Personal Eastercon hightlights:

• Moderating a panel with Cory Doctorow, Amanda HemingwayigHi, China Mieville and Ruth O’Reilly on Politics in Young Adult Fiction – which I thought was a really interesting discussion.
• Managing to make space for Cory, Amanda and China to get their say, despite the determination of Ruth O’Reilly to dominate the conversation with her incessant ranting in the above panel*
  
• The ease with which it is possible to make Gemma – Neil Beynon’s much better half – blush.
  
• The look of terror on Charles Stross’s face when he realised Gemma (see above) was staring at him – again! **
  
• The FFF panel – small, but perfectly formed – and meeting all the guys
  
• The BSFA Awards – there was a great vote, a great turn-out for the presentation, a lot of love in the room and Flick’s beautifully made awards (origami rockets) were the most lustworthy things I saw all weekend
• Mitch Benn – much ruder, much funnier than I was expecting.
  
• Sex and the Singularity – the panel that will, forever, change the way I think about hippos
  
• Drunken conversations – you all know who you are.
  
• Sharing tables with writers like Paul Cornell, Cory Doctorow, China Mieville and Ian McDonald and not being able to detect the slightest whiff of ego – people talk about the openness of sf fandom and it’s easy to be dismissive, but you know it is true 99% of the times
  
• Ian Watson makes me laugh (in a good way)

And the not so highlights

• Introducing China Mieville and getting the name of his book, Un Lun Dun, wrong – twice.
• The corridors – my bad knee hurts.
• The bars – we’re going back to this hotel for Eastercon in 2010 – I hope by then they’ll be able to organise things so that it is possible to buy a round for a largish group of people that includes a variety of drinks (cider, lager, real ale) all in the one place with staff who show some (i) talent and (ii) interest in service.
• Being introduced to Aliette de Bodard (author of “Deer Flight” and “The Lost Xuyan Bride” in recent Interzones) and assuming she was Gareth Lyn Powell’s wife (it was late, I was getting drunk, I’m a bit of an idiot – she was French grace personified)

* This might not be true.

** Neither might this.