Con Report Fantasticon 2018 in Copenhagen

My Dutch friend Jarsto and I had decided to go to the Fantasticon, so we both had week end tickets, and went to register Friday evening.
The theme for this years Fantasticon was Steam Punk, and it was quite fun to see people dressing up.
It was good to meet many old scifi friends, and get to meet a few new ones.

Saturday :
I went to the con, arriving about 1230.
More chatting with other fans, and then attending two program points :
Author interview with Lavie Tidhar, who was quite interesting and amusing to listen to. I just might find some of his books to read.
The second was Edmund Schluessel who talked a bit about cosmology, and told the story of two Danish astronomers :
Tycho Brahe who made as accurate measurements of the stars and planet’s positions and movements as is possible without telescopes. Yes, he did that before the invention of telescopes. He provided a massive amont of data, but did not d9o too much with it, but Johannes Kepler could use the data to form his theory and formulas for the movements of tha planets.
Then the talk went into measring the speed of light. Old measurements made with distances on Earth yielded no measurable delay, and light speed was deemed to be infinite, or in any case, not measurable. That was about to change.
Ole Römer who did use a telescope, among others to watch the moons of Jupiter. He noticed a discrepancy in the timing of eclipses of Jupiter’s Galilean moons, and by seeing the difference in timing when Jupiter was near conjunction with the sun, and in opposition to the sun, he measured the offset in timing and arrived at the conclusion that light does indeed have a finite speed. His result, made with the instrumentation and math of 1676.
He arrived at a speed of 200 000km/sec, which is excellent, considering the instuments used, and within a margin of about 30%.
I live a few km from the remains of Römer’s old observatory, and the Kroppedal museum nearby with some of the instruments used in the observatory, and asked if he knew about it. He did not, and I offered to bring him there for a visit, if he should visit Denmark again. He liked the idea, so we exchanged contact information.
After the talk we had an interesting conversation about science fiction and science in general, so I had an excellent Saturday at the con.

Sunday :
I was arriving a bit earlier than on Saturday, and, as usual having some talks with other fans.
In the afternoon there was a recording of a podcast by two groups. The Danish “Hva’ Fan” podcast and the Swedish “Fandompodden” , making a single podcast, spoken mostly in English. I took some pictures of the recording session.
Finally there war an interview with and a reading by the Danish writer Marie Ladefoged.
I came home with 3 books from the convention, two by Marie Ladefoged (in Danish), and one by Justina Robson.
I had a fun time, and I am looking forward to going to more conventions next year.

Overview of Babylon 5 (B5) podcasts.

Starting with the Babylon 5 podcasts known to me now, here is the list :

The Babylon Podcast  :
– 280 episodes
– warning : Massive spoilers in their episode discussion
– Very comprehensive with episode discussions, interviews, discussing books and comics

The Babble On Project  :
– currently running
– essentially spoiler free sections and spoiler sections
– episode discussion, a few interviews.
– sometimes poor audio quality with shouting into the microphones.

Downbelow : A Babylon 5 Introcast  :
– started 2014, currently at episode 30, at the end of season 1
– intended spoiler free, they have succeeded in doing that
– each B5 episode has a discussion episode, some episode commentaries

Braving Babylon 5  :
– started 2014, currently at episode 9
– generally spoiler free, first time viewer of B5
– single host talking about one episode per podcast episode

The Babylon Project Podcast  :
– started 2014, currently at episode 4
– generally spoiler free section followed by a spoiler section
– single episode discussion

The Audio Guide to Babylon 5  :
– started 2014, currently at episode 5
– starting every episode with a generally spoiler free section then a spoiler section present from the beginning
– Single episode discussion

White Star 5  :
– started 2014, currently at episode 4
– spoilers inevitable due to the nature of the discussions
– Discussions of themes, characters etc – no episode discussions

Jumpgate : The Babylon 5 ReWatch Podcast
– Started late 2013 or early 2014, currently at episode 14
– spoilers inevitable due to the re-watch quality
– single episode discussions

SQPN : Secrets of Babylon 5  :
– ran in 2011 for 17 episodes, possibly pod-faded
– generally spoiler free, first time viewer
– two hosts discussing 2 episodes per podcast episode

Wow ! 9 B5 podcasts that I know about, and 6 of them started less than a year ago.
This really looks like a renaissance of the interest for Babylon 5.
That was the quick overview, some more details for some of the podcasts will follow.

 

Podcasts, Podcasts, Podcasts

If you search the net and iTunes – and many other podcast aggregators you can find thousands upon thousands of podcasts in all kinds of categories.

 

I have mainly focused on Science fiction and radio related podcasts, and I am going to tell a bit about the scifi podcasts I have collected. It is so easy to collect more than you have time to listen to, so I have over 1000 un-listened podcasts for later use.

I started my podcast listening when I had had an accident and broke the arm inside the shoulder, and since I was interested in Babylon 5 that is where I started the search, and, lo and behold, there was one : The Babylon Podcast They already had about 40 episodes out, so I got started with catching up. They also had a live recording, so one night (my time) I listened in – and they opened up for a brief talk, so on my first night of listening a podcast recording I could jump in and participate for a minute or two. Just for the fun of it – the episode I was on was number – wait for it – 42. The Babylon Podcast has run its course, and covered all things B5, series, spinoffs, comics, books. More detail on that in a later post. Beware The Babylon Podcast has lots of spoilers.

The Babylon Podcast led me to “Slice of Scifi”, a more general podcast mostly covering TV and films, always with an interview. I enjoyed that one a lot.

From the same group, and with the author MIchael Stackpole (among others, known from the Star Wars X-Wing series) there was “Dragonpage Cover to Cover”, all about books and authors, so I was fairly well covered.

Come 2014 – Babylon 5 podcasts seems to have had a renaissance, last I checked I had 5 (or 6?) more B5 podcasts in my podcast directory. I will give an overview in the next post, because they all have different qualities and different levels of spoilers for possible new B5 viewers.

 

Two conventions and some podcasts

In May and June I have been to two conventions , the Fedcon in Düsseldorf, Germany and Fantasticon in Copenhagen, Denmark.

At Fedcon a few Babylon 5 fans went together to make a little happening. You can find a series of pictures of Babylon 5 fans in and out of costume here

At both conventions I was giving away buttons for #FreeBabylon5, a group that campaigns to get Babylon 5 back on TV channels and Internet streaming. You can find more information on the Free Babylon 5 website.

I have participated in a few more of the Downbelow podcasts as a guest, and it has been fun following Heidi and Elisabeth discovering Babylon 5, and their – sometimes – uncanny guesses of what is to come. Of course, they miss greatly form time to time, but they are very observant.

Likely there will be a bit more on those activities later …