girlofprey (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
girlofprey) wrote2008-03-24 09:11 pm
girlofprey) wrote2008-03-24 09:11 pm
Con Report - Orbital - Thursday and Friday
I'm back, baby.
Thursday
First, some background from my own life. Given that it was going to take me three hours to get to Heathrow I was going to go to Orbital straight from work, and was taking an hour off early. I packed on Wednesday, and had to finish up packing on Thursday morning. Then, because the stupid buses can't decide which routes they actually run, I had to carry my weekend bag all the way to work. At work I was told that my position was finishing that day, and the agency had known but hadn't let me know. I was a bit panicked for a while, but after calling the agency it turns out they have another job for me this week, though it doesn't start till Thursday or Friday. Anyway, so I left work at 4, walked to the train station to get the train, then went and got some dinner and doughnuts for the room (hurrah for Krispy Kreme), then got the tube to Heathrow, got the free bus somewhat tentatively to the hotel, went through the vaguely embarassing situation of trying to check in and having to admit I didn't know the last names of the people I had checked in with, and finally got up to the room at about 9 o'clock. Where Jen was watching something, and she was great.
Apparently before I got there they'd all checked in and gone to our triple room and found out it was a smoking room. They'd complained but there weren't any other triples left, so we were in a twin room with the beds pushed together, a camp bed and a sofa. Which was fine. We had a mini bar you couldn't move anything in or they'd assume you'd eaten it and would charge you. And we had a scary interconnecting door to the next room, which thankfully had to be opened on both sides to use. But it was a lovely room. The bathroom was marble and beautiful. I've never known such a brilliant shower. Also they had a helpful list in case you wanted to buy any of the furnishings or things in the room. We didn't particularly, but we appreciated the choice. But no, it was lovely. Jen and I hung around talking for a while, while Alice and Liz were socialising or something. Also we had doughnuts. Eventually we went to find them, and I met Paul Cornell, a proper Dr Who writer or something. He seemed to be under the misapprehension that it was a good show, but whatever.
Anyway. I had a drink, and then eventually went back to the room, and Jen and I watched Seven Swords, which I had sent her, and which is a BRILLIANT FILM, BRILLIANT. It's about of team of heroes who have SEVEN SWORDS between them. They fight off warlords and beautiful evil lady generals, and rescue slave girls. One of the heroes is a girl who's just gotten her sword, and it is the best sword ever, but she can't make it work until pretty much the end. All the swords are the best swords ever. It was quite win. That was a digression. We finished watching the film and went to bed, and Alice and Liz came back a little bit worse for wear, but it was all fine and good and I was totally ready for the con the next morning.
I don't think I've mentioned the hotel actually. The hotel was MAD. There were mirrors everywhere! Literally, you can't imagine. Mirrors on the wall. Mirrors that were the wall. Mirrors in the middle of the chandeliers. Mirrors in the elevator. Mirrors framing pictures. This morning I went to one of the public hotel bathrooms, and it had a little entry hall thing with two doors, like they sometimes do? The top half of all of the walls were mirrors, and when the doors were closed all you could see was a door, yourself, and about ten reflections of doors all around you. It was bizarre. Also everything looked the same. When I checked in the man told me the elevators were just behind reception, behind the marble wall. No no. A man had to help me, and then he tried to convince me I should volunteer. That was quite terrible. But at least our room was easy to find from the elevators. Well, one set of elevators. Very often we went down from floor 2 to floor 1 and reception to get up to the conference rooms on floor 3, rather than just going up in the lift, until Alice convinced us not to. It was quite a strange hotel. But it was lovely. Just BAFFLING.
Friday
Friday I got up for breakfast, and was sent to all kinds of crazy rooms because I was with the con, but eventually got there and their food was great. They had sausages you could actually eat, random slices of pear and other fruit, and a selection of pastries to accompany all this. Breakfast was pretty much the best meal of the day. Then after breakfast we had to go register, and that involved queueing, but they gave us a free book at the desk, by one of the guest authors. Mostly the books were parts 2 or 3 of a series, for the reason, but hey, free books. I think they ran out later in the day, but it was quite nice while it lasted. And then, after getting my beautiful badge and being marked as a green martian, I went to my first panel, at 12. It was So You Want To Be An SF Writer, and it was quite good, about the difficulties facing authors, especially new ones, in the market today. It turns out there used to be 4-book deals to build authors up with, but now if you manage to get one and it doesn't sell well, that's pretty much it. There was a young Dutch (I think) writer on the panel called Thomas Olde Heuvelt, who had managed to have a career in Holland even though the SF publishing trade and reading audience was really small, and he'd come over to do some networking here (and panels). He was quite attractive, also. I don't really remember who else was on the panel, except a publisher/agent Alice and Liz had been talking to the night before. This probably isn't going to be that kind of con report.
At 2 we went to The Hovercraft of Disbelief, and I can't for the life of me remember what that was about. It was what kinds of things pulled you right out of story, I think. There was a woman on the panel who was quite great and had studied Celtic mythology and the sources of Arthurian literature and had massive issues with Marion Zimmer Bradley. Paul Cornell was there too, and quite massively misunderstood some of the things she said, I thought. Also there were people to tell us that Magnets Don't Work That Way, but that they totally forgave it if the writer was good enough and actually did something with it. I think it was generally agreed that different things with jolt you out of a story depending on your familiarity with the subject matter or how you view the characters, but that if the writing was good enough you would still happily ignore that. Also if the story and characters were at least consistent. But I think it's different for everyone, personally. And there's a bit of a tension between exposition and confidence in your writing if you do just make something up, a bit, but again, I think it will depend on the writer and the story and the reader.
I think we went off and found sandwiches then. Also the dealer's room was open by then, I think, and we all went off to look at pretty books. At 4 the others DISAPPEARED to Save The Planet or Get Off The Earth?, while I went to Judging a Book By It's Cover. One of the book dealers was there, and people discussed the importance/cost/history of sci-fi and fantasy books covers, and how things are going to change with the increase of internet shopping for books, where covers are often more important than ever. Also one of the men proved quite effectively that you would probably NOT buy a good set of pretty decent (as he called them) sci-fi books if they had the FUGGEST COVERS EVER, which they did. They were still on the dealer's table on Sunday, I think. Also I was introduced to the glory of the old Gollancz covers which were just bright yellow, with the title and author on. They were quite lovely.
At 5, Jen and I (at least) went to Be Careful What You Wish For - The New Dr Who, which we assumed would be a judgy panel. Not so much. Mostly it was run by people who were saying the extra emotional stuff and the fact that it was more like Buffy now was a great thing, although they were saying that it had therefore come to a natural end now and should really end, which is maybe fair enough. They compared it to what 'the kids' are watching today, Skins and Hollyoaks, without pointing out the fact that a) Hollyoaks at least is rubbish, and b) that they are ensemble shows, and people can be a bit emotionally manipulative and rubbish in an ensemble show, whereas in Dr Who the Doctor's the main character, and very often held up as the hero at the end. Also that mostly it was just dull and rubbish. Rose was described as 'the perfect woman' a few times. Mostly it was all a bit confusing, but people did say some decent things from the audience. So. Yes.
At 6 we hung around for Star Trek: Is There Anyone Still To Explore?, which mostly talked about Kirk and Spock and Scotty, and the new film and Starfleet Academy, and other things I didn't understand. Some people seemed to think a new series set in the Starfleet Academy would be great. Some people seemed to think all of the original series' crew being just out of the Academy at the same time in this new film was a bit strange. Some people thought Enterprise would have been a much better show if they'd just done X, Y and Z. Again, I couldn't mostly keep up, but it was fairly entertaining. I'm not sure they concluded anything by the end of it, but people seemed quite happy. Jen might remember more.
I think we went back to the room after that. Oh, it was 7 and Emmerdale was on, and the others decided to come hang with/judge me in the room. Sadly there was no Kingcest to show them. And they mostly ignored beautiful Debbie. Inexplicably. Anyway. We hung around for a few hours, I think they all had books, and then at 9-ish I went off to find food. The dinner buffet was finished, but they were meant to have some behind the bar from 8, according to the booklet. The first told me they had no food, until 12, but there was food for con people in this big glass room with a waterfall. I went there, and no no, there was some in that big room upstairs. I explained that I'd just been there, and they said no, it was in the big room behind the bar, there was something going on there. So I went all the way back and up the stairs again, and met Alice, and we went, and there was no food, we had clearly just missed the Opening Ceremony. So I went without, for at least an hour until I suddenly noticed that first bar was selling sandwiches. The Alien Jazz Band that was meant to be on at 9:15 turned out to be a (quite good) band playing sci-fi theme tunes (hmm). Eventually Alice came and rescued me from that tedium.
And then I think we made our way up to the Awful SF Movies - A Talk With Clips panel in the vid programme room, which turned out to be a tiny room with about fifteen chairs in it. The man running the panel had clips on video so he was waiting for a player, which the room didn't have, and in the meantime he went through the SF "Rassies" of the previous years (awards mostly opposite to the oscars, for those who don't know). Unsuprisingly, the room filled up quite fast, and when Liz and Jen turned up five or ten minutes into it they had to sit on the floor by the wall, next to a tiny open hatch in it, for wires and whatnot. Eventually someone came to say there was no video player, and it took me a little while to figure out this meant there would be no clips. No clips at all. Mostly we discussed the films on the Rassies list instead. Amityville II: The Possession got a mention, which was quite great. And then the man just started asking people for their examples/experiences of terrible SF films, but seemed mostly interested in writing them down and listing them for his future vid programmes, rather than discussing them. Also someone mentioned Rambo, which isn't even an SF film, and is actually QUITE GOOD. Anyway. We left pretty shortly after that, especially after we realised the main thing the man running the panel would be discussing in the films was how attractive the actresses were.
Liz, Jen and I found our way to the fan room for 11:30, and went to the Slash Workshop, run by Elfin, subtitled 'Aliens, Incest and Objects'. A lot of people were a bit judgy on incest, and mpreg and RPS, but whatev. I would have mentioned Emmerdale and Veronica Mars but I didn't think it was SFF enough. I screamed a bit when I thought a spider had fallen on me, but it turned out to be a bit of fluff. Mostly we talked about Supernatural incest, and the biology of Londo and G-Kar. I think there were some rather worrying bits about real-life fetishes and fetish merchandise, but I don't think that played too large a part in the conversation. And then at 12:30 we played a Blake's 7 Drinking Game, with Seek-Locate-Destroy, and I saw my first ever full episode of Blake's 7. It was quite great, although I admittedly I couldn't hear much of it over the drinking game shouting. It turned out that everything was Slashy Slashy. And there was a man called Travis in it. He was great. Also Servalan. She was QUITE BEAUTIFUL. And Fulham Gas Works were there. They finally got the recognition they deserve. It was great. And I think we went back to the room, and to bed.
Also, if you think I'm doing this panel timetable a little weirdly, I am one up on the Read Me/explanation booklet. Believe me.
And that's all I can manage for now. It's almost time for bed again. I will do Saturday, Sunday and Monday tomorrow, probably.
Thursday
First, some background from my own life. Given that it was going to take me three hours to get to Heathrow I was going to go to Orbital straight from work, and was taking an hour off early. I packed on Wednesday, and had to finish up packing on Thursday morning. Then, because the stupid buses can't decide which routes they actually run, I had to carry my weekend bag all the way to work. At work I was told that my position was finishing that day, and the agency had known but hadn't let me know. I was a bit panicked for a while, but after calling the agency it turns out they have another job for me this week, though it doesn't start till Thursday or Friday. Anyway, so I left work at 4, walked to the train station to get the train, then went and got some dinner and doughnuts for the room (hurrah for Krispy Kreme), then got the tube to Heathrow, got the free bus somewhat tentatively to the hotel, went through the vaguely embarassing situation of trying to check in and having to admit I didn't know the last names of the people I had checked in with, and finally got up to the room at about 9 o'clock. Where Jen was watching something, and she was great.
Apparently before I got there they'd all checked in and gone to our triple room and found out it was a smoking room. They'd complained but there weren't any other triples left, so we were in a twin room with the beds pushed together, a camp bed and a sofa. Which was fine. We had a mini bar you couldn't move anything in or they'd assume you'd eaten it and would charge you. And we had a scary interconnecting door to the next room, which thankfully had to be opened on both sides to use. But it was a lovely room. The bathroom was marble and beautiful. I've never known such a brilliant shower. Also they had a helpful list in case you wanted to buy any of the furnishings or things in the room. We didn't particularly, but we appreciated the choice. But no, it was lovely. Jen and I hung around talking for a while, while Alice and Liz were socialising or something. Also we had doughnuts. Eventually we went to find them, and I met Paul Cornell, a proper Dr Who writer or something. He seemed to be under the misapprehension that it was a good show, but whatever.
Anyway. I had a drink, and then eventually went back to the room, and Jen and I watched Seven Swords, which I had sent her, and which is a BRILLIANT FILM, BRILLIANT. It's about of team of heroes who have SEVEN SWORDS between them. They fight off warlords and beautiful evil lady generals, and rescue slave girls. One of the heroes is a girl who's just gotten her sword, and it is the best sword ever, but she can't make it work until pretty much the end. All the swords are the best swords ever. It was quite win. That was a digression. We finished watching the film and went to bed, and Alice and Liz came back a little bit worse for wear, but it was all fine and good and I was totally ready for the con the next morning.
I don't think I've mentioned the hotel actually. The hotel was MAD. There were mirrors everywhere! Literally, you can't imagine. Mirrors on the wall. Mirrors that were the wall. Mirrors in the middle of the chandeliers. Mirrors in the elevator. Mirrors framing pictures. This morning I went to one of the public hotel bathrooms, and it had a little entry hall thing with two doors, like they sometimes do? The top half of all of the walls were mirrors, and when the doors were closed all you could see was a door, yourself, and about ten reflections of doors all around you. It was bizarre. Also everything looked the same. When I checked in the man told me the elevators were just behind reception, behind the marble wall. No no. A man had to help me, and then he tried to convince me I should volunteer. That was quite terrible. But at least our room was easy to find from the elevators. Well, one set of elevators. Very often we went down from floor 2 to floor 1 and reception to get up to the conference rooms on floor 3, rather than just going up in the lift, until Alice convinced us not to. It was quite a strange hotel. But it was lovely. Just BAFFLING.
Friday
Friday I got up for breakfast, and was sent to all kinds of crazy rooms because I was with the con, but eventually got there and their food was great. They had sausages you could actually eat, random slices of pear and other fruit, and a selection of pastries to accompany all this. Breakfast was pretty much the best meal of the day. Then after breakfast we had to go register, and that involved queueing, but they gave us a free book at the desk, by one of the guest authors. Mostly the books were parts 2 or 3 of a series, for the reason, but hey, free books. I think they ran out later in the day, but it was quite nice while it lasted. And then, after getting my beautiful badge and being marked as a green martian, I went to my first panel, at 12. It was So You Want To Be An SF Writer, and it was quite good, about the difficulties facing authors, especially new ones, in the market today. It turns out there used to be 4-book deals to build authors up with, but now if you manage to get one and it doesn't sell well, that's pretty much it. There was a young Dutch (I think) writer on the panel called Thomas Olde Heuvelt, who had managed to have a career in Holland even though the SF publishing trade and reading audience was really small, and he'd come over to do some networking here (and panels). He was quite attractive, also. I don't really remember who else was on the panel, except a publisher/agent Alice and Liz had been talking to the night before. This probably isn't going to be that kind of con report.
At 2 we went to The Hovercraft of Disbelief, and I can't for the life of me remember what that was about. It was what kinds of things pulled you right out of story, I think. There was a woman on the panel who was quite great and had studied Celtic mythology and the sources of Arthurian literature and had massive issues with Marion Zimmer Bradley. Paul Cornell was there too, and quite massively misunderstood some of the things she said, I thought. Also there were people to tell us that Magnets Don't Work That Way, but that they totally forgave it if the writer was good enough and actually did something with it. I think it was generally agreed that different things with jolt you out of a story depending on your familiarity with the subject matter or how you view the characters, but that if the writing was good enough you would still happily ignore that. Also if the story and characters were at least consistent. But I think it's different for everyone, personally. And there's a bit of a tension between exposition and confidence in your writing if you do just make something up, a bit, but again, I think it will depend on the writer and the story and the reader.
I think we went off and found sandwiches then. Also the dealer's room was open by then, I think, and we all went off to look at pretty books. At 4 the others DISAPPEARED to Save The Planet or Get Off The Earth?, while I went to Judging a Book By It's Cover. One of the book dealers was there, and people discussed the importance/cost/history of sci-fi and fantasy books covers, and how things are going to change with the increase of internet shopping for books, where covers are often more important than ever. Also one of the men proved quite effectively that you would probably NOT buy a good set of pretty decent (as he called them) sci-fi books if they had the FUGGEST COVERS EVER, which they did. They were still on the dealer's table on Sunday, I think. Also I was introduced to the glory of the old Gollancz covers which were just bright yellow, with the title and author on. They were quite lovely.
At 5, Jen and I (at least) went to Be Careful What You Wish For - The New Dr Who, which we assumed would be a judgy panel. Not so much. Mostly it was run by people who were saying the extra emotional stuff and the fact that it was more like Buffy now was a great thing, although they were saying that it had therefore come to a natural end now and should really end, which is maybe fair enough. They compared it to what 'the kids' are watching today, Skins and Hollyoaks, without pointing out the fact that a) Hollyoaks at least is rubbish, and b) that they are ensemble shows, and people can be a bit emotionally manipulative and rubbish in an ensemble show, whereas in Dr Who the Doctor's the main character, and very often held up as the hero at the end. Also that mostly it was just dull and rubbish. Rose was described as 'the perfect woman' a few times. Mostly it was all a bit confusing, but people did say some decent things from the audience. So. Yes.
At 6 we hung around for Star Trek: Is There Anyone Still To Explore?, which mostly talked about Kirk and Spock and Scotty, and the new film and Starfleet Academy, and other things I didn't understand. Some people seemed to think a new series set in the Starfleet Academy would be great. Some people seemed to think all of the original series' crew being just out of the Academy at the same time in this new film was a bit strange. Some people thought Enterprise would have been a much better show if they'd just done X, Y and Z. Again, I couldn't mostly keep up, but it was fairly entertaining. I'm not sure they concluded anything by the end of it, but people seemed quite happy. Jen might remember more.
I think we went back to the room after that. Oh, it was 7 and Emmerdale was on, and the others decided to come hang with/judge me in the room. Sadly there was no Kingcest to show them. And they mostly ignored beautiful Debbie. Inexplicably. Anyway. We hung around for a few hours, I think they all had books, and then at 9-ish I went off to find food. The dinner buffet was finished, but they were meant to have some behind the bar from 8, according to the booklet. The first told me they had no food, until 12, but there was food for con people in this big glass room with a waterfall. I went there, and no no, there was some in that big room upstairs. I explained that I'd just been there, and they said no, it was in the big room behind the bar, there was something going on there. So I went all the way back and up the stairs again, and met Alice, and we went, and there was no food, we had clearly just missed the Opening Ceremony. So I went without, for at least an hour until I suddenly noticed that first bar was selling sandwiches. The Alien Jazz Band that was meant to be on at 9:15 turned out to be a (quite good) band playing sci-fi theme tunes (hmm). Eventually Alice came and rescued me from that tedium.
And then I think we made our way up to the Awful SF Movies - A Talk With Clips panel in the vid programme room, which turned out to be a tiny room with about fifteen chairs in it. The man running the panel had clips on video so he was waiting for a player, which the room didn't have, and in the meantime he went through the SF "Rassies" of the previous years (awards mostly opposite to the oscars, for those who don't know). Unsuprisingly, the room filled up quite fast, and when Liz and Jen turned up five or ten minutes into it they had to sit on the floor by the wall, next to a tiny open hatch in it, for wires and whatnot. Eventually someone came to say there was no video player, and it took me a little while to figure out this meant there would be no clips. No clips at all. Mostly we discussed the films on the Rassies list instead. Amityville II: The Possession got a mention, which was quite great. And then the man just started asking people for their examples/experiences of terrible SF films, but seemed mostly interested in writing them down and listing them for his future vid programmes, rather than discussing them. Also someone mentioned Rambo, which isn't even an SF film, and is actually QUITE GOOD. Anyway. We left pretty shortly after that, especially after we realised the main thing the man running the panel would be discussing in the films was how attractive the actresses were.
Liz, Jen and I found our way to the fan room for 11:30, and went to the Slash Workshop, run by Elfin, subtitled 'Aliens, Incest and Objects'. A lot of people were a bit judgy on incest, and mpreg and RPS, but whatev. I would have mentioned Emmerdale and Veronica Mars but I didn't think it was SFF enough. I screamed a bit when I thought a spider had fallen on me, but it turned out to be a bit of fluff. Mostly we talked about Supernatural incest, and the biology of Londo and G-Kar. I think there were some rather worrying bits about real-life fetishes and fetish merchandise, but I don't think that played too large a part in the conversation. And then at 12:30 we played a Blake's 7 Drinking Game, with Seek-Locate-Destroy, and I saw my first ever full episode of Blake's 7. It was quite great, although I admittedly I couldn't hear much of it over the drinking game shouting. It turned out that everything was Slashy Slashy. And there was a man called Travis in it. He was great. Also Servalan. She was QUITE BEAUTIFUL. And Fulham Gas Works were there. They finally got the recognition they deserve. It was great. And I think we went back to the room, and to bed.
Also, if you think I'm doing this panel timetable a little weirdly, I am one up on the Read Me/explanation booklet. Believe me.
And that's all I can manage for now. It's almost time for bed again. I will do Saturday, Sunday and Monday tomorrow, probably.