Cora’s Adventures at Iridescence, the 2026 Eastercon in Birmingham, Part 3: Easter Saturday at the Con

Over the Easter weekend, I was at Iridescence, the 2026 Eastercon in Birmingham, UK.

I’ve already chronicled my adventures in getting to Birmingham and wandering around the city in part 1 and my adventures on Good Friday in part 2. So here is Easter Saturday:

Saturday, April 4, 2026

On Easter Saturday, I woke up, got dressed and went to have breakfast.

The Eastercon Business Meeting took place on Saturday morning and since Farah needed to be there, we decided that I would man or rather woman the table until approx. one PM and then Farah would take over.

So I headed to the dealers room after breakfast, only to find that it was still closed, though they did let in the people who had tables. It turned out that we had miscalculated, since Farah and I assumed that the dealers room would open at nine, when it actually opened at ten.

So I straightened up the table, refilled the chocolate and candy bowls as well as the koalas. I also set the pineapple upright and placed the hats on top. I also finally found the garbage bin next to the door to the dealers room, which was good, because we’d just been collecing the accumulated garbage in a bag under the table.

This is what it looked like on Saturday morning before the dealers room officially opened.

The Brisbane/Meanjin (indigenous name of Brisbane) logo was designed by indigenous Australian artist Tori-Jay Mordey BTW.

In the background, you can also see the fan table for LACon, the 2026 Worldcon in Anaheim, California, as well as the BSFA table and a table of the Honor Harrington fan group Royal Manticorean Navy. I was a bit surprised to see them, since the Honor Harrington books aren’t as well known in Europe due to Baen‘s well-known lack of regular distribution in Europe, though they also had a table at the 2019 Worldcon in Dublin.

As for our competitors from Nuremberg, this is what their table looked like on Saturday morning:

The poster was designed by German comic artist and illustrator Michael Vogt and shows one of the towers of Nuremberg’s Imperial Castle reimagined as a rocket. There also are flyers, postcards, stickers, tourist broshures, a flyer of the Nuremberg exhibition center and a Playmobil figure of artist and Nuremberg native Albrecht Duerer. The headquarters of Playmobil is in Dietenhofen near Nuremberg.

A little bit later, Edward James, who also thought that the dealers room opened at nine AM arrived with more supplies, including more tiny koalas to give away. Edward also took this somewhat goofy, but also very nice photo of me behind the table, cuddling a plush lobster:

I’m wearing a 2025 Toyplosion t-shirt with some great Simon Eckert artwork of She-Ra fighting Hordak, which is covered up by my arms and the lobster.

Since the dealers room wasn’t yet open, I walked over to the Science Fiction Club Deutschland and MetropolCon tables to chat for a bit. The Science Fiction Club Deutschland folks also had Niederegger marzipan bites, so I took one.

By now, Carolina and Amanda had come in as well to staff the Montreal and Edmonton tables and Florian Bailey also showed up, his wife and kids in tow. The Baileys have two school-aged kids. There are currently school holidays in most German states, including Bavaria, and so the Baileys combined Eastercon with a holiday trip. Of course, sitting at a fan table in the dealers room at Eastercon isn’t all that exiciting for kids and toys only go so far, so they got antsy after a while. Which is totally understandable – they are kids, after all. The fact that their English was pretty limited also meant that they couldn’t communicate very well with the other kids running around the con.

At ten, the delaers room officially opened and more people started coming in. I spent the morning handing out koalas, ribbons, postcards and bookmarks, explaining how site selection voting works and just chatting with people about all sorts of things ranging from Doctor Who fan theories via Galactic Journey, Hugo history and Sad Puppies to Birmingham as a foodie city.

Among others, I chatted with Adrian Tchaikovsky, Anna Smith Spark, Charles Stross, his wife Feorag and their plush Cthulhu, Matt/Womble, Andrew Knighton, Ana Sun, Scott Edelman (who had just enjoyed his first Birmingham balti the day before), Alison Scott, John Coxon, España Sheriff, Sara Felix, James Bacon, S.J. Groenewegen and many, many others whose names I don’t recall. If I talked to you at Eastercon or gave you a koala and failed to mention you, I’m very sorry.

I also took this photo (with permission) of Cthulhu making friends with a tiny koala and posted it on social media, where it went kind of viral and even ended up in the convention newsletter The Fiery Chicken.

Another very memorable encounter was with a marine scientist who’s just returned from a tour to Antarctica aboard ther German research vessel RV Polarstern. I told him that my Dad had been working on developing equipment for the much delayed replacement vessel Polarstern 2 (the OG Polarstern was built in 1982, i.e. she’s 44-years-old) before he died and that he had also developed equipment for other German research vessels such as the RV Maria S. Merian. Well, it turned out that this gentleman not only knew the Maria S. Merian, but had actually been chief scientist during one of her voyages. I told him which equipment my Dad had developed – which was complicated by the fact that while I had known at one time, what those equipment parts were called, I didn’t remember the official names while sitting in the busy dealers room of a con some twenty years later. The gentleman said that he probably met my Dad, but wasn’t quite sure. He also noted that Germany has an amazing fleet of research vessels, which a lot of Germans don’t know.

This encounter makes me wish that I could have persuaded Dad to come to Worldcon or some other con with me. I tried a few times and even told him that I could get his membership comped, if he would give a talk about his work or interests, whether it’s equipment for research vessels or system for oil spill clean-up or renewable energy. But he never wanted to come along and always said that he didn’t know anybody there. Well, here was at least one person at Eastercon he probably knew or could have connected with over shared interests.

As for what we actually did at the Brisbane in 2028 Worldcon bid table, the most important thing is to make sure that people vote in site selection, which means that they need a WSFS membership, the former supporting membership, from LACon V. We always told people that a WSFS membership is sufficient and that they can vote online – they don’t need to travel to California and actually attend the con. It’s a very telling and sad statement about the state of the world right now that lots of people told me, “Oh no, I’d never travel to the US as things are.”

Now I actually have a full attending membership for LACon, optimistically purchased during the 2024 Eurocon three months before the 2024 US presidential election. And I was looking forward to visiting Los Angeles and Anaheim, because I’ve never been further west than San Antonio. I wanted to strike my childhood bucket list item of “I want to see the Hollywood sign and the Walk of Fame” off my personal list (someone told me that the Walk of Fame wasn’t really worth it, but that the La Brea tar pits are well worth visiting, which led to a discussion about the movie Miracle Mile), visit Clifton’s Cafeteria, maybe go to Disneyland (though apparently that’s super expensive these days – not that it was cheap when my parents took my to Disney World at the age of five). But nope, like so many others, I’m not going, because I don’t fancy being denied entry or ending up in some ICE jail, because someone doesn’t like my nose or some of my social media posts or can’t figure out if attending a Worldcon is considered tourism or business travel.

We also pointed out that a WSFS membership gives you Hugo voting and nominating rights and access to the Hugo voter packet, which provides so much value that it basically pays for itself. Honestly, I’m always surprised that Worldcons don’t stress this aspect more. At any rate, LACon should thank us for hopefully getting lots of people to sign up for WSFS memberships.

Next, we explained that in order to vote in site selection, you have to pay another voting fee, because running a Worldcon costs a lot of money, since convention centers, hotels, etc… want to get paid. However, the voting fee automatically gets you the WSFS membership for the respective year, including Hugo voting and nominating rights, the Hugo voter packet and site selection voting rights.

The people I talked to had wildly differing knowledge. There were former Worldcon chairs, Hugo finalists, well known writers, SMOFs, who of course know how site selection voting works. But there also were people who had attended Worldcon before – quite often Glasgow in 2024, Dublin in 2019 or London in 2014, but I also talked to people who’d last attended in 1995 or earlier – who had never voted in site selection before and didn’t know how it works. There were also quite a few people who – in spite of previous Worldcon memberships – had never voted or nominated for the Hugos before.

There also were people – often young folks from the Haruhi Con anime con which took place in the same hotel on the same weekend – who didn’t know anything about Worldcon, so cue some Worldcon history. I usually introduced Worldcon as a root from which all the ther cons – the comic cons, anime cons, Star Trek cons, filk cons, etc… sprang. If they were cosplayers, I told them that cosplay was invented at the very first Worldcon in 1939. Interestingly, some people did have knowledge of the Hugos, but not Worldcon. At one point, I was discussing the Chengdu Hugo scandal and Sad Pupppies with two young women who’d heard of the former, but not the latter, most likely because it happened before they were active in fandom.

As for what we told people to persuade them to vote for Brisbane over Nuremberg, the total solar eclipse that will pass through Australia, including Sydney, on July 22, 2028, i.e. about a week before Worldcon, was a popular draw. Another popular attraction was Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. I mentioned that Brisbane has an attraction called Bluey’s World a few times and I did mention that Brisbane has a swimming and bathing lagoon with lifeguards in the city. The swimming lagoon and the lifeguards – I promised hunky lifeguards and asked people to imagine their favourite attractive Australian person of their preferred gender – were usually brought up in response to people being worried about Australia’s famously deadly and poisonous wildlife. In fact, I was surprised how many people brought up the poisonous wildlife as a reason why they didn’t want to vote for Brisbane. Yes, the poisonous wildlife exists and I think Australia likes bragging that their wildlife is deadlier than anybody else’s a little too much, but you’re extremely unlikely to meet that poisonous wildlife in a city of 287000 inhabitants outside maybe a zoo. Worrying about poisonous wildlife when attending a Worldcon in Brisbane is like worrying about being mauled by a grizzly or coyote while attending a Worldcon in Seattle or Anaheim.

Of course, I also got people who told me they were voting for Nuremberg and I told them that’s fine as well, as long as they vote. As for the reasons people gave for their vote, they were quite varied. A lot of people were excited about Brisbane, because they really wanted to visit Australia or because they had family or friends in Australia. The biggest counter argument against Brisbane was that it’s very far away, that the flight is expensive and likely to get even more expensive by 2028. There’s really nothing you can say against that argument.

I also got people who really wanted to go to Nuremberg. One gentleman had been a competitive fencer and had visited Germany in general and Nuremberg in particular several times in that capacity and really liked the city and wanted to visit it again. Competetive fencing is big in Germany and Tauberbischofsheim, the center of German competetive fencing, is close to Nuremberg.

There was also a young lady (whom I suspect might not even have a driver’s licence) who told me that she wanted to go Nuremberg, because she wanted to drive very fast on the Autobahn. Upon which I told her that I like driving very fast on occasion, too, and how to do it most safely. I also told her that I’d be fine with Nuremberg, because it means I can hop into my car and drive there on the Autobahn. And then I realised which Autobahn I would have to take and that I would have to cross the bloody Kasseler Mountain and pass through the region where WWIII was expected to start again.

In general, if people have a strong personal preference for one Worldcon site, you usually can’t sway them and that’s fine. The ones you can sway are the ones who are undecided and also the ones whose reason for one site over the other is something like “X is very far away” or “I’m worried about [insert unlikely event here].” Though I always emphasized that while I would prefer people to vote for Brisbane, I’d be fine with Nuremberg as well as long as they do vote.

As for why I’m backing Brisbane rather than Nuremberg, for starters the Brisbane team asked me to help staff their table at Eastercon. Nuremberg didn’t. And while I would love to see a Worldcon in Germany as much as the next German fan, I want a good German Worldcon, one that won’t ruin our chances to have another Worldcon for the next 55 years. And as things are, I’m not sure if the Nuremberg team can pull it off, especially given the extremely tight timeframe of a little over two years. There’s a reason Worldcon bids are normally announced five or more years in advance – because the time is needed to get your team in place and make all the behind the scenes preparations that regular members rarely see. I first saw the team behind what would become the 2024 Worldcon in Glasgow at the Fannish Inquisition in Helsinki all the way back in 2017.  Meanwhile, Nuremberg didn’t even have any social media accounts in place until mid March. Indeed, it seemed – and I am not the only one who noticed this – as if Nuremberg co-chair Florian Bailey’s answer to every single question was, “We’re working on it.” Which I’m certain they are, but this shows how tight the time frame is.

Another potential issue is that while Nuremberg co-chairs Florian Bailey and Ruben Wickenhäuser are clearly fans and enthusiastic and at least Florian Bailey also has event organising experience from the Nuremberg Digital Festival which he runs, neither of them have any Worldcon or SFF fan con running experience and it’s not clear how familiar they are with Worldcon and its unique culture. And if you look at the team on their website, you’ll see a lot of US and UK SMOFs and comparatively few Germans. Of course, a large part of the reason why we haven’t had another German Worldcon bid since 1970 (and no, it’s not because some trolls decided to behave like trolls back in 1970) is the balkanized nature of German fandom. Every group has their own cons – the Star Trek fans, the Perry Rhodan fans, the Star Wars fans, the Masters of the Universe fans, the anime/manga fans, the gamers, the cosplayers, the filkers, the Steampunks, the toy collectors, etc… – and they don’t necessarily interact with cons and fandoms outside their own bubble. We do have experienced con-runners, but they haven’t been willing to bid for a Worldcon so far. And in fact, the reaction among German fans and con-runners to the Nuremberg bid so far seems to be “wait and see”.

As for the US/UK SMOFs on Nuremberg’s team, it’s great that they’re getting experienced help, cause they’re going to need it. However, as things look now, a potential Nuremberg Worldcon would be more like Glasgow/Dublin 2.0 than an actual German Worldcon. And while Dublin and Glasgow 1.0 were both great Worldcons, I would prefer a German Worldcon to be actually German, if you know what I mean. As for why so many US/UK SMOFs jumped onto a last minute Worldcon bid run by two inexperienced co-chairs, there is apparently some kind of beef that some of the international SMOFs have with the Brisbane team. And to be fair, the Brisbane bid was rather inactive for a long time, even though they’ve been bidding for several years.

Which brings me to another issue with the Nuremberg bid. Cause sliding into 2028 at the last minute wasn’t fair to the Brisbane team and the Australian/Oceanian fandom in general. Because Australia/Oceania usually only gets one Worldcon per decade. The last one would have been CoNZealand in 2020, but we all know what happened. So Australia and Oceania haven’t had a Worldcon since Aussiecon 4 in Melbourne in 2010 and frankly, they deserve one, especially considering how isolated Australian and Oceanian fans and pros are from the rest of the SFF sphere due to their location. And yes, Germany hasn’t had a Worldcon since 1970 and continental Europe hasn’t had one since 1990, but – as I explained to Florian Bailey and his wife – Australian fandom doesn’t see it that way, because Australia is huge. And what they see is that there have been four European Worldcons (London, Helsinki, Dublin and Glasgow) since the last Australian Worldcon.

The Nuremberg bid was also marred by some clumsy messaging early on – e.g. the strong focus on Nuremberg’s Nazi history as opposed to everything the city has to offer put some people off. Now particularly Americans tend to associate Nuremberg mainly with Nazis – to the point that there is a movie about the Nuremberg trials in theatres currently just called Nuremberg (and some Americans were peeved that Germans don’t want to see yet another Hollywood film about Nazis) – while Germans have other associations. For me, “Nazis” isn’t even in the top ten of things I associate with Nuremberg. Nuremberg Toy Fair, gingerbread, Albrecht Dürer, the famous Christmas market, Christmas ornaments, Nuremberg sausages, the Imperial Castle, the world’s first pocket watch the Nuremberg egg all rank way ahead of Nazis for me. And of course there are those ghoulish tourists (often, but not always Americans) who want to visit all the Nazi sites to feel better about themselves. Berlin is plagued with those and Nuremberg likely is as well. My favourite BTW was the guy (not American, but British) who deliberately sought out the graves of former high to medium ranking Nazis on German cemeteries and then complained that those graves – usually normal family graves used for decades, which just happened to have a notable Nazi buried there among various non-Nazis – were still there.  Dude, you’re the one who sought out Nazi graves and felt the need to point them out to the world. Of course, the Nazis are part of Nuremberg’s history as well and pointing out the respective museums is perfectly fine. Plus, the Nuremberg exhibiton centre, which would be the venue for a potential Nuremberg Worldcon, is actually on the former Reichsparteitag grounds. However – and people unfamiliar with Nuremberg don’t know this  – the Reichsparteitag grounds are huge and house not only the exhibition centre, but also a park, a lake, a football stadium, a concert hall and yes, crumbling Nazi ruins and a museum, too. But the Nazi ruins are not that close to the exhibition centre and you don’t have to visit them, unless you want to. That said, the Zeppelintribüne would be a great place for some toy photograph. The Nuremberg website has been updated by now and points out the many other sights and museums the city has to offer aside from crumbling Nazi ruins, but the initial messaging wasn’t great.

What is more, while Nuremberg is a beautiful city and has a world-class exhibition centre (it’s the home of Nuremberg Toy Fair), I’m also not sure if it is the best location for a possible German Worldcon (but then neither was Heidelberg). Now if you were bidding for a potential Worldcon in Germany, the venue is the least of your problems, because pretty much every bigger city has an exhibition or convention centre. I could theoretically run a Worldcon in Oldenburg’s Weser-Ems Halle, except that the city doesn’t have the required hotel capacity and we would be filling up every country inn in a radius of 50 kilometres around the city with Worldcon members. I could definitely run a Worldcon in Bremen – though don’t worry, I won’t.

The main obstacle in Germany is not convention space, but hotels and particularly airport access. Because most German cities are old, convention centres tend to be on the edge of town, whereas hotels usually are concentrated in the town centre (coincidentally, this is also the case in Nuremberg). Which isn’t normally a problem for Germans or Europeans, because there always is a public transport option shuttling you between your hotel and the convention centre. However, it is a huge issue for Americans, who are less used to using public transport and basically prefer to have several hotels around the convention centre, preferably with direct access that you don’t even have to go outside. Helsinki even offered free public transport tickets for Worldcon members, while Glasgow had a very cheap option of a multi-day pass and people still complained.

Airports are an even bigger issue in Germany. For while Germany has plenty of airports, for a Worldcon you need one with overseas connections and there aren’t that many of those. Basically, you have Frankfurt on Main, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Düsseldorf and Berlin with overseas connections plus Hannover and Halle-Leipzig, which could theoretically handle overseas connections and have in the past, but no longer do. Fun fact: Bremen airport could easily have overseas connections as well and the runway is long enough for a Boeing 747 (and a 747 has landed here at least once), but some locals who bought cheap real estate near the airport keep complaining about an airport that’s older than their houses. To be fair, Bremen also only has one runway and due to the location you can’t easily built another. Meanwhile, Hannover’s airport has a runway that’s long enough for a Concorde and yes, a Concorde has landed there at least once as well. However, in practice, the smaller German airports – including Bremen and Nuremberg – mainly offer flights to holiday destinations in the Mediterranean as well as feeder flights to various hubs. Nuremberg Airport also has the issue that it’s too close to both Frankfurt and Munich – two likely arrival hubs for international visitors – to offer flights there. So international visitors would have to take the train and navigating train travel in a foreign country and foreign language is not easy. In fact, navigating train travel in Germany isn’t all that easy for me as well (plus, Deutsche Bahn is just fucking terrible) and indeed, I try to avoid train travel in Germany as much as possible.

So in short, while I would welcome a German Worldcon and wish the Nuremberg team all the best, I don’t think 2028 is the right year for it. 2031 (which right now only has one bid for Texas, which isn’t particularly viable for political reasons beyond bid team’s control) or 2033 (no bids at all currently) would both be better choices.

But back to Eastercon: At around one PM, Farah arrived to relieve me at the table and so I went to have lunch at the bar of the Hilton. I had the vegetable balti again, because I had enjoyed it the day before and most of the other options didn’t really appeal to me. I did briefly consider having fish and chips, cause I really like fish and chips. But I had seen someone else eat it the day before and it was served with mushy peas (which is fine) and tartare sauce, which I don’t really care for. Plus, the person who ordered it had to hunt down vinegar. So I just ordered the balti again. No photo, cause you’ve already seen it in the previous post.

After lunch, I took a stroll through the art show. Once again, no photos, because none were allowed. However, I have to say that I was very impressed with the scope and quality of the Iridescence art show, which rivaled some of the Worldcon art shows I have seen.

After the art show, I returned to the dealers room to actually browse the tables and wares on offer – something I really couldn’t do while I was at the Brisbane table. I chatted with fellow Galactic Journey correspondent Fiona Moore, who was putting in a shift at her publisher’s table and we took this photo of both of us together.

I also bought a couple of books as well as a bracelet to go with the steampunky Octopus necklace I had bought the day before. In general, Iridescence had a very good dealers room with a good variety of offerings. I particularly liked that many small presses and indie authors had tables, where you could buy books you wouldn’t normally find at a regular bookstore.

After I had done my round of the dealers room, I went up to my hotel room to find that it hadn’t been cleaned or serviced – for the second day in a row. On the first day, I had chalked the lack of servicing up to getting up late and not having put out the “Please make up room” sign, but on Saturday I got up earlier and did put out the sign. Apparently, the Hilton Metropole is only cleaning/servicing rooms every three days now – supposedly to protect the environment, but in truth because they were understaffed. They also don’t inform you about this beforehand. And frankly, considering the room cost approx. 150 GBP per night, I do expect daily cleaning/servicing. This is the Hilton, after all, not a a dodgy motel or country inn.

I took a nap for two hours or so and then got up again to have dinner. I checked my phone and saw a message on WhatsApp as well as the convention Discord that someone named John (or rather his wife) urgently needed tweezers. Now I happened to have tweezers, so I messaged John or rather his wife that they could borrow them. John was at a panel, so I waited outside for the panel to finish and then handed over the tweezers and told him to return them at the Brisbane fan table.

The BSFA Awards ceremony was on Saturday evening and many folks at the con, including most of the people I knew, attended the ceremony, so I was on my own. Initially, I was going to head over to Resorts World again. However, the weather had taken a turn for the worse, cause a storm was blowing in. And so, when I was about to leave the hotel to head over to Resorts World, I met some Eastercon members returning from there, who warned me that it was cold and windy. A few steps out of the hotel confirmed that it was indeed unpleasantly cold and windy, especially since I was still wearing the skirt and t-shirt I had worn in the warm dealers room.

I now had two options. I could go back up to my room, put on pants and grab my coat and brave the oncoming storm (no, not that one). Or I could just stay at the Hilton and have dinner there. Since I would have to walk through a park and along the lake with little protection, option 2 won out. It proved to be the right choice, especially since that same storm would cause a terrible accident in the village of Satrup in the far north of Germany on Sunday morning, when a tree fell onto a group of people at an Easter egg hunt, killing a young mother and her baby as well as a teenager and seriously injuring another teenager.

In addition to the bar, where I’d had lunch two days in a row now, the Hilton Metropole also has a restaurant called Brightsmith on the Water, because it has a terrace overlooking Pendigo Lake. In spite of the storm, some brave folks were even sitting out there. Because I didn’t really fancy having vegetable balti again (or fish and chips), I opted for Brightsmith on the Water. Considering it was a Saturday evening and there were two conventions going on at the hotel, the restaurant was pretty empty, though there were a few Eastercon people there, including two I knew well enough to say hello.

Brightsmith on the Water turned out to be a nice restaurant, though on the pricy side. I did have a full three course menu and wine, though I did forego the seafood, cause it was very pricy indeed, for somewhat less pricy, but also tasty options.

As a starter, I had whipped goat cheese with hot honey, which was nice. Coincidentally, this was the first time I’ve had hot honey. Cause even though it’s currently very trendy, it has eluded me so far.

As a main cause, I picked butter chicken masala. Again, it was nice, though maybe a bit close to the balti I’d had for lunch. However, the seafood dishes on offer were very pricy and I didn’t fancy having steak or a burger. I’m not a fan of gourmet burgers anyway. And I do like Indian or – as in this case – Anglo-Indian food.

For dessert, finally, I had something called Dark Chocolate Delice, which consisted of mousse au chocolate, coconut ice cream and mango compote. This was the one dish where my (uncommon) food allergy might have caused a problem and the server specifically checked with the kitchen whether it would be okay. Which it was. Not that I would have suffered an anaphylactic shock otherwise – but I would have gotten an upset stomach, which isn’t what you want after a gourmet meal.

After this very nice dinner, I made another round through the bar to see if there was anybody there that I knew and then went up to my room, cause I had to get up on time the following day, because the Future Worldcon Bid Q&A was happening a nine in the morning.