running at a Worldcon. Kevin was on the panel and was able to put the case for bringing in new blood. Thankfully he tells me that there were not too many angry neos there, but goodness knows how many just looked at the write-up in the Convention Guide and felt unwanted.

Quite a few people came up to me at the convention and asked why I wasn’t on any panel items. I must confess that I didn’t go to the N4 web site and express an interest. I figured that it was likely that I’d be a Hugo nominee again and, given that it is traditional to use Hugo nominees on panel, I wanted to see if I would get invited. I didn’t. More to the point, when one panel asked if they could have me join them they were turned down. (They sneaked me on anyway, which was very kind of them but really not the done thing.)

I’m not too fussed about this. Looking at the people on the N4 programming team I’m not in the least surprised, fannish politics being what it is. It wasn’t worth complaining to Deb Geisler. But I note that I was not the only Hugo nominee who was present at the convention but not used. William J. Widder, the author of the Hubbard biography, whom I met at the Hugo ceremony, is very old and might not have wanted to be on panel. But John Flynn was not on panel either. That surprised me because being involved in programming for Interaction I had seen a list of people N4 intended to invite. Flynn was on it (I wasn’t). Yet at the con I heard reports that he was disappointed at not being allowed to be on panels. This is not good. Hugo nominees are Hugo nominees. It doesn’t matter how much you might dislike their politics or their religion, of be in a huff over some slight you think that they have done to you, you offer to put them on panel.

One thing I was pleased to see was a genuine attempt at creating international interest. There were several panels on fiction and fandom around the world. I learned about an interesting project to create an anthology of stories translated from European languages (which we may see launched at Interaction). I learned a little bit about fandom in Sweden and Italy, though the Worldwide Fandom panel could have been a lot better. There was the usual panel on British SF, which I’m delighted to say was packed out. There was even a panel on Islam in SF. I was disappointed that the convention hadn’t managed to find a Muslim to put on the panel, but John Courtenay Grimwood was his usual excellent self and I was very impressed by Sarah Zettel.

By the way, while I was at the con I noticed a new web site dedicated to Islam and SF. Worth a look.

There was a lot of very interesting science program as well. I had good intentions to go to a lot of it, but in the end due to being very busy, very tired, or more both, I didn’t make any of it. Sorry.

Nor did I make it to the New Weird panel. I so wanted to stick my hand up and claim that New Weird was a hoax that China and I had cooked up to wind up Jeff Vandermeer.

One of the things that Worldcons struggle with is how to deal with publisher freebies. A smaller convention, if it is lucky, can hand out one book per person. Worldcon never gets that many books. So how to deal with the problem? Tom Whitmore was given the task of finding a solution. The one he came up with was good. He’d give a couple of books to people he knew and ask them to hand them out randomly to strangers. I liked my idea too. Give me a box or two, I said, and I’ll hand them out at the Best Books of 2004 Panel. Anyone who gets up for a 10:00am panel on Sunday about good books deserves a freebie. Sadly it seems we still didn’t have enough to go around. My apologies to anyone who didn’t get one. But I did get the list of books that the panel mentioned online. You can find it here.

The Business Meeting this year was expected to witness a titanic battle over the projected return to 2-year lead times. You will have read all about it in Kevin’s article in the last issue. But one of the skills of business meeting management is to ensure that the argument is already won before you get to the actual meeting. If enough people have read enough persuasive arguments beforehand, it doesn’t matter what people say on the floor of the meeting. Most minds will already have been made up. So sure, Tom Veal spoke very well, and I’m sure he means well. But he’s wrong, and he lost, quite comprehensively in the end. The motion was passed by 112-59.

Of course since then there have been all sorts of predictions of doom and disaster on the SMOFs mailing list. People are saying that we’ll never be able to get facilities and that what we really need to do is go to 5, 7 or even 10 year lead times. They don’t seem to quite realize that what they are asking for is for us to set up a professional organization to run Worldcons, because that is what it would take to plan that far ahead. Or maybe they think we already have one.

Something else that has attracted the ire of some SMOFs was the motion clarifying the meaning of the Best Dramatic Presentation split. A lot of people are complaining that this was some perfidious plot to damage the split and get it revoked. This is very odd considering that both Chris Barkley (the original proposer of the split motion) and Craig Miller (who works in Hollywood) spoke in favor. Trust me folks, what this was actually for was to prevent Hugo Administrators who are opposed to the split making bizarre rulings so as to discredit it (of which more very shortly).

There were a number of other pieces of nitpickery designed to clarify the rules, in particular one firming up on exactly what happens to nominations when Hugo Administrators move items between categories. This was again motivated by concern that a rogue Administrator might interpret the rules in a very strange way. Both this and the BDP motion require ratification in Glasgow.

If you don’t believe me about the need for this, or the BDP changes, consider what happened in the Retro Hugos this year. Most movies made in 1953 were below the 90 minute dividing line for long and short form works, but well within the 20% gray area that would allow the Administrators to move them between categories. I have pointed this out before, and recommended nominating those works in Long Form. I know that Kevin and I did so.

Some of the people involved in the Hugos for N4, however, have spoken out against moving dramatic presentations between categories under any circumstances. And if you look at the nomination lists you will see that they have stuck rigidly to the 90-minute dividing line. Had they moved the movies, we would have had two dramatic presentation categories. The Long Form nominees would have been War of the Worlds, Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Invaders from Mars, It Came from Outer Space, Peter Pan and 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (six entries as the last two tied). Short Form would have had Duck Dodgers, Duck Amok, Robot Rabbit and TV of Tomorrow (four entries because a nominee must get at least 5% of the total vote to qualify).

Personally I think that would have made for a far more interesting contest than a single category with poor Duck Dodgers up against four movies. I’ll admit that Short Form only manages four valid nominees, but Best Related Book only managed three. Nevertheless, despite all of my warnings to contrary, the expressed views of former Hugo Administrators, and the expressed views of people responsible for creating the BDP split, N4’s Hugo Administrators stuck rigidly to their own eccentric interpretation of the Hugo rules. The fact that at least one of them has spoken publicly against splitting the BDP doesn’t exactly give one confidence in their motives.

Fortunately this happened in the Retro Hugos, which are, after all, just a bit of fun (though they would have been much more fun if Duck Dodgers had got a Hugo). However, I hope you now see why motions like those presented at the N4 Business Meeting are necessary to prevent maverick Hugo Administrators trying to bend the rules to fit what they want to happen rather than follow accepted practice.

The other item of business close to my heart was the Hugo Eligibility Extension. I think I am pleased to say that it passed again, but it has wreaked havoc with my Hugo nominations for next year. The effect of the motion is to make any work published elsewhere before 2004 but first published in the US in 2004 newly eligible for a Hugo. One of the books affected is Steven Erikson’s Gardens of the Moon, reviewed elsewhere in this issue. But what has got me in a tizz is that two of my favorite books of all time are now eligible for a Hugo next year. They are Light, by M. John Harrison, and The Course of the Heart, by M. John Harrison. This is like tossing Casablanca and Citizen Kane into the Oscar mix for next year. In one way I am delighted because they are superb books that really deserve a second chance. But in another way they take up two of my Best Novel nominations in a year where there are actually a lot of good books around.

Much to my surprise, the Business Meeting also voted to extend eligibility to three works of SF criticism on the grounds of limited availability. Such motions generally get turned down, but the BM seems to have been in a very generous mood this year. The works in question are: Up Through an Empty House of Stars (Dave Langford), The True Knowledge of Ken MacLeod (Andrew M. Butler and Farah Mendlesohn, eds.), and The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn, eds.). Given that the MacLeod book actually finished sixth in the nominations for Best Related Book this year, and that it is now available in the US through Old Earth Books, it must stand a pretty good chance of a nomination next year.

Kevin got re-elected onto the Mark Protection Committee. I thought I had escaped that particular job, my time as ConJosé’s representative being up, but Pat McMurray decided to step down as Interaction’s representative and asked me to take the job instead. Given that Kevin is now chairing the committee, I don’t suppose it will prove too onerous (especially as Linda Deneroff has kindly volunteered to be secretary – thank you, Linda!).

Possibly the strangest thing about the Business Meeting was the Torcon 3 financial report. As I mentioned earlier, Peter Jarvis did the hand-over of the gavel to Deb Geisler at Opening Ceremonies. But here’s Larry Hancock telling us that Jarvis is no longer involved with Torcon 3, and that furthermore they can’t give a financial report because their finances are in complete disarray and they need to undertake a major investigation. Peter Jarvis is in the room, but says nothing.

It gets worse. The Millennium Philcon folks have finally sorted out their finances (hooray!) and have made some more Passalong Fund payments (even bigger hooray!). That Passalong money went to ConJosé, Torcon 3 and Noreascon 4, as required by the Passalong Funds agreement. ConJosé immediately passed the money forward to Interaction and N4 as they were both "in progress" and could potentially use it. Torcon 3 is hanging on to theirs. Apparently their finances are in such disarray that they don’t know whether they need the money or not. A source close to the T3 Board assures me that they do intend to deal responsibly with the money once they get themselves sorted out, but really, this is no way to run a Worldcon. What is going on in Toronto?

One small piece of good news that I can offer involves the Torcon 3 thank you party. A number of SMOFs were wondering how, given that all T3 funds have been frozen, the party was being paid for. Especially as Peter Jarvis seemed to be in charge of the event. I’m told by a reliable source that the money for the party was approved before the funds were frozen. Thank goodness for that.

A full agenda for the Business Meeting, including the text of all the motions, is available here. The Business Meeting was adjourned in memory of George Flynn.

This year had two of the most unimpressive bids I have ever seen. The Japanese have something of an excuse. It is expensive for them to get to North America to attend Worldcons, the language barrier forces them to rely on Westerners to make their case for them, and cultural differences resulted in their not being comfortable with the sort of gung-ho campaigning that we normally see from Worldcon bids. They were modest and diffident, which sometimes made it seem that they weren’t too serious about bidding.

Columbus had no such excuse. They have a fine site and a lot of experience in running big conventions, although not Worldcons. They should have pushed Japan close. Instead they seem to have thrown in the towel early. They just didn’t try. As a result, Yokohama won by the fairly large margin of 935 to 692.

The Guests of Honor in Japan will be: Sakyo Komatsu and David Brin (writers); Yoshitaka Amano and Michael Whelan (artists); and Takumi Shibano (fan). The chair of the convention is Hiroaki Inoue. Congratulations to David, who I’m sure will be delighted. His work is very popular in Japan. Indeed his Heaven’s Reach won a Seiun this year for Best Translated Novel. Michael Whelan, I’m sure, needs no introduction.

The Nippon 2007 web site is currently a little short on information, though they promise that this will change soon. However, a PR #0 was distributed at the convention and I’ve been doing a bit of research on the Web. Sakyo Komatsu is one of Japan’s most respected SF writers. Several of his works have been films. One of his short stories, "The Savage Mouth" is available in the anthology, The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories, by John L. Apostolou and Martin H. Greenberg (eds.). It was originally translated by Judith Merril and also appeared in a 1978 Australian anthology, Rooms of Paradise (Lee Harding, ed.).

Yoshitaka Amano has his own web site. He has worked on a range of anime shows and video games. He is a four-time winner of the Seiun for Best Art, but his best-known work in the West is his collaboration with Neil Gaiman, Sandman: The Dream Hunters. The book was nominated for a Hugo and won the Eisner, Dragon*Con and Julie Awards.

Takumi Shibano is well known at American conventions. He won the Big Heart Award in 1987, and a Special Committee Award for his translation work at ConFrancisco in 1993. Back in Japan he founded one of their first fanzines, Uchujin, in 1957, and the Japanese National Science Fiction Convention in 1962. He was also the founder of the Nippon 2007 Worldcon bid.

Hiroaki Inoue is an experienced producer of anime whose credits include the very wonderful Tenchi Muyo. He will be a special guest at Cascadia Con, the 2005 NASFiC, in Seattle.

Yokohama’s PR#0 includes details of hotel rates (about time too) and also some all-in tours. Hotel prices range from $57/night to $254/night or a single room, $86-$304 for a twin. Packages for airfare from LA or San Francisco and 4 hotel nights start from $1,300 per person (assuming 2 persons sharing a room). There are also post-convention tours of Japan on offer. All of the rates, including the hotels, are 2004 prices. The Japanese don’t seem to understand the idea of guaranteeing a price for the convention, and actual prices will presumably be rather higher.

As I’ve already said once, there has been a lot of online reporting of the convention. Noreascon 4 has a huge collection of links available off the front page of their web site. I’ve not read all of these by any means, but there is a lot of good stuff there. Note that with blogs and LiveJournals the material you are looking for may be in an archive by now rather than on the main page. (I know mine is).

I want to say a special word of thanks to rushthatspeaks who said that Worldcon is "small and intimate and relaxing and totally non-pressured", at least compared to the vast anime cons she is used to. That sure puts us tired and frazzled con-runners in our place. Hey, and she’s a fan of Angela Carter and John Crowley as well. Obviously my kind of girl.

Quite a few people I know were attending Worldcon for the first time this year. Some of them might even have done so on my recommendation. I thought it might be a good idea to get some feedback from some of them. Jeff Vandermeer, bless him, sent me a whole article, which I have reproduced below. Jon Courtenay Grimwood had the following observations:

"All the old hands kept telling me, ‘Oh, Worldcons used to have more people. They used to be bigger....’ And I’d just look around and think, ‘God, isn't this enough?’"

Hey, the old hands were exaggerating, Jon, as they always do. As for high points and low points, Jon said:

"High-ish: (apart from all that Boston lobster)

1. going to lunch with Walter John Williams, someone whose plots I’ve long admired;
2. explaining to a panel that in the UK novels didn’t *have* to have happy endings
3. listening to Jeff Vandermeer get moderately grumpy about the New Weird.

"Highest: Neil Gaiman’s brilliant, self-deprecating master of ceremonies act at the Hugos.

"Low-ish:

1. the huge cart selling hand-made chocolates just outside Marriott entrance, temptations one really doesn’t need
2. overcrowding and lack of space for talk by Marvin Minsky. (This was always going to be on most people’s ‘must go’ list.)

"Low point: listening to someone on already bad panel say she couldn’t work out why women suicide bombers blew themselves up, only to pause, before adding, Maybe they’re all gay? (It must be those 70 free virgins in heaven, you see...)"

All in all, this was a darn good Worldcon. Many of the things that went wrong were very quickly fixed. There were no major disasters with late publications or program confusion. I do have a few reservations, as follows:

1. Photography in general was badly handled. ConJosé and Torcon 3 put someone in charge of getting this right. N4 didn’t, and paid the price.
2. The number of mix-ups in Events was above the normally acceptable level. Sorry Marc. I know why many of them happened, and I’m sure that Kevin and I will get things wrong next year, but all the same the members have expectations. We’ll get blamed if things go wrong with Events in Glasgow, no matter how hard we tried and whose fault it was.
3. Programming seems to have decided that certain types of people were not wanted at their Worldcon. This won’t do.
4. Just occasionally, particularly with respect to the Hugos, N4 showed an alarming tendency to ignore precedent and do what they thought was "right".

Overall, however, this was one of the best Worldcons I have attended. The level of enthusiasm shown by the N4 staff in getting things like First Night and The ConCourse up and running was exemplary. After last year Worldcon needed something good, and we got it. Thank you, Noreascon 4.

Hugo Analysis

I want to start the coverage of the Hugo voting by mentioning a very strange remark printed on the cover of the voting breakdown handed out at the convention. It reads as follows:

"This year’s voting included a larger than average number of late-joining supporting members who wished to vote but not attend the World Science Fiction Convention. Because of the mixed process of balloting (mail-in and online both), a statistically larger than average percentage of unsigned ballots or ballots without correct PIN information were rejected."

Very odd. I wonder what was going on.

Wow, Frank Wu superstar! He got more first place votes than all of the rest of the nominees put together. Only things like the Lord of the Rings movies are supposed to do that. Is Frank bigger than Gandalf? It would appear so.

Spare a thought, though, for poor Steve Stiles, who started off second in every round of balloting, only to finish last after preferences were distributed.

The Fan Writer race was very close. Dave Langford, despite having only the fourth highest number of nominations, held a narrow lead on first place votes. He lost that lead to John Flynn (who had topped the nominations) when votes from Jeff Berkwits were redistributed. Flynn lost that lead when votes from Bob Devney went largely to Dave and me. At this point Flynn had 158 votes, but only 38 of them had further preferences. In the end Dave beat me by just 11 votes. When the minor place run-offs were calculated Flynn ended up fourth behind Devney.

You know, this is a challenge. Dave has now won that Best Fan Writer Hugo eighteen years in succession. I can’t imagine any greater honor in fandom than being the person who finally topples him from his perch. The hunt is on.

A quick word too for Lloyd Penney who was dreadfully disappointed by his bad showing at his home convention in Toronto and was greatly cheered to finish sixth in the nominations in Boston.

The thing that surprised me most about the fanzine category wasn’t that we won, but how emphatic that win was. Emerald City topped the nominations and was well clear on first place votes. It was close in the end because preferences from traditional paper fanzines tended to go to other paper fanzines. I see my standing with British fans has not improved much. When Plokta was eliminated, 26 of their votes went to Emerald City and 47 to Mimosa.

I note that SFRevu was a close 6^th in the nominations list. With Mimosa now ineligible, it should make it into the nominees next year. That will make two web-based fanzines in the running. I think that will make things a lot more interesting.

As usual, people are griping about Locus always winning Semiprozine. I don’t think that there is a lack of quality competition. There is simply a lack of awareness of that competition. If Andy Cox makes a good job of the re-launched Interzone he could do well in Glasgow. If people really want to do something about the category, they could probably change the circulation limit. They could probably lower it from 10,000 to 5,000 and only knock one magazine out of the running. But I can’t see anyone introducing such an obvious anti-Locus motion to the business meeting, let alone succeeding with it.

The other solution is to get 1,000 of your friends to go out and subscribe to Locus so that Charles goes above the 10,000 limit. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind too much.

Ginjer Buchanan made a brave call for recognition of book editors at the Hugo ceremony. While I fully support the sentiment, and will continue to nominate the likes of David Hartwell, Juliet Ulman and Jennifer Brehl, I’m afraid this one is a lost battle. I have come to the conclusion that a much better solution would be to change the category to Best Anthology/Collection. Magazine editors would still be eligible, because a single issue of a magazine is, in effect, an anthology. And of course the likes of Gardner Dozois and Ellen Datlow do book-length anthologies as well. The novel editors would be cut out entirely, but we’d share the Hugo around a lot more people.

Why is that important? Look at the nomination figures. Ellen was top with 93. Patrick Nielsen Hayden was 6^th on 51. The next highest number of nominations was A.J. Budrys with 18. That is a sign of a category with too few serious contenders.

By the way, I note that Gardner was only 4^th in the nomination lists. Like Langford, he is only still winning because the much larger number of people who participate in the voting stage are more likely to behave like sheep and always vote for the same person each year. Those who nominate and vote seem to have acquired a taste for diversity.

Yes, Bob Eggleton won again too, but he didn’t have it easy. He was 3^rd on both nominations and first place votes. He was still trailing Donato Giancola on the forth round of balloting, but the preferences from Frank Kellly Freas went overwhelmingly to Eggleton. All round popularity is important in winning Hugos.

Yay!!! Go Gollum!!!

The only thing that could have made Hugo night better for me was if Gollum could have made it to the ceremony. Sadly, being a big name movie star, he was too busy to hang out with the likes of me.

Can someone else win the Long Form category next year, please? There aren’t any more Hobbit movies, are there?

Best Related Book had a really strange voting pattern. William Widder’s L. Ron Hubbard biography led on first place votes, from the Lambshead Guide and the Chesley Award book. But it only picked up eight preferences when Scores, the Frank Herbert biography and Spectrum 10 were eliminated. Being eliminated itself, the Hubbard book only distributed 11 preferences out of 186 votes. That sure looks to me like a book for which lots and lots of people voted for it and it only. Hmm.

Hey, but well done to Jeff Vandermeer, Mark Roberts and all of the very many doctors for a terrific second place. Congratulations too to Thog the Mighty on the rocket. Surely Thog, being the star attraction of Ansible, deserves more Hugos than that Langford fellow.

Short Story was unremarkable for the expected comfortable Gaiman win, but quite remarkable for the fact that Michael Burstein had stories in 1^st, 6^th and 7^th in the nominations lists. Once again Short Story saw a very wide spread in nominations, with only 25 needed to make the ballot.

The battle for Novelette was an intense 3-way race between Michael Swanwick, Jeff Ford and Jay Lake. Jay has a huge number of first preferences, but ended up third. I feel very sorry for Jeff, whose story was truly wonderful.

Kage Baker put up a good show in Novella, but as I expected the wide popularity of Vernor Vinge saw him through in the end. Best Novel was never really in doubt. Lois McMaster Bujold is very popular indeed. I was a little worried at the huge cheer Robert Sawyer got when his name was read out in the list of nominees, but he finished last.

The Novel also-rans are always interesting. Congratulations to Kevin J. Anderson for finishing 6^th in the nominations with A Forest of Stars. William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition was 7^th, and the Nebula winning Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon, 8^th.

And now to next year. I have made a start on the Recommendations List. There are an awful lot of good novels out there. I have four obvious nominees, and a huge list vying for the fifth slot. Choices, choices…

My First Worldcon

By Jeff Vandermeer

This was a rather different convention for me. I have devoted a good part of the last two World Fantasy Cons to shepherding fake disease guide writers to various events and taking care of things for Ministry of Whimsy authors. But none of that was required at Worldcon, so I took it upon myself to get a chance to talk in more depth to people I haven’t to this point had a chance to meet. I found it rather delightful, and more relaxing than usual, even though it was busy.

For example, on Saturday Ann and I had a relaxing lunch with Cheryl (or at least as relaxing as you can in an empty hour between two con appearances). On Thursday night I went out with the "Austin Axis of Unevil" — Chris Roberson (and his lovely wife, baby, and mother-in-law), John Picacio, Lou Anders and his charming wife, David Coe (great guy), and Jonathan Strahan (another great guy, who I’d met for the first time as I was checking out of the hotel at the last World Fantasy Con). And I actually had some opportunity to talk to Kelly Link, Gavin Grant and Charles Brown. And so on and so forth.

I also met Matt Cheney for the first time. I had pictured Matt as looking a bit like Damon Knight in his later years — with an old gray beard, perhaps even with a cane or staff of some kind. Imagine my surprise when he turned out to be bearded, yes, but considerably younger than I had imagined — this is probably a testament to the maturity of his prose style. I had also expected him to be about six foot five.

As for Worldcon itself, it has been more than 10 years since I went to a convention that had a "fan base" with costume parties and all of that, and I found myself enjoying it quite a bit. It was a little like Carnivale, or being in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. And I really enjoyed seeing the "props" in the convention center — the colorful dragon and other papier mache/wire/cloth beasties they’d put out. It really added a nice touch. And everyone was really friendly.

I found the convention one of the best organized of all the conventions I’ve attended. The packet I received as a moderator and panelist included tips on moderating, which if read by all moderators (and clearly some moderators did not read the tips) would have saved all of the panels from some unnecessary annoyances. As a first-time Hugo award nominee, I can’t compare my treatment by the organizers this year to past years, but I have to say I was made to feel very welcome and they took very good care of me — went out of their way in one case.

The panel topics were generally interesting, well attended, and made me think. (Although on one a novelist named Wen Spencer kept trying to steal my microphone before I was done speaking, which I found more than a little annoying.) I enjoyed the New Weird panel because it was a lively discussion and I think it was clear to everyone that any acrimony was over the term not over the works described by the term. I felt I was able to speak my mind without anyone taking it personally, which is always good. Jon Courtney Grimwood provided some insightful commentary from the audience as well.

I also enjoyed being on the Hiking the Enchanted Forest panel with David Coe, Greer Gilman, Beth Hilgartner and Rebecca Moesta. It was another good panel, with Rebecca not having known she was moderating until she arrived, but doing an excellent, excellent job on the fly. I liked the way in which Gilman, Coe, myself, and the other panelists all had different entry points to creating a credible setting, but they were all really means to the same ends. Very interesting stuff. The Disease Guide reading also went very well — jam-packed.

Again, I’ve never gone to Worldcon before, so I don’t know what they’re normally like, but I found the distance between hotel and programming quite amusing. I felt like it was a forced march to Bhutan every time I went from the hotel to the panels and then to the dealers’ room. This was bad on the three days I’d gone to the gym in the morning, since I was already tired from working out, but great on the days when I’d skipped the gym, since I still got a light aerobic workout.

Some of the dealers I talked to were irritated that only dealers got maps of the dealers’ room. It would have been good to have gotten maps distributed to those visiting, so they could more easily seek out what they wanted. I know I only found Katmandu Books, one of my favorites, on the last day of the con. Dealers also seemed to be concerned about the depth of the programming — it seemed like the multiple-track programming, and the quality of it, had actually made it hard for some people to spend much time in the dealer's room.

I had interesting conversations in the dealer’s room with Justin Ackroyd, Sean Wallace and John Betancourt. Otto from Realms of Fantasy Books is a real cut-up — I had a wonderful time bullshitting with him. I also was shocked to discover that Glen Cook was a dealer in the dealers’ room. I’d loved his stuff growing up (high school/college), and had him sign one of his Dread Empire books to me.

All day Thursday, and most of Friday, I had difficulties because no one recognized me. I hadn’t realized the profound effect shaving my beard would have. I kind of enjoyed it, though, too. Passing Farah Mendelsohn and Graham Sleight three times and saying hello with a cheery smile only to receive a blank stare was kind of funny. As was passing F. Brett Cox about four times and being completely ignored (this was probably actually a form of rudeness on my part). I rather liked the anonymity. But it did lead to a very stupid moment at the Tor party Friday night when, after having been mis- or un-identified for so long, I actually said "Hi, I’m Jeff VanderMeer" when I met Ellen Datlow, who I’ve met and talked to at four or five conventions, only to have her say, "Yeah, I know who you are." Probably my dumbest moment of the con.

My reading Friday went well — I had decent attendance (just as I was pleasantly surprised, despite George R.R. Martin's presence, to sign 15 to 20 books at the autograph session) and afterwards I received an offer to partake of absinthe, which I'd never had before. The absinthe (and its purveyor, Cliff) wandered over to the Polyphony party, where I wound up tasting it out of half of a human skull sealed in copper. Deborah Layne, co-editor of Polyphony, refused to believe me when I told her about it, but I have a photograph that proves it.

Ann joined me Saturday morning, which was good, because I was going into rather violent Ann withdrawals by about that time and missed her terribly. Except for lunch with Cheryl, Saturday was a bit of a blur. But I do remember that the pre-Hugo reception was delightful. I got to talk to Jeff Ford, Tim Pratt, Kathryn Cramer, Juliet Ulman, Mark Kelly, and others, but also got a big thrill finally having at least a few minutes to talk to Elizabeth Hand, who I had only met through e-mail before the convention. She was very sweet and as I am currently really enjoying Mortal Love, it was very nice for that reason, too. There is still a bit of the "fan boy" complex in me, I’m afraid, in that I sometimes freeze up when I meet a writer I admire for the first time.

The Hugo Awards ceremony itself surprised me immeasurably. I’ve only ever attended the World Fantasy Awards, so I had no idea that the Hugos would be like the Oscars. That was really the only thing that made me nervous. I was sitting between my wife and Juliet Ulman, with Jeff Ford on the end next to Juliet, and about five minutes before they announced in the Best Related Book category I began to go into a kind of rigid fetal position, despite the fact that I was secure on all sides — wife, editor, friend watching over me.

Before that, I hadn’t really thought the Disease Guide had a shot. But then I began to think it did, and I became extremely nervous until they announced the winner. I remembered something Jeff Ford had said to me the night before: "Gardner Dozois, I think, told me that every poor bastard nominated for the Hugo thinks they have a chance right before it’s announced, even if they don’t have a chance in hell." (When they announced the nominees, I laughed hysterically. There was something about hearing them announce the Frank Herbert and Chelsey books and then the Disease Guide that was kind of like a Monty Python skit: "We have Frank Herbert, the Chelsey Awards book, and spam, spam, spam, and spam.") Still, learning that the Guide came in second was nice, and the relief of having it over with was good. So, I did pretty well — five minutes of stress about the awards over the whole weekend was very good for me, considering how hyperactive I can be.

The highlights of the Hugos for me were seeing Cheryl, Jay Lake and Frank Wu win (since I know all three of them), and also Neil Gaiman MC’ing and Robert Silverberg’s speech, which I thought was excellent. The low point of the Hugos was probably just the length, and the fact that the heavy appetizers promised for the pre-Hugo reception turned out to be things like a couple of globules of caviar served on a plank of lettuce. So Ann and I were really tired and really hungry when it was all over with. After some aimless wandering, we decided to just go up to the hotel room and crash. Unable to go right to bed, hungry and exhausted, we finally ordered room service at midnight and had a wonderful half hour unwinding with really good food as we watched the Boston skyline from our hotel room.

Then, of course, began the flight delays due to the Florida hurricane, with Ann and I finally making it back to Tallahassee on Wednesday. We kept saying goodbye to the same people we’d said goodbye to just the day before. I began to feel like a bit of a ghost, haunting the same territory. So Ann and I became tourists and made the most of our last couple of days in Boston...

Past Painting Future

By Judith Clute

When Cheryl asked me if I’d do a note on the Worldcon Art Show for Emerald City I said "Yes!" because I wanted to commend the Retro Art Show. It was a separate and special part of the regular Art Show and several times a day a tour of it was given by Robert Weiner. I went on one of these and most of us in the gaggle following him had already spent some time quietly examining the works on display. His remarks built on an assumption of prior interest and he brought an infectious love for these early Science Fiction paintings. In fact he is a collector and lent many of the works.

I start with something of a personal discovery. An artist I’d taken for granted. I mean to say I knew his work from covers from the early 1970’s, but the artwork simply existed. I’d forgotten to think of it as created for the purpose. The artist in question had 50 original pieces in the Retro Art Show. He began as a fan artist and quickly learnt the right commercial skills when he apprenticed with Hannes Bok. I’m talking about Jack Gaughan. His works vary in quality. Robert Weiner spoke about the way Jack Gaughan sometimes had three works on the go simultaneously, each with imminent deadlines. He could do a painting in three hours.

Take the cover artwork for a DAW book in 1976, "The Galactic Buccaneer" by E.C. Tubb as by Gregory Kern. It was probably a rushed job, but it’s a strong iconic SF painting. There’s an updated Buck Rogers-like chap and his woman. They are shown in pulp formulaic dancing movement, hands outstretched. The helmets are painted in deft over-strokes and the suits are made of calligraphic marks on top of body fitting costumes. This space-suited couple is fleeing an orange flaming section on a bright purple planet. A slant-eyed alien is evoked as a mirage in an intense cerulean blue sky. Over-the-top stuff, perhaps, but sincere. Jack Gaughan’s skills are obvious and competent.

In a painting titled "Farewell to the Artifacts" for Galaxy, early 1970’s, Gaughan has conceived a more graphic, less painterly design. It’s on the jokey side. A spaceship vacuum cleaner rears its snaky neck to a startled, short-skirted woman. A man waves goodbye from a receding doorway. The background is white, thereby demanding a confident composition to sit comfortably on the stark page. It does. This issue of Galaxy should have special significance for collectors because it features the first part of Robert Silverberg’s "Dying Inside."

The next Galaxy issue had the second part of "Dying Inside" and it was featured on the cover. Of course, Gaughan did the artwork. In this Retro Art Show we saw Gaughan’s same size sketch for it in black and white. It’s in "flat" format (back, spine and front) and tracing paper is taped on top with sketchy pencil areas showing the graphic placement of lettering relative to image. For me it was one of the joys of the show, this little exhibit from the collection of Tony and Suford Lewis. Where else in a formal exhibition can you touch the artwork? I gently lifted the translucent tracing paper and peeked at the handsome black ink work underneath.

Several Black and white works were sprinkled throughout the exhibition. One special group was placed at the end of a row on the far side. I hope people didn’t miss this set of 15 beautifully framed interiors for Heinlein’s Double Star by Frank Kelly Freas. They positively sparkled. We are lucky to have these survivors. All too often black and white interiors got lost after the printers used them. Interesting also to see how much more detail we have in the originals. The pulp reproduction tended to bring them down in contrast.

John Schoenherr’s original black and whites are amazing too. Three dozen of them were in the show. All of them are gems, but I somehow chose to spend time gazing especially into one interior for Dune. It’s from the collection of Jim Saklad and it’s in scraperboard mode. I couldn’t help marvelling at the artist’s control of parallel lines sculpting six individual faces looking down at a scaled down rendition of Dune.

Back to my opening remarks: yes, I certainly should have known more about Jack Gaughan, but there was the pleasure of discovery, and this pleasure principle played its way right through the rest of show. Looking at old friends. Schoenherr’s paintings are always amazing. Here was perhaps the largest assembly of his work you’ll ever see in one place. Around 40 paintings for Analog Science Fiction. Ed Emshwiller was well represented too. Some two and a half dozen works.

And Richard Powers. Ballantine was quite courageous to take his abstractions for their covers in the early 1950’s because he didn’t depict the usual hardware. Robert Weiner reminded us of this in his talk, and it’s true, his work really is different from everyone else’s. I’ve always like Richard Powers’ work. Now however, in the context of a Retro Art Show, he seems sort of dated. Some of his cover work is almost "Festival of Britain" in style. I mean quite "fifties" in a fine art sense. And yes, several of his Fine Art paintings were there too. His Gorman Powers works.

Ed Valigursky was working at the same time as Powers’ first works and was one of the most respected artists of the 1950’s. Several paintings for his Ace Doubles were in the show. Ah ha! He’s another I hadn’t known by name. Thank you, Robert Weiner.

I conclude with a couple of artists mentioned at the end of Robert Weiner’s perambulation. He noted that perhaps one of the finest paintings in the whole show was Robert Schulz’s moody painting for Ballantine’s 1968 Chocky by John Wyndham. The original painting is, indeed, a masterpiece by any standard. A young boy is rendered with photographic rightness in soft tones. His expression is perfect as he gazes at the accent of the composition — a three dimensional diagram of a molecule in white, red and blue.

And nearby were works by Mel Hunter: his robot covers for F&SF. From the July issue in 1957: "Robot Sitting Reading Yellow Pages". There’s a pile of magazines close by including a Sears Roebuck catalog. Something about the mood of these pictures comes through in the titles. "Robot sitting facing Swollen Moon". "Robot in Row Boat on Sand". Rick Berry — one of my favourite contemporary Fantasy and SF artists who did the jazzy cover for the 1984 reissue of William Gibson’s Neuromancer — strolled up as Robert Weiner was speaking about the ironic quality of these paintings and added his thoughts: he loved them, he said, partly because they were "utterly sad". Mel Hunter pulling the heart strings is a good place to sum up the exhibition. Enthusiasm, daring, sadness; time past. The Retro Art Show was a stunning addition to the 2004 World Con Art Show.

Regency Magic

Unless you have been living in a sealed bunker in the Australian outback for the past year you can scarcely have avoided hearing about Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Bloomsbury is taking no chances that their adult-targeted follow-up to Harry Potter will sink without trace. The publicity campaign has been phenomenal. It has been reported that the entire 200,000 first print run sold out before the book was even published. Galleys were selling on eBay for $200. With all that hype going on, one has to fear for the poor author whose work is bound to struggle to keep up with expectations. Neil Gaiman’s comment that the book is the best fantasy to come out of England in the past 70 years will have only added to the pressure. (And even Neil isn’t perfect — he has clearly forgotten M. John Harrison’s The Course of the Heart.)

To survive all this hype, the book clearly has to approach being all things to all people. And there at least it is in the ballpark. Being about magicians, it is clearly a fantasy of sorts. Being about a 19^th Century England in which magic is used to defeat Bonaparte, it is perhaps an alternate history. But perhaps most importantly for its salability, it is a Regency romance.

The year is 1807. The whole of Europe is wracked with war. The French tyrant, Bonaparte, is sweeping all before him. Only a brave little island, stuck out in the mists of the North Sea, seems willing and able to defy him. And yet with the death of Nelson at Trafalgar two years before, even the British may be faltering. What the nation needs is leadership, pride, and above all a new weapon. This is perhaps why a Mr. John Segundus was moved to ask the York Society of Magicians whether anyone actually practiced magic in England these days.

The members of the Society, being gentlemen, replied in the negative. A gentleman may study magic as much as he wishes, because study is a reputable occupation. But as for doing magic, that is the realm of charlatans and mountebanks, of gypsy fairs and street performers. It is not respectable. Segundus, however, was not to be denied, and soon after he heard tell of a Mr. Gilbert Norrell, master of Hurtfew Abbey and a notorious recluse. The world was about to change, and Norrell was to be the cause of that.

Those of you not of British origins may find the character of Norrell somewhat confusing. The thing to remember is that he is a Yorkshireman. Or rather, he is that type of person in whom supposed Yorkshire traits are so exaggerated that one might term him a Professional Yorkshireman. Cricket lovers might ponder upon the character of Geoffrey Boycott as an example of the breed (Dickie Bird is an even better example, for those familiar with him). For a man about to rescue English Magic from centuries of neglect, Gilbert Norrell is about as anti-heroic (not to mention cowardly, selfish, vain, miserly and curmudgeonly) as a man can get. But a man of such power as he possesses can always find advisors, hangers-on, fellow travelers who play upon his vanity and use him to advance their own careers in society. Sometimes they even give helpful suggestions.

Hmm, one might suspect that Ms. Clarke will be taking a fairly sanguine view of any reviews her book receives, then. And so she might, having had a long and successful career in publishing before hitting the big time as an author (not to mention being the partner of the very wonderful Colin Greenland). She is no newcomer to our industry.

But I digress, because there are three magicians in the book. The second is Jonathan Strange, who is everything that Norrell is not. He is young, good looking, out-going, friendly, brave and not a little reckless. It is Strange, therefore, who finds favor with London society; Strange who finds himself in the Peninsula with Wellington pondering how to put magic to the service of the army; and it is Strange who is perhaps unwisely unafraid of the denizens of Faerie, and of the mighty Raven King.

What marks the book out most as an alternate history is that for several hundred years during the Middle Ages the northern half of England was ruled by one John Uskglass, a legendary sorcerer who supposedly won a kingdom in Faerie long before he invaded England. Uskglass is a bona fide hero of the North; Arthur and Morgan Le Fay rolled into one. He is not merely sleeping, he is very much awake and busily watching. Uskglass, the Raven King, is the driving force of the book.

And here I must diverge briefly into British regional politics. I’m all for those nice Northern people having their own mythic hero (it might stop them trying to hijack Arthur). I also find it rather amusing that Uskglass’s capital was at Newcastle whereas the Yorkshireman, Norrell, is a pain in the butt. But I do have to mention the location-finding spell that both Norrell and Strange use in the book. It divides the world up into four corners: England, Scotland, Ireland and Elsewhere. I suspect that many Welshmen will be rather put out by this. The English, of course, won’t understand, because they have always thought of Wales as a tiny corner of England in which people speak funny. But the truth of the matter is that Wales is the Otherland, the mysterious magical kingdom of which Norrell is so afraid. We Faerie folk acknowledge this and smile mischievously. (And we rather like the idea of Stephen Black as he’s clearly an ancestor of Our Shirl.)

Meanwhile, back with the book. It is, I have to say, not without problems. It is very long (almost 800 pages), and more importantly it continues on in a linear fashion at the same pace for all of those 800 pages. From that point of view it is very like one of those slow Regency line dances. It has no great plot mysteries, and no interesting narrative structures. What it does have is a bunch of entertaining characters, some delightful language and a keen eye for the period setting. How Clarke managed to keep her language firmly in Regency style for such a long book is beyond me.

Perhaps most importantly, the book is highly entertaining. It is shot through with humorous asides and wry footnotes. The best bits, at least to my eye, are where real historical persons are involved. Some of Strange’s interactions with the Duke of Wellington and Lord Byron are hilarious, and I rather wish Clarke had made more room for the delightfully eccentric General Picton. But, as I said, the book has to be all things to all people. It can’t just be a Sharpe pastiche, or a comedy of manners, or a tale of Faerie abduction, or a North Country myth. Sometimes it has to be Lovecraft.

This, I think, is the strength of the book. I don’t think that Susanna Clarke has created a classic of fantasy literature. This is not a new Gormenghast, or Lord of the Rings. What it is, is an extremely readable and very entertaining book that will appeal to large numbers of people in many different ways. It is a book that doesn’t stretch the casual reader, but at the same time does not insult the experienced one. Fantasy fans will enjoy it for the invocation of Faerie; Lois McMaster Bujold fans (and Jane Austen fans) will flock to it in droves for the Regency setting; book lovers will enjoy the elegance of the prose and the knowing asides. I suppose that your average Libertarian military SF reader will find little of comfort in it, but then you can’t please all of the people all of the time. All that the book really needs to be a roaring success is something about cats. And lo, what have we here?

And there’s the rub. Because if you don’t read this book, forever after every cat that you meet, and quite a few of the humans as well, will look down their noses at you in precisely that supercilious manner as if to say, "my dear, how can one possibly have polite conversation with a being so deprived of artistic taste as to not have read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell." And thankfully, unlike with Harry Potter, keeping up with the latest fashion in reading will not be a painful experience. If you want to be invited to all of the very best parties, and enjoy a good story, I suggest that you read this book now.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell – Susanna Clarke – Bloomsbury – publisher’s proof

Life's a Gas (Giant)

The new Iain M. Banks novel is SF, because it has that "M." in the author’s name, but it probably isn’t a Culture novel. I say probably because after Inversions it is never quite safe to trust Banks. He’s cunning and devious. And The Algebraist does contain a few characters who sound and behave suspiciously like Culture Minds. Also I find it very hard to trust what I’m reading in a book where the dominant religion of the galaxy, modestly known as The Truth, is a belief that the whole of creation is a giant simulation running on a computer somewhere and that when a majority of sentient beings are converted to belief the simulation will end. Banks has been known to talk about creatures that dwell in gas giant planets in Culture novels before, and The Algebraist is full of them. Of course if the book is Culture then it is more correctly pos