Ed Fortune

Rather than the usual format for a blog post, in which I wax lyrical¹ about some nerd thing or other that has caught my eye this week, I’m going talk about what I did this weekend. Which is go to a luxury hotel in Nottingham and hang out with book geeks.

The Black Library Weekender was a two-day event focusing on the books produced by the world’s fifth largest publisher of Science Fiction. I am a big fan of the Black Library, partially because I was bitten by the Warhammer bug at a very young age², but also because it deals with expanding consistent world settings; everything BL produces is part of a growing mythology, and everyone is invited to dive in. The imagination, much like sports, can be more fun with the addition of some basic rules, and the loose guidelines that define the worlds of Warhammer tend to be a lot of fun.³

So what happens when hundreds of fans turn up at a really nice place with conference facilities, a bar and a spa? A good time is had by all it seems, though I didn’t see many other fans in the swimming pool (they were mostly in the bar). Personal highlights for me include getting to chat away with the likes of Clint Werner⁴, who is very epitome of a Texan Gentleman, getting to geek out slightly at Aaron Dembski-Bowden⁵, and talk to a host of authors, editors and fans. (I was stunned to learn that they are people still using the old-school Rogue Trader rules to play RPGs. That is deeply hardcore.)

I also got to interview Dan Abnett for Starburst Magazine. I’m a big fan of Dan’s work, and it was a lot of fun to do. He’s a nice chap and I got some great stuff to write up later. I probably came across like a huge fanboy, but then that is who I am.

I totally played it cool, as you can see.

As an event, it was mostly seminars and signings, and there was quite a bit of overlap with the Horus Heresy talks; I learned a lot about what was coming up over the next 18 months for that series, and much less about other lines. However, I was also able to grab multiple viewpoints and takes on that bestselling series, so nothing was wasted. Another highlight was some great insights into the adventure gamebook industry.

The evening social events included The Pitch Factor, a Pop Idol style event where nervous unpublished authors pitched their ideas to two editors and an English teacher⁶. I had a go myself, and got the reality TV experience⁷, but it was an awful lot of fun. There was also a quiz, which was essentially authors versus the fans. Technically the fans won, but judging by the amount the laughter, I think everyone did.

It was a large, but intimate feeling event. The Black Library ‘tribe’ is a rather awesome one, and I can’t wait to do something like this again soon.

1: Or if you’ve met me, babble in excitable Geordie whalesong.
2: There is no known cure for Geek. It may mutate, but it can never be cured, and that’s fine the way it is.
3: Black Library, and indeed Games Workshop, have a policy that can best described as “It’s all true, especially the lies”. Much of the work is told from a specific viewpoint, and no one pretends that any one faction has the full facts. This means that stories are stack upon stories, creating a deep yet flexible world. This is a very British approach to dealing with story settings that feature multiple creative talents. Doctor Who has a similar policy.
4: He writes some cracking stuff; if gritty fantasy featuring rat-men and disease sounds like your thing, check out Dead Winter.
5: Aaron is a great writer who should be more famous than he is. He also wrote a great article on canon here.
6: Legion of the Damned writer Rob Sanders. Possibly the coolest English teacher ever, for a given value of cool. I may have babbled incoherently at him at one point about his cinematic scenes in The Primarchs.
7: I should have gone for My Little Primarch, also known as We buy any Khan.