Saturday morning was perhaps understandably a bit painful to endure for the first couple of hours. But we did manage to sneak into the back of the New Con Press triple book launch. Ian Whates launched his first collection of short stories, The Gift of Joy. Ian Watson and Roberto Quaglia gifted the world with The Beloved of My Beloved, a visceral telling of bedtime stories, described as “by turns surreal, satiric, erotic, obscene, ingenious, hilarious, and quite, quite brilliant.” Eric Brown also set free his latest novella, Starship Fall.

Multi-tasking, we caught 40 minutes of the panel, ‘Entry-level Criticism,’ moderated by Caroline Mullan with panellists Paul Skevington, Chris Hill, Jon Courtenay Grimwood and Paul F Cockburn. Incidentally I must apologise to Caroline for ducking when she asked if anyone had had their work critiqued in the past, but the head was pounding and definitely not up to intelligent conversation.

Somehow we managed to wile away the hours between lunchtime and early evening. It’s amazing how time flies when you are hunter gathering from numerous strange large silver bowls in the hotel restaurant and mingling in-between. I waved at writer Andy Remic, spent a customary manic five minutes with writer Conrad Williams, laughed with Louis Savy of Sci-Fi London and enjoyed the smoker’s corner with Dani Ware and writer Dave Devereux.

But back to the con. The BSFA awards were compared by the double act of Kim Newman and Paul McAuley and the winners are as follows:

    * Best Novel: The Night Sessions, Ken MacLeod

    * Best Short Fiction: “Exhalation”, Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)

    * Best Non-Fiction: Rhetorics of Fantasy, Farah Mendlesohn

    * Best Artwork: Cover of Subterfuge (ed. Ian Whates), Andy Bigwood

Tempted to stay to watch Doctor Who in a packed hall of likeminded fanatics, Del and I opted instead for the panel, ‘We don’t need no big name publishers’ moderated by Donna Scott with panellists Ian Whates, Andrew Hook, and Sam Stone. It was a lively debate, if one that saw the dark lord of tech besides me sitting on his hands so as not to become embroiled.

Hunger and a mild case of cabin fever drove us to round up the troops and take a taxi to Bradford’s famous curry mile. It was a pleasure to spend time in the company of Marc Gascoigne, boss man of Angry Robot, Harper Collins’ new SF imprint, and to learn more about his plans for world domination. The curry was less of a pleasure – nice enough but the restaurant itself bordered on dive status. It was also unlicensed.

Consequently, and probably just as well, Del and I headed back to our hotel in the company of friends for a few easy reds and an early (mid)night.