Seacon'84: Eastercon 1984

35th British National Science Fiction Convention
European Science Fiction Convention: Eurocon 1984
20-23 April, Metropole Hotel, Brighton

GoHs: Christopher Priest, Roger Zelazny, Pierre Barbet, Josef Nesvadba, (fan) Waldemar Kumming

My first con. With some of the best talks I've heard (and not just because it was the first time I'd heard them!)

Tom Shippey: SF: The Other Side of the Hill -- English has a native word for the concept dour, but not for panache -- SF's large vocabulary (words ending in -oon, 'amphigory' used on the first page of Heinlein's NotB)
Dave Langford: The Dragon-Hikers Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune's Edge: Odyssey 2 The Silence of the Langford]
Bob Shaw: "Ten Years, but not Decayed": A Serious Scientific Talk
Panel: Fantasy Costuming -- Julian May exhibited some of her Pleistocene costumes -- "For those who took flash photographs of the projected slides, none of them will come out!"
Vogon Poetry Contest: some truly dreadful doggerel -- won by someone who's native language is not English, but who uses words like 'extemporise' in casual conversation!
Jack Cohen
1. Concepts, Copouts and Confusion
2. On Its Knees Man, Not on Your Back, Dearie
Genes aren't blueprints: there isn't a gene for "lion's head", so you can't put a lion's head on a different body by splicing in that gene -- alien sex is different
Tom Shippey: Shippey On Tolkein -- a discussion centered around his book The Road to Middle Earth
Dougal Dixon: After Man -- evolution hasn't stopped -- Star Wars hairy desert elephants and hairless arctic dinosaurs don't work -- slow worms in the Raiders of the Lost Ark 'snakes' scene