Friends, Panels, Parties and Signings
One of the nice things about the convention was catching up with friends,
whom I've not seen for quite some years (hmmm - been a while between cons ...)
including Sue Isle & Stephen Dedman from Perth caught in the foyer!
There were a number of interesting panels, including the one hosted by
Sean McMullin on "Karate, Belly Dancing & Computer Slaves: Behind the Action
in Souls In The Great Machine", in which he detailed the problems involved
in getting your action descriptions just right! It included some live 3D
demos ... thanks to some friends from the karate school, and to
Helen Patrice shown here belly dancing.
Here we see the panel on Time Travel and related topics, with Sean McMullen,
Alison Goodman, Damien Broderick, Russell Blackford, Gregory Benford &
Aubrey Townsend.
And there was a great late night panel on Vampirotica, chaired by
Sue Isle, shown here with me.
I also managed to find a few parties, including the FOOLs (Friends Of Old
Langford) party on Thurs afternoon - which featured quite a few familiar
faces from times past.
Special Guest of Honour J. Michael Straczynski did a great job
coping with the queue of fans wanting things signed, here shown
signing his book on Script writing for me.
And here we see that Nick Stathopoulos will sign just about anything,
including Sean Williams's back. With a work of art no less!!!
Hugos
I attended the Hugo ceremony, only taking a couple of photos at the end,
including the group shot shown here. Amongst others visible are Bruce
Gillespie, Dave Langford (Best Fanzine, Best Fan Writer), and
Karen Pender-Gunn (collecting Ian Gunn's Best Fan Artist).
Masquerade
The Masquerade was a lot of fun.
Apart from some very funny skits by the MC's Danny (Oh my head hurts)
& Nick, including their take on "War of the Worlds" shown here,
there were some great costumes:
Here we had the Best Presentation winner with Karen, David & Megan in a
very entertaining comedy skit, now who will I chose ...
And of course, Robert Jan took away an award for "Best in the Show"
for his wonderful costume as always!
I did rather like the reprise of Queen Amelia and her handservant,
by Trish Osweld & Lynette Mayer, winning the Best Costume award, and
seen here after the parade.
Not to be outdone, there were some rather nice hall costumes, the ones
here being selected to come up on stage for notable comment.
Here we see a closeup afterwards of this spectacular hall costume.
Here is Gail with her winning Minbari warrior costume.
In the young fan category, we saw some great entries, including this
costume in a Best Performance.
Caught wandering around outside was Kosh!