Last weekend I attended Conflux 13, Canberra’s speculative fiction convention. It ran from Friday 29 September until Monday 2 October. The Guests of Honour were Ellen Datlow and Angela Slatter.
I took a low-key approach to the convention this year, as I was already worn out from several other commitments throughout September. This meant that I missed some of the programming in the late afternoon and evening.
However, I still managed to catch a few panels and events, and live-tweeted most of what I attended. You can find those tweets on Storify. They cover:
Permanent Storms and Forests of Fungi, a panel on climate-change fiction with Shauna O’Meara, Jason Nahrung and Cat Sparks
WorldCon Wrap-up with Donna M. Hanson, Rob Porteous, Michael Sisley and Angela Slatter
Beastly Transformations with Claire Fitzpatrick, Leife Shallcross, Cat Sheely and Angela Slatter
Remembering Terry Pratchett with Imogen Cassidy, Alex Hardison and Alis Franklin
Diversity in Marvel & DC with Kellie Takenaka and Lyss Wickramasignhe
Ellen Datlow’s GoH interview with Kaaron Warren and Cat Sparks
Angela Slatter’s GoH interview with Liz Grzyb
and Tour of Book View Cafe with Gillian Polack and Irene Radford
The highlights for me included:
— the climate-change fiction panel. The panelists really knew the topic and Shauna asked some very insightful questions as the moderator.
— Beastly Transformations, mostly because I love the topic and the panel members approached in from a number of different angles.
— Remembering Terry Pratchett because (again) the panel members touched on some interesting issues and there was a great fondness for the author from everyone in the room.
— and Angela Slatter’s GoH interview. She and Liz are old friends and were clearly having an uproariously wonderful time.
I also ran a game of Monsterhearts 2 for Alex Hardison, Alis Franklin and Lyss Wickramasignhe, as is becoming our tradition. It gave me a chance to try a new approach to running the game, which seemed to work far better than my last one.
So, that’s it for another year! A big thank-you to the committee and volunteers, who were all very friendly and kept everything running smoothly. I look forward to seeing what’s in store for 2018.