We resume on Sunday afternoon, when I returned from lunch to find myself witnessing the official photograph of the official signing of the official contract for the new edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, by John Clute, Dave Langford and Peter Nicholls. I was pleased to learn later from Dave Langford that he is fairly optimistic it can be completed fairly quickly (whatever that means), and positively thrilled to hear that the new Encyclopedia will be primarily a low-cost subscription on-line resource, capable of being continually updated. OK, I do like dead trees as a medium, but for a work like The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction the extra benefits of on-line searches and perhaps also hyperlinks to external information will be huge.

I mainly just hung around for the next few hours, bumping into (at last!), Conor Kostick, and and her mother who had come over to present the James White Award. Had a good chat with , and . Then it was time to go to the Hugos.

I’ve already written up the Hugo results, but just want to note that I felt a small lump in my throat at the ceremony. I’ve been writing various web pages about the Hugos for five years now, and at last I was actually there. More prosaically, as well as a particularly high percentage of UK-bsed winners, I have a suspicion (which I will check some time) that a higher proportion (or at least number) of women won Hugos this year than is usual. (I calculated three years ago that a third of Nebulas in the fiction categories had been won by women, but only a quarter of Hugos.) More number-crunching to follow.

Met up with for a post-Hugo drink, and we witnessed the cheers and applause of the Moat House bar as a kilted strode in bearing his Hugo. We then repaired to the Hilton, admiring of ‘s success at crowd control, and looked around for parties. The Hugo nominees party was rumoured to be a) the place to be and b) opening to all after half an hour; neither of these rumours turned out to be true, and we tried out the Spruotlore/Irish party before eventually gravitating to the Finns. Somehow the Finns had managed to put together the ingredients of a fine time, lots to drink (including a particularly addictive liquorice flavoured vodka), lots of people, and what appeared at the time (though my memory as time goes on is increasingly blurred) to be good conversation. I eventually found my room mate (whose blog I have now syndicated as ) talking to Ken and Carole MacLeod, and we returned to our lodgings.

On Monday morning I bumped into and on my way in, and wandered round the dealer’s room with (who was somewhat the worse for wear) to buy presents for my family (sadly the picture of the Very Hungry Cthulhu had already been bought) before my 11 o’clock panel. This was supposed to be on the future of politics, chaired by Caroline Mullan, but wandered off a bit into the decline of the Swedish social model, since there seemed to be a lot of Scandinavians both on the panel and in the audience. It was also my last panel as a participant.

My one comment on programming – which in general I greatly enjoyed – would be that, if possible, moderators should have a bit more input into both the description and personnel of their panels. I did seven panels throughout the con; the one I myself moderated had an extraordinarily ambiguous description which left it unclear as to what it was supposed to be about; another had a moderator whose views were completely different to those of the other three panellists, which distorted the discussion; two had at least one panellist who really had no interesting ideas about the topic of the panel (and in one of those two cases the panellist in question was me). I appreciate that it’s not an exact science; also in comparison to the many many such events I do for work, I’d say that Worldcon panellists are without exception (of the panels I attended) clever enough and articulate enough to rise above the petty problems I mention, and that Worldcon audiences are among the most forgiving, appreciative and intelligent I have ever addressed. In terms of the logistics of the panels on which I myself appeared I have no complaints, but we were all just talking heads; I noted problems elsewhere with overhead projectors and slide projectors.

Wandered into a conversation with and , who introduced me to and . The latter persuaded me to attend an extraordinary presentation by Duncan Lunan about the Green Children of Woolpit, a 12th century mystery which he reckons points to a high-level conspiracy involving Henry II and the Vatican to conceal the fact that the children had been transported from a human colony on another planet. I shared with those present certain information I received earlier this year from an Eastern European foreign minister which seems to me to undermine one of the key arguments of Duncan Lunan’s thesis, but I will say no more of that here.

and were still at the same table an hour after I’d left them, and we were joined by Julian West as we munched on sandwiches. Then it was time for the Closing Ceremony. As Robert Sheckley was absent through illness, and Jane Yolen had already left, it was up to Chris Priest to respond to the convention on behalf of the professional community, which he did eloquently and gracefully. Though he finished with a good-natured dig at – “I think that in years to come, we shall look back to Charlie winning his Hugo last night, and say to ourselves that that was the moment when science fiction changed for the w- I mean, when science fiction changed forever!”

I seemed to spend the afternoon helping with the dismantling of the Science Fiction Foundation stall, then, long chat with and various other luminaries of British fandom. very kindly invited me to join a literary dinner, but my plane flight did not allow for this, and I ended up finishing my worldcon with a slightly grotty chicken tikka masala in Glasgow airport in the company of and Enid.

Minor logistical complaint – I put a bid in on one of the scanner/printer sets that the con was trying to get rid of, but come the crucial moment nobody seemed to be able to tell me if I had won the auction or indeed where the equipment physically was, so I dropped the issue. I would certainly have had difficulty humping it onto the plane, so perhaps it’s just as well.

Apart from the two very minor grumbles noted above, I had a great time. Apologies to those weren’t there and who’ve had to endure these ramblings over the last few days. Apologies to anyone I met and haven’t mentioned. See you all again soon.