The geeks are coming. From the 4th to the 8th of August, Glasgow plays host to Interaction, the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention. And it's big.
Very big.
In addition to the Central Hotel being taken over for a week-long party, there are an absurd number of official events, running in the SECC, the Moat House Hotel and the nearby Glasgow Science Centre. Panels, workshops, short films, electric LEGO-train death battles, space pirates, the Masquerade, book signings by any number of authors...the list is enormous, and ridiculous. The provisional programme (in .pdf format) lives
here. It is
ninety-nine pages long.
It's impossible to express just how amazing this event is going to be. With approximately a million things happening
at all times, every single day of the con, there's always something on worth seeing. Some bunch of spods are geeking about
Farscape? No problem, there's a panel about dinosaurs at the same time, and now you know it won't be clogged up with
Farscape lovers.
The downside to this is that lots of great stuff clashes with other stuff. Some band of maniacs are putting on a performance called
Lucas Back in Anger, which is all six
Star Wars films condensed into an hour. They're doing it at the same time as Space Pirates night, the bastards. Still, for a lot of the con-goers, desperately sprinting from cool event to cool event is the only exercise they'll get all year, so schedule-clashes do serve a useful purpose.
There is a huge series of events running for 12-19 year-olds, with titles like
Lightsabre Building and
Fun with Armoured Vehicles. I'm not at all jealous. Not me.
The
full list of participants, much like the programme, is too vast to reproduce here. Some of the better-known names include: Brian Aldiss, Kevin J. Anderson, Greg Bear, Terry Brooks, Harry Harrison, Terry Pratchett, Robert Rankin and Robert Silverberg. These are only the ones who are there on official business, too. There'll be a hell of a lot more people doing occasional promotion work and just hanging out and enjoying the con. Expect to see big Iain Banks skipping about the place, for starters.
Attendance was pretty cheap if you were clever and bought your tickets ages ago. It's a bit more expensive, now, but still good considering that events run from eight in the morning 'til after midnight. Full five-day membership is £120 (£32 for 7-15 year-olds, kids under 6 go free). Single day memberships cost between £25 and £40 (£5-£10 for children), so even if you can't make the whole thing it's well worth checking out the programme to see if a particular day grabs your fancy. For more information on how to join, visit
this page here.
Don't just sit idly by as Glasgow fills up with geeks from across the globe. Get up in amongst it. What's a mere five days without sleep?
Official site:
http://www.interaction.worldcon.org.uk/ 
, if I can only avoid all teh M:TG players I'll be fine 
.
