Last year I was on a panel at Bristolcon titled What’s in a Name? about fantasy and sci-fi names and how authors create them. I’ve been wanting to write a post on the topic ever since, since not only did the other panellists make some really interesting points, but in preparation for it I wrote way too many notes, and I justified the indulgence by telling myself I’d turn it into a blog post later. Now that October is nearly upon us again, and the next Bristolcon looms, I thought I’d finally pull out those notes and dive a little deeper.
Romantasy and romance books on display at Avid Reader bookshop in Brisbane, 2026 (Photo: Nicola Alter)
Over ten years ago I wrote a post that ended up being one of my most read of all time. I had just come out of tutoring a course on genre fiction, and I was frustrated by the fact that when I looked up fantasy subgenres online I would get one of three things: a detailed look at a few specific subgenres that ignored all the others, a breakdown of someone’s own very personalised way of categorising things, or an epic three-digit list of every fantasy sub-genre under the sun, many of which I’d never heard of.
For those of us who like a touch of the magical and the medieval, nothing quite beats a visit to a fictional castle. But with all those trap doors, winding passageways, and changeable stairs, it’s hard to know where to start and how to make the most of your time.
Yes, you may already have Diana Wynne Jones’s The Tough Guide to Fantasyland to help you tour the fantasy realm, but fictional castles are an experience all their own, and are deserving of some closer attention. Plus, let’s face it, the internet really needed another “top ten” list. So here are ten must-see sights and experiences to ensure a memorable, action-packed, and relatively peril-free stay.
I’ve always loved science fiction and fantasy stories that focus on language, translation, and linguistics. And I’m not talking about the Tolkien-esque creation of whole fictional languages to furnish invented worlds, which I’m also in awe of, but about books where the very act of communication or translation itself becomes core to the plot.
Why do these stories appeal? I think it’s that mysterious sense that something needs to be “decoded”, the bridging of culture gaps, and the unlocking of exciting new possibilities for human (or non-human) connection. The theme of language itself also just inherently feels a little magical. The fact our brains are capable, with enough effort and exposure, to transform unintelligible babble into something meaningful, is remarkable. I admire the almost superpower-like ability of polyglots to shift seamlessly between different languages, and I enjoy encountering characters like this in stories.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about attending Bristolcon, which I try to do every year. This week, I wanted to reflect on the second convention I went to this October, one I’ve never been to before. The World Fantasy Convention is an annual event that, as the “world” in the name suggests, takes place in different countries or cities – though rarely outside of the USA and Canada. This year it joined forces with Fantasy Con, run by the British Fantasy Society, and took place in Brighton on the weekend of Halloween.
This is not the first large international convention I’ve been to – my first was actually Worldcon in Dublin in 2019, and I went to Worldcon again last year when it came to Glasgow. I was curious, however, to see how WFC would differ, especially being a more UK-focused affair with the inclusion of Fantasy Con, and perhaps also a more fantasy-focused affair, given that Worldcon’s full name is actually ‘The World Science Fiction Convention’ and that it has a strong science-fiction focus.
I was also simply curious what it would be like to do two cons back-to-back, and wanted to join other friends who were going. So I set off to Brighton, keen to find out.
I’ve been a bit quiet recently, but for a good reason at least – a few weeks ago I attended two fantasy and science fiction conventions in the UK. The first, Bristolcon, is a favourite I attend pretty much every year. This October, however, the stars aligned to put the World Fantasy Convention only a week later in Brighton. What’s more, this particular World Fantasy Con joined forces with Fantasy Con (an annual UK-based convention run by the the British Fantasy Society) in a sort of extra-large affair, so it seemed worth going to both.
If you’re getting confused by all the extremely similar con names, you’re not the first… a few times when drafting this post I accidentally wrote “Worldcon” instead of “World Fantasy Con”, which would be an entirely different con yet again.
Anyway, I wanted to share a few personal reflections and highlights from both conventions, but in this post I’ll just focus on Bristolcon to keep things short. I’m also not going to write extensively about everything I attended, because the mere thought is exhausting and because I didn’t take diligent enough notes, so I’ll simply pick out a few highlights that stayed with me.
The Völklingen Ironworks in Germany’s Saar region—a warren of rusted towers, smokestacks, and steam-age machinery now preserved as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
While I was writing a previous post on the origins of steampunk, inspired by a trip to Wuppertal, it occurred to me that I’ve actually been to several other very “steampunk” locations in Germany since moving here. As a country that boomed during the industrial era, it has a lot of these to offer, but they’re sometimes off the beaten track and not the first attractions listed among the ‘must-sees’ of a region (often displaced by castles or quaint villages, which I can completely understand!).
As a writer of science fiction and fantasy, however, these places filled me with a particular kind of thrill and wonder, as if I’d been transported into another century or stepped into the pages of a novel. Steam-era architecture, giant cogs, brass finishes, steel rivets, historic machines, old fonts… it all felt like fertile inspiration just waiting to be transformed into a steampunk tale or artwork.
I’ve been woefully absent in the blogging world this past month (both in terms of posting here and also catching up with other great blogs I enjoy), so I feel bad about that, but I’m finally getting to the end of other projects so I’m hoping to change things. I thought I’d start with a short post about the 5th Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off that recently came to a close. I’ve been following and enjoying it, so I wanted to share a few links and thoughts. Continue reading →
I’ve been a bit absent online these past two months, both because of the holiday period but also because I was trying to finish editing my novel-in-progress before the new year. It took longer than expected, but in the end I managed to send it off to beta readers just after Christmas, so that’s at least one resolution achieved! (even if others fell by the way side).
Now that I’m finally back to blogging, I figured I’d start the new year by looking at my favourite reads from the last one. I picked up many great books in 2019 but I’m only going to list the 5 that most impressed me, and I’ll do my best to keep my ramblings on each brief and spoiler-free (if you want to know more about any of them you can click the links to see the blurbs on Goodreads).
Back in June I set myself the goal of reading as many of the finalists for this year’s Hugo Awards as possible, and in the end I was pretty happy with what I managed. So on the awards night at Worldcon I bustled into the auditorium, ready to cheer for my favourites… and not a single of my top picks won! I wasn’t too crestfallen, since I also liked the ones that did win, but it goes to show you how varied tastes are when it comes to awards. Apparently some of the categories were decided by a slim margin of votes, so there was stiff competition.
In light of this, and since everyone always talks about the winners, I thought I’d take this opportunity to give a shout out to some of the finalists which didn’t win, but which I personally thought were fantastic.
