It was a remarkably nice day in London today, for a variety of reasons. Unaccountably, given that today was the first day of Wimbledon, the weather was excellent. As a result I spent much of the day sat in the roof garden at the Clutes’ talking about books with the assembled multitudes and actually getting sunburned. And there were multitudes as well, because John and Judith put on a little reception for those attendees at the recent Critics Masterclass who were still in the UK and didn’t have to rush off to work. I met Jonathan McCalmont for the first time, and discovered that he has a fine new idea for a blog – Fruitless Recursion specializes in “discussing works of criticism and non-fiction relating to the SF, Fantasy and Horror genres.” That one has gone straight into my Google Reader account.

I had an interesting conversation with Gary Wolfe and M. John Harrison about fan space at the end of books (as opposed to in the interstices of series) that deserves a much longer post when I have time.

The rest of the day was spent doing touristy things with Gary Wolfe, Karen Burnham and Karen’s husband, Curtis. I managed to go to Camden Market without buying anything. I have, however, picked up issue #1 of Paul Cornell’s new Captain Britain and MI:13 comic, and Sean Williams sequel to Saturn Returns.

Um, Paul. If the comic is called Captain Britain, no one is really going to believe that you’ve killed Brian off in issue #1, are they?