In jest, I expressed to one or two people at Fantasycon this past weekend that having nothing to moan about would take a lot of fun out of this write-up. But in truth, I'm not altogether the cynical git that I may come over as on occasions, and you know what? It's really nice to be able to say that a convention was flat out excellent, as Fantasycon 2017 was flat out excellent.
It also leaves me wondering at the fine lines that separate a good convention from a bad one, since most of what was going right was not stuff that was innately exceptional as such; you could have looked at the programming, for example, and expected a Fantasycon very much like every other. I guess for the most part it just came down to a little (or maybe a lot) of extra thought and effort being sunk in behind the scenes. Some proper attention seemed to have gone into who was doing what and when; the red coats were on absolutely top form, and there was always someone around to ask daft questions of; and the venue, The Bull Hotel in Peterborough, was ideal in so many ways, with a huge bar space that made it really easy to find people and a separate convention centre to keep all that non-drinking stuff nicely clustered in one place. For that matter, Peterborough itself turned out to be a rather inspired choice of setting, what with being easy to get to from both north and south and a nice enough place to warrant stepping outside for an hour or two.
On a personal note, having arrived as a bit of a stress-filled mess, (I've been fairly poorly for the last couple of months, in fairness), I was totally astonished both by how much fun I had and how relaxed everything turned out to be. I mean, not the Ready Steady Flash, obviously, that was a literally nightmarish bungee jump into the pits of Hell - though, and I will absolutely deny this if you ask me, it was also sort of entertaining, and I may even be a little bit glad that I did it. But on top of that, my three panels went very well indeed, thanks largely to having excellent panelists for the two I moderated: deep and heartfelt thanks to Anna Smith Spark, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Simon Bestwick, Stewart Hotston, Gary Couzens, Gavin Williams and Nina Allan for making my job so effortless. And my reading was pretty fun too; The Black River Chronicles: The Ursvaal Exchange fared well in its first public outing. (It helped that I had good reading company in the shape of Mr. Bestwick again and Joely Black, both of whose books I now want to read.)
If I had a single gripe, and bloody hell, of course I do, it's me writing about a convention, it was the same one I almost always have about these things, and Fantasycon especially: not enough to do that wasn't panels and too many panels with generic or done-to-death topics. And an illustration of how splendidly right these things can go was provided by the Fantasy Economy! panel on the Sunday afternoon, which was a stellar example of four knowledgeable people talking clearly and fascinatingly about a subject that they clearly knew an inordinate amount about. (Frustratingly, the program is out of date and I can't remember everyone's names, but I imagine they know who they were, and I'm pretty sure I told them all individually or collectively what a brilliant job they'd done.)
But, in the grand scheme of things, a few imperfect panel topics weren't that big a deal. At least there was a good variety, and like I said above, there was a definite sense that people hadn't just been thrown at subjects for no reason. And in the end, the best thing a Fantasycon can accomplish is to put you in a suitable space with all of the great people who go to Fantasycons, make sure that alcohol is at hand and not too insanely overpriced, and leave you to get on with things until a suitably preposterous early hour. And this year's event did that as well as any of the however many of these things I've been to now.
And only as I get to the end of this do I realise that I haven't once mentioned the Room of Death! But then, I guess we don't talk about the Room of Death...
If I had a single gripe, and bloody hell, of course I do, it's me writing about a convention, it was the same one I almost always have about these things, and Fantasycon especially: not enough to do that wasn't panels and too many panels with generic or done-to-death topics. And an illustration of how splendidly right these things can go was provided by the Fantasy Economy! panel on the Sunday afternoon, which was a stellar example of four knowledgeable people talking clearly and fascinatingly about a subject that they clearly knew an inordinate amount about. (Frustratingly, the program is out of date and I can't remember everyone's names, but I imagine they know who they were, and I'm pretty sure I told them all individually or collectively what a brilliant job they'd done.)
But, in the grand scheme of things, a few imperfect panel topics weren't that big a deal. At least there was a good variety, and like I said above, there was a definite sense that people hadn't just been thrown at subjects for no reason. And in the end, the best thing a Fantasycon can accomplish is to put you in a suitable space with all of the great people who go to Fantasycons, make sure that alcohol is at hand and not too insanely overpriced, and leave you to get on with things until a suitably preposterous early hour. And this year's event did that as well as any of the however many of these things I've been to now.
And only as I get to the end of this do I realise that I haven't once mentioned the Room of Death! But then, I guess we don't talk about the Room of Death...
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