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Conflux roundup

Vibe hotel, Canberra. Image from hotel website.

One of our goals this year was to go to a science fiction convention.

We’ve been to conferences in the past, but they’re all aimed at writers. Genrecon, RWA. But we’ve never been to a con specifically for speculative fiction. Nor one that’s not just about writing but about consuming what has been written.

We missed our local—Melbourne—con, Continuum. This was back in June, and I had work commitments.

Our next-nearest convention was Conflux, in Canberra, which always seemed to have good mix of topics. Not only that, the con was at the Vibe hotel, which is at the airport and meant we only had a walk a few hundred metres once we got off the plane. It sounds a weird place for a con, but it worked really well.

The conference was also held during Canberra’s Floriade festival. We thought maybe we could sneak away for a couple of hours and look at flowers.

We couldn’t make all four days, only the weekend, so another advantage was the reasonable day rates.

We arrived Saturday morning, checked in our baggage, and joined the fun.

Everyone was friendly, approachable, and easy to talk to.

The guests of honour were great, the panels interesting and informed.  Standouts for me were:

  • Steampunk martial arts (Rik Lagarto, Aiki Flintheart, Laura Goodin and Madeleine D’Este). An entertaining look at how one protects oneself wearing Victorian garments.
  • To PhD or not to PhD (Angela Slatter, Cat Sparks, Tim Napper, Donna Hanson, Rachel le Rossignol). I wasn’t sure what to expect here. I came away thinking maybe I should try for a PhD.
  • Putting science in stories (Ellen Datlow, Craig Cormick, Rob Porteous, Dion Perry). An interesting topic.

The first two sessions were on the Saturday, the third on Sunday.

Plus, there was our own panel on the Sunday morning, Starting writing later in life. Sherylyn and I did this with Laura Goodin, with Zena Shapter moderating.  If you were there, you were a great audience, interested and engaged, and you participated, which is what every panellist hopes for when they sit down there at the front.  Thank you.

We didn’t get to Floriade. There was too much happening at the Vibe, and we were having a good time there. I’d recommend it as a conference for first-timers. It was small, it was friendly.  Even better, they had a ‘first-timer’ rate, where you could go along for one day at half price.