I should perhaps start this by declaring my interests.
Over the thirteen years of its existence, I’ve been
on the Octocon committee probably more often that any
other person. I have, at one stage or another, held
all committee positions, either officially or
unofficially, and really there’s nothing about the
running of the convention I don’t have some idea
about. Not only that, but I was on the committee that
ran this convention for about half of its existence,
before stepping down for various more or less personal
reasons. This review cannot help but be informed by
all of this, and it’s up to you to decide how
impartial I managed to be despite all the above.
It’s probably fair to say that this year’s convention
had its share of troubles before it even began. A
number of the guests who had originally indicated that
they’d attend cancelled over the course of the last
nine months, with a further three no-shows on the
weekend itself, two of whom didn’t go to the trouble
of informing the organisers of their non-appearance,
as far as I know. However, I do think that the
committee fell down in not informing the public of a
number of these as they were happening, despite having
a website and an electronic newsletter to hand. I
understand that occasionally time slips away, but
allowing two or three months to go by between being
informed of someone’s non-appearance and actually
broadcasting the news is tantamount to deception,
especially with all the tools of a munificent
technology at their fingertips. Besides problems with
the guests, the convention was obliged to cancel
various items they had advertised, including the
writers’ workshop, the art show, and much of the
"Choctocon" events (which I never understood the
purpose of in the first place), largely due to lack of
response from the attendees, as far as I can see. As
well as that, it seems that convention attendances
worldwide have been sluggish, in the aftermath of the
World Trade Centre atrocities, and this year’s Octocon
appears to have been no exception. A number of people
I was hoping to meet up with over the weekend were
unable to attend for various reasons, despite a lot of
them having already paid up. I was particularly
looking forward to seeing Ariel from "The Alien
Online" and Nicholas Whyte of "Ireland in SF & F", as
well as Bridget Wilkinson of "Fans Across the World",
Stefan Lancaster, and numerous other people who would
normally be there, but weren’t this year. Finally, to
top all these misfortunes, the weather over the
weekend was substantially beyond foul, with freezing
winds blowing all the way through to the dealers’ room
on Saturday, and driving torrential rain all day
Sunday. A convention is more than simply the guests,
or the committee, or the attendees, or indeed the
prevailing climatic conditions, but all these things
play a part in the final result. So...
Myself and the lovely Deirdre got to the Royal Marine
Hotel at about 2.30 on Friday afternoon, thereby being
the very first people to actually arrive for the con.
This was not overzealousness on our part, but due to
the fact that I was taking a stall in the dealers’
room, and had nine boxes of books with me that I was
hoping to get in place early, to allow me time to get
into the hotel bar to meet the first arrivals from
abroad. Despite being a two day con, Octocon actually
has an extra day tacked on at either end, what with
everyone gathering in the hotel on Friday evening, and
the long farewell on Monday in the Porterhouse Bar in
Temple Bar. Anyway, it was not long before I had
found myself my usual place in the dealers’ room,
organised tables and tablecloths, and put up all the
books (in alphabetical order, naturally). I joined
Deirdre in the bar where we found ourselves a table.
Before too long had passed, we were joined by various
folk from far and wide, a few of them staying in the
hotel, and many of the more price-conscious staying in
some of the outlying hostelries. As is often the
case, a few people attracted more people, and we soon
found ourselves part of a group of about twenty, with
various outlying sub-divisions. It’s always good to
see old friends, especially when you only see some of
them once a year, but as always I wanted to talk to
all of them at once. I was glad to at least get the
chance to finally meet Angie Perver from
Silveroak.co.uk, who has been putting this newsletter
on her front page since last May, as well as Juliet E
McKenna, with whom I’ve been corresponding since a
brief meeting last year, and Colin Smythe, who I
admire enormously for his publishing work. We finally
left the hotel in time to catch very nearly the last
bus home.
Saturday, as I may have mentioned, was absolutely
freezing cold. None the less, we managed to get to
the hotel by about 8.30 AM. I checked the dealers’
room, to see if all was well. It was indeed, with the
con’s overnight security man curled up in a corner,
fast asleep in his sleeping bag. It seemed a shame to
disturb him, so we went in search of strong coffee.
As time passed, various people appeared from their
lairs, including the committee and the Guest of
Honour, China Miéville, who I hadn’t previously met.
China is a 30-year-old London-born writer with three
novels under his belt, and numerous awards to
accompany them. He is also, beyond any shadow of a
doubt, the best-looking Guest of Honour Octocon has
ever had. (I heard several of the ladies, and some of
the men, pass very favourable comments on his rugged
good looks.) What really shone through though,
listening to him talk over the weekend, is his passion
for genre writing, and his obvious intellect. To go
back to Saturday morning, however, all was not going
according to plan, it seemed. It was 10 AM, and time
to open the doors to the horde, and to hold the
opening ceremony. This being a convention, we were
all to get our membership pack, which should contain a
programme book and a name badge. The programme book
was there, as was a free copy of Atomic Diner’s comic
"Naked Lunch", but the badges were nowhere to be seen.
Much running to and fro by various committee members
ensued, and by about noon all the badges had been
produced on the printer in the "tech-geek" corner of
the ballroom. The opening ceremony, for reasons that
were never explained, failed to start on time, which
was not a good omen for the convention in general.
Not only this, but The Guest of Honour was left to
wander around the ballroom, obviously unaware of what
was going on, until he was rescued by Deirdre, who got
him a cup of tea. When the opening ceremony finally
ran, forty minutes later that listed, it consisted of
the chairman standing behind a table, thanking
everyone for coming, mentioning the Guest of Honour,
and that was that. Without a break, it ran straight
into "Skye & Cats Motivational Power Hour".
I don’t know much about this, except that a number of people
left when they were told that they were going to play
games. In fact the first of these, which involved
everyone moving around until they were sitting next to
a stranger, seems to have provided the perfect cover
for a mass breakout, from what I hear. In the case of
both the badges and the opening ceremony, however, I
fail to understand how, considering that they knew a
year in advance that this was all to happen on that
day at that time, they were unprepared for it.
Not all the programming was as haphazard or as late as
the opening ceremony, however. I probably saw more
panels at this convention that at any other, largely
due to having no duties to tie me down. Even my stall
in the dealers’ room was being ably managed by my
sister Caitríona. I did go back there often, though,
particularly when we were selling copies of John W
Sexton’s new book "Johnny Coffin: School Dazed". This
was being launched at the con and I had been
approached by the committee to deal with O’Brien
Press, the publishers. After a certain amount of
discussion about terms (someone had offered my a 25%
cut over the phone, although Ivan O’Brien later
admitted that 35% was the standard discount rate to
the trade. I think the fact that I said I was in the
second-hand trade led someone to think they could
deceive me...) I ended up with a box full of John W
Sexton’s books. These sold well, not just after the
launch, where John read quite magnificently, I am
told, but also over the course of both days. I’ve
done this kind of thing for years, and you can always
tell when a writer is making a mark on people, because
they come down to the dealers after the panels,
looking for their books. The same thing that had
people looking for John’s books also held true for
China Miéville and Juliet E McKenna. If I’d had a few
dozen copies of Juliet’s "The Thief’s Gamble" which is
the first volume of the Einarinn series, I could have
sold the lot. Back to the panels, though… The first
thing I actually got to see was the Guest of Honour
interview, which was on at 2 PM on Saturday. This was
conducted by Kim Newman, freshly arrived from Britain,
after having miscalculated his flight. China Miéville
was, as I previously said, extremely erudite and
intelligent, if a little prone to use certain words
and phrases quite often. By the end of the convention
a number of us were regularly dropping things like
"critical conversation", "parenthetically" and
"ontologically" into our own conversation. Where I
really enjoyed seeing him, however, was on the
"Lancing Tolkien" panel on Sunday, where he had some
rather rude things to say about the old master.
Considering that he’s done this particular talk a
number of times, and the Juliet E McKenna, who was put
on the panel to take a contrary stance, *hasn’t*,
Juliet acquitted herself with honour. Both parties
agreed, however, that the real problem with Tolkien
was the fact that he was now taken as the taproot text
for all fantasy fiction. My own opinion lies
somewhere more towards China’s point of view, though
for different reasons. I still find it hard to see it
as anything more that a bunch of small men with hairy
feet squabbling over jewellery, but this could be seem
as an overly trite point of view.
There was much else I enjoyed about the convention.
Roger Gregg and Crazy Dog Audio Theatre did a Star
Trek spoof comedy improv thing, which is possibly the
single funniest thing I’ve ever seen at a convention.
Michael Carroll’s Secret Panel, this time about Irish
history, was as good as ever. Mostly, though, I ran
around, talking to old friends and hanging around in
the dealers’ room. I was always more interested in
the people attending the convention that the actual
panels, or I would have more to say about them. In
the end, all I can do is report on the con I went to,
which is naturally going to be a different one to the
one other people went to. I always said that if two
hundred people go to a con, you get two hundred
different experiences. This is about mine.
There is no doubt that this year’s convention was a
lot more lacklustre than previous ones, and that the
attendance was well down. I don’t think this was
sufficient cause for the committee to announce that
there would be no Octocon next year, however. Many
people go to this convention every year, and if the
organisers don’t wish to go forward with it, they
should try to find some people that do. Leaving it in
abeyance is not the answer, it seems to me. We shall
see what we shall see.
Pádraig Ó Méalóid
Irish SF News
