altariel | Redemption

Right, Redemption. First of all, a massive thank you to

sugoll, who not only hosted this magnificent and joyful party, but also somehow managed to find time to sit on panels, perform in the cabaret, and be smiling whenever I saw him. You, sir, are the business.

It is only because Karma knew that

sugoll deserved rewards that I was not late for my first panel on Friday (we were co-panellists on the book thread). For some reason, when I was booking my bus ticket, I looked at the time of arrival in Coventry (4.45pm) and the time of the start of my first panel (5pm) and I thought, “Oh it’s not like roads in Britain get busy at Friday rush hour or anything, what can possibly go wrong...?” Frankly, I deserved to be punished, and I was. When I arrived at the bus station, it turned out that there had been a crash on the M11 and the coaches were running an hour late. I decided not to text

sugoll with this information. I did spend two minutes hyper-ventilating – and then it turned out that my bus, heading north, was not running late at all. Massive relief. However, traffic was piling onto our route instead, and at Bedford the driver told me we were running 13 minutes late. I decided not to bother

sugoll with this news either, but carried on with the panic and the fine calculations of how long it would all take to get through registration, go up in the lift, find the room, etc. etc. Then, between Rugby and Coventry, the driver hit warp speed and we screeched into Coventry bus station at 4. 47pm. The bus station and the Britannia Hotel appear to be the same building, so all I had to do was get in a lift, walk through a door, and start burbling. This is basically what I do when I’m teaching, except that at Redemption the audience responds.

So it all Turned Out Well, but I didn’t deserve that outcome, and the moral of the story is: next time, don’t be such a Damned Fool.

While I’m talking about the book thread, I think the three sessions went very well; in fact, there were so many people clamouring to be let into the first one that we had to switch to somewhere more spacious for the next two. The three panels covered: classics old and new; fantasy procedurals, and families in fantasy and SF. I think this final one was my favourite, as we ranged widely across some of the reasons why children’s books might like to remove the adults as quickly as possible – and what part adults might plays if they were there. On the subject of fantasy procedurals (defined, as

sugoll pointed out, by CSI), I think I was only just starting to get to grips with how the magic might function in these stories. This Requires Further Thought.

archie_gremlin did suggest compiling a list of books discussed, but I was made of fail on this one. I’ve started compiling a master list here, if you can help.

I’ve not even checked in yet. I did manage to do this at some point, although it turned out to be a Quest, what with having to exchange one not-working room key for another not-working room key, and then having to ask a passing stranger to help me get this second key to work... He had a crafty technique honed throughout years of battling office doors which I duly adopted. I did leave the bloody thing in the lock for the entire first night; happily no passing murderers decided to take advantage of this fact and I can only assume that they were having such a great time that they had no need to take out their issues on a damned fool who can’t manage either a key or a bus schedule without mishap. Hurray for Redemption-generated goodwill. (The hotel building was fairly shambolic, but this didn’t affect enjoyment at all.)

Other than the book panels, which were spread across the three days of the convention, I had two other panel commitments. The first, on Saturday morning, was an hour-long love-in on the subject of Lois McMaster Bujold, with

sharikkamur,

gair, and another panellist who I believe INOLJ. We covered the best place to start reading (Chronologically? With the start of Miles’ adventures? When the books get ‘meatier’, around Brothers in Arm?) and I don’t think we came to a particular resolution on this one, although we did then discuss how well the earlier adventure novels stand up against the later longer books. Also whether Ekatarin is right for Miles (correct answer) or a bit blah (wrong answer), and how brilliantly Mirror Dance treats its scientific themes. I hugely enjoyed listening to people’s speculation about the content of the forthcoming book, particularly about the politics of Beta Colony (reminded me of

minor_ramblings’s Green Silk Rooms). I was personally taken with the idea of Cordelia, Cordelia’s mum, Ekaterin, and possibly Kareen between them taking down the government of Beta Colony. So a very full and lively panel, and how delightful to be amongst so many people who love these books. I know of at least two people in the room who have been inspired by the enthusiasm of the audience to go off and start reading LMB. Result! (And my copy of The Vorkosigan Companion was waiting for me when I got home.)

My other panel commitment was late on the Saturday night, 11pm to be exact, when four of us lined up to discuss “Who is the best Who writer?” My fear that the panel would be a late-night apocalypse was unfounded, and we had an extremely civilized and nuanced discussion about writing for Doctor Who and, particularly, about the merits as a writer of a certain Russell T. Davies. Three of the panellists were enthusiastic about his work; the other panellist held the opposite view.

iainjcoleman and I were united in our love not only for Rusty, but for the writers of many of the Hartnell episodes. The audience was unusually quiet in this panel; I’d like to think that this was because we all were being so fascinating, I’m sure it was more to do with the fact that it was getting on for midnight and everyone was knackered. But from where I was sitting it was a quality discussion.

I went to two panels on fanfiction which were “yayful”, to swipe

ms_manna’s extremely useful word. The first asked: “Are Mary Sues Useful?”and I’m not sure what we concluded, although I do remember being extremely concerned about the children (possibly I was having flashbacks to the Mary Sue hunts from way back in Tolkien fandom). I also thoroughly enjoyed

paranoidangel42 and

selenay936’s panel, “Why is fandom so tolerant of everything except shipping preferences?”, a lovely, good-humoured panel, in which we put aside differences and talked about what it is we do when we have OTPs in which we are so invested. It is ages since I had a really good conversation about fanfiction, it felt like coming home.

Oh lord, so many other things going on, not all of which I managed to see or do. I had to leave

iainjcoleman’s excellent interview with Paul Cornell early, simply because I was finding the main hall bakingly hot. I therefore missed his request to appear in slash with Stephen Moffatt, which surely has materialized online by now? Nor did I hear Rob Shearman read his story So Proud (MP3 on this page) , but I did get to his excellent talk on writing for theatre and radio. I only get to see fairly ropey rep at the local theatre, which also seems to have the world’s weirdest audience, so it helped enormously to have a few fundamentals explained.

Definitely my biggest omission of the weekend was skipping the Man of Ironscript reading. To the uninitiated, this is an unrehearsed read-through of the legendary Paul Darrow script for Blake’s 7 (where ‘legendary’ is a synonym for ‘shite’) which has grown and grown as a feature of the convention. I was a damn fool not to go but, like the Sweeney, I had not had my dinner. I did get some excellently entertaining reports, however. I’ll be there Redemption ’11. (Was this really the only Blake’s 7 item on the programme? Somehow that seems so... right.)

Saturday night was the Masquerade and the Cabaret. Oh, but where else could you see: a pinstriped Lucy Saxon dancing to Doomsday...; a song about tribbles; poi and Tom Lehrer; someone playing a dulcimer that makes you go, “Wow!” and then she pulls out the recorder; a sketch in which the Doctor wrecks the Council of Elrond; another sketch where the Godfather sorts out all that Paterson Joseph casting nonsense; and then the winning costume in the Masquerade is a Victorian Torchwood dress of stunning skill and labour and the runner-up is a glorious chaos costume of the Liberator (see here). All this and the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre. And also there was a piece of performance art that took up the whole weekend: the campaign of Brigade Leader Lethbridge-Stewart to become Ruler of the Universe. Campaign posters here. (These guys went around in military gear all weekend and scared the shit out of me the first time saw them. Of course they won the ballot: more than 500 votes – out of roughly 300 cast.)

On Sunday night, we celebrated

iainjcoleman’s birthday with cake, fine wine, and chat:

iainjcoleman was informed about Rome,

piersb was brave about Bonekickers,

communicator was inspiring about Mad Men, and I was right about The Wire. Thank you to

glitterboy1 for hosting. It was particularly good to have time to sit and talk to

katlinel whom I kept on missing throughout the weekend (like ‘Partners in Crime’! But which of us is the Doctor, and which is Donnna...?). Monday morning the party slowly ended, as we all drifted back to what laughingly calls itself real life.

God, it was all fabulous.

For company and all-round yayfulness, THANK YOU:

archie_gremlin;

communicator;

espresso_addict;

fifitrix;

games_player;

gair;

gerald;

gfk88;

glitterboy1;

i_smell_shite;

iainjcoleman;

jellynewt;