The Eurocon took place this weekend in St. Petersburg. I wish I could have been there, but Russia is just too difficult for someone like me right now. However, there is good news. The ESFS Awards were announced yesterday, and I know some of the winners. In particular:

• Hall of Fame, Best Author: China Miéville
• Hall of Fame, Best Publisher: Gollancz
• Hall of Fame, Best Promoter: Mihaela Marija Perković
• Spirit of Dedication, Children’s Books Creator: Ruth F Long (tied with Anton Lomaev)
• Encouragement Awards: Liz Bourke (and 8 others)

The full list of winners is available at the ESFS website.

Also in Eurocon news, the 2016 convention in Barcelona has expanded its GoH list. The line-up is now: Aliette de Bodard (France), Richard Morgan (UK), Jun Miyazaki (Hungary), Enrique Corominas (Spain), Andrzej Sapkowski (Poland) & Johanna Sinisalo (Finland). That one I do plan to get to.

My interviewing duties at Sofacon 2 seem to have gone fairly well. I had an hour-long discussion with Joe Haldeman touching on a number of subjects. Judging by the comments on the convention’s chat room, and on Twitter, we went down fairly well. This comment was particularly kind:

https://twitter.com/JuliaSD/status/576813326333702144

I started off talking to Joe about The Forever War (which was rejected 17 times before finding a publisher, and yet still won almost every award going). When Joe wrote the book, the prospect of same-sex marriage becoming legal was probably deemed less likely than meeting aliens, but nevertheless he wrote a novel with a future society in which same-sex relationships were the norm. There are people around who want you to believe that the SF community was an evil right-wing plot before they same along to “save” it just a few years ago. It is good to be reminded that people like Joe were fighting for queer folks in the 1970s.

We touched on a number of other issues, including gender roles in ancient Rome, the place of women and queer folk in the armed forces, the convention that had Joe dress in drag, and America’s obsession with snipers. There was a lot of really serious stuff about war as well. Joe is a really easy interview, because he’s had such an interesting life and he’s always ready with a smart response to your questions. My thanks to Tony Smith for asking me to do this.

I took a break from the con to have dinner, but I’m now listening in again because there’s a cyberpunk panel with the awesome Pat Cadigan on it.

This weekend sees the second SofaCon, an online convention run by Tony Smith of Star Ship Sofa. Because it is international it doesn’t start until 5:00pm, UK time, but that’s good because it means I won’t miss the Wales – Ireland game. At 6:00pm, UK time, I will be interviewing the legendary Joe Haldeman. Huge thanks to Tony for asking me to do this.

You can find the schedule for SofaCon 2015 at the Kickstarter page. There have been some minor changes — in particular Charlie Stross won’t be able to make it, and Rachel Swirsky will open the event. If you’d like to join us, you can still get a ticket to the event here. There are a lot of great sessions lined up, including interviews with Kim Stanley Robinson and David Brin, and a World SF panel featuring Rajan Khanna & Aliette de Bodard. Gareth Powell will be reading from one of his Ack Ack Macaque books.

It is possible that Tony will make individual sessions available afterwards, but I don’t have any firm information one way or the other.

Hopefully I’ll see some of you in the audience tomorrow, but if you can’t make it and have a question you’d like me to ask Joe please comment below. I can’t promise to ask it, but input is always welcome.

Over on Europa SF there is an interview with Arno Behrend, the leader of the bid to bring Eurocon to Dortmund in 2017. I have long been of the opinion that European fandom needs to fully embrace large countries such as Germany, France and Spain. We have the Barcelona Eurocon on the schedule now for 2016. Here’s hoping that Germany gets a turn.

Oh, and you do know what Dortmund is famous for, don’t you? Right: beer.

Well, that’s another one done. Six down, many more to go?

I started out writing a brief note, and it rapidly turned into a con report, so I have posted it as such. You can find it here.

Well done once again to Jo and her team, and thanks to all of the fabulous people who came and made it happen.

I spent Saturday in Cheltenham getting my first taste of a major literary festival from the inside. Here are a few thoughts from the point of view of someone who is far more used to large science fiction conventions.

Cheltenham itself seems very nice. The railway station is quite a way out of town, but there is a lovely footpath most of the way into the town center which appears to be at least part-based on an old branch line. I’m not sure that I’d want to use it after dark, but during the day it is very pleasant. The town, once you get there, looks very expensive, perhaps even more so than Bath. I was told that the charity shops there are a good place to shop for designer clothes, so I may have to go back.

The festival covers two large Georgian squares and some of the civic buildings in between. The venues are mostly tent-based, but they are big, serious tents that are probably proof against anything but the most serious weather. They could have done with a few large signs with maps of the layout, but mostly it was easy to navigate. I suspect that the lack of signage to what they called the Authors’ House and what I’d call the green room was deliberate.

The organization was excellent. Everything ran to time. There were helpful staff to make sure that we got to where we needed to be, when we needed to be there. They even did sound checks. Of course it is easier to do that if the programming is fairly light. Venues were not run back-to-back, but instead had hour or more gaps in between sessions so they could be turned round without any crush.

The idea of taking panelists off to do signings immediately after their panels worked fairly well, though the Waterstones tent, where the signings took place, got very crowded at times. Margaret Atwood, bless her, had a queue stretching half way to Bristol. They could perhaps have done signings in the venues, given that they were empty for quite a while after each event, but that would mean moving the books and providing someone to sell them, and anyway people like Atwood needed far longer than an hour to sign.

Inevitably many of the people appearing at the event were celebrities. We were a very bookish crowd in comparison. I was rather looking forward to being able to strut in and thumb my nose at the lobster & Bolly crowd, given that I was on program too, but Caitlin Moran had gone by the time I arrived. The only person I noticed who might have been offended by my presence was Jenni Murray from Woman’s Hour.

All in all, it was a very pleasant experience. I’d certainly go back if asked, though I suspect that’s not hugely likely. I’ll write more about the panel itself shortly.