So, that was Novacon

So, Novacon.

Firstly I should admit that I went to Novacon with an ulterior motive. I had a plan for getting a Birmingham (or perhaps West-Midlands) writers group going. The major reason I wanted to do this was to get a group together to brainstorm our half-formed ideas. Critting finished works is already admirably covered by the 'Hopefull-monsters' online group that Dwayne Minton and I started last year. I had an idea that face-to-face meetups might allow a greater cross-polination of ideas and information, as it's hard to get that 'round table brainstorm' effect going with online groups. However, I've been to 'writers workshops' where, as far as I could tell, almost no-one actually wrote, many were still looking for the 'right software' for doing the job (I use vi ) and of those that wrote, none had achieved any paid publication, so I was looking for people with some publication credits under their belts. I tried posting to 'gumtree', but got only one response, not enough to support a group. I've now abandoned the idea, they just aren't out there.

I turned up yesterday at 9:30, fearing that I'd have missed the first items on the programme (I didn't know because full programme wasn't available online, or sent to me by email). Reception was closed, and the people I met in the hotel bar told me that it started at 10:00, and that reception should be open soon(ish). Indeed, when I asked them "Have I missed the first programme item?" they rather looked at me like I was mad (people looking at me like I'm mad was to be a lietmotief of Novacon). To be fair, everyone was getting breakfast in the hotel restaurant at this time, and my memories of Eastercon starting earlier might be inaccurate. Eastercon felt a lot more 'organized' than Novacon, and thus I guess I've come to 'remember' that it started at 8:00 am start with Reveille being broadcast through the hotel's P.A. system at 7:30. I suspect that didn't really happen.

The first item on the programme was a science talk on the subject of Dark Matter by Dr Meghan Gray of the University of Nottingham. This was excellent, Dr Gray was an animated and accomplished speaker, and her lecture focused on the exploration of dark matter,
what's led us to think it's there, and how experiments are done to probe its nature. Up till this moment, I'd never really had a 'handle' on dark matter, because everything I'd read about it basically said 'well, we think there's a load of stuff missing from the universe, because the experimental results imply it', and that was pretty much it. Dr Gray went into the details of why we think there is dark matter: galaxies 'lens' objects more than they should, and spiral galaxies don't rotate like they have a dense core (which visibly, they do) but rather like they have an evenly distributed spherical mass, implying that there's more stuff there than we can see. At this moment it was obvious to me that the missing mass was alien dyson spheres, but Dr Gray crushed this hope by pointing out that we have a good theory for how much 'normal' matter should exist in the universe (personally I'd be happy to throw this theory over if it got us dyson-sphere aliens, but the scientific community lacks my radical 'can do' approach). I then figured "Ah! It's 'rough space', we assume spacetime is smooth because it seems that way at the small (stellar) scale, but at a galactic scale, it isn't". As though reading my mind Dr Gray went on to describe and experiment that showed that the effect was tied to galaxies, so was likely some form of matter rather than just a random warping of spacetime. At this point I gave up formulating theories, as she was clearly one of those negative people with an objection to everything.

Anyways, a good start to the con. But then it kinda went downhill. The thing is, Novacon is small, despite supposedly being one of the biggest UK cons. It's not really a convention about science-fiction, it's more of a social meetup for a bunch of people who've known each other for years and as it only has one stream of programming if you're not one of the 'Novacon veterans' and aren't interested in the current item on the programme, you can find yourself at a bit of a loss. Also, very little of the conversation was about SF, it was mostly people catching up with each other. It was less a con, I felt, than a reunion. Thus even eavesdropping proved to be somewhat uninteresting as I didn't know the people being gossiped about.

The other thing about Novacon, is it's OLD, and I say that as someone who's 42 himself. Almost everyone was my age or older, many had silver or grey hair. I don't mean to be ageist, but looking about one had to wonder 'How much longer can Novacon run?' Many people I spoke to said it was very much 'The same people every year'. Well, when those people are finally gone, what's left? The handful of people under 25 that I saw there looked hopelessly lost and lonely. In many ways Novacon is, I feel, a metaphor for modern science fiction itself: it's not doing anything for the younger generation, and no-one minds that, it's become a nostalgia club for the 'die hards', and when they die and it dies with them, well, what of that?

Still, I don't want to get too down on Novacon, it's problems are the universal demographic and image problems of science fiction, and I still found stuff to occupy me for most of the day. The dealers room, though small, was good because there was someone in there selling old paperbacks for a quid a shot. I'm someone who doesn't normally buy books at cons, but I found one or two unusual items (a collection of Samuel R Delany's short stories) and you can't balk at that price. As I was browsing a hand whipped out and grabbed a couple of 'Women's Press SF' books with the focused determination of a mantis seizing its prey. I instantly knew who was standing next to me. I turned and said "Excuse me, are you Ian Sales?" Thus, the man who recently brought my story for his 'Rocket Science' anthology was the second person to look at me like I was mad. (I should, in retrospect, have done the opening line differently. I should have simply said "Ah, Ian Sales I believe," without looking up from the books, then turned to face him. This would, of course, be terrifying, but THAT'S THE POINT. If people are going to think I'm mad, they should at least think I'm mad and able to read minds!

Anyways, I had a brief conversation with Ian during which he recomended many books from those on the table, all of which I turned down. I had only a tenner in my pocket, and I've got more books than I could ever read, so I was trying not to buy. I learned that someone else in 'Rocket Science' had set a story in the Kuiper belt, and railed somewhat that I'd wanted to set my story there, but just hadn't been able to come up with a plot that I really felt fitted the location. In retrospect it's probably a good thing that I didn't, because I'm not sure Ian would have gone for *two* Kuiper-belt stories.

Next I encountered Ian Whates at the Newcon Press stall. What I discovered here was that Ian is a remarkable salesman with an answer for any objection. I wound up buying a 'Solaris books' anthology that he'd edited, and count myself strong-willed to have come away having only bought that. Ian did not look at me like I was crazy at any point while he was selling to me.

However, my mission to hook up with other writers wasn't really going anywhere. I had expected there to be legions of them, so I could interview prospective members for the group, and select those who seemed to have good ideas, knowledge, or otherwise fit in with my conception of what I wanted the group to be. However, Novacon was mostly full of consumers of SF, not producers, and those producers that were there seemed too 'big' for my little group, (I'm not about to try to recruit Charles Stross or Dave Langford). I decided to take a more aggressive approach, and ask people directly whether they knew any aspring writers, or whether anyone else was already doing this kind of thing.

The overwhelming answer seemed to be 'No'. Everyone I spoke to forwarded me on to someone else. Some people said that the 'Brum SF group' had a writers workshop, some people said it didn't. Eventually I got referred once again to Ian Whates, because people said that as an editor and publisher he should know lots of aspiring writers. But he looked at me like I was, perhaps, a little crazy.

In the course of all this I did pick up hints about online resources that I could be using, like http://little-details.livejournal.com/ and this has led me to very much question the whole idea of a 'face-to-face' group, as there's online solutions available that I didn't know about, and it doesn't seem like I'm likely to find many other writers, we are a rarer breed than I thought.

Finally, I owe an appology to Dave Langford (he of 'Ansible'). Not knowing anyone at Novacon, and spotting him as a name I knew and thus had an 'in' to start a conversation with, I bought myself a half-pint of 'Black Sheep' and sat down with him. Unfortunately, about half-way through the conversation, something happened in my brain. I'm not a big drinker, and hadn't eaten anything that day, but even this is not an explaination of how, after only a quarter of a pint, I was suddenly pissed. It happened very suddenly too, like a switch being turned on. Thus, poor Dave was subjected to a kind of 'stream of conciousness' rant on my part, most of which I can barely remember, wherin I lectured him (a long time observer of SF) on "what's wrong with the genre" and god knows what else. He graciously put up with this for a long time. I should be more wary of alcohol in future.

Overall I quite enjoyed my day at Novacon, but a day was enough. In future, I think I'll save myself for the larger and more varied 'Eastercon'. Indeed, I do wonder if all the smaller cons suffer from the 'same faces every year' issue that I encountered here, and whether they really offer anything for the casual visitor.