Something a little bit different this week. The weekend just gone was Continuum 14: Conjugation – the 14th iteration of Melbourne’s annual fan-run speculative fiction convention. I attend Continuum for many reasons – to see friends, to dance the night away at the Maskobalo, to sing bad karaoke… but most especially for the program of talks and panels.
Like all of Australia’s fan-run conventions (and probably those of other countries, but I can’t speak for them), many of Continuum’s attendees are in the literary way – whether as writers or aspiring writers, editors, publishers, reviewers, or any combination of the above, not to mention readers who think deeply and critically about the fiction they consume.
Listening to them examine the structures and tropes of fantasy, science-fiction, and horror introduces me to new concepts or new aspects of concepts I thought I understood; it challenges me to think beyond my assumptions and explore new ways to write, and new subjects to explore in my writing. There is nothing in my life that broadens my writerly horizons the way a convention like Continuum does.
