Redemption reviewed

[lexin]

As some of you know, I went to redemption_con over the weekend.

I had an absolutely splendid time, overall. The journey up went well, which is always a good start to any convention, because it meant I didn't arrive hassled to death. The second good thing was that I remembered to book my dinner on arrival rather than going hungry then wondering what had happened as I'm inclined to do.

WiFi worked in the hotel, which was excellent even if the number of geeks meant it ran slow some of the time.

I arrived in time to attend a talk on skeptics (the k is intentional, despite not being British spelling) at the convention, which covered issues of most interest to skeptics. My only point at this discussion was to raise the issue of mental illness.

The guy running it seemed to equate believing in weird things (homeopathy, ghosts, angels, Scientology…) with mental illness or for people who have had a breakdown. I made the point that as someone with a mental illness who does not believe in these kinds of things, this seems to me to be a false correlation. It seems to me that it's far more likely to be a situation where someone has little "insight" into their illness, and I'm not even sure about that position – what do people think?

From there I went to the bar and met a few people – I think manna was one, but they were on their way to a panel.

This set the tone for the rest of the convention – I spent a lot of time in the bar drinking tea.

I caught a cold!

It had to be tea, because just as I was leaving London I became aware that I had a slight – just a slight – sore throat. By the time I reached Coventry it was a serious sore throat and by the time I'd reached Friday night, it was obvious that this was going to be my third cold in four months.

I know they're colds because I had my flu jab last September.

So there was I, at a convention, but knowing that the way of dealing with a cold is fluids and rest. The rest wasn't going to happen, but I could do the fluids. I could also do the cold remedies – I popped out to the handy nearby Sainsburys on Saturday morning and cornered their cold remedies and paper hanky supply.

My apologies to anyone who caught con crud from me. I really did only become aware this was going to be a full on cold after I'd arrived and it was too late.

The convention from there on in

I met my various gaming friends who were there, and also grumpoldusenaut, with whom I spent a serious amount of time over the weekend. Sorry for monopolising you, there!

I did catch the 'Watching the Detectives' panel about how SF fans are quite often also fans of detective shows. Given that I'm a fan of the whodunit, I was impressed by how many detectives there are that I've never seen. I really didn't think there were that many.

I also caught the "Merlin: Did we get the ending we deserved?" panel, which had various of my friends on it. Always good. I don't remember if it came to any conclusion, probably not because convention panels rarely do. It was fun, though.

I was on the "Blake's 7, the 35th anniversary" panel, though I'm not sure I contributed much. I coughed a lot and grumbled about the standards of some of the post-Gauda Prime output by various people, but praised the more recent stuff by Big Finish. Search it out, it's worth it.

Sadly, I missed the "Grand Little Sherlock Holmes Debate" due to the necessity of eating. I hope they'll run one again next time at a time when I'm not in the restaurant.

I was a fancy dress judge, and I hope people felt the right costume won. We thought we'd chosen correctly, but one never knows.

Sunday opened with me on another panel (for which I was woefully prepared and it showed) on how the portrayal of vampires has changed over the couple of hundred years there have been vampire stories. My reason for being on the panel was to complain about sparkle-pires, for which I have no time. To me, vampires should be suitably frightening.

My final appearance on a panel was "Unlikely slash pairings" which was as fun as it sounds. yonmei was also on this. She's an old friend and we bounced off each other really well, I thought. In fact I spent quite a lot of Sunday sharing political discussion with yonmei.

Conventions in the future

And finally, I'm signed up for two conventions over the next couple of years – the first is the Eastercon next year, Satellite 4, which will be in Glasgow and Redemption 2015, which is planned to be in Coventry in February 2015. They'll give me something to look forward to.

Comments

[watervole]

I think the right costume won, and judging by the applause when it was announced, so did the audience.

[lexin]

That's good to know.

[elenopa]

Thank you for choosing me.

Although, all the entries were good.