Registration went smoothly and was well-organized. The registration packs were very cool: we each got given a useful canvas satchel (that I used for the rest of the con) containing the two programme books, a collection of Australian short stories, and masses of guff about Melbourne, including maps and nifty stuff like a guide to the city's famous back-lanes and alleyways.

There was a lit bit of confusion at first, with one desk denying that they were the sign-up desk for certain things, when in fact they were, but once the organizers and volunteers found their feet everything about the day-to-day running of the con went very smoothly.

More pictures of the venue are available here.

We entered the Plenary Hall for the opening ceremony to a stirring soundtrack. I didn't recognize it, but it was very reminiscent of martial pieces like the Star Wars Imperial March. After a brief introduction and welcome from the con co-chairman they played a very funny montage video, which linked together various famous SF movies with particular reference to Australian movies. At one stage Ned Kelly was facing off against Stormtroopers on Hoth. He seemed to be getting the better of them until Boba Fett got in a sneaky shot.

The co-chair invited someone who had been present at the first WorldCon to be held in Australia to give a short speech. This was a strange negative and defensive piece of a sort that I hear all the time. The basic thrust of the talk was that SF is not a ghetto subject ("despite what the people who make these rules say") and has literary and other value. I find this oft-repeated position curious. Rather than just enjoying our hobby and not worrying unduly about the people who sneer at us, we seem to be constantly seeking validation from the very people whose opinions we purport not to accept. Odd.

Then the co-chair invited the convention guests and various fan-fund winners on to the stage... and then the ceremony was all over, in about twenty minutes flat. I was expecting a word or two from the guests, but of course we'd have plenty of opportunity to hear from them over the coming days.

(A "kaffeeklatsch" is a small informal group meeting over coffee between a con guest and a small number of con attendees.)

Kirkpatrick's kaffeeklatsch was under-subscribed, as was Dirk Flinthart's, so Flinthart decided to join the two into one. It was an interesting session, with lots of interesting stuff discussed.

Kirkpatrick talked about his maps, describing them as an aid to immersion. He spent a year having fun making maps by hand before he even started writing his first book. He got so obsessed with his maps that he produced one that had 7000 lakes on it. He described his obsessive map-making as an attempt to make himself believe in the world he was creating.

When asked about what he cheated on in his maps, he said that for the first series: nothing at all. He claims that no-one has ever found anything wrong with the maps for the first series. By contrast he wrote the second series without a map at all, and only applied a map to the story after it was finished - and then found that he couldn't make the map fit the story!

He talked about working on the Atlas of Bahrain, and getting to meet the Sheik over a 50-course banquet.

He said that he loves going to cons, as he finds them energizers for his novels.

One of the reasons why Fantasy novels are so huge is in an attempt to maximize the immersion, to suck your reader into your world. When asked if achieving this immersion himself was getting harder as he wrote more books, he replied with an emphatic no, saying that he was a reader first, a fan second, and a writer only third.

Kirkpatrick said that writing has to be its own reward. Anything else (such as publication success) should be considered extras. If you are writing to get published, to be the next big thing, then you're not going to make it.

He was asked if he points out flaws in other writers' maps when he finds them. He said that he tries not to, but sometimes finds it hard, such as when one map he saw had a river that crossed a continent from coast to coast. He says that sloppy maps can be a symptom of sloppy thinking. He dislikes maps with unimaginative names like "North Land". He says that you should try to communicate a rich sense of culture using maps. Even if your story is narrow, make it rich.

He said that in his current book he is introducing some really nasty animals - and so being in Australia should provide some useful research.

Flinthart meanwhile said that he is currently working on the libretto of an opera. He said that his daughter keeps his storytelling skills sharp, as she wants Goldilocks read to her every night - but demands a new version every night!

Flinthart made a very thought-provoking comment. He said that it seemed to him that Fantasy readers tended to be left-wing in their politics, but that the standard Fantasy story - with clear-cut notions of right and wrong and the mighty hero setting out to destroy the evil guy - was strongly right-wing. He said he had always found this fascinating, and wanted to do a thesis on the topic. When I asked for examples of left-wing fantasy, he offered China Mieville and Joe Abercromby's books.

Panelists: Ellen Kushner, Trudi Canavan, Carol Ryles.

As the panelists took their place at the table on the podium, one (I think it was Kushner) quipped, "I feel like we should be negotiating world peace or something".

Kushner started the panel by saying that the post-Tolkien generation felt that Fantasy had to be about forests and mountains and long quests, and that indeed publishers are still churning out that sort of stuff. And then in the 80s people started experimenting with setting Fantasy stories in cities. From her own perspective, she was as much interested in Regency London as Tolkienesque Fantasy, and that went into the melting pot which informed her own city Fantasy stories.

Ryles noted that traditionally the city was seen as the refuge, the place to which the heroes retreat to escape from the dangers of the forest, but that the city can be even more dangerous than the wild places. She made two interesting observations about the differences between 'urban' and 'rural' Fantasy: there tends not to be so much class distinction in stories set in rural locations, and that rural Fantasy has much less moral ambiguity than urban Fantasy.

Cities simultaneously offer a sense of freedom and a sense of claustrophobia.

When you set a city in an unusual place - in the side of a cliff, in the tops of trees, underwater - this offers great potential for dreaming up new and interesting social structures. Internal consistency in a setting is more important than miles and miles of descriptions.

Canavan recommended setting up a naming convention for each culture you write about, so that the reader can tell at a glance something about each town or person from their name. Although she admitted to sometimes just smashing her head on the keyboard when she can't think of an appropriate name.

Kushner had the quote of the session when she came up with, "I don't really understand my books - I have to get other people to explain them to me."

Panelists: Talie Helene, Danny Lovecraft, Chuck McKenzie, Leigh Blackmore.

This was a very funny sometimes-semi-serious romp through the extraordinary cultural effect HP Lovecraft's invented tome The Necronomicon has had. One panelist described the Necronomicon as one of Lovecraft's greatest gifts to us, another that it was the most iconic thing that Lovecraft created.

Blackmore showed a brief video clip in which two friends meet in a cafe. "Have you read any good books lately?" asks one. "Why yes!" replies the other, hefting a massive iron-bound padlocked copy of the Necronomicon onto the table.

He also presented a slide show taking us through the many different works that the idea of the Necronomicon has spawned: from purported actual copies of the book, through to commentaries, movies, computer games, bands and music albums, tarot cards and finally - and unbelievably - Necronomicon-themed dildos. He also showed a Library of Congress catalog card that lists the fictional author Abdul Alhazred as the author of the equally fictional Necronomicon!

McKenzie offered a brief history of the 'real' Necronomicon, pasted together from 'true' accounts of it to be found on the Internet.

Helene had some great one-liners ("There are only two types of death-metal band: crazy and vegan"). She read out the lyrics of one Necronomicon-influenced band, Morbid Angel. She suggested that perhaps a Necronomicon Anonymous organization was needed, complete with twelve-step recovery plan.

She talked of the cultural power of the Necronomicon, about how appealing the idea is that we all live in ignorance, and that reading the Necronomicon reveals to you the eldritch horrors that surround us all, how the fiction is so seductive that some people purport to live by the principles of the Necronomicon even though the book doesn't exist.

A member of the audience came up with the mind-twisting idea that he power of the Necronomicon to make one go insane is so strong that it still works even though it doesn't exist.

The audience seemed to be of a kind. I'm pretty sure I was the only guy in the room not wearing black.