Fantasycon: Saturday Night

Let's set the adulatory and hero-worshipping fanboy tone right away: Fantasycon Rocks. Like a boss.

Three years ago I was hovering awkwardly, but purposefully, at Inklight's stall at StAnza – Scotland's largest poetry festival. That purpose was clearly defined, but that didn't mean it was a simple task. I was hard-selling our journal to anyone who stumbled within flyering range, and in such a small foyer, a lot of people were being shunted past me. Despite this, it was not going well. It wasn't expected to, and one sale would have made my day. But this was looking less and less like even the remotest possibility until, when all hope seemed lost, a lovely lady called Di came upon my stall, saw the simple and fruity cover of our amateur publication, and allowed me a moment to pitch it.

We hit it off, but it wasn't until I told her that I had an extract in the journal, that she agreed to buy it. The personal connection was important, so I later learned. She met the author, found him (dare I suggest it) interesting, and determined that it would be worth a moment or two of her time to read his work. £3 went into Inklight's coffers, and I gained a little something for myself too: advice, for an aspiring author.

Fantasycon.

It took me a while to make it there, but armed with a kindred spirit in the undauntable Clare Hicks, after three years, I was there. Best advice EVER.

Fantasycon is an annual weekend of fantastical awesome, and this year it was in Brighton, during the hottest October in recorded history. Within 30 minutes of arriving we'd already received more than half our ticket costs in free books. The next day, we received the other half, and then some.

For a weekend we were walking down the same hallways as dozens of authors, passing them and daring ourselves to make eye contact. We sat and listened, like rapt little children in awe of a six foot BMX biking teen that would be their one-time hero. They imparted further advice, like the need for a personal brand, reinforced by, yes, a blog, and that maybe I should rethink the chosen one thing. Oh, and let's be clear. We are NOT talking costumes and kids, but adults and a whole lot of mutual respect.

I'm going to have to cover the highlights of the con in particular, rather than the trimmings, and boy were there trimmings.

Let's start off with the juicy stuff. There was a frickin' burlesque show. An adult fantasy geek-themed burlesque show. The first girl made Cthulu sexy, and another introduced me to Puscifer. Immense. On that same night, we threw shapes. And we saw shapes cast around like paper aeroplanes by famous authors to some seriously epic tunes. How many nights out include Rock Me Amadeus and Let it Rock?

I mean, damn.

That's a taster. There's more to come, and I hope it'll be enough to convince a few of you to join me next year, because there's no way I'm not going back.

Visionary, CEO, Messiah

“Where were you when Steve Jobs dies?”

“Me? I was in bed. Why? Where were you?”

If Apple can keep control of the phone and tablet markets for the next half century, by some miracle, it will be down to the foundations that Steve laid, built upon, and reinforced with space-age consumer foresight. After those 50 years are up, we'll probably find ourselves asking the above question. Last decade's big celebrity death may have generated the same sort of cathartic wreath-casting response, but Michael Jackson's death was hyped by the scandals of his own life, lifestyle, and death. Steven Jobs has drawn a (frankly) not at all surprising outpouring of sympathy and eulogy. World leaders, CEOs and competitors are all crying to have their voices heard as they seek to praise his works and deeds louder than the next man. No one wants to show apathy for a man who, in more ways than one, has evolved the western world. No scandals blighted his career; his death was expected, and he went quietly with family. Even Samsung, embroiled with Apple in over a dozen lawsuits across the globe as the iphone/ipad and galaxy lines duke it out, stepped forward to gush praise upon the competition.

I'm no Apple fan, and I never will be, but there's nothing stopping me (indeed, there's a lot encouraging me) from seeing what the man has done, and what he may continue to inspire in death.

Apple polarises. It's regularly the Marmite of the technology world, and even if you don't think you're a particular fan, there's a good chance they've got their sleek hooks into you anyway. Not many people go iphone and then 'advance' to Android. No matter what side of the fence you're on, Steve Jobs has undeniably made lives better across the western world. He's built up a sleek white empire, employed 50,000 people in the process, and flooded the world with gadgets that, to many, may not be all that important. To others, the ipod and the iphone were revolutionary devices, and they genuinely believe that their lives are better with them than without. The truth of that matter is irrelevant, and comes down to opinion anyway, but if you perceive something to have made your life better, then it has. There are plenty of Jobsians out there that perceive precisely that, and Steve made that possible.

If you still don't accept that Steve made the world a better place, consider this: he forced Google and Microsoft to get better, and Apple will continue to force its competitors to raise their game. Even if you never buy Apple, you know that Google is fighting harder than it ever would have if it led the market, just to keep up. He raised the bar.

Steve has done some incredible things over the years, gathering followers and making something out of nothing. The Jobsian cult is now a fully formed religion, complete with a messiah who threw his life into his work to rescue common man from the curse of the phone that was only a phone all those years ago. His success was somewhat appropriately miraculous itself; the ipad in particular still doesn't actually fulfil a consumer need. It doesn't have a purpose, but it found a niche and wedged it open with titanic force. Still, Jobians snap them up by the bread and fish-basket load!

The man has been called visionary more than once, and some have satirically compared him to the Christian messiah, not without some justification. Did you know that when a new Apple store opens up the employees are whipped up into a fanboy frenzy, that the part of the brain stimulated by love of Apple products is the same that shows greater activity in religious fanatics?

This is definitely another heretical post – hearsay can wait.

Only time will tell what Steve Jobs' death will do to Apple, for while he had given up day to day running of the company, he was still its face, smiling assuredly from the trademark turtleneck. Could the cult take another step forward, idolising its great leader? Will his icons continue to lead the surge of Apple's quarterly figures or stem the growing tides of Android and Windows 8?

Cupertino has its work cut out for it after the collective media grouching that was the 4S launch, and without Steve to pick up the slack, times could get tougher for Apple, but I seriously doubt it.

Apple still has its zealots, and no religion was ever weakened by the death of its founder.

Heresy?

Truth be told I'm preoccupied by something else at the moment, something rather more weighty than anything I'm going to discuss for the moment. Maybe that will change, maybe I'll need to find a venue to lay out my thoughts, like I'm bouncing inner demons off the rag dolls I'll hang up to represent the readers this blog will probably never have.

How do you express an idea to the world, so that it's out there, so that you can feel free of it, without anyone else reading it?

I know that goal thoroughly defeats the point of a blog; perhaps its even heretical when it comes to the blogosphere. If I'm not writing this to put out my thoughts and beliefs, what am I putting out there? Heresy and Heresay? That's just a title that it took me far too long to come up with. I fell back on good, solid, reliable alliteration. You can't go wrong with it, any more than you can go wrong if you use a pencil.

I am not in the habit of using pencils. I like to use pens and make mistakes. I like to throw myself in at the deep end, fish myself out of any seaweed that I might find there, and then learn from my actions, so that I don't repeat those mistakes.

This time I'm being conservative, not because it goes against my better judgement, but because my judgement is overwhelmed. I dipped a toe in the water earlier this evening. There is an outside chance that I attracted a shark. Too late now though, my toes in the water, and I can't seem to pull it out.

We'll see what the fallout from that is later, if there is any. My baited toe may catch nothing. That might be even more painful.

As I was contemplating this blog I thought of a lot of other reasons to write it. I want tell you the world about the joys of Fantasycon 2011, and drag some of you next year. I want to remember how Brighton felt like another country. The sun, the people, the beach... and I went to St Andrews! I thought nowhere had a more eclectic bunch. And I've seen 1 or 3 beaches in my time. Brighton does beaches like Bioware does story-heavy rpgs. Geocaching is great there too, loads hidden in a fairly small area near the seafront.

At some points along the way I will review things too. Like Picus the Thief (obtained at Fantasycon) – First Impressions: A fantastic foundation concept and three moments in the first 50 pages that made me squee and point avidly at the page. Aside from that, despair. Where was the polished prose, the snappy dialogue! I cringed, hard. Twice. Or more.

So why write this at all?

Because I met people, and decided that it was time to listen to some other views, besides my own. How does a blog fit into that, I ask myself (not expecting that as yet anyone else is here to ask the question). Well, if I'm putting my views into the public domain I'm going to have to learn to accept other views. If I want people to acknowledge my values, then I need to acknowledge theirs. When you are one voice in a small environment, you don't have to worry that no one sees as you do, but if I am to put that small voice into the cacophony that is the blogosphere, I will have to temper it, and in so doing, hope to temper myself as well.

Can I be more tolerant? Can I be more trusting, forgiving or accepting? Can I grow in wisdom, because of the restraints I place upon my own words?

I suppose we'll see.