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One of the Eastercon panels I went to was about Science Fiction on stage. Mostly the agreement was it was pretty healthy, pretty diverse, pretty damn good, but pretty hidden. Small venues, tiny fringe pieces. Mostly adaptations (1984 at the Royal Exchange, Midnight from LassFest spring to mind). What was needed was a mainstream SciFi original to allow it to break through and become something special.

Time travelling giants wandering round Liverpool in a three day street-theatre spectacular.

Will that do you?

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It hasn't been immediate or internet quick, but it really hasn't taken long and the apology from BSFA seems genuine. We won.

And in a very real way we lost. We seem to have hounded people out of the roles they did as volunteers. Martin McGrath has already said about feeling harangued and personally blamed for what went on and this, it is suggested, was not an isolated incident. This is not an image of fandom I like very much either.

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I think Sundays are Eastercon are where I start to go into a mindset of relaxation and subsequently seem to attend fewer panels. While I was tempted by Biology of the Zombie Apocolpyse, Discuss the Hugo Nominees and Occupy the Metaverse, I ended up going to the Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog - which could have done with subtitles for the Sing-Along bits... then again no-one wants to hear me singing especially at 10am with hangovers...

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EDIT TO ADD: If you have come to this article first, please do note that I have a follow up post following the BSFA's response.

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You last saw your intrepid hero (*waves*) about to go watch Paul Cornell host an all female (get that Radio 4) Just A Minute featuring topics such as who you would put on a stamp (a lot of China Mieville lust on that stage) and what you would say to Christopher Priest. After some pattering, I hijacked a team (complete with homemade 3D Printer) to lead them to stunning bottom of the heap pub quizzery (we got over half right)...

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As I'm on my phone, I am rather limited in how much I'm willing to type but have some spare minutes and thought I'd talk about the day so far at Eastercon (Olympus 2012). Edit to add: Cory also made the point that with the internet, censorship requires surveillance, the two become inseparable.

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Ahhh... work over and done with until next Wednesday 8-)

But what am I doing with the time I hear you cry? Oh, a little bit of this, a little bit of that... planting potatoes in the allotment, washing, maybe get round to finishing off that Equal Marriage consultation, Eastercon.

Yep. It's Easter which means Eastercon - Olympus 2012 - the British Science Fiction Convention. I'm particularly looking forward to Guests of Honour George R R Martin (Game Of Thrones! Game of Thrones! Game of Thrones!) and Cory Doctorow (after missing ORGCon).

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Well, I earlier listed some stuff I wanted to do, and now have a couple of weeks booked off work to help with that. I have booked my tickets for EasterCon (British SciFi convention in Bradford) and was *this close* to booking hotels for MakerFaire in Newcastle, but I'm a wimp and want company (I may struggle to pay for this now anyway - I ended buying tickets to see Blur as you may have noticed in my twitter stream - one left...).

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