The SFX Weekender 2012 – Part 1

I just typed ‘Geek’ into an online dictionary and got two definitions:
1. A person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious
2. An intelligent, single-minded expert in a particular technical discipline or profession

Now, if you consider yourself a Geek (and hey, you are reading a website called ‘Fantasy-Faction, so probably do!) a part of you is probably disgusted in the first description and yet revelling in the second definition. I guess the sad fact is that when the average person uses the term ‘Geek’ they are probably referring to the ideas that revolve around definition number 1, agreed? Ask the average person; “where are all the Geeks at?” and you are likely to get the answer that they can be found relaxing in their room watching Doctor Who or perhaps reading a copy of Lord Of The Rings… They don’t like to party, do they?

Well, the SFX Weekender proved to those who would label the Science Fiction / Fantasy community as a quiet, boring and unsociable group completely and utterly wrong. In fact, it stuck a metaphoric middle finger up at those people and partied in their faces! Yes, SFX is a convention with a difference – although there is tons and tons of Science Fiction/Fantasy related workshops, signings, memorabilia and panels – its emphasis is on partying and having fun. Now, to try and cover the whole event would be simply impossible, but for those who didn’t attend the event I’m going to try and give you a taster of my experience and hopefully leave you understanding why you NEED to attend next year.

So, where to begin – ah yes; the queue. Conventions are well known for their diabolical queues. They absolutely suck and with SFX attracting over 4000 people this year (wow!) it was inevitable that some queuing was going to take place somewhere along the line. I myself was in the queue for around an hour, from my talks with other people the average time was about 30 minutes to 90 minutes… that isn’t actually too bad. And actually, SFX had our backs – they provided entertainment for the queuers stuck awaiting entrance to the event. There were a number of spacemen, aliens and even some Doctor Who look-alikes with moving and talking daleks telling jokes. Personal favourite:
“So, the Edward Cullen guy sparkles and lives in a forest? Sounds more like a fairy than a vampire!”
I also quite enjoyed hearing a dalek giggle after being rubbed and tickled by a fairly attractive young lady – I also looked at him with loathing. Paul got a photo of some storm troopers who seemed to like stroking women too:

Anyway, suffice to say we eventually got through the queue and were ready to watch the ‘opening event’ on the Friday Morning. WOW! Straight away SFX came out and said ‘this is not your run of the mill event’. I’ve been to a few conventions now, they are usually held at small hotels and are full of whispering people talking about books, comic-books and films… SFX had hot, near naked women fighting aliens on stage, strobe lighting and I think I even saw a few pyros – yes… this was going to be different. The SFX Staff came out on stage, I actually met a couple of them later on briefly and they really seemed enthusiastic about the event and were quite clearly working hard to make this event a real success and as enjoyable as possible for the fans. The editor of SFX informed people that there had been a rather major train incident just outside of London so a few people would be late and others may not make it at all… the crowd however seemed to appreciate that the guys were doing everything they could and I have to say that they did an excellent job of re-arranging everything over the course of the weekend.

After the welcome show we hit barter town. Now, I have to say – if I was rich, I wouldn’t be any more. I’m actually not rich and therefore I’m now broke. The amount of cool stuff to buy there was just ridiculous. In terms of book publishers, you had Abaddon books, Black Library, Solaris Books, Angry Robot, Forbidden Planet, 2000AD all with stands. The great thing about these guys is that they are so, so willing to talk with the community and tell you what they enjoy, the editing process for them and just about anything else. There were also authors signing things constantly at tables, so that’s always exciting. I quite liked that as you walk around barter town you keep running into and being  surprised by things such as harpies on stilts walking around (hot harpies I should add) or Daleks rolling about mocking people (especially doctors) – that is apparently the norm here… and strangely, you get used to it! You then had the memorabilia – and wow was it great. There were some wonderful posters, paintings, badges, keyrings – all that kind of thing, but the highlight for me was the metallic notepads. As a writer I am always looking for a beautiful notepad – but there was a guy here, sitting down, etching out metallic notebooks with Science-Fiction/Fantasy Themes on them… they were truly beautiful and even now I am regretting not purchasing one… dammit!

So, after we’d spent out and dodged the daleks, harpies, aliens, star wars characters, the odd Judge Dread and spiderman we went off to watch a couple of panels. My favourite of the whole weekend was Elf Preservation’ where Joe Abercrombie, Juliet McKenna, Graham McNeil, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Gav Thrope pondered whether it could really be called fantasy if it doesn’t have magic and monsters. A good friend of mine; Jared Shurin hosted it too! As a fan of fantasy literature I have to say that these kind of panels were unbelievably well done. To have so many well-known authors on the same panel was just great and I think anyone who attended them would have gone away thoroughly entertained but also education. I’ve heard some really good things about the ‘What is Urban Fantasy’ panel, the various comic book panels and also the ‘Sci-Fi Legends’ and ‘Space Opera Panel’ – with people such as; Mark Newton, Dan Abnerr, Janie Fenn, Peter F. Hamilton, Stephen Baxter, Alistair Reynalds, Ben Aaronvitch, China Mieville *big breath* would you expect any less?

Ah, the ‘games’ as well. Now, by games I mean the panels that challenged the authors. There were tons of them, some challenged authors to write a story in 5 minutes, others were quick fire questions, but my favourite just ‘Just a Minute’. Now, if you haven’t heard of the show ‘Just a Minute’ it is a radio Four game where the moderator (in this case Paul Cornell) states a subject and the contestants (China Mieville, Joe Abercrombie, Toby Whithouse and the beautiful Sarah Pinborough) have to talk on that subject non-stop for a minute. The other contestants have to buzz in at any point of hesitation, repetition or deviation from the subject. Well, as you can imagine, non of these authors were happy to play exactly by the rules and I think I laughed more over this game-show than I did watching Michael McIntyre or Lee Evans at Wembley in 2011… it seriously was that funny. China and Joe constantly buzzed each other – just for the fun of it sometimes and Sarah had a habit of hitting the thing accidently and trying to justify her buzz with a made up rule. Joe Abercrombie pretty much destroyed the other contestants – and for those of you who know Joe, he wasn’t exactly humble with his win (as you will see on the Fantasy-Faction podcast in a few weeks).

Actually a video here I found on youtube. Full credit to the capturer ‘gayalondiel’:

Our first stop following the shows and panels that day was the wildly hyped ‘The Kitschies’ presented by ‘Kraken Rum’. These are annual  awards designed to elevate the tone of genre literature by awarding those who have help moved the genre forwards in some way. Jared (Pornokitsch as some of you may know him was a great host and the awards seemed to go down very well. What I like about these awards is that they are commending people who aren’t just writing to the trends or selling thousands upon thousands of books. They are looking at people who are doing things differently are rewarding them for taking risks and helping us as a genre move forward. For those who didn’t attend, the winners were: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness and Siobhan Dowd (Red Tentacle), God’s War by Kameron Hurley (Golden Tentacle), The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan and designed by Peter Mendelsund (Inky Tentacle) and graphic novel publisher SelfMadeHero (Black Tentacle).

Following that,  I was lucky enough to be invited to a party with some authors and publishers. I have to say that the publishing industry is so strong in the UK right now and the wonderful people at these events show why. You have the big publishers such as Gollancz, Orbit, Tor, Voyager hosting get-togethers and inviting the other publishers because they literally love their jobs and the environment that they work in. You shouldn’t be surprised to see the press people of Tor chatting with the Press people from Gollancz and congratulating each other on good campaigns. I really loved this about SFX as a whole actually – the fact that although there were directors, film stars, television stars, novelists, editors, publicists and they are all happy to mingle with no only their co-workers, but with fans as well. There is nothing quite like getting into a taxi at 11:30pm and realising that sat opposite you is Sam Sykes and Joe Abercrombie… Man, not only can those guys write – but they are a heck of a lot of fun.

I guess I’d better say it because everyone else has. Yes, SFX is held on a Pontins site and yes… the rooms are ‘basic’. I’ve read the word ‘concentration camp’ on one blog and ‘disgusting’ on another. But to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t actually all that bad… it wasn’t Glastonbury or anything like that… we weren’t wading around in our wellies or burning our dirty tents. The rooms have a bed in them and paper-thin walls. Most have a small fridge, cooker and sofa. If you make the most of your SFX you will hardly even be in there and the bed is actually pretty comfortable for your 4 hours or so of sleep when you roll in from the parties and get up early for breakfast.

To be honest, although the SFX fun resumed on Saturday, I can’t tell you too much more about the event from the general visitors perspective from this point forwards! Technically, Friday Night was the end of the ‘fun’ for me because the next day (Saturday) was actually ‘work’ for the Fantasy-Faction team. We were registered as media for this event, meaning we can take authors away and do podcasts, interviews, etc. For a site as large as ours this is vital and I have to thank Ben Bolton from SFX who ensured that we got on the press-list and really help us arrange everything. However, how can you call anything ‘work’ in an environment such as SFX? I certainly left with able to say something I’d always wished I’d be able to say one day: “Damned do I love my job!” I do know from having spoken to people since, that those who were lucky enough to attend the Saturday activities had a great time. The awards for example went down really well and from what I hear the disco was an event to be remembered… 4000 Sci-Fi and Fantasy fans hitting the dance floor for a good 3/4 hours… kind of gutted I missed that… but hey, always next year!

Anyway, onto our Saturday.

Myself (Marc Aplin) and one of the other editors, Paul Wiseall, arranged a number of interviews for our upcoming Fantasy-Faction Podcast. We were lucky enough to talk with Joe Abercrombie about his new and upcoming fantasy novel (A) Red Country, Skyrim and his plans upon finishing this novel. We spoke to Black Library about how popular their books have become in recent years and recorded a beginners guide in regards to reading within the genre. We spoke with Adrian Tchaikovsky about why short story collections don’t sell as well as novels and we spoke to David Tellerman about his upcoming novel ‘The Giant Thief’. Even people who didn’t have time to be interviewed there we made plans to travel to London and such – so yeah – we can announce that the Fantasy-Faction podcast is officially under-way and the début episode will come to you in just over a week in the form of an interview with Joe Abercrombie at SFX.

We then headed off to meet some more authors and press guys from the UK publishing scene. Fantasy-Faction is working really hard right now to promote Fantasy/Science Fiction and it was really great to see that so many editors, press officers and just people working within the industry had heard of us. Truly, if there is one great thing about SFX it is that it brings non-judgemental like-minded people together. Not only will you have a fantastic time, but if you are willing to put yourself out there and chat with people – you will end up leaving with more friends than you had going in there. I always look forward to meeting my ‘convention buddies’ and there is no better place to meet these kinds of people. Following our mingling it was sadly time to go home.

On the way back to my home in Weston-Super-Mare (a place no more glamorous or sunny than Pontins sadly) , all me and Paul could talk about was what a great weekend we had. The thing about SFX, unlike many UK conventions, is that there is something for everyone. As much as I love the other conventions in the UK, none of them match up to SFX in terms of scale or variety of things going on. Will I be there next year? Heck yeah I will! And I hope to see a few more of you guys too. Tickets for SFX 4 are already available and should you want to go I recommend you think about booking now because this SFX we’ve just had sold out months and months in advance. For more information, up to date news on the next weekender and highlights from the event from the guys themselves, you can visit: https://www.sfxweekender.com/

Print Friendly