Yesterday, I spotted a link to this Vice post claiming that QAnon thinks Trump will become President again on March 4, for reasons which don't make much sense to me. I tweeted a link to the post with a comment that it was starting to remind me of the Johnlock conspiracy, to which a former member of my team responded that they had been dating one of the originators of TJLC while they worked for me. Which is *not* something I ever expected to be told.

I'd booked a ticket for this year's Gollancz Festival at Foyles ages ago, because I'd quite enjoyed last year's despite grumpiness about the lack of diversity, and as it was the same day as T was due to be in London for the Times crossword championship it seemed like a good day to go to London myself. As T's plan had always been to go down on the Friday and stay near the championship venue at London Bridge rather than relying on the trains being running smoothly enough to get him there on time on the Saturday, when I found out that there was a book launch for a friend's translation of a novel about divorce by a Swedish feminist academic at Hatchard's on the Friday night it seemed to make perfect sense to combine the two.

Unfortunately, despite leaving work at ten to four which should have been plenty of time to get to Piccadilly for 6pm, I ended up on my backup train, the 1638 to Marylebone, as the 1631 to Paddington was delayed by half an hour, and despite leaving on time the Marylebone train ended up taking 40 minutes longer than it was supposed to do to reach London, so I didn't get to the book launch until 7pm, by which time I'd missed the initial discussion (and the canapes) and the questions from the audience were just starting. Also, it meant I ended up standing at the back along with several people who I suspect of only having come for the free wine, as they appeared to be carrying out their own whispered conversation all the way through, but what I did manage to hear was interesting and the book sounded enjoyable enough for me to buy a copy, and it was nice to catch up with friends (and meet slemslempike properly for the first time) afterwards.

The organisers of the Gollancz Festival had clearly taken on board feedback from last year's event about diversity; all of the panels had at least one woman on, and five out of seven had more than one, with two actually having more women than men. Racial diversity was more of an issue, as the only non-white panellist was Aliette de Bodard, and the gender balance of authors represented in the books on display both in the festival itself and along the stairs leading up to the auditorium on the top floor of Foyles was less good, but it was still an improvement. The panels themselves were generally interesting, and I minded less about the lack of audience questions than I did last year, I think possibly because the panel discussions became genuine discussions and weren't just authors talking about how they wrote particular things. As well as the serious discussion, which engaged thoughtfully with how sf reflects the present state of the world* (despite Adam Roberts' rather Panglossian assertion at one point that the world is better now than it has ever been without either interrogating the terms in which he was defining "better" or considering just how fragile that progress is; happily this was robustly contended by Antonia Honeywell and Jaine Fenn), the afternoon session featured a couple of more "fun" panels, one a virtual deathmatch between the panellists' preferred weapons, and the other a similar contest to determine the scariest monster, and I felt that that having the mix of serious and lighthearted panels worked well. It was also lovely to catch up with Caroline and K, as well as getting to spend a bit more time with a couple of other people I've only met in passing at Nine Worlds before, even if I was feeling a bit overpeopled by the end of the day and ended up making a slightly abrupt exit after we encountered a bloke who I think was from the BSFA and who appeared to have an underdeveloped sense of personal space as we were meandering down through Foyles after the event had finished. As I then had to negotiate the Tube to find T in the courtyard of a pub near London Bridge where he was catching up with crossword people, and then the Tube again back to Marylebone before being able to relax in the relative quiet of the Oxford train. And today I am definitely glad to be at home in the quiet and not having to negotiate crowded spaces or interact with people.

* I hope there was no-one from the Daily Mail at the event, as I think they would have had an apoplexy at the amount of anti-Brexit sentiment being expressed.

Last year I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to buy a day ticket to Nine Worlds and see what a con was actually like. I enjoyed it enough to buy a full weekend ticket at the early-bird rate (not much more expensive than the day ticket bought just before the con) and this weekend was my first ever full three-day con experience. Now I wish I hadn't let shyness keep me from taking the plunge and actually going to a con for so long, because I had a brilliant time. I went to some really interesting and engaging panels; particular highlights were Twin Peaks Wild Speculation, a talk on Minerva in London, Transformative Works and the Colonisation of Historical Space, Recreating Ourselves With Stories, the Joss Whedon Singalong*, The Limitations of Strong Female Characters and Historical Headcanons, though everything was good with the exception of the panel on "Writing Utopia" where none of the panellists appeared to have a very clear understanding of what a utopia actually was.

Also, somewhat ironically given that I didn't go to cons for so long because I was worried about not knowing anyone, I spent a lot of time just hanging out and socialising, largely with friends-of-friends I'd only met for the first time that weekend; by the end of Friday I'd found myself introducing myself to a complete stranger who I recognised as someone aella_irene had told me to look out for by her costume and knitted BB8 and spending half an hour drinking tea with her, playing a game with three people I'd only just met via triskellian, who'd had to go off to babywrangle, and spending half an hour after a panel having an in-depth conversation about feminism and parenting and life choices with C who I know as a knitter and two of her friends, as well as spending some time chatting to coughingbear and hano and briefly seeing sir_guinglain (who I did manage to catch up with properly later in the weekend).

The venue this year was the Hammersmith Novotel, which was much better than last year's, both in terms of location (it made it very easy to stay elsewhere and get to and from the con, and to pop out to buy food and just have a bit of a breather) and also in terms of layout (wide corridors that didn't feel overcrowded when people were milling about between sessions, and enough food and drink outlets that getting tea and snacks didn't take up the entire break).

I've already bought my ticket for next year (super early bird rate until the end of August).

*which I found surprisingly emotional, as well as really good fun; something about singing "Going Through The Motions", which absolutely nails how depression feels for me, while feeling so happy and alive and surrounded by likeminded people had me getting a bit tearful.