Asking the Wrong Questions

I wrote this on a train on my way to London, and am posting it from home. My Worldcon adventure has decisively concluded. This was my sixth time attending a Worldcon (the first was Montreal in 2009), and as ever I find that they are dizzying, overwhelming experiences, incredibly intense and yet seemingly over in a minute. I thought I'd round up some thoughts on the con, my events, and of course, the Hugos. First up, Glasgow 2024 hosted the launch of my book , Track Changes: Selected Reviews . This was my first opportunity to see the book as a completed object (Briardene Books publisher Niall Harrison trucked boxes and boxes of it from his home in Newcastle) and I can confirm that, even beyond the satisfaction of seeing a work you've labored over for more than a year take physical form, it is a beautiful object. We held a launch event for the book on Friday, and despite the fact that nearly everyone I spoke to about it seemed to have another event to go to (more on that in a mom...

The 2024 Worldcon in Glasgow, Scotland is now only a week away, and today the convention programme has been published. It is, unsurprisingly, chock full of fascinating stuff that has already got me gritting my teeth and wishing I could be in two or three places at once. The excellence of the programme is also the reason I found myself unable to say no to any of the events I was offered, which is why my Glasgow programme is the busiest I've ever had. First up, my book Track Changes: Selected Reviews will go on sale on August 8th (eagle-eyed blog visitors may have noticed the dedicated book page on the blog title bar). We will be having a launch event for the book at Worldcon on Friday the 9th. If you're around, I'd love to see you there. Friday, August 9th, 11:30           Book Launch: Track Changes by Abigail Nussbaum Argyll 3, In Person Abigail Nussbaum is a Hugo Award-winning critic and author of the blog Asking the Wrong Questions -- and now, author ...

Well, here I am, back from London and Loncon, with much to tell.  I combined my third foray to Worldcon (and my first as a Hugo nominee) with a family vacation, both of which were delightful if a little tiring--a classic "I need a vacation after this vacation" situation.  The experiences of both convention and city are already swirling in my head, so I'd better get them down while it's still possible to make sense of them. The City - I've been to London many times, but the last time I toured it, rather than simply stopping on my way from one place to another for a bit of shopping or theater, was in 2001.  And this trip was also the first time my family and I had vacationed together since 2008 (longer if you include my aunt, who joined us for the first weekend as an early birthday celebration for her and my mother).  We ended up doing a lot of the tourist standards, many of which have changed substantially since I last visited them--the whole area surrounding th...

The Worldcon program was published today, and just from a quick glance I can already tell that I am going to be a) worn off my feet running from panel to panel, and b) overcome by agonizing choices between conflicting but equally awesome events.  I'm truly looking forward to this convention. My own excellent slate of panels is below.  In addition to these, I will be on hand at the Strange Horizons brunch, on Saturday from 10AM to 12AM, at party tent A. A Reader's Life During Peak Short Fiction Friday 12:00 - 13:30, Capital Suite 10 (ExCeL) There are now more speculative short stories published than any one person can hope to read -- or even find. So how do fans of the short-form navigate this landscape? With so much ground to cover, how does an individual reader find stories they like -- are we more author-driven in our reading habits? Conversely, how and why do particular stories "break out" and become more widely known? To what extent is the greater volume...

My plane from the US landed on Friday afternoon, and yet I'm still not wholly back: piles of papers and books are still where I left them while unpacking, my photographs are uncatalogued, and a stack of emails remains to be answered.  I promised myself, however, that at least the traditional con report would be done before the convention itself was more than a week over (update: well, close enough).  In brief: I enjoyed myself at Chicon 7 very much, but that enjoyment often seemed to come in spite, and not because, of the convention's best efforts.  And now, at greater length: The venue: unlike Montreal, Chicago is a city that I'm quite familiar with, with ties to both sides of my family.  My father got his master's degree there, and my mother's sister and her daughter lived in Chicago for many years, during which my family and I visited them several times.  In the last decade, however, nearly all of my relatives have moved away, and this visit was the first ...

I'm back! And a mere 38 hours after walking through my front door (after 37 hours of wakefulness), feeling more or less recovered. Worldcon was, well, you name it--fun, exhausting, weird, illuminating, disorienting and invigorating. I feel very motivated to dive right into writing and talking about genre with a redoubled enthusiasm, and hopefully that feeling will last as I get back into the daily rhythm of work and ordinary life. I have a couple of writing assignments due by the end of the month, but I also hope to get the blog back on track, to which end the gigantic pile of books now threatening to cave my desk in will no doubt be a great help. More thoughts: Montreal: quite lovely, and with a more European flavor than any other North American city I've been to. That presumably has something to do with the fact that the city's bilingualism is mostly an official thing--outside of the con, I heard French almost exclusively, but the Montrealers I interacted with also had e...