Musings of a Babylon Lurker

Impressions from Eurocon 2007 (4)

Sunday, September 30th, 2007 | Eurocon, books, cons, events | No Comments

Saturday (2) : More Anne McCaffrey :

An hour long Q&A session and the speech as Guest of Honour with Anne McCaffrey again showing us a *very* lively “Dragon Lady”, telling her story as an author and as a person.
I took the opportunity to get a single book signed by this excellent author : “The White Dragon” , the 3rd book of the Dragonriders of Pern series, and in my view one of the very best of the extensive series.

Also the “Trekkies.dk” had an open coffee meeting . The rest of the day – until the banquet was spent chatting along with other fans – getting to know some new people.

Since I did not have a ticket for the banquet I was watching a quite amusing film about convention goers and their quirks. The title esacapes me, but it was a BBC production.

Impressions from Eurocon 2007 (3)

Thursday, September 27th, 2007 | Eurocon, science | No Comments

Saturday :

A good lecture on the mysterious “Dark Energy” , which is thought to take up ab0ut 70 % of the Universe . Most of the remaining part of the Universe is “Dark Matter” , so all we can see of the totality is about 5 % of it . A bit scary, isn’t it ?
In the presentation we heard that two teams had – at the same time – found some surprising results during surveys of supernovas in the furthest corners of our universe. This particular type of supernova was known (or assumed) to have a rather limited range of luminousity – and a lot of light coming from them – meaning that the distance to them could be estimated with a rather good certainty. Other sources of error (such as dust clouds) could be eliminated, and the result was that the expansion of the universe looks like accelerating in stead of slowing down – as we would expect due to gravity. So what we have is a sort of anti-gravity – but only on very large distances. Later other surveys in different fields gave similar results , so the scientists are rather certain that the effect exists. There is just no clue as to the cause of it. Rather exciting to listen to.

More on the Saturday later …

Jan from Denmark

Impressions from Eurocon 2007 (2)

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 | Eurocon, events, science, scifi | 2 Comments

This was only my second Scifi convention, the first one being a Star Trek convention in Fresno,California about 15 years ago.

Thursday night :

Already on Thursday evening at the pre-registration there was convention activity. The organisers were quite happy that I offered to make some photos at the con, so they are receiving a CD with photos for every day of the con.

A nice talk with frequent convention goer – and volunteer – Wilf from the UK was already a good start for me. A quite knowledgeable fellow with a solid scientific angle as well.

Friday :

Panel with Guests of Honour. Anne McCaffrey arrived a little late and, when asked, insisted on going up the stairs to the stage (in spite of the handicap) – hats off. A few words from the guests of honour. Harry Harrison is a veteran guest of con’s and has quite a few stories to tell.
Anne McCaffrey, too is very experienced in conventions and could tell of her first con’s where she had good advice from (then) experienced writers, and expressed her advice to new writers : in short , if you want to write , make youself sit down and write … every day.

Scientific lecture on Solar eruptions. This has had my interest for a long time, being a licensed radio amateur. For me the content was not new, but a condensed version of what I already knew. Only difference was – this came from a scientist’s point of view.

There were lots of other presentations during the day , but these stand out for me. A lot of time went with meeting other fans and discussing science fiction, science and fantasy .

A little fun thing is a photo I made : Anne McCaffrey is also involved in the “Writers of th Future”, a quarterly competition, where the winners get their stories published in collections. One moment a Star Wars Stormtrooper in full gear was “standing guard” right behind the famous author, link to the picture .

more to come …

Jan from Denmark

Impressions from Eurocon 2007 (1)

Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 | Eurocon, cons, scifi | 2 Comments

I have been attending the Eurocon 2007 in Copenhagen this year , and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

The con had just over 400 registrered members , and some people just came and registrered on the spot, so possibly about 700 – 1000 people in total attended.

For me the main reason was the visit by Anne McCaffrey, who appeared on a panel discussion, at an interview, for a book signing and finally a reading by the author herself.

I took quite some photos at the con and will post a few of them when they are ready.

Other Guests of Honour were Stephen Baxter and Zoran Zivkovic and the artist David A. Hardy. Harry Harrison was there as well.

Several lines of presentations, readings and also scientific lectures were in the program.

I enjoyed lots of talks with other fans en between , but after 3 days of 10-24 (or more) con activity I am rather tired and will continue my “Impressions” in the coming days.

Eurocon 2007

Thursday, August 30th, 2007 | books, events, film and tv, science, scifi | No Comments

The European Convention on Science Fiction and Fantasy takes place in Copenhagen on 21 – 23 September.

For me the most interesting guest of Honour is Anne McCaffrey. The “Dragonriders of Pern” series is one of my favorite SciFi book series, well written and with an interesting plot.
The first book of the series ,”Dragonflight” was published in 1968 , and since then a steady flow of sequels (and prequels) have come out.

You can find out more at their website Eurocon 2007

If I can find the time (and an Internet connection) I might make a few posts during the days of the Eurocon