The strange woman watched them, still holding Mrs Skraeveling’s hat. Her antlers were a sort of hat too, Utterly realized. Now that she had got over the first shock of them she could see the wires to which they were attached shining in the woman’s russet hair. It was a peculiar sort of a hat, but then she was a peculiar sort of person altogether. She was one of the troll-people who lived at the north end of Wildsea in the rocky wooded region called the Dizzard. Reverend Dearlove said that it was rude to call them trolls, but Utterly could see why people did, for the woman with the antlers was quite ugly. All the features of her face were too big and too definite, and her thick eyebrows met above her nose. Her eyes were large and deep-set: dark brown eyes with flecks of gold in them.
I got to know Philip Reeve in person at the 2022 Eastercon, Reclamation, where we were both guests of honour. We had a couple of very pleasant dinners together, and ended up sharing a taxi to escape Heathrow. At that point the only one of his books that I had actually read was a Doctor Who short from 2013. He is of course best known for Mortal Engines, of which Minnesota governor Tim Walz is also a fan. I bought this at that Eastercon, but have shamefully only now got around to reading it.
It’s very good. Utterly Dark is a foundling girl brought up on a strange island off the Cornish coast. Her adoptive father, who was the Watcher of the island, keeping an eye out for the Hidden Isles and the creature known as the Gorm, is found drowned, and his brother is summoned from London to take over. Under the new regime, disaster of a YA Lovecraftian type comes ever closer. It’s all very nicely done, and I’ll keep an eye out for the two sequels now. (Oddly enough my reading of this overlapped with Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward, which also features young protagonists and seaside horrors.)
Back in January 2020, before the world ended, I was attending a planning meeting for the bid to host the 2024 WorldCon in Glasgow, when two of the committee literally grabbed me and said they needed a word. One of them was Phil Dyson, and he revealed that he and his team were planning to bid for the 2022 Eastercon, the UK’s National Science Fiction Convention; and that they were formally inviting me to be the Fan Guest of Honour.
I was stunned into silence. (A rare occurrence.) If you look at the list of Guests of Honour for previous Eastercons, there are some pretty prestigious names there as both pro and fan guests, including some who I have slavishly admired since my teenage years. At the same time, I am very aware that you and I could easily name at least a dozen people who have put more years and work into fandom than I have, who have not yet been recognised in that way. So I had a really vivid moment of impostor syndrome.
And yet, it did not take me many seconds to say yes to Phil. I came late to Eastercon – my first was as recently as 2012 – but I have loved the atmosphere each time I attended in person, and felt more and more that this is an accepting community; my tribe. I accepted Phil’s proposal, and he looked relieved. So that was January 2020.
And then, as you know. the world ended.
The 2020 Eastercon, ConCentric, which would have been in Birmingham, was simply cancelled in all respects apart from an online bid session, at which the 2021 team presented their plans – and were given the community’s approval to proceed – and Phil presented his intention to bid for 2022, but declared that it was too early to seek formal approval. Eastercons do not reveal their Guests of Honour until they have won the selection vote. I was in the tantalising situation where I had hoped that the 2022 committee would go public, but of course they decided not to.
The 2021 Eastercon, Confusion, took place entirely virtually. This had its pluses and minuses (as reported in detail by Jo van Ekeren). The biggest plus was that at least it actually happened, and from my spare bedroom in Belgium I moderated one panel, spoke on two others and participated in several more. In particular, I learned a lot about Chinese SF from a panel about Jin Yong. The downside was that the technology was raw; many of the early panels and discussions were not streamed live, and the organisers seemed disturbingly nonchalant about the negative experiences of some participants.
There was, again, a bid session, held virtually. The 2021 team asked for another chance in 2023, and a challenger arose and advocated instead that the 2023 decision should be postponed. The session agreed. It also agreed, with little dissent, to approve Phil’s bid for the 2022 Eastercon, to be called “Reclamation”. At that point my own involvement became public, and so were my fellow Guests of Honour: Zen Cho, Mary Robinette Kowal and Philip Reeve. People in general were very kind about this, and if there was a negative comment on my role, I missed it completely. (If you did see any such thing, don’t feel that you need to enlighten me.)
Zen Cho had unfortunately had to withdraw for family reasons, but I’m glad to say that she will be one of the Guests of Honour at next year’s Eastercon instead. My father and both of her parents were born in what is now Malaysia, which is probably three more Malaysian-born GoH parents than in the previous history of Eastercon.
By the time the announcement was made, I had rather unexpectedly taken on the role of WSFS Division Head for the 2021 WorldCon, DisCon III to be held in Washington DC. I relinquished that role in late June, and shortly thereafter the Chair of the convention also resigned, to be replaced by one Mary Robinette Kowal, my fellow Eastercon 2022 Guest of Honour. The first thing I said to her when I saw her last weekend was to apologise for my role in thrusting that particular burden on her shoulders. I will not report her response.
Anyway, time passed, the plague receded to an extent, and last Thursday I set off to Heathrow (after a couple of days working in London), arriving in time for a lovely dinner with my wife and son and the Committee (and, in theory, the other Guests of Honour; but they all arrived on Friday).
Zen’s replacement was Tasha Suri, whose work I’m ashamed to say I was unfamiliar with, though in my 2020 Hugo administration role I had sent her a finalist pin for being on the inaugural Astounding Award ballot. Tasha was a bit distracted by domestic events during the weekend, but I instinctively liked her as a person and have now bought some of her work to enjoy.
As mentioned above, I knew Mary Robinette best of the other GoHs. We had some good rehashing of recent events, which again will not be further reported. She and Ian Whates did a breezy and enjoyable BSFA Awards ceremony. (Though I had only voted for one winner.) Her interests are gratifyingly eclectic, and I hoped but failed to go to a couple of her panels on historical topics. She flew out a little early to go to Kjell Lindgren’s next space launch.
Philip Reeve was a real discovery. Famous for Mortal Engines, of course, the only other book of his that I had read was a Fourth Doctor / Leela story from 2013 which I greatly enjoyed. Anne, F and I dined with him in the hotel on the Saturday and then took him out with a larger group including Mary Robinette on the Sunday. A charming, modest and reserved chap, who I hope we will see again.
Phil Dyson introduces the Guests of Honour – me, Tasha Suri, Philip Reeve and Mary Robinette KowalBadly backlit after-dinner photo on Sunday night
Apart from the opening and closing ceremonies, I had four panels, a Kaffeeklatsch and a formal stage interview during the weekend. When I say I had four panels, one of them was simply introducing Wendy Aldiss presenting her lovely book, My Father’s Things, in a discussion with Brian Aldiss’s publisher Scott Pack, and then sitting back in the audience and enjoying the illustrated narration.
The other three were two on politics and one on Doctor Who, which seems about right. They were front-loaded so that on Sunday all I had to worry about was the GoH interview, or so I thought. My Kaffeeklatsch was first thing on Saturday, and only two people came, both of whom I already knew well (Hi, Shana! Hi, Colette!); I wonder if there would have been more if it had been scheduled after my GoH interview rather than before?
All praise to Vincent Doherty, who carefully managed a delightful interview, much of which was summarised by the BSFA scribe Emily (click on the tweet for her full account):
These were the slides that Vince assembled from the photos I had sent in advance:
Two other things happened on the Sunday. The first was the hotly contested bid for the 2023 Eastercon, where I was called in to read aloud the (newly finalised) rules. The choice between the two contenders was resolved by a lobby vote, with each of the two bids assigned a door and supporters asked to leave the room by one or the other. Virtual votes, and votes from the less mobile, were tallied in parallel and added in. The winning bid had almost exactly 60% of support, which is comfortable but not crushing. Apparently this was the closest vote since the revolutionary year of 1989.
The other significant thing on Sunday was the new Doctor Who episode, a swashbuckling bit of Chinese pirate fun along with Sea Devils. (They call humans “Land Parasites”.) I won’t analyse it in depth, yet; I loved the deepening of the Doctor / Yasmin relationship and I loved even more the imminent return of Tegan and Ace.
Incidentally, and I should have posted this in February, I got a pic with Mandip Gill, who plays Yasmin, at Gallifrey One in February, and the green-screen effect means that the Tardis appears to be visible through my torso. They offered me another photo-op, but I quite like it.
Yesterday was much more relaxed, for me anyway. I attended the live recording of the Octothorpe podcast, where I was roundly mocked for predicting that they would win a BSFA Award, my attempts at camouflage proving strangely ineffective. (Note F, sitting beside me, wishing he was anywhere else.)
My attempt to hide from the scorn of Octothorpe
It was fantastic to be back with real people again, and I loved seeing all of you. You made my family very welcome as well, and that makes a big difference. Many thanks to Phil and all of his committee, and congratulations to James Shields on winning the Doc Weir Award. And I do hope to come again next year, though it does depend a bit on the venue.
A number of people inevitably came away with COVID as a souvenir of the convention. So far the numbers seem to be barely into double figures, out of 700 attendees, and I myself have tested negative. (Having caught my own dose at Novacon in November.) Fingers crossed that nobody is too badly affected.
Fannish friends will forgive my closing with our dear H, our guest for many Christmases, who cycled many miles to come and see us on Friday evening and Saturday morning. I hope that it will not be too long before we see any of you again.
Glancing over the scavengers’ heads, Tom glimpsed a dark silhouette against the distant glare of furnaces. The girl was at the far end of the catwalk, climbing nimbly up a ladder to a higher level. He ran after her and snatched at her ankle as she reached the top. He missed by a few inches, and at the same moment a dart hissed past him, striking sparks from the rungs. He looked back. Two more policemen were thrusting through the crowd with cross-bows raised. Beyond them he could see Katherine and her father watching him. “Don’t shoot!” he shouted. “I can catch her!”
Philip Reeve and I are both going to be Guests of Honour at next year's Eastercon, but I confess that I had not read any of his books. Mortal Engines was a huge hit when it first came out, and has been (unsuccessfully) filmed. The plot is fairly standard YA (girl meets boy, they are separated, struggle and are eventually reunited) but what really makes it is the setting: a post-apocalyptic steampunk Eurasia where cities have become mobile and eat other cities in a struggle for survival, "municipal Darwinism". It does take quite a special talent to invent a grotesque, fantastic world and also get us to sympathise with the characters who gradually learn just how awful their world really is. He also gives his heroine a particularly memorable back-story to uncover. Recommended. You can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired this year, and also my top unread sf book. Next on those piles are Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver, and Staring at the Sun, by Julian Barnes.
‘Aggie?’ said the Doctor thoughtfully. ‘I wonder what that’s short for?’ The girl’s nostrils flared proudly. ‘My full name is Agony-Without-End-Shall-Be-The-Doctor’s-Punishment.’
The Penguin series of short Who books for younger readers keeps getting better. This month (published two days ago) we have the Fourth Doctor and Leela in an adventure on a giant spaceborne tree. The plot combines quite a lot of elements of Leela’s first televised adventure with nods to New Who, and also a decent moral twist to the tale in the end. If this is typical of Reeve’s writing, I may well seek out more.
