Hannah Steenbock
The Science Fiction Club Germany decided to have its yearly meeting in Kiel, last weekened. And of course, they did it as convention. The organizers, Marc and Anissa Heinrichs invited me to do a reading session there.
So, on Saturday morning, I found out how to reach the Youth Hostel in Kiel by bike, where the con was taking place. They had two rooms, branching off from a corridor. While the corridor was rather warm – heated by a now infamous ice vending machine – the rooms themselves were fairly cool. In the corridor, there were also some tables with books, and even fairly wild space monsters made of felt. (Should have taken pics of those …)
At the same time as my reading, there was a presentation about the German roots of British SF, so I count myself lucky I had five people in my audience. Great five people, though! I don’t really write a lot of SF, so I read part of “Irina’s Revenge” (which is only published in German), talked about the novel (Mannwolf), even though it’s not SF at all, and then read part of my brand new alien cat tale.
And then I spent the rest of the day talking with nice people – I suppose that’s what cons really are about. I met fellow authors Simone Edelberg and Axel Kruse, talked to the publisher Harald Giersche of Begedia (small press, but up and coming), and Heidrun Jänchen who won the German Science Fiction Prize 2012 for the best short story (congrats, Heidrun!).
Yes, I even attended the small ceremony when the German Science Fiction Prize was awarded – as the only women in the audience. I don’t want to draw any conclusions from that, but it was noticable. All in all, it was a very small con, but also a very nice and friendly one.
I said good bye to everyone in the early evening and went home, happy and quite content. It was a fun convention! Thanks to Marc and Anissa for all the work and for great hospitality.
More pics in another blog: Urlaubscon und Meer – Samstag
