After a hiatus caused by my lack of broadband before, over and through Christmas and New Year, we resumed gaming last week. It’s still going pretty well, albeit it with the occasional interesting visual effect.

This wasn’t actually the best one; the best one – which I missed with the camera – was when General Tangent appeared to morph into some kind of green, dragon-like monster rearing up above the table.

Our characters have now made it to Egypt. Best exchange of the night?

Me: We should check out the pyramids first. Didn’t we figure out last week that they aren’t actually very far from Cairo? Perhaps we should hire a car?

General Tangent: There’s a tram line that goes there. [Consults book]. The number [something] tram on the Pyramids line goes there.

TAFKAC: I’m not taking a tram! If we end up being chased by a bunch of cultists trying to kill us I don’t want to end up waiting for a tram to get away from them!

We agreed we wouldn’t take the tram.

I’m very pleased to announce that not only will I be attending Odyssey 2010, this year’s Eastercon, but that I’ll be on a panel too: a discussion on “Humour in SF” that’s provisionally scheduled for 11am on the Monday morning. I’ll post again when I have more details of the panel, or if the time changes.

So what is an Eastercon, where and when is this one, and why should you come?

Well Eastercon is the British national science fiction convention. It’s held annually, at Easter (duh!), with typically a different venue and organising team each year – which is why each iteration has a different name. I’ve been to two Eastercons: the first two years ago, when Orbital was held near Heathrow; and the second last year, when LX was held in Bradford. This year’s convention, Odyssey, which will be the 61st Eastercon, is being held at the same Heathrow location as Orbital. The basic details are:

Odyssey 2010, The 2010 Eastercon, 2 – 5 April 2010

Radisson Edwardian Hotel, Heathrow, London, UK

Guests of Honour

Alastair Reynolds

Iain M Banks

Liz Williams

Mike Carey

Artist Guest of Honour

Carlos Ezquerra

Fan Guests of Honour

Fran and John Dowd

I’ve thoroughily enjoyed both Eastercons I’ve been to, and I think I’m going to enjoy this one even more because it will be the first where I’m not spending eight hours a day in the dealers hall. According to the website, there are already 927 people signed up, so it looks like it will have a good buzz to it. If it’s anything like the previous two conventions, the programme will be packed with items covering literature, science, drama, music, life and everything, and with tones ranging from the deeply serious to the happily absurd – which I think are sometimes the best. At LX, one of the most memorable panels I went to was one where they demonstrated an item called a “violet wand“. If you want to know what that is, then I’d point you at the wikipedia entry, but will say that it was originally developed as a Victorian healing device and is now generally used for what might be termed “bedroom recreation”.

That was quite a late night panel.

At present, they only seem to have details of the science programme up (there will be several strands of events), but even that ranges from:

Life of a Hydrogen Atom

The universe around us is made up of many different types of atoms, yet only two types, hydrogen and helium, were created in the Big Bang. Other elements have been formed by a wide variety of fascinating astrophysical processes since then. This talk will take you on a quick tour of some of these processes by following the life story of one of the simplest things in the universe – a proton – from its birth in the Big Bang to its death, swallowed up by a black hole.

…to:

Alien Archeology

What will our panel of ‘experts’ make of the various items they are presented with? Is it a Denebian ritual object, or simply a salt shaker?

…with both of these being panels I’d love to attend.

Oh and my fellow Brighton author Mark Barrowcliffe (a.k.a. M D Lachlan) will be doing a seminar on ‘Sherlock Holmes’ Baritsu:

…a lecture on Victorian self defence for ladies and gentlemen – how the Victorian gentry subdued the hobbledihoy.

It all looks very quaint until you remember these guys built the British Empire. If you can stand against a Zulu ibutho charge then you know a bit about being in a scrap. I may do the talk in character, which should be fun. Advice ranges from the quaint ‘look him in the eye and say “do you know who I am?” to the chilling ‘it is possible to tear off his arm from this position, after which you can chastise him at will’.

Details here.

If you’re at all into science-fiction and fantasy, I’d strongly recommend going to Odyssey. You can sign up here. Hopefully see some of you there.

We (the UK) are currently in the grip of a meteorological disaster that has paralysed our entire country. Or to put it another way, a few inches of snow has fallen and everything’s consequently turned to shit. Roads are blocked, buses are cancelled, trains are delayed, and schools and businesses are closed – often because staff can’t get to them owing to the aforementioned transport difficulties.

And as always, the cry goes up from everyone (including me) that: “It wasn’t like this in the old days!” And it wasn’t: I don’t ever recall my school ever being closed because of snow. I just put on my wellies and walked through the snow, as did my teachers – and I think that’s the rub. In the old days, teachers probably lived in the same town where they taught, and walked to work.

Posh commuters aside, everyone did. Since 1995/1997 alone, the average journey distance to work has increased by 6%; think how much it must have increased since 1950, say? Back in those days, people would decide which place had the best balance of work, housing and recreation, and then live there; now we decide that the best housing for us is a point A, the best job is at point B, and the best play to have fun is at point C, and proceed to spend a good chunk of our time travelling between those points.  (I’m not criticising: I’ve done exactly that myself).

The point is that when I was a small child, most people either walked to work, or had jobs that were near enough that they could – if necessary – walk to work. A school had a fighting chance of getting enough staff in – 75% say – that it could stay open. Now, it doesn’t.

So it’s not necessarily that people in the old days were better able to cope with snow than us. It might simply be that we’ve built a more geographically diffuse society that is, as a result, less able to cope with transport disruptions.

Great. Still strips out apostrophes. Still therefore totally useless. And as a bonus feature, the photo did not (see what I had to do there?) appear.

Bugger.

Well after nearly a month in which I havent blogged, due to a combination of being away, having no Internet access when I wasnt away, and not really having anything to say…

…I still havent anything to say.

But I do have a new WordPress client app on my iPhone to test.

And thats pretty much it. But Ill add a random photo.
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I think that one of the most fascinating things about the ongoing change from old, analogue/physical business models to their new digital/virtual replacements, is the way we’re moving through a sort of middle, mash-up period, in which legecy businesses are desperately trying to hammer their old models into a shape that might perhaps work in the new.

Take music, for example. I’ve recently got quite into listening to music on my iPhone, and have been buying quite a few downloaded tracks for it from iTunes. Like, I suspect, most people, I don’t buy albums when I buy digitially; instead, I simply buy the individual tracks I want.

But iTunes doesn’t yet quite work that way. Sure, it allows you to buy individual tracks, but it insists on pretending that those tracks are part of albums. So when I search for a track, it shows me a list of probably identical versions that differ only on which album (original, compilation, greatest hits) they might have been released on. And having selected one of those at random, the iPod app on my phone then insists on showing me – and anyone who might be looking over my shoulder – the artwork of that album (an album I’ve never bought) as it plays the tune.

I wouldn’t mind, except that some of those random album choices make me look pretty stupid when it comes to my taste in music.

I think Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” is a good song, for instance, obviously, or I wouldn’t have bought it. But the iPod app insists of telling everyone that I got it from the Forest Gump soundtrack album, which isn’t the sort of album I can imagine myself buying.

And when I listen to “I’m Gonna Be” by The Proclaimers, which is a bit dodgy to start with, the iPod app is adamant that I got this track from “Totally Celtic Rock: The Essential Celtic Rock Alb-

Hang on a minute. Crap. That is actually an album I bought.

Bugger.

I had a really good time at Dragonmeet. The last two years I’ve been stuck behind a stand selling Game Night, and the problem with that is that you basically miss the actual con. This year, I didn’t have a stand, so it was really nice to get out and about.

I went down with Mark Barrowcliffe, author of the D&D memoir the Elfish Gene, who’d expressed an interest in checking out a gaming convention (he’s been out of gaming since about 1983). I think he was just a tad worried that he might get a slightly hostile reception, given that some people were a little bit upset about his book – but actually everyone seemed really nice towards him.

(When two copies of the Elfish Gene were being auctioned off at the charity auction, someone did shout out, “How about you just auction off his home address!” but it was said in a very jokey manner).

We sort of mooched around in the morning, then I did a panel at 12 with Mark and fellow authors Dave Devereux and Stephen Deas (and yes, it is a bit poncy to use the phrase “fellow authors”, but please forgive me – I’m still bouncing around with pride and excitement about being up there on a panel with them, as a peer). The panel was about the ways in which roleplaying may have influenced what we write. It was pretty well attended – must have been at least sixty people there – and I’d like to think I was at least half-way coherent and a bit entertaining.

Danie Ware from Forbidden Planet (@Danacea) took a picture of the four of us, and kindly gave me permission to post it here:

There was a quite funny moment at the start. When I did some panels at the last Eastercon in Bradford, one person was pre-selected to chair the panel and the panelists had to assemble in a “Green Room” area 15 minutes before; the idea being that you all then had a quick chat about what you were going to say.

Dragonmeet does it a bit more casually; you turn up at the actual panel room at the appointed time, a gopher makes sure there’s enough seats and introduces you all… and then leaves.

It was at that point that I suddenly realised that I perhaps ought to have thought about what I was actually going to talk about (I have to confess that up until then, I’d concentrated all my efforts on getting onto a panel, self-publicising author that I am), and looking around at my fellow guests, it looked like they were having similar thoughts. It was just the four of us, staring at each other, with about sixty odd people expectantly waiting for us to entertain them.

Luckily (for me at least), Dave Devereux stepped up to the plate and acted as sort of chairman, getting things going by describing how he got into roleplaying, with each one of us in turn giving our first roleplaying story. I ended up really enjoying the hour; it whizzed past, and it was really good to meet and chat with Dave and Stephen.

Then in the afternoon we (Mark and I) played a game of Hot War, which is by my friend Malcolm Craig, and is the sequel to his game Cold City. That went really well. Mark ended up going a bit “evil god” after putting on an “ultimate power helmet” (and his character was supposed to be a smooth-talking bastard) and we had to kill him, but everyone had a good time. (It was apparently his first roleplaying death since 1982 or something).

Then came the final part of the day, the charity auction, compared as always by my good friend Brian Nisbet (@natural20), and an event in which I managed to avoid a divorce by failing to get the only copy of the still unreleased Doctor Who Roleplaying Game. (I got up to £220, but I think it went for £250). I did end up getting a rather special Star Wars item for the ridiculous price of £35.

This was a prototype that Wizkids made for a “click-out collectable miniature” type game like Pirates of the Spanish Main – but for Star Wars. In the end the game wasn’t produced, so the prototypes were all there was. There were three of them on offer at Dragonmeet, all different, and I ended up getting one of them.

I didn’t actually want it. But I figured it was something that deserved to go for a reasonable amount of money, and since Brian was auctioning them by a method he uses for multiple items where everyone interested puts their hand in the air, he starts shouting ever increasing figures, and when only x number of people still have their hands in the air (where x is the number of items on offer), those x people get one of the items, I figured I’d keep my hand up for a while.

But in this case, loads of people had their hands in the air… and they all seemed to put them down at the point he got to £30. And then I ended up being persuaded to pay an extra £5 in order to have first pick from a selection where I genuinely had no preference on account of not wanting any of them in the first place.

I think I might donate it to the Warpcon charity auction.

And that was Dragonmeet 2009, save for the obligatory post-con trip to a pub, a very long journey, and bed around 1am.

Next Saturday (December 28th) the tenth Dragonmeet will take place at its regular venue of Kensington Town Hall. And I’m pretty proud that I will be one of the convention’s guests.

To be an official guest at a convention is quite an honour, and one that I haven’t previously had. I’ve been a trader, and had the privilege of walking around a convention with a different coloured badge. But as I said to my wife last night, the special status afforded traders at a convention is ultimately an honour that you’ve purchased. Whereas you cannot purchase the honour of being a guest; this is an honour one has to blag.

As part of my guest duties, I’ll be appearing at a panel discussing the influence of roleplaying games upon writing, alongside fellow guests and authors Mark Barrowcliffe (author of “The Elfish Gene”), David Devereux, Stephen Deas.

And apparently all of the authors (including me) will be doing signing/sales sessions at a table by the stage, next to the artists. So if you want to pick up a signed copy of Game Night, this will be your chance.

I posted a few weeks ago to say that we (James Wallis of Magnum Opus Press, my publisher, EN World, and I) were going to be publishing the whole of Game Night on the web, in twenty-six weekly instalments.

Well as of about 11:30 am today, it’s up:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/blogs/jonny-nexus/2059-game-night-chapter-one-gate.html

If you haven’t yet read Game Night, then please head on over there and check it out. And be sure to leave a comment on the end if you like it.

If you have read Game Night, and if you liked it, then perhaps you could pass the above link on. If you can post it on your blog or on forums or on twitter I’d be very, very grateful. And if you have the time, perhaps you could go to this thread and say something about Game Night.

Thanks in advance,

Jonny

On Monday, the first free weekly instalment of Game Night will be published on ENWorld, and as I announced a couple of days ago, I’m going to be doing a blog tour to publicise this event.

Well as of now, I currently have six bloggers/sites signed up to host a stop on the tour. (And while I’m here, thanks very much to those guys!). Six is enough, but there’s still room for a few more.

So if any of you think you might fancy hosting a stop, please drop me a line at jonny (at) jonnynexus dot com.

(For details on what hosting a stop involves, just click on the latter of the links above).

Thanks!