Sourcery

The Discworld Convention 2008

3 September 2008 (8:29) 3 Comments

Many of you were lucky enough to go to the convention–but many more weren’t so lucky (including the admin of this site, a.k.a. me).  Fortunately for us, demdike from The Cunning Artificer’s forum was nice enough to be our scribe and write a convention report, in which we learn a bit about Nation, slightly more about Going Postal and other future film adaptations, and a lot about our favorite fandom:

The First Day: Friday, August 22, 2008

[The convention] started (officially) with the Opening Ceremony. There were voice-over messages asking for the stage to be cleared of party debris and on came Lu Tze with his broom. After telling everyone to go home–the Con had been and gone, and the disruption in the Number 7 procrastinator was blamed–the Men in Saffron (1 of the 2 was me) were called in to rewind 72 hours.  Cue stone grinding and Tardis noises, the lights went up and Lu Tze and the Men in Saffron had been replaced by Terry.

After briefly touching on his illness (most of which has already been printed online in most places) he spoke about the last year which has propelled him from relative media obscurity to celebrity status.

The evening ended with Terry’s bedtime stories, where the usual nutters turned up in their nightwear clutching their various bed companions (mostly furry).  Terry then read from Nation. I had to leave after an hour and a half so I apparently missed the lighter passages.  Definitely a darker book than any previously written.

The Second Day: Saturday, August 23, 2008

[Saturday] was spent trying to familiarize myself with the Hotel. Although the standard of the rooms was very high, it lacked the atmosphere of previous venues. The rooms were at the end of very long corridors. There was no one place to congregate, [the hotel] having a number of bars and eating places, so I never saw some people I knew were attending, and some I saw briefly in passing and never again.  Although the lectures and workshops were very well attended, quite a lot were scheduled for the same time. In fact the lady running the candle workshop came down the corridor wondering what the queue was for and was quite horrified to find out it was waiting for her. Previously she had had around a dozen people attend and this time it was 60!  She had only brought the materials for 60 candles, so had to turn people away.

The Masquerade I shall have to leave others to describe as I took part and was locked up in the ‘Green room’ with the other participants for all of it, but I can say that during the acts the Ankh-Morpork street refuse collector was called and the anonymous disgusting gnoll that came to clear up was none other than our own Pam Gower, and the fact that she was unrecognised pleased her no end, and of course the costume was all her own work as usual.  In fact, off stage I didn’t recognise her myself until I overheard her speaking.

The Third Day: Sunday, August 24, 2008

I attended the “2008 Is Wallace Year” lecture given by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, which was both entertaining and informative and as usual showed that the Roundworld can be as wierd and wonderful as the Discworld, with many similarities.

Pat had made the great error of describing his audience as sitting ducks–bad move as most of the auction (and every other appearance he made) was punctuated by duck calls.  The Octavo made an extremely impressive centrepiece and I had to leave before it came up, because it never would have fitted in the car.

The evening was rounded off by the Gala Dinner and Dragon racing.  The meal was very enjoyable except for the fact that I went out for a nicotine fix between courses and someone replaced my pudding with 2 grapes on a plate!

Terry gave a speech mentioning that for half the attendees it was their very first convention, which does raise the question of what has happened to half of the regulars?  The last speech was given by Lord Vetinari and his statement of one man one vote and he had it was interrupted by Terry begging to differ. Terry also said that he wasn’t bad–he was just written that way, which amused everyone.

The Dragon racing was enjoyable with a Tote using our free money and despite numerous stewards enquiries, photo finishes and one dragon being lifted and ‘helped’ to the finishing post by Nac Mac Feegles went off very well.

The Fourth Day: Monday, August 25, 2008

[Monday] was spent mostly packing, saying goodbye to friends old and new.  The Mob had brought David Jason’s Rincewind hat (the one that had fallen in the water, so suitably snotted), Kring the magical sword, and the Bafta, which Stephen Briggs managed to photograph it held by many people.

During the Meet the Mob presentation it was mentioned that the order of the next films will be Going Postal, Making Money, then Sourcery.  Unfortunately there may be limited fan involvement as the next two will be filmed in Hungary due to a lack of suitable buildings here and that most of the action is set amongst architecture.

The Closing Ceremony

The closing ceremony was the usual mix of sadness and joy.

Joy because the prizes were given out, and we were all able to fit into the room together as at the Opening ceremony, but also sadness as one of the prizes for the Guild member who remained in charactor for the whole convention and who had contributed greatly to their guild and in promoting other peoples enjoyment was given an award named for Ewan the young assassin who captured everyone’s heart at the 2006 convention and who died shortly afterwards.

At the very end when the guests and con committee had left the stage there was the voice overs asking for someone to clear the stage of the mess and on came Lu Tze and despite being told we had only just got there, was adamant that we only got one time turn and this time really had to go home, so we did.

Home again, Wadfest next weekend, then the frantic saving for Hogswatch and Nadcon in Arizona.

Many many thanks to demdike for the report!

Would anyone else like to share their experiences? And for those who couldn’t go, how jealous are you?