The British Science Fiction Association has been running an annual UK convention since 1958. The con is now the largest in the UK; this year over 1000 people will attend.
The UK national SF convention is this year being held at Heathrow, about a mile from the airport. It's my first con, so I don't know whether it's bigger than in previous years, though I somehow suspect it is. While not on the scale of Worldcon, it's at least twice -maybe three times- the size of any other UK convention.
Friday is spent mostly gathering, opening up the dealer's room, and getting used to the lie of the land. However, by the evening, programming was fully under way (although one panel had a member from Holland who didn't even have time to register before appearing on the panel!).
Programming events included 'Coping with Rejection,' which although it sounded as if it could be a short programme ("Keep writing, and keep submitting" as one member put it), caught fire with the audience, most of them unpublished writers, who were interested to hear editor's and experienced writers experiences.
Also illuminating was 'The UK Short Fiction Market,' which the programme text wrote up as 'dying.' While there were grounds for concern, writers like John Meaney and editors like Jetse de Vries of Interzzone and Niall Harrison of Strange Horizons had some interesting and pungent comments to make. Not so much that the UK short fiction market is dying as it is evolving, although no one quite knows which way it will evolve, for good or bad.
