major_clanger | Write Fantastic 5th Party

Yesterday was up to Oxford for the 5th Anniversary event organised by sf/fantasy authors' group Write Fantastic. Held in the modern Jacqueline du Pré Music Building at St Hilda's College, it was in effect a mini-convention with a programme concentrating on the craft of writing.

The venue, whilst very nice, did not have catering, so Geoff Ryman made a coffee-run. (

tamaranth was effusively grateful).

The event was well-attended, with interesting and engaging panels.

Given the absence of catering, at lunchtime practically the entire event - guests, organisers and attendees - decamped to the Cape of Good Hope pub, which was very nice but a bit overwhelmed as apparently they were expecting to see about two customers that day. This probably explains why it took a little while to feed us all, slightly pushing back the start of the afternoon programme.

The final panel was on 'a life in writing'; here

desperance and

mevennen wait with Geoff Ryman and Ben Jeapes for Ian Watson to manifest himself and stun all present.

Needless to say, on arrival he did.

We came to the conclusion that Ian basically runs AutoRamble 4.7, a release that is a little buggy and can sometimes need a hard reboot to get it out of an endless loop but which does produce a very varied and entertaining output, as you will see from the expressions of everyone else here. I think the previous Ian line had been something close to "and that is why we will explore the Earth's core with Agas."