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Fantasticon 2019

Fantasticon happens every year in Copenhagen, usually in September. It’s not the only con of that name, but it is the only Nordic con of that name. This year was my third Fantasticon. For the past few years, it’s been themed, and for 2019 the theme was Afrofuturism, and the guest of honour was US writer Nisi Shawl.

On previous visits – I’ve now visited the city over a dozen times – I flew from the UK, but now I’m resident in Sweden, and there’s a regular train service between Stockholm and, as we say here, Köpenhamn. Train travel is much superior to flying. And Swedish train are vastly superior to UK trains. In the company of Johan Anglemark, who had not attended Fantasticon since it moved to its current venue, I caught the train from Uppsala to Stockholm Central Station, and changed there onto the train to Copenhagen. The trip was unsurprisingly stress-free. We sat on the train for about five and a half hours, and though we crossed an international border we didn’t have to show any ID. This is not something I’m happy to give up just so a handful of very rich old white men won’t have to pay their fair portion of taxes. Fuck’ em. Better yet: lock them up.

Do you know how difficult it is to take a good photo of the Öresund while crossing the bridge on a fast-moving train?

We were joined on the train at Malmö by a Swedish fan from Göteborg, Patrik Centerwall. On arrival in Copenhagen, we trekked along Vesterbrogade from the main station to our hotel, where we bumped into a couple more familiar faces. After checking in and dumping our stuff in our rooms, we headed for the Serapions Order, where the con was taking place. It’s the lodge of a sort of Danish Masonic order, in Frederiksberg, a weird sort of enclave within Copenhagen. No sooner had we met up with various other fans, then around a dozen of us, led by Danish fan Sanna Bo Claumarch, caught a bus for the now-traditional Friday night oysters, at a French restaurant, L’Éducation Nationale. Some people also had snails. I played it safe and had entrecôte. We stayed until the restaurant closed, and a group of four of us – Johan, myself, Sanna and Sidsel Pedersen – set off to walk back to Frederiksberg, a distance of about 2 km. We stopped off en route at another bar. And closed that. And then Sidsel had to catch a taxi to Valby because Edmund Schluessel’s key wasn’t working on the entrance door to his hotel. The three of us left walked back via Sankt Jøgens Sø, and I was in bed by about 3 am.

The next day, I spent the morning briefly at the con, then headed into the centre of Copenhagen – basically a march the length of Vesterbrogade to Rådhuspladsen, where I met my sister. We went for a bite to eat, followed by a wander around the comics branch of Faraos Cigarer, and then the games branch. I returned to the con in time for a programme item celebrating Samuel R Delany and his work.

Saturday evenings at Fantasticon are typically taken up with a banquet, at which the guest of honour gives their speech. I’ve attended at all three of the Fantasticons I’ve, er, attended, and the food has been excellent. After the meal, there is filk. I am, I admit, not a fan of filk. I don’t get the appeal of rewriting the lyrics of folk songs so they refer to science fiction works or fannish traditions. Apparently, the Nordic filk tradition is very much a singalong style, unlike the UK and US traditions. Unfortunately, the person invited to lead the filking did not know this. So there wasn’t much of a singalong. Also unfortunately, the lyrics to the half-dozen songs performed, which were projected onto a screen, were hardly appropriate: one featured the term “nancy boys” and jocular references to rape. The most recent sfnal reference in them was Return of the Jedi (1982). Fortunately, I’d spotted a racial slur in the lyrics sheet as the projector was being tested, and asked for it to be removed. Which it was. Shit like that should not be happening in 2019.

After the banquet, and filk, had finished, a group of us headed to Vesterbro Torv. The bar we’d visited the year before had gone, replaced by some sort of posh pizzeria. So we ended up at a bar next door, which was not as good. At midnight, they packed up the outside tables, and only Sanna, Sidsel and myself moved inside. After we’d finished our drinks, we made our way to Mikkeller, probably my favourite bar in Copenhagen (in my defence, I have not visited that many). I was back in my hotel bed by about 2 am.

View of Tycho Brahe Planetarium across Sankt Jørgens Sø

Sunday morning demonstrated I really am getting too old for this shit. I had a bit of a lie-in – but still managed to catch hotel breakfast. I sat about and socialised for much of the day until my interview. 2019 is the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and I am allegedly knowledgeable on the subject – which no doubt explained why I was put on four panels about Apollo and the Moon at Worldcon this August, including two featuring an actual NASA astronaut (one of which I moderated). This likely explains why Flemming Rasch interviewing me about the Apollo programme, and my Apollo Quartet, was added to the Fantasticon programme. Amusingly, Johan had told me earlier that day about his experience at a con some years previously interviewing Iain Banks. He’d been asked to interview Banks for the programme booklet and had done so. On arrival at the con, he was then asked to interview Banks again as part of the programme. But, as he pointed out to Banks just before the programme item, he’d already asked the questions he wanted to ask. So he asked Banks if he would cooperate… and Johan admitted he asked only four questions and Banks gave 15 minute answers to each…

Which is sort of what happened in my interview. Flemming asked a question… and I was off. He managed to squeeze in another three questions. And even then he had to cut me short because the hour was up. I hadn’t actually prepared for the interview, so everything I said was completely off-the-cuff. I’m of the opinion that writers discussing how they write is boring, so instead I decided to focus on what I wrote – which I thought was interesting in its own right: the Apollo programme, Mercury 13, bathyscaphe Trieste, astronaut biographies… Plus, of course, how I came to write the Apollo Quartet, and the many non-genre inspirations I folded into it: the films of Douglas Sirk, Michael Haneke and James Benning; the fiction of Cormac McCarthy and WG Sebald… I enjoyed myself and it seemed the audience found it interesting. I was actually surprised at how much I’d managed to retain (although apparently not enough to turn straight to a page in All That Outer Space Allows to read an excerpt to demonstrate a point; oh well). Of course, as soon as the interview was over and I was back in the lounge area, I thought of loads things I could have mentioned…

View from Frederiksberg Have

Finally, there was the closing ceremony, in which con chairperson Knud Larn handed the baton over to Flemming. And then there was the dead dog party, which takes place in Cafe Asta, next to Hotel Fy og Bi, in Valby, a 2 km walk from the con venue. (Fantasticon used to be held around the corner from Cafe Asta. Fy and Bi were a Danish silent film comedy duo.) A group of us took a route there through Frederiksberg Gardens, which features one of Copenhagen’s few hills. After sushi, we joined the others at the Cafe Asta. Which closed at half past nine. Boo. Sanna, Johan and I walked back to Frederiksberg, this time detouring through the Carlsberg Brewery, which is in the process of being gentrified into posh offices and apartments. Johan and I looked for a bar that was still open in Vesterbrogade but without success. So it was an early night. Which was probably just as well as our train back to Stockholm departed at 8:23 the next morning.

Somewhere in the Carlsberg Brewery

So that was my third Fantasticon. Nisi Shawl was an excellent guest of honour, extremely approachable and friendly, and very knowledgeable. I purchased three books – well, four, as one was an Ace double – for 5 Danish crowns each (the con was selling off a late fan’s book collection of old sf paperbacks). That’s better than I did at Worldcon. Even if three of the books I already have in storage back in the UK. There’s definitely a Nordic fan group coming together, one that attends cons in all five Nordic countries, numbering between a dozen and two dozen people. You can always be sure of spotting a familiar face, whether the con is in Reykjavik or Helsinki. One of the excellent things about this group is its multilingualism, even if it often uses English as a lingua franca. At Fantasticon, I witnessed a Danish fan and a Swedish fan in conversation, and they were each speaking in their native tongue. Of course, the Scandinavian languages are to some extent mutually intelligible, although not to everyone; but I certainly found myself understanding more Danish than on previous visits after studying Swedish for four months.

Fantasticon is not a big convention – around sixty to seventy people – but it’s a friendly one. And Copenhagen is a lovely city. It’s definitely worth attending. I’ll certainly be keeping an eye open to learn what next year’s theme will be and the identity of the guest(s) of honour…

(Apologies for not name-checking everyone I met and spoke to during the weekend.)

 


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Raising steam in Copenhagen

Last weekend was Fantasticon, a Danish sf convention which has been running since 2004. This year the theme was Steampunk, and the two Guests of Honour were Jeanette Ng and Lavie Tidhar. It was also my second time at Fantasticon, as I went last year (see here).

The journey didn’t start well. At the railway station, no platform was given on the concourse display for the 7:08 train to Manchester Airport. Fortunately, five minutes before it was due to arrive, someone spotted a hand-written sign on the information desk which said it was arriving at platform 6. So I headed to platform 6… only to watch another train to pull in. The Manchester Airport train was now at platform 8. I had a seat booked on coach E, but when the train appeared it only had three coaches: A, B and C. FFS. So the train was packed and all seat reservation were null and void. The train also ended up stuck behind a slower train, so it was soon running ten minutes behind schedule.

Thank you, Conservative governments, for fucking up our railways so comprehensively.

The timing was tight, and if there were a massive queue at security at the airport I’d have to rush to catch my flight. And then I looked at the boarding card I’d printed out the night before… It read 12:35, not 10:15. When I’d bought my ticket months earlier, it had said 10:15. Which was why I’d booked a ticket for the 7:08 train. When I checked the Opodo website a few days earlier, it had said 10:15. I checked the SAS website. It said 12:35. Apparently, they’d rescheduled the flight and not bothered telling me. Oh well. At least it meant it didn’t matter if my train were 10 minutes late. On the other hand, I’d have three hours to kill in Manchester Airport…

I reached the airport and was directed to the security check-in in the basement. The usual one was closed for all except “fast track” passengers. I asked one of the security officers why the usual one was closed. Was it being refurbished? He laughed. Refurbished? Manchester Airport? Ha. No, it was only because it got too busy so they introduced a second security check-in downstairs. The usual one would be open later. I for one am glad they put us through all the security rigmarole. After all, think of the bombers they’ve managed to catch– oh wait, they haven’t caught any. On the other hand, they did fail to catch two bombers…

Happily, the plane stuck to the new time. It wasn’t SAS, however. I noticed the signs in the aircraft were in English and… Icelandic? Apparently not. It was Faroese. The aircraft was operated by Atlantic Airways, the national carrier of the Faroe Islands. They have an Airbus 319 and two Airbus 320s. So I have now flown on a third of their fleet…

I was sat next to an old Australian couple, who were flying to Copenhagen to join a Baltic cruise. They were due to visit Talinn, St Petersburg, Helsinki and Stockholm. They had, they told me, plenty of euros. You’ll need more than that, I told them…

This year, I’d booked a room in a hotel in Frederiksberg, 250 metres from the con venue, the Serapion Order (the same venue as last year). That proved a tactical error, as it was a 1 kilometre hike from the central railway station to the hotel. With a heavy bag. And it was pissing it down when I arrived. Still, the Hotel Sct. Thomas proved very pleasant (and convenient), although the soft-boiled eggs on Saturday morning looked like they’d only been shown a pan of boiling water…

Fantasticon seemed more, well, in evidence this year than last. The downstairs hall contained far more dealers, and there seemed to be more attendees – there were reportedly 119 in total, almost twice as many as last year. Obviously, I knew more people – not just Danish fans, but also Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian and Icelandic. And another Brit beside myself (and the two GoHs, of course, and partner). And even an American, although he lives and works in Finland. This was good, but it did mean I attended few programme items since there was always someone to hang out with. So, name-check time: Sanna, Fia, Thomas, Jukka, Bente, Sidsel, Eva, Knud, Johan, Edmund, Paul, Einar, Rolf, Dom, Carolina, Flemming, Klaus, Lise, and if I’ve forgotten anyone I apologise profusely. As for the programme, well, I’m not a steampunk fan, so I wasn’t especially interested in it. But who goes to cons for just the programme, eh?

On the Friday night, a group of us went for a meal, arranged some days earlier, to a seafood restaurant near Nørreport, called Musling. Some of the group had oysters, but I’ve never been a fan. I’ve heard them described as like “licking snot off a tortoise’s back” and that seems about right. I had ceviche for starter and monkfish for main, and it was very nice. I saw some Danes at a nearby table with a massive dish that looked like something out of Lovecraft, all hard jointed legs and antennae. After the meal, it was back to the con. The bar closed at eleven, so I took Lavie to the famous Mikkeller bar. But his idea of a good beer is apparently Carlsberg, so he wasn’t impressed. After a couple of beers there, we went looking for somewhere else, and ended up in Dudes on Vesterbros Torv, which was strangely deserted for one am on a Friday night.

Saturday was more of the same: sitting around in the Serapion Order, drinking the cheap bottled beer – and good beer it was too – and chatting to friends. The bar also served food, so I ate there for lunch. That evening, it was the banquet, which again was lactose-free. This time, they had it in the main hall on the first floor. And it was a lot more, well, Danish. Not the food – which was excellent, incidentally – but the fact that people would stand up at intervals during the meal and speak. Or sing. Yes, filk. Karl-Johan Norén led the filking. Including some song, sung to the tune of ‘Waltzing Matilda’, which used the phrase “bouncing potatoes”. It is still stuck in my head. Both Lavie and Jeanette gave speeches. Then Jeanette was persuaded to sing. It was some pirate song with lyrics composed entirely of obscene double entrendres. After the banquet, a group of us head for Dudes. I left the bar around one-ish. I wasn’t the first to leave, and I wasn’t the last.

I gave breakfast a miss on Sunday, I felt rough and had a bit of a lie-in. I had a plan, you see. I was going to grab myself a fruit juice and a sandwich and a bottle of water (as I’d managed to lose the one I bought in Manchester Airport). But I obviously wasn’t braining very well. The nearest supermarket was a Føtex. I found the fruit juice, and even a dairy-free cold coffee drink (it proved to be vile), but I couldn’t find the sandwiches and I completely forgot about the water. And when I tried to use the self-scan machine, it wouldn’t let me use my card, so I paid in cash, took my change… only to have a guy run after me because I’d left a 50 kroner note in the machine. Doh.

Despite having a bowl of chilli in the con venue, I accompanied some friends for lunch, and we ended up in a tapas – I think – bar. During the hunt for somewhere to eat, I discovered my favourite Danish word, blækspudder, which means octopus but translates literally as “ink squirter”. The bar served “orange wine” but I stuck to beer…

Sunday afternoon, Fantasticon hosted the Niels Klim Prisen for children’s fiction – genre I think – and the con had invited a class from a school to participate. So there were kids everywhere. At one point, one of the nominated writers approached myself and a few others who were sitting an chatting in the lounge to ask us about fandom. We admitted we were from several countries, that some of us had last seen each other at Swecon in Stockholm, that some of us would see each other at Icecon in Reykjavik… It feels weird to be included in this group, given I’m not actually a Nordic fan. True, I have a family connection to Denmark and I’ve visited the country about a dozen times. And the first Swecon I attended was in 2013… leading one Swede to wonder why I didn’t speak the language, until I pointed out I had spent less than a fortnight in elapsed time in Sweden… But, to be fair, I’ve been picking up bits and pieces of the language, although I do need to make a concerted effort to learn it. However, post-Brexit, once “Fortress UK” comes into effect when we lose our Freedom of Movement throughout the EU and all the flights to and from the UK are grounded, well, I may not be so regular an attendee to Nordic cons… I hope I’ll still be able to attend them, of course, but…

Thank you, Conservative government, for fucking up our economy and our future so comprehensively.

Fantasticon ended at five o’clock on the Sunday. Most went home, but several of us headed for the dead dog party in Cafe Asta in Valby, which entailed a ten-minute bus ride. Copenhagen public transport operates a similar system to London’s Oyster card (it may predate Oyster, I’m not sure). I have a Rejsekort because I visit Copenhagen regularly, but others didn’t. So I dug into my pocket, pulled out a handle of Danish coins and handed them across.

The dead dog party was fun. It wasn’t warm enough to sit outside, as it had been last year, but then Fantasticon this year took place later in the month. People slowly disappeared as the night progressed, until there was less than half a dozen of us left, including the GoHs, both of whom were staying in the hotel attached to Cafe Asta. I asked the cafe to order me a taxi. I think it was only about midnight, but I’m not sure.

The following morning, I hiked it from my hotel, with heavy bag, to the central railway station, and caught a train to Skodsborg, where my sister picked me up. She lives in a small town nearby – although they’re not really towns: Zeeland north of Copenhagen is pretty much suburbs all the way up to Helsingør, although many have town-centres, such as Lyngby, Holte and Nærum. I spent the Monday relaxing, well, recovering from a weekend of drinking.

On the Tuesday, my sister took me to see the Tekniske Museum in Helsingør. It’s in an old hangar, and contains a number of cars and aircraft, and the Soyuz capsule in which Danish ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen returned from the ISS after a ten-day stay. As well as the Soyuz, there is a Sikorsky S-55, a Lockheed F-104, a Saab Draken, a Caravelle, a Dakota DC-3, the wreck of a Blohm & Voss BV 138 flying boat discovered in the Øresund when they were building the bridge to Sweden, an early outside broadcast TV van from Danmarks Radio, a number of electric cars, some other early jet fighters, and, apparently, as I missed it, DASK, the first Danish computer.

I love shit like that, especially when you can climb all over the exhibits, as you could at the Tekniske Museum. The Caravelle was a bit old and tired, as was the DC-3, the Draken was missing its engine and the F-104 had half of its control panel removed… I mean, it’s great seeing these things “in the flesh”, as it were, but I’d sooner they looked as they had done when they were actually in use.

After the Tekniske Museum, we drove into Helsingør, got a bite to eat in a cafe in the town centre, and then walked out to the Søfart museum. This has been built in an old drydock below ground, and to reach the entrance you walk down a ramp crossing the drydock from one side to the other and back again. The museum itself is arranged in a downward spiral underground around the drydock, and covers Denmark’s maritime trade. There are lots of models of ships, as well as film clips and artefacts from more than two hundred years of cargo transport by sea. It’s fascinating stuff, if not as visceral as clambering over and around helicopters and supersonic jets or standing next to a flown Soyuz descent module.

I’d planned to head into central Copenhagen on the Wednesday, perhaps to visit Fantask or Faraos Cigarer. But in the end we drove into Lyngby for lunch and a wander round. Lunch wasn’t especially good, a steak sandwich in a cafe we’d visited several years previously – and why do Danes put pesto in all their hot sandwiches? At 5 pm, I caught the train to Copenhagen airport for my flight back to the UK. Which this time was a wet lease operated by Air Nostrum, a Spanish airline. It was a Bombardier CRJ100, a small 100-seater jet. Not the smallest airliner I’ve flown on, but not far from it. The flight was happily uneventful, the landing very smooth, and even Manchester Airport’s passport control was virtually empty. We landed thirty minutes late and it seemed like all the major routes across the Pennines were closed, but I got home around 11 pm. And went straight to bed.

Oscar returned from the cattery the next day, and has been following me around and copying me ever since. I give it a week before he’s back to his old tricks of demanding I fight with him and scratching everything in sight.


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Wonderful wonderful– er, fantastic fantastic Copenhagen

So the big project at work that was supposed to end on September 1st… didn’t. A month before, they realised they weren’t going to hit the deadline, and so rebased all their plans. Which meant I was now free for the first weekend in September, the date of Fantasticon, an annual science fiction convention in Copenhagen. I mentioned it in passing to my boss, told her it was doable, if expensive, and she said go for it, I needed to use up some holidays anyway. Which is why, on pretty much a week’s notice, I booked a flight and a hotel room, and flew to Denmark to attend Fantasticon 2017.

I flew out on the Thursday night, as it was easier and cheaper than a Friday flight, although it meant an extra night in the hotel (which, er, wasn’t cheaper…). Usually, when I fly to Denmark, I go EasyJet, but this time I flew SAS, and it was a much better experience. I landed just after 9 pm, topped up my Copenhagen travel card, and caught the train from the airport to the city’s main railway station. My hotel was on Vesterbrogade, about 800 metres from the station. There are a lot of hotels on Vesterbrogade, which meant a lot of tourists, dragging their suitcases along the pavements, which were restricted because of roadworks. When I landed in Denmark, I’d switched my mobile back on and learnt I had two voicemails. Once I was in my hotel room, I listened to them. The first was from work; the second was from my bank… asking me to ring them on their fraud prevention line. I called them, demanding to know what was going on – they’d wanted to cancel my debit card two days before I flew to Helsinki for Worldcon75, but I’d persuaded them to hold off, and on my return they’d cancelled my card and sent me a new one… and now this new one had been compromised, even though I’d had it less than a week. I got a bit shouty. The bloke on the other end of the phone said, we haven’t left you a voicemail today, that one was from 16 August. Oops. It was an old message about my old card, and had got stuck in Vodafone’s voicemail system. I apologised for my outburst.

The view from my hotel window

Fantasticon 2017 didn’t start until 4 pm, so I had most of Friday free. I rang my sister, Kay, who lives just north of Copenhagen, and we agreed to meet up for lunch. I went for a wander in the Indre By, and managed to navigate my way to Faraos Cigarer, with a bit of help from my phone. I’d last visited there at Christmas, but the shop had greatly expanded. Downstairs had been English-language and upstairs Danish-language. Now, it was all English (there was a new Danish-language shop across the road), with novels and manga downstairs, and graphic novels upstairs. I met up with my sister outside the Rådhus, and we went looking for somewhere to eat. The first place, the waitress gave us a blank look when I asked what was dairy-free on the menu. She checked with the chef. I could have the salad. It seemed Copenhagen was going through a brioche phase and all sandwiches were made with bread that contained milk. We left. The second place we tried, the menu was just as unwelcoming, but the guy behind the bar (he appeared to be the only person serving) made an effort and produced two club sandwiches without dairy for us. Danish club sandwiches are not like club sandwiches in the rest of the world. They’re not triple-decker sandwiches with egg, bacon, chicken, salad, etc; they’re hot sandwiches containing chicken breast in curry mayonnaise, often with pesto. But then the Danish don’t call danishes danishes either. (They call them Viennese pastries.)

The Rådhus

After lunch I returned to my hotel to wait for the con to begin. At 3 pm, someone from the con posted on Facebook that the doors were open, so I made my way to Frederiksberg, 800 metres from my hotel in the opposite direction to the railway station, and the Serapion Order, the venue for Fantasticon. I was a bit early. I walked in and the only three people there were Sanna, Bende and Flemming, all of whom were involved in organising the con. (I’d met both Sanna and Flemming at Swecons previously.) So I checked out the venue until the opening ceremony started. More people began to arrive, including a few Swedish fans, Carolina, Thomas and Johan. There was also a Finnish fan at the con, Linn, who was a NOFF candidate. The opening ceremony consisted of Flemming welcoming everyone to the con, apologising that the GoHs – Nina Allan and Christopher Priest – had not yet arrived (their plane was landing as he spoke, he told us), and then mentioning several upcoming cons (including Icecon 2 next year and the worldcon in Dublin in 2019). Later that night, I sat through Jesper Stage’s entertaining, and very dry, talk on the economics of colonisation in fantasy and science fiction. The venue closed at ten. I left with Jesper Rugård, and as I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, we stopped at a posh burger place on Vesterbrogade. They actually had an allergy sheet for their menu.

The Serapion Order

The next morning, after a big breakfast (sadly, no gherkins), I headed to the Serapion Order about 11 am. I spent most of the day talking with friends, and attended two programme items – a GoH interview with Nina Allan, and a panel on the New Wave. The con was much busier than the day before – not just with day members, but half a dozen invited guests had also turned up to give talks or sit on panels. That evening the con laid on a buffet – they’d assured me there’d be some lactose-free food available, so I’d bought a ticket for it. In the event, the chef turned out to have a daughter who was lactose-intolerant, so he made everything using lactose-free ingredients. The dinner was excellent. Again, the venue closed at ten. Most people went home, but half a dozen of us – Jesper R, Lars, Linn, Sanna, Fia and myself – headed for a bar called the Mikkeller. It turned out to be just around the corner from my hotel. Fia, Sanna and me carried on until 1 am, before calling it a night.

Nina Allan interview

I didn’t bother with breakfast on the Sunday, and had a lie-in until 9 am instead. On my way to the con, I stopped in Irma, a supermarket, and bought a sandwich and a small bottle of orange juice with chilli, which proved to be horrible. I nipped to another supermarket, Fotex, to buy a sandwich and a drink at lunchtime. (It was the same sandwich both times, chicken and bacon, which was the only dairy-free one I could find.) I attended a panel on “Will the real science fiction please stand up?”, with both GoHs, which mostly discussed the Clarke Award and the Sharkes. At 4 pm was my only panel of the con, added at the last minute when I bought an attending membership, on “Manned space flight in the past and in the future”, moderated by Flemming, with Asmus Koefoed, Klaus Æ Mogensen, and myself. It was a bit of a free-form discussion – perhaps too free, I noticed Chris Priest nodding off in the front row at times, although apparently something we said has given Nina “the key inspiration for my next novel” (according to her blog).

The end of the con

Fantasticon 2017 ended after the closing ceremony. There was a dead dog party planned, but not in Frederiksberg near the venue. Instead, they’d booked tables at the bar used in previous Fantasticons in Valby, a ten-minute bus ride away. I’d planned to head straight for my sister’s, bus since I had a travel card, I decided I might as well have a couple of beers first. So I caught the bus with the rest of the fans. I also had some food while I was there (fish and chips! I go all the way to Denmark and I have fish and chips!). I left to catch the 19:44 train but, in a weird repeat of Worldcon75, I arrived on the platform just as the train was pulling away. Fortunately, it wasn’t the last one of the night, and I only had to wait ten minutes before another came along. If I’d caught the train I missed, I’d have changed at Østerport and arrived at Skodsborg at 20:39. But the train I actually caught meant I had to change at Copenhagen main railway station, and I got lucky with my connections, and actually arrived at Skodsborg 20 minutes earlier than the earlier train would have got me. Danish trains are good – covered in graffiti, bizarrely – but the timetable is a bit variable.

I spent the night at my sister’s, saw my brother-in-law and my nephews. I’d originally intended to stay a couple of days in Denmark after the con, but in the end booked a flight on the Monday night. And unfortunately, museums are closed in Copenhagen on Mondays. Plenty of people had told me the best coffee in Copenhagen is in Arnold Busck, a book shop, which I already knew, since I go there at least once every Christmas. People had also mentioned Fantask, Copenhagen’s first comics/sf shop, to me, so I dragged Kay there after we’d finished our coffees. I walked into the shop… and there was Sanna. I didn’t buy anything, however. Me and Kay ate lunch in Palæo, which sells grain-free food (most of which is also  dairy-free).

Fantask

After a couple of hours back at Kay’s, I caught the train to the airport. I got a bite to eat in the airport – these days airports are all about the shops, with far too few places to just sit down and relax. And it’s ridiculous shops too – Gucci watches, £50 pairs of tights, Victoria’s Secret… Yes, food, toiletries, books and magazines, these are all useful… but you have to wonder if some of the shops take in enough to cover their rent. And I’d much sooner have somewhere to sit. The flight back to the UK on a tiny aircraft, an 88-seater Bombardier CRJ900, was uneventful. Instead of relying on the vagaries of the British railway network at 9 pm at night, I’d pre-ordered a taxi from an online website. They’d emailed me the driver’s telephone number, and I rang him once I was through the e-passport gates. Manchester was, bizarrely, extremely humid. The minicab turned up 5 minutes later, and drove me home. I think in future, when I travel to Nordic cons, I might fly later in the day and take a taxi home. It was a lot less stressful.

It was all a bit sudden, but I’m glad I made it to Fantasticon. Jesper reckoned they’d had about 65 paying members over the weekend, and certainly the two rooms used for the programme were often only a quarter full. The venue, the Serapion Order – it’s some sort of Masonic order, with lodges throughout Denmark – was surprisingly good. A bottle of beer for only 25 Kr! (That’s £3.) I didn’t try any of the sandwiches they had for sale, but the buffet on the Saturday night was very good indeed. I met a bunch of Danish fans, not just the ones already mentioned, but also Knud, Jan, Klaus, and several others whose name I didn’t catch. It was also good to chat with Nina and Chris, although the con kept them busy over the weekend. The programme items I went to could have done with a little more preparation – and I include myself and the one I was on – but none were boring. A date hasn’t been set for Fantasticon next year, although it’s likely to be the first weekend in September. Nor have they decided on GoHs. But if I’m free that weekend, I’ll probably go again (but I’ll book everything well in advance so it’s not so expensive).

I’ve now been to conventions in four of the five Nordic countries, only Norway is left. True, the cons I went to in Finland were a Nordic con and a worldcon, so neither were actually Finnish conventions. But there’s always Åcon or Finncon. Swecon next year is back in Stockholm, at the Dieselverkstaden in Sickla. Assuming work doesn’t get in the way, I plan to be there – it’ll be my third Fantastika there. And, as previously mentioned, there’s going to be a second Icecon in Reykjavik in October next year. The first one was excellent, so I’m definitely up for that.