Con Report: Mancunicon 2016

I’m just back from Mancunicon, the 2016 British national science fiction convention (or EasterCon) in Manchester. It was a busy EasterCon for me. I participated in three panels over the first three days (though I know some people were on up to five!) and got to spend time with many good friends from across these islands and beyond whom I only see once or twice a year. That is the best part of any convention. It always is. Of course, the second best part is listening to and meeting writers and critics and fans who make you want to raise your game in everything that you do, and Mancunicon also provided its fair share of that.

On the first afternoon of the Con I joined my Clarion classmate Tiffani Angus, along with novelists Matthew De Abaitua and Tom Toner, for ‘Transcending the Genre and Other Polite Insults’ moderated by Kate Wood. This panel explored (as several of the weekend’s panels did) the boundaries between literary and speculative writing. It did so by asking questions about setting, character, reader expectations, and marketing. I’m disappointed we didn’t get to discuss the role of prose style a bit more (or get to the ‘insults’, which I figured was the reason I was on the panel!) but, overall, it was an enjoyable hour poking at a subject which could (and occasionally does, though in more academic contexts) have many days dedicated to it.

On Saturday I participated in ‘Adapting as a Creator from One Medium to Another’ with Chaz Brenchley, Guest of Honour Sarah Pinborough, and Gavin Smith (ably chaired by Emmeline Pui Ling Dobson). We bounced off a lot of topics here (video game tie-ins, television, and films, to mention a few). This panel might be the only time I ever get to talk about both Ted Hughes and comic books during a single event (though, honestly, I should probably have spoken more about my work on Neil Jordan; and it would have been nice to have delved into unconventional narrative forms such as Twitter fiction and so on, but hey!). That said, I think the main value for the audience was the insight – especially from Pinborough – into the world(s) of screenwriting.

Finally then, on the Sunday, I moderated the ‘Supporting the Short Stuff’ discussion with Ruth EJ Booth, EG Cosh, Matthew Hughes, and Juliet Kemp. These panellists brought a wide range of experience and insights (including writing for fiction magazines, websites, journalism, and anthologies) to the challenges presented by the contemporary short story landscape. The panel covered a lot of ground, everything from diversity to market realities to the intersection of both. Or, as Cosh put it, ‘crowdfunding isn’t about selling stories, it’s about selling a relationship, a community’. And if there was a theme of sorts that snaked in and out of various Mancunicon events, it was exactly that: Community.

Case in point was a performance of the post-apocalyptic play North Country by Taj Hayer. If you know Taj then you know that, in person, he loves puns, but North Country is a serious, provocative look at the notion of community after the end of the world. It refutes the whitewashed nature of so much post-apocalyptic writing and instead embraces the complexities (dramatic and otherwise) offered by a multi-ethnic cast of characters. It is a beautifully imagined and carefully constructed piece of work. The conclusion genuinely moved me.

Also top notch was Ian McDonald’s Guest of Honour interview (which saw his recent novel Luna: New Moon described as ‘Game of Domes’ or ‘Dallas on the Moon’). The self-deprecating and quietly knowledgeable Peadar Ó Guilín was the perfect interviewer for McDonald, and their hour on stage together passed all too quickly. In a similar vein, the great Kari ‘I can’t not be political’ Sperring was the ideal host for Aliette de Bodard’s GOH interview, which offered an engaging and personal look at blended cultures and the manner in which gender roles vary from society to society. As de Bodard said, ‘not having equal rights is not the same as having no agency whatsoever. It does not mean you have no story, or no power to affect your story.’ She also told the audience how she did her engineering degree at a military school and she still remembers how to strip down and reassemble an assault rifle. (She further appeared genuinely surprised by her well-deserved  – and unprecedented? – twin BSFA Award wins.)

Meanwhile, on the panel side of things, I was particularly impressed by ‘Menstruation, Contraception, and Reproduction in the Apocalypse’ and ‘Place, Identity, Story’ which both delved into their subject matter with intelligence and verve (the ‘Menstruation, Contraception, and Reproduction’ panel was particularly strong in this regard with all five participants holding PhDs).

Indeed the only real negative at Mancunicon was that this was the first (and hopefully the last) time I had to raise someone’s behaviour to a convention’s organisers. My friends and I repeatedly encountered an individual both predatory and systematic in their application of that behaviour. It was unpleasant for all concerned however I am pleased that the convention organisers dealt with the issue promptly and we had no interaction with said individual after the intervention of Ops.

But, as I say, Mancunicon on the whole was a success story. Some quotes from the weekend:

• ‘It’s Twitter. No one is listening. Everyone is shouting’ – Sarah Pinborough
• ‘To an early Irish king, space is a social web; to a Viking it is an economic opportunity; to a Norman it is power” – Kari Sperring
• ‘I’m Dickens at heart really… but with better sex’ – Ian McDonald
• ‘A twist must be plausible as well as being something the reader didn’t see coming’ – Charlie Stross
• ‘For me Feminism is equality. It’s diversity. It’s being able to choose the life you wish to have’ – @hiddeninabook
• ‘If the apocalypse kicks off, run into Harrods… They have underground bunkers the War Rooms would be proud of’ – Russell Smith
• ‘The best writing about sex and food is about what’s happening in the character’s head’ – Doug S
• ‘Writing about Ireland almost cost me my career…!’ – Ian McDonald
• What to cut from writing ‘depends on what you want to accomplish in that scene’ – Russell Smith
• ‘Exploration of the outsider is at the core of both crime fiction and science fiction’ – Guy Haley

Lastly, some stray observations:

• EG Cosh has assembled a list of some the great fiction which was recommended during her panels at Mancunicon. You can find it here.
• Participants who particularly impressed me included Matthew De Abaitua, Kari Sperring, Ruth EJ Booth, Russell Smith, Sarah Pinborough, Niall Harrison, and Nina Allen. Some of those always impress me; some of those were people I heard speak for the first time.
• The BSFA awards, in their unpretentiousness, were an appropriate and charming celebration of fan culture.
• After a few days of queuing for the elevators one begins to feel a touch of High Rise setting in…
• As is the way of cons, there were a lot of panels which clashed with the ones was on. I would have liked to have attended the Book Reviewing panel and the Guest of Honour interview with fourth GOH Dave Clements (who launched his short story collection Disturbed Universes, along with a selection of other volumes from NewCon Press, at the Con. I’m looking forward to diving into that). So thank you to the people who Tweeted from those events.
• Dimitri’s Tapas and Mezes restaurant in Manchester is wonderful! And great value! Highly recommended.
• #PeopleBeforePanels

_____

Other posts which may be of interest:

• “Why Aren’t the BBC Here Right Now?” Notes from the “Does Science Fiction Have a Future?” panel at the 2013 World Fantasy Convention.
• “Puppet vies with puppet-master in thrilling cyberpunk debut”: My review of Al Robertson’s Crashing Heaven