reposting from 2007: Iain Banks at MeCon

A great day at MeCon yesterday - I post these pictures and a video to make you all feel jealous that you weren't there.



Guest of honour in the glowing sunlight



An excerpt from Iain M Banks' Guest of Honour speech, in which he is answering a question about how his writing career had got started. (Thanks to Mecon and Iain M Banks for permission to post this.)

But I spent most of the time just sitting around and talking.


Paul Cornell, natural20, ephiriel


slovobooks, pgmcc, mizkit, and Caroline


The two Annas, annafdd and sciamanna


The two Ia(i)ns, McDonald and Banks

Apart from the GoH speech the only panel I attended was a discussion of Doctor Who. None of my shots of the panel itself were particularly good, but here is a much better one of two of the panellists beforehand:

wiselamb and doyle_sb4

and here is another of the panellists plus two audience members immediately afterwards:

Paul Cornell, Leah Moore, Caroline

We settled back to chatting again, so that an observer who had left and returned might have believed that some of us hadn't moved (indeed, I believe that one of us hadn't)

Sleepy Paul, Caroline, natural20


pgmcc, mizkit, Leah Moore, John Reppion

while at the other end of the room the whiskey tasting was in full flow:

xipuloxx and ianmcdonald in foreground, others visible in background including Iain Banks and the two Annas

Things seemed to be going well for the whiskey tasters!


Not sure if I will make it again today, but thanks to all for organising and doing it.