The evidence

Here are some con photos.

Four days on Raisa

Got home yesterday afternoon, after a brief post-con interlude with friends in Maidenhead, and now I feel the need to reflect on the whole puzzling Orbital experience. Puzzling because, in the main, I should not have enjoyed this, and the two other cons I have attended, anywhere near as much as I did since I am not in any way A Fan.

This is not to say that I don't like science fiction because I do, very much, and have done since my teens when I read first the excellent John Wyndham and then the less-than-excellent-and-extraordinarily-sexist Edmund Cooper, in some quantity. Fantasy too has been a occassional addition to my literary diet, beginning inevitably with LoTR at the age of about 14 and followed by a looooooooooooong dry spell until Husband introduced me to Tad Williams in 1990. However, I feel that merely liking the stuff and being A Fan of the stuff are two very different things. I can barely remember a thing about a book/film/TV episode/series once I have stopped interacting with it. For me it's all about short-term gratification - read/watch and move on. I can't recount series numbers, episode titles or plot details. I feel no sense of ownership of the characters or their millieu. If a book or episode is bad, I'm likely just to stop engaging with that author/series rather than to agonise about how the writers/producers have let us down. If characters do things that I didn't expect and don't particularly like, I may grump about it a bit but I accept that that's the way it goes with fiction sometimes. For Fans, I feel, things are very different. Which is not to say that Fan-dom is bad, just that I am different from A Fan and A Fan is different from me.

So why do I enjoy conventions so much when the whole premise of the event is that it serves Fans, a group to which I demonstrably don't belong? Answer is, I don't know. Since I am also not a particularly gregarious person, it can't be the opportunity to meet lots of people. I go to the occassional panel but am frequently confused and nonplussed by the content. I don't read an awful lot of fiction at the moment so have few favourite authors whose autographs I would seek out. I'm far too shy to get dressed up for the Masquerade. I did get involved in running the Easter day service this year, which was terrific but not unstressful.

I guess part of what I enjoy is seeing my partner and friends having such a good time - four days in the happy company of these people whom I love, admire and respect is no small treat. And I like hotel life, the self-containedness of it all, the slightly off-world feel*, the free shower caps. And when I do summon up the nerve to make conversation, I always find that very rewarding. Ultimately, I guess, it's about being part of something, no matter how peripherally, that matters to other beings. So while I a not A Fan, not part of The Tribe that Neil Gaiman talked about on Sunday, I like to think I am something of a fellow traveller.

In the world of transgender, where my research interests lie, there is a term SOFFA, standing for Significant Others, Family, Friends and Allies. Inspired by this, but not wanting to colonise someone else's discourse, I name myself a SOFTy - Significant Other/Fellow Traveller. Maybe at the next convention, if there are any other SOFTy around, we can get a drink together in the Real Ale Bar and swap stories about what it's like on our planet. Check us out with your bioscanners as you pass by - I think you'll find us harmless.

* like Raisa, while the world outside the Radisson Edwardian was harsh and forbidding, inside there was everything for pleasure!

The best bits ...

... so far:

• Joe Abercrombie (that boy will go far, mark my words)
• Frank Wu's masterly, funny and moving exposition on the resurrection in this morning's service (and he gave me a dvd - cheers chief!)
• being read to by Neil Gaiman (not alone, more's the pity - though I agree with Husband that Gaiman's leather jacket is a bit dodgy)
  
• a really good argument about the Death of the Author in the Real Ale Bar
• hotteeeze self-heating foot warmers
• men in kilts
• Adam Roberts being secretly funny
• the first half of China Mieville's exposition - and arguing about the second half later
• a nice (if expensive) pot of darjeeling in the Polo Lounge
• magic eye drops

And there's still 24 hours to go.

I like cons.

Breaking orbit

So, the time to depart for Orbital fast approches and the dreaded task of packing must be faced - the shorter the trip, the greater the stress for this clothing commitophobe! Will it be warm or cold, damp or dry? Should I take trousers or skirts and, if the latter, what colour tights? How many cardigans and pairs of shoes? Shoes! What about boots? Which boots - the red, the black, the spanish ones with buttons up the sides, the pearly purple docs? Arrrrghh!

Too. Many. Decisions.

Head!

Will!

Explode!

Small objects of desire

Am thinking of getting one of these.

Buy now or hold out for the 16gb model that is bound to come out about two weeks after I take delivery.

Ah, technology - don't you just love it!