A couple of weekends ago I was fortunate to attend the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, UK which is an hour or so’s train ride from where I live. A fine time was had! Although I’ve got two World SF Conventions under my belt (Dublin in 2019 and Glasgow in 2024), this was my first World Fantasy Con. It was very cool with lots of great guests in attendance, and had the advantage of not being too crowded, yet well-attended. (And also superbly run by the organisers).
There was a great mix of panels and events, and a chance to catch up with some friends I hadn’t seen for a while. The convention hotel was very spacious and accommodating, with a good mix of rooms catering to different audience capacities, laid out across multiple floors – and connected by suitably maze-like corridors, connecting doors and ‘secret’ entrances. (There were rumours that the people we passed in the corridors who looked particularly harried were guests from the 2013 World Fantasy Con still trying to find their way out – but might just have been late night revellers).
One of my personal highlights was getting to chat with author (and editor!) James Logan after a panel he was part of. He was full of sage advice and general publishing wisdom. He very kindly signed a copy of his fantasy novel The Silverblood Promise which I started reading back in my hotel room, and I have to say it is a most excellent book. The second in the series (The Blackfire Blade) has just been published and it’s going straight on my TBR list.
Another highlight was seeing science fiction magazine ParSec win the 2025 British Fantasy Award for Best Magazine/Periodical. ParSec is a great SF/F magazine edited by the incomparable Ian Whates and I don’t think it gets enough mention. Obviously I am a little biased, having published my story Pennies in the Meme Jar back in ParSec issue 8, but the quality has always been very high, and in an era where high-quality SF/F outputs seem to be disappearing, ParSec has an important role to play. Let’s hope the BFA win brings in new readers and new subscriptions. (Subscriptions are available here).
One other thing that took my fancy was just along the sea front from the convention hotel. Brighton has a panoramic viewing tower called i360 which has a large viewing capsule that ascends a tall concrete pillar. Even though I’m not a great lover of heights, I quite fancied having a trip up – but alas, whenever I had free time away from the convention, the weather conditions weren’t right. (Brighton at the end of October is windy!). But I could see it from my hotel window and even in the middle of the night the capsule seemed to roost two thirds of the way up the tower. What I particularly liked was that if you got up close and tilted your head just so, without quite taking in the top of the column, it was possible to imagine it as an orbital tower with the capsule transporting passengers up to geostationary orbit.
The Quantum Scribe 