Illness, work, and a compulsive desire to vent about AI have prevented me from bringing you up to speed about my June of festivals: Cymera and Shetland Noir. This week: Cymera.
Last year, as you may recall, I attended Cymera ’22 as an author panelist. It was my first time ever at a book festival and I was simply blown away. This time, now that I’ve moved to Edinburgh where Cymera is held, I managed to wangle a gig as a panel moderator. Arriving in the green room 30 minutes before our panel, Connection, Interrupted, with Nina Allan, Cory Doctorow, and Ian McDonald, Cory confronted me with the blunt question: “What’s this panel about?” Fortunately, having had to wrestle with the same problem for some weeks as I read through their excellent books, I had an answer.
We trooped out onto what I like to think of as the Cymera main stage and launched into a wide-ranging discussion about AI, use and abuse of the internet, privacy, technological fixes for global warming, and the merits of a good old-fashioned handshake deal, as seen through the lens of their novels Conquest, Red Team Blues, and Hopeland. I thought it was going great guns – and it was – until Cory directed my attention to frantic waving offstage. I had run out of time and left no opportunity for audience questions. I can’t read a watch, apparently. Fortunately, I am a person of color. Had I been white, I would have been beetroot with embarrassment!
Cymera itself didn’t disappoint. The Blackwells on site bookshop was as awesome as I remembered it, everyone was happy and a lot of us were well lubricated. Shockingly, given that Cymera takes place in what passes for Edinburgh University’s Student Union, they ran out of beer! There were a couple of the highlights I particularly want to mention. First, a book signing with Samantha Shannon. I’m not a huge fantasy reader these days but I loved The Priory of the Orange Tree, which contains one of the best opening sentences of all time. The queue went out the door and well up the stairway but she was as gracious with the last person in line as she was with the first. Second, an all female panel called Final Frontiers with Stark Holborn, Everina Maxwell, and Emily Tesh. The discussion of their space operas Hel’s Eight, Ocean’s Echo, and Some Desperate Glory, was witty, ribald and perceptive by turns. So much so that, even though I was not familiar with any of them, I marched over to the bookstore, bought three of their books, and then waited patiently to get them signed. They were every bit as delightful face to face as they were on stage. As I get to them on my TBR list, I’ll drop you all a short review. But in the meantime, please take a look at Everina Maxwell’s signature. I watched her write it out freehand, in real time. I’ve never been proud of my penmanship. Now, I’m just humiliated.
