Eastcon '90

[Programme book] 42nd British National Science Fiction Convention
13-16 April 1990, Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool


GoHs: Iain M. Banks , Nigel Kneale (unable to attend due to work commitments), Ken Campbell, (artist) SMS, (fan) Anne Page


My first con at the Adelphi Hotel, a truly magnificent building (But very difficult to find in a car travelling Liverpool's one-way system --- we took three tries just to find the Mersey Tunnel).

Also, my first, and serendipitous, discovery of filk (we caught the end of a filk concert before Bob Shaw's "A Bit of BoSh".)


Programme highlights


Julian Baum: Paper, Fish Tanks and Exploding Galaxies

How to get very impressive SF effects photographs using what can only be described as crude techniques:


Dave Langford: Fun and Senseless Violence

An inimitable Dave Langford review of SF from the point of view of genocide --- multiple genocide, ordinary genocide, accidental genocide --- plus how and why various weapons of megadestruction can't work.

The sound of one Waldo clapping.

For example: A spaceship is powered by two laser beams: "The one at the back heats up the air, just like a jet. The one at the front clears the air out of the way. To turn round, you must leave the one at the front on, whilst simultaneously not turning off the one at the back."

[This talk can now be found in The Silence of the Langford ]


Panel: Batteries Not Included --- Hard SF


Jack Cohen : Genes Don't Make People or Aliens


Dave Lermit: Nanotechnology


Panel: "Up the Walls of the World" --- Book collecting for the Seriously Short of Room

I attended this to get some hints: we had just decided to build an extension, because we were running out of space in the house for our 7000 books ... However, it was a series of anecdotes.