Aw, look at how empty the calendar for this month is; I fail at blogging. Anyway.

Before I write about anything else, my BFF snow_vs_asphalt twit'd this while I was gone:



I love what this says about both of us.


Sososososo, EASTERCON. I guess I'll tell you about it day by day...

Friday

On Friday I mainly sat on trains. XD Because I have very little trust in rail-replacement bus services, I left massively early, and ended up having to wait at King's Cross for almost two hours, but eh, it wasn't too bad. Read a bit, listened to podcasts, ate sandwiches, sketched people standing in line without them noticing me, fun times. Spent the rest of the journey watching BSG eps on my Zune (they were right, it does get better).

I went to a few things when I got there. The pre-game meeting for the Kunji Revoltt(he LARP - I almost started to dissuade myself from going, because I'm a shy self-hindering lame-o sometimes, but I stfu'd and got on with it, since I'm not a teenager anymore just awesome like that), and then had in character lunch... dinner... dunch at 6 with the other members of the Royal Society.

Then I went to a panel on Bad Biology, which ended up being more cool speculative Biology (migrating forests!) than bad, but nonetheless win. Wish I'd taken more notes there. Then one on "Researching Your World" which ended up being mostly on near future type stuff (Charles Stross was on the panel, so), and the effects of technology on society, as well as a little general advice on researching worlds. One of the best of the whole con, I think. I really liked all the people on it; gonna check out their work. There was a Kunji event, and after that a panel on "Classics that Aren't" - things that are considered classics that shouldn't be & such. A little over my head since I haven't actually read that much classic sci-fi, and towards the end it degenerated into some guy (who's probably important or famous in some way) raging against fantasy novels in general. >_<


Saturday

Some pretty good stuff on Saturday. Mostly on at the same times as other stuff.

A few Kenji things and then the first panel I went to was "Maqpping the mysterious" about designing worlds in a map-making sense. I wish there'd been more of it, it didn't go on at all long enough! And half of it ended up being on whether maps should be included in books. Apparently they're very expensive to put in.

After that a "Starting with Comics" panel cum recommending session to get into comics, which was awesome, and resulted in the majority of this. (Feel free to recommend me more if you know any, btw. I'll buy them all eventually.)

The next panel was the best of the day, I think. Missed the Easter Doctor Who special for it! XD Not that it was what I expected it to be. It was called "Dealing with Dead Meat", about "how dead bodies really are", so I expected a lot of, I dunno, decomposition and stuff. Well, alright, there was that, too. Anyway, what it was was a doctor and a mortician telling their funny, disturbing, and sobering stories. it was amazing.

And then there was "Bad Sex in SF". Oh, the lulz. And they quoted this, which is my favourite passage of bad prose in the world.

The one talk I was a little disappointed by was one titled "Space Ain't What We Thought It Would Be", which was basically a run-down of the space missions of the last few decades. Which was interesting, but I pretty much knew all of it already. :/


Sunday

Sunday was probably the busiest day. The first thing I went to was "How Movies & TV get their Martial Arts wrong (on purpose)". I haven't see many martial arts films, tbh, but it's always fun seeing people throw other people around. Especially when the person doing the throwing is in a wheelchair! I was seriously impressed. Want to see that in a martial arts movie.

The next panel was a prettyt easy choice. I mean, it was titled "They Keep Killing Hitler". How could I resist. Got a lot of recs for alternative history novels from that. The next one was a presentation by a folklorist about Spring-Helled Jack, who/which I'd never heard of before, but it was interesting to see how rumours and urban legends get started and propagated.

The next was "A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing", about references in novels and whether it's possible to enjoy them without getting them. The Discworld books are an extreme example, obviously, but did you know there's obscure medievalist word-usage in-jokes in Lord of the Rings? Apparently so. Also, apart from anything else, my notes from this panel have the best doodles of the weekend:


And then I went to an introductory talk on Quantum Mechanics, which was awesome. The woman who gave it was brilliant at explaining. Such fascinating sutff. <3

Afterwards there was a panel on "The SF-savvy Criminal", which continued to get derailed into the ethics of surveillance cameras and so on, and then there was the book launch and signing for The Third God, the last volume of one of my favourite book series, which I have been waiting for for quite literally years.

Apparently, according to his talk, Ricardo Pinto realised while writing this volume that it was actually all a big autobiographical therapeutic exercise. I think I'll continue to enjoy it for the complex and dark world, though. The man is a genius at world-building. (Or, you know, obsessive, with the plasticine models and shadow-angle calculations. But I think that's really cool.)

After that I went to a what-if-famous-novels-were-RPG-campaigns panel, which was really funny, but also, um, a bit over my head, seeing as I've never actually done any roleplaying, though I really want to try. I started feeling a little noobish and out-geeked, by the end. >_> Must remember it's not a competition and I have nothing to prove...

Then after the last Kunji event (which was a little disorganised, but we did kill a werewolf), the same woman who did the Quantum talk gave a Brief History of the Universe talk, and then I took the bus back to the hotel, and packed while watching red Dwarf on Dave.


Monday

Just four panels on Monday, before the end, and another two hour wait in a train station, because pff, timing, who needs timing when you can have cheap, late train tickets.

The first was "World Building with Music", which had a lot about classical music and it's narrative structure. Then another recommendations for comic-n00bs panel (this time "for the discerning SF fan") where I won a Hellblazer comic in a raffle. :D

And then "Terraforming vs Pantropy" which was another of the highlights of the con. (Pantropy, btw, is genetically engerneering humans to match other planets instead of the other way around. New favourite word!) A lot of speculation about generation ships and artificial wombs and colonies on Mars, as well as some more book recs.

And then another Physics talk. "Beginner's time travel", light clocks and worm-holes and paradoxes with billiard balls.

Your useless fact of the day ration: astronauts are on average 10μs younger than they would be if they'd never gone to space at high speeds.


All in all, I really really enjoyed it. I'm glad I went to the LARP, though it was a tiny bit disorganised, and maybe just not suited to a con setting, it was a good way to start talking to people... even if it was about selling the treatment that'd allowed Queen Victoria to live until 2009 to alien kings. Even without that, though, I loved the whole atmosphere of being able to turn to anyone sitting next to you and have a friendly conversation. I dunno, maybe incredibly socially capable people feel like that all the time, but it was pretty novel to me. I'm going to try to carry over that confidence to normal life. Though when I said something to people on the next bench over while waiting for the train, they looked a bit bemused. XD

Oh, also, click here for a txt file of all the book and comic recs I got from panels and such.

In other news, I went shopping with my mum a few days ago, and got some pimpin' new shoes (my other ones aren't really suited for warm weather):


Also a cool new top. Also a sweat-dress type thing, which I can't find on the website. And some new bras. Yay, bras. :D

Anyways, the train to Durham leaves at 10 tonight (again with the late cheap trains ftw), so I'd better get back to packing.

Comment, foo! // Comment at LJ
Tags:awesome; Eastercon; geeking out; I like books they are my friends; life; loot; shopping