Orbital 2008

Orbital: Eastercon 2008

We have just spent 5 brilliant days at Orbital – the annual science fiction convention. This year it was hosted at the Radisson Edwardian Hotel at Heathrow. Over 1200 sf fans got together over the Easter weekend to meet up, discuss and share their enjoyment of sf.


One of the strangest things about being at a con is the fact that you enter a self-contained world. Once inside the hotel we went for the Star Trek type womb fantasy of 'this hotel is our self contained, all providing universe for the next 5 days'. It's amazing how quickly it is possible to adapt to being in a place - so that the outside world seems unreal. The surrounding areas seemed so divorced from the convention that when we got another glimpse of them from the car park as we were leaving, 'normality' had taken on an unfamiliar, alien quality. Semi-detached houses and urban decay - the norm when we arrived at the hotel, seemed strangely out of place after spending all that time amongst marble and wood and crisp sheets and thick white towels. Now, back home our house too feels like an alien space - devoid of fans, real ale and booksellers. It has been a strange day today, reacclimatizing and getting over a strange sense of grief that the con is over for another year (to try to overcome our post con depression, we have, like Mr Roy and Procrastinatrix booked for the next 2 years).

In terms of the con itself here are the highlights:

The hotel. This was the first time I’ve ever stayed in a 5 star hotel. It seems to me that, aesthetically at least, what distinguishes the 5 star hotel from the other varieties, is the fact that it is made primarily of marble and wood. So, as you can imagine, it was beautiful, if a little strange in its décor. On the one hand there was marble floors, wood panelling, enormous chandeliers and on the other there were areas that were modern, including illuminated bridges (like something out of a 1920s musical) over glass areas with glass fish, but surrounded by old fashioned statues and antiques from around the world. Anyway, it was delightfully posh – so posh there was a phone in the en suite and in the public loos were individual towels to dry your hands – yes – real towels (must admit though these disappeared as 1200 guests arrived!).

The discussion panels. Except for one where one of the panellists was clearly rather drunk, the panels were great. I particularly enjoyed the one on our future survival on this changing planet and the one on surveillance societies – these 2 will get separate blog posts about their discussions at a later date. I even enjoyed being mocked about going to a panel which had on it a certain author whose book I reviewed rather negatively recently. The reason I was mocked (apart from the fact this author is now one of my editors) was because the panel’s subject matter was ‘should authors respond to reviews?’. I got all kinds of threats that I would be named and shamed. My only consolation was that Christopher Priest, who was also on the panel, had also written a negative review of this author’s work in the past too. So at least I wasn’t alone.

The guest of honour talks:

China Mieville, as well as turning out to be a really nice guy and friend of someone we work with (weird in itself – small world) gave a great talk. Again the subject matter will be a blog post for a later date. But his speech sparked a fantastic debate about the death of the author that night in the real ale bar (discussions at length over a beer are officially one of my hobbies and since cons are just like a 5 day version of that it’s no wonder I had a good time).

Niel Gaiman read some fantastic pieces of writing to us and spoke very entertainingly. Although not as intellectual as China Mievill’s talk, Gaiman’s was interesting, amusing, and when he read his fiction, captivating.

Charles Stross. Went to this one a bit late. Met Geoff Ryman and had a little chat with him and we decided to sneak into Stross’s talk. Geoff is so tall I manged to use him to hide behind. Stross’s speech was more technology based that the other two talks. Interesting in a different way I suppose.

The dealer’s room. Got some great stuff this year. A couple of books on Lovecraft I’m very pleased with and there will probably be another blog post on those at some point. Best of all though I managed to get some fantastic 1920s sf magazines with some great story titles – ‘Vibrator of Death’ definitely warrants another blog post – expect that one immanently!

Meeting up with some great people – got to see some old friends and make some new ones.

The general mix that you get at cons of fans, authors, academics etc all chat in to one another in one great melting pot.

The real ale bar.

The food. This was the best convention food I’ve had, especially considering the amount of people being catered for. The only problem is that all that good food has had waistline implications. All I’m going to say is that P. has put on 4lb since we went away. And since he is officially the thinnest man ever there’s no hope for the rest of us! I blame pastries at breakfast…


I’m going to finish by saying that the con organisers deserve a massive thank you – this was the best Eastercon we’ve been to.

I shall blog again (when I get time) about some of the points mentioned in this post – particularly ‘Vibrator of Death’. I’ll also post the photos on my facebook as soon as poss…


P.S. Arthur C. Clarke - RIP