Wordcon - Points of interest

Registration

So, I missed the opening ceremony because the queue was crazy long (also because I had to go back and fetch my passport). As it turned out, I didn't need my passport because I was recognised by the person on the reg desk. There were complaints about the length of this.

Fan Village

This has had a lot of praise and a little bit of criticism. We had a lovely large area filling a hall, with a bar in one corner, a games room in the other, a "Village Green" in the middle, tends for other conventions around it, a library and a fan activities tent. I always like it when cons have a decent fan hangout space. Putting so much in one place is really nice. Not quite so sure about using it for parties. I read someone saying they rather liked it and felt that room parties were rather too cliquey, which is a fair point. I do rather like the pirate vibe the room parties had which really wasn't here. The other problem was that the disco/dance area was way too far away. Different floor down an uninviting passageway at the rear end of another hall.

Excel Centre

Mixed opinions on this. It's a shame that such a large venue doesn't have a proper auditorium. There are raked seats at the back, and plenty of space for chairs but I found the SECC and Melbourne a lot more inviting. Also felt that the access to upstairs conference rooms was a little cramped. Only one escalator, and no stairs. Was nice that there were reasonably affordable places to eat (all fast food but a notch above McDonalds).

Hugos

Retro Hugos were a lot of fun. There's a quirky rule in the Hugos that if a worldcon  50 years or 75 years (or presumably 100 years) earlier didn't give out Hugos, then a Worldcon can have a Retro Hugo ceremony. It was staged as a radio production, with interruptions of a newsflash from an alien invasion, a musical introduction, dancers and advertisements for cold-b-gone (or something like that) for dealing with the con crud. The con crud and alien invation were neatly tied together at the end. Rather unfortunate that because of Hugo rules, Superman wasn't eligible (There was only only one nomination), but it did win a special committee award because Superman, dammit!

Actual Hugos seemed a little bit bland. Not nearly as much humour as previous ones I've been to. Nowhere near as witty and clever as Kim Newman and Paul McAuley 9 years ago. Also tech seemed to be cocking up a lot of the time, playing two doctor who trailers on top of each other, hard to read captions, and random stuff flickering on the main screen.

It seems that the Hugo for "Best Dramatic Presentation: Doctor Who" (aka: "Best Dramatic Presentation:Short Form") has been replaced by the "Hugo for best Dramatic Presentation: Game Of Thrones". My bet is "The Watchers On The Wall" will win next year.

Plays and shows

They had quite a few of these.

Captain Tartan was just silly. Hilarious, with lots of fan references. Felt like it was put together in a bit of a rush but I enjoyed it.

The Anubis gates needs way more of a writeup than I have space for. Will get to the Masquearade later as well.

The Girl Genius radio play was really funny! Had a really good radio play feel about it and was really well paced and presented.

Panels

Went to a few of these. Nightvale one was intriguing. The one on worldbuiding for RPGs was pointless.Felt the panellists hadn't read the panel synopsis. I wanted some tips for building a world. Or building a system. The "Education and training of a young protagonist" was much better although I felt it missed something. The thing is, I can't think what it was missing.

Panel on Hugo for Dramatic Presentation (short form) was way too crowded, which was a shame. I was told it was very good. The long form panel was pretty good though.

"What do you mean you don't watch" was a good idea. 3 shows. People pitch as to why you should watch them. Kickstarter panel was informative but a little too short.

The Anubis Gates

(There are some sorta-spoilers for the book if you're particularly spoiler phobic)

One of the big worldcon events was a production of Tim Powers' "The Anubis Gates". An excellent book about time travel, body swapping, beggars guilds, ancient magic and more.

And the acting was excellent. The body swapping aspect was handled mostly by changing accents. I have no idea whether the guy who played Doyle was American or British.

What I'm less sure about is whether it actually works as a play. It's a pretty complex plot with a lot of threads. I'm not sure of the body swapping stuff would have been all that obvious if I hadn't read the book. The entire Horrabin subplot was just bizarre and shrunk so much that it made no sense even though I had read the book!