This weekend I went to Huntingdon Library as they were staging a mini-convention – an offshoot of British Library Fantasy Exhibition. Huntingdon library is a smashing place, and I very much like the town of Huntingdon, famously the birthplace of Oliver Cromwell (we did see a cavalier striding down the street while we were there; he may not have been best pleased about that). No visit to the hallowed Falcon pub this time, but I’m having a Slight Condensation February to follow my Dry January this year anyway, so maybe another time.
Some of my favourite writers were appearing at this convention. Sadly, the awesome Kari Sperring (whose wonderful fantasy writing displays her passions for all things medieval/musketeer) could not make it due to graciously protecting us from her partner’s bugs. But my most wonderful pal Ian Whates (who writes both brilliant SF and fantasy, and who runs Newcon Press) was there with partner Helen, and also the Queen of Grimdark herself, Anna Smith Spark, and Clarke-Award-winning Chris Beckett. We could not leave without completing our Chris Beckett book collection (for now!) and purchasing The Holy Machine. Also present were SF-writing and con-running pals Allen Stroud and Karen Fishwick, and Emma Coleman, who writes gorgeous folk horror and whose latest collection The Glasshouse has come in for lots of praise. I also enjoyed chatting to lots of local booksellers and reading group organisers who had come to attend. I unfortunately missed the talk with Bex Hogan and Holly Race as we were waylaid in town fetching provisions (more on that shortly). A bijou audience of fantasy enthusiasts attended, and I know numbers would have been higher had the local transport infrastructure been in full effect, but trains are a bit of a problem in the UK right now. Nonetheless, it was an extremely enjoyable day, and I had great fun, and have come away feeling newly inspired and invigorated.
I’m afraid I took no pictures of Anna’s shoes – this time, beautiful silver dragons.
I don’t know what it is about Huntingdon, but every time I go someone tries to stop me in the street to talk to me about something controversial, whether it’s a particularly exclusive religion, bogus views on immigration, or chemtrails or something. I have a policy of avoiding anyone holding leaflets or a megaphone now after valuable drinking time was lost on the Black Prince pub tour a couple of years ago trying to get away from someone who was convinced that I didn’t have Jesus in my heart (“No, I swear he’s there. Now let me get back to the pub, please…”), but this time my husband was with me (we had only popped out to get teas for people) and a very nice lady called Dee tried to stop us to say we really should take her leaflet, no it didn’t matter if we weren’t local, this was actually a national thing, and weren’t we upset about THEM trying to control us, with things like net zero prison penalties and 15 minute cities? Oh dear… a whole tick list of things that have been confused with other things and caused a few people to really, really panic. “But aren’t you worried about all this surveillance?” she asked, before she was joined by another fella, who also seemed quite nice, but who was wearing a GoPro camera. Luckily, we had said no to the question about being bothered by all the surveillance.
As a longtime reader of fantasy and science-fiction I am obviously both a huge fan of fluffy thinking and conspiracy theories, both for escapism and for asking the question “What if?” and seeing where it takes you. Many of the things that people get scared by don’t come from nowhere. Some of the most mind-blowing fictional plots are rooted in something real that has happened somewhere, at some time. There are cycles, fashions and zeitgeists in fiction and conspiracy theories, driven by topicality, and we can all be victims of a salient bit of incorrect information being popularised and spread like wildfire. Quite a lot of it from primary school teachers, who may have had even less requirement to be knowledgeable about stuff in the 70s and 80s (when me and my contemporaries were learning the supposed basics) than now. If you’ve ever seen the panel show Qi, you might know what I mean by “Blue Whale”. We all have blue whales in our heads, and some people have lots of them. Since Lockdown, I think a lot more of them have been swimming about, but if you have a particularly stubborn blue whale, setting of a blaring klaxon in someone’s face might not be the best approach to convincing them that “blue whale” is in in fact not the correct answer.
I recently unlearned something I thought I knew about Brown Windsor soup, and that was jarring, because it was a particular memory I had about a programme I had seen twenty years ago. Something that lived in my head and was real. It was about Oliver Postgate’s father and the invention of the Good Food Guide. But now I know this soup never existed. It was likely a pun – a joke! Seems obvious now. Ah well. Bye bye memory…
Anyway, I’m proud of us for just having the brief chat with these nice people, not setting off any klaxons, and leaving them still secure in their extreme societal anxiety before heading back to the convention and listening to proper fantasists who know for sure when they’ve made stuff up.
One day, we’ll walk through Huntingdon and there will just be shoppers. I’m an optimist!
An interview with me is available in the current issue of ParSec Magazine. And please do vote for me (for Best Editor) and my book in Best Anthology (Best of British Science Fiction 2022) in the Locus Awards!
