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Bazyliszek x Polcon – Oops, I did it again
Jul. 19th, 2025 10:06 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
fandom_rover_feedI love conventions. This should be pretty obvious to anyone who follows this blog. Yet there are some limits. I realized a few years ago that doing more than two in a row is hard and I try to avoid it… Yet I ended up doing it again. I started with Seminarium Literackie, followed by Archipelacon 2, and then by Bazyliszek x Polcon. The good thing is that I don’t regret it at all!
Tiring Time
In fact my “combo” goes further back. It started with Lajconik in the beginning of June. The following weekend was not a convention but I spent the whole Saturday away. Then the series of cons followed that finished with Bazyliszek x Polcon. So in the end for over a month I had no weekend to just sit at home and relax. Despite my worries it was not bad. I was tired but quite happy and, what is crucial, ready to enjoy all the cons on the way.
Between the programme items the convention could get a bit corwded.
Would it look differently should I have more breaks between those events? There is such possibility. Maybe I would have more stamina to join the evenings in the pubs during Polcon. Maybe I would attend more programme, or do some things ina different way. But there is no point considering it now. What is, however, worth consideration is how good time I had during this year’s Bazyliszek x Polcon.
Dragons Invade Warsaw
As usually (for some time at least) I travelled to the con with Jadwiga the Dragoness. She was not the only representative of the Dragon tribe in Warsaw. Our good friend Mieszko and his excellent caretaker – Seji took the same carriage as we did. (Truth to be told it was rather me who took the same carriage as Seji and Krzyś but this would not make such good story). So when the five of us (three humans and two dragons) reached the current capital of the country we met with our friend – Basia. It was a bit too early to go to the convention so we met at a cafe to chat for a bit. Let’s consider this as the beginning of Bazyliszek x Polcon for me. After the meeting, we went for a lunch, and later to the convention itself. (We just made a brief stop at our accommodation from which we were able to see the main convention venues).
Yet Mieszko and Jadwiga were not the only dragons that travelled to Warsaw. According to our notes there was eight or nine dragons. Yet, as we learned during our stay, there was one more… But let’s not go ahead of ourselves.
Many Guests
According to Polcon’s by-laws each year we select a few Guests of Honour. For Bazyliszek x Polcon those were SQN (Publisher GOH), Aleksandra Menio (Fan GOH), and Wołodymyr Arieniew (Creator GOH). I would like to concentrate a bit on the last of them. When the names were revealed I was very happy for Wołodomyr’s invitation. One reason was that I like him personally and I thought it would be a great occasion to meet. Yet I was also happy that Polcon decided to go more international with the GOHs’ selection. In my opinion this is a great direction). Sadly, because of the current situation in our part of the world he was not able to attend in person. The good side is that thanks to the current technology a remote Q&A session was possible.
A panel with some of the guests.
What is typical for Polish cons is that we have many guests. Well not all of the conventions do but it is quite common. As per Bazyliszek’s website, this year there were over 50 guests (including a few institutional ones). I won’t be listing all of them here as it would be too long. It is enough to said that among those were four more writers from abroad and one LARPing group from Denmark. The bad side of having as many guests is that there was no option for me to attend programme with all of them. So in the end I had to make choices.
You must construct additional pylons time(?)
In order to attend all the programme that was worth listening to I would have to had more time. Waaay more time. Sadly, so far I did not develop a method that would allow me for bilocation so I had to cut corners. In the end I attended a few items that were “must see points” and some more from my wishlist. What I also had to do was to find the time for meeting friends, enjoying other aspects of the con, and even doing such mundane things like eating. Truth to be told, time limitation was not the only problem. I also didn’t have the stamina before the con to deep dive into the programme and create the most optimal schedule.
Wonderful Q&A session with Ada Palmer led by Aleksandra Klęczar.
So what was on my “must have” list? Three items took quite a lot of time. Those were our Business Meetings (The Council of Fandom and Fandom Forum), and Awards ceremony. The two more items were Q&A session and Tabletalk with Ada Palmer. I managed to attend all of those (yay!). On top of that I was also lucky to have some “additional tabletalk” with Ada after her Q&A session. From my bucket list perspective Bazyliszek x Polcon was a complete success. Not only I attended everything but I was also very happy with how those items went.
I was a moderator in two programme items. The first was, as already mentioned, Q&A with Wołodymyr Arieniew. The second was the Awards around the world panel. It is not for me to judge how well they went, but I can write about my view on them. And the truth is that I enjoyed what the speakers had to say. They were both informative and interesting. Of course the questions covered the topics I enjoyed, so I may be biased here, but I firmly believe that what the speakers said was worth listening to.
Bazyliszek x Polcon was not only about panels, but also about gaming.
I regret that I missed so many programme items. I would love to go back and listen to at least a few more but this is impossible. On the other hand when they took place I had some nice conversations with friends not seen for a long time (or with friends seen recently). Those were also an important part of my experience of Bazyliszek x Polcon.
Discussions, Dealers, and Display(s)
As mentioned above I skipped the pub evenings, but it doesn’t mean that I missed the social aspect of the con. In the contrary I spent quite a lot of time chatting with friends. I did it after programme items, while wandering around the con, and during lunch. I can say that from the social perspective Bazyliszek x Polcon was a good convention. As the aftermath of one of the convos, I received the “Neuro Spacey” ribbon which was absolutely lovely.
One of the “walking conversations” brought me and a friend to the LEGO Exhibition in the second of the three convention venues. (The three venues were Culture Center, Local Goverment Building, and a nearby school). I am not a specialist and I cannot say how good the exhibition was objectively, but from my perspective it was pretty awesome. I was especially impressed by the “paintings” made with LEGO bricks. Yet what I enjoyed even more were the prototypes of the Tales of the Space Age set (21340). The creator of those was on-site and explained a bit about this set and about other things that were on display. That was kinda amazing.
In the back you can see three prototypes for the ‘Tales of the Space Age’ set. They stand in row with the fourth piece developed by LEGO company and three more created by the constructor of the originals.
I also walked around the outside space for dealers, and I saw some excellent works of ceramics. I was strong enough to resist the temptation of those. What I missed was the strength to resist the temptation of books and I ended up buying one (and one magazine). Yet I came back home with a lot of paper thanks to Szaman. He was kind enough to offer me historical fanzines and convention programmes. We talked about it for some time and I expected a few pieces, not a big bag that, I am sure, had over 100 items. (I still need to go through all of them and put them in the catalogue). I am very thankful for this gift and I hope that I will be able to use some of those for research purposes.
At Bazyliszek x Polcon there was also one unofficial “exhibition”. In fact it was made to commemorate the previous Polcon in Warsaw that took place in 2013. Despite being a very nice convention it is remembered mainly for one issue – a great queue. Because of a damage to the router, the registration started later than it should. As a result many fans spent a lot of time waiting in line to get to the con. I remember that it took me around seven hours to get my badge. It was frustrating at the time, but then I realized how great conversations I got while waiting. The unofficial exhibit mocked commemorated that situation. As one picture says more than a thousand words let’s just look at the Dragons paying a visit to the exhibition.
Dragons paying tribute to the router.
The Zajdel Awards
Like in the last few years I participated in the Zew Zajdla (The Call of Zajdel) action. It is a kind of challenge to read all of the works nominated for Janusz A. Zajdel Award. Unlike in the previous years, this time I managed to complete the challenge in both categories! It was possible thanks to my luck. Somehow I read four (out of the six) nominated novels before the nominations were even known. That was a coincidence that I appreciated a lot.
This is a good moment to describe the Awards Ceremony. The first thing – I was impressed by the mistress of the ceremony – Katarzyna Rutowska, who led the whole evening in a great style. At the beginning she mentioned that she had experience in leading the burlesque revues and the rest of the evening clearly showed that! What she didn’t mention is that she is also a SFF writer with her debut novel published last year.
Amazing Katarzyna “Rutka” Rutowska.
The energy she expressed for the whole evening is something I appreciated a lot, as the cermony was a bit too long. Apart from Janusz A. Zajdel Awards*, it hosted also oter awards. Namely Quentin (for the best RPG scenario), Piotr “Raku” Rak** (for the fannish activity), and ESFS Awards. In fact ESFS Awards were given at Archipelacon 2 a week earlier. Yet for some years we are handing the trophies at Polcons. The thing is that winners often are not present at Eurocons, and therefore they miss the thrill of being awarded. To allow them to celebrate the success we present them the awards at local gala. At bazyliszek x Polcon we handed the Awards to Polish winners. We also handed the Awards for Ukraine to Sergii who managed to come to Poland, and who will bring them to the Ukraine.
Handing ESFS Award to the creators of ‘Potencjalny Mimik’ fanzine.
Ceremony hosted also seven short performances. Liz Katrin sang two times and Szermjeże made two appearances to show their sword-fighting abilities. Sakuramai Poland appeared once and showed us the Japanese yosakoi dance. Then just before the Janusz A. Zajdel Awards announcement T. Kingfisher gave a speech. She talked about the Hawaiian monk seals and the eels sticking out of their nostrils. It was absolutely hilarious! The evening had a closure when Ada Palmer performed two of her songs (and I was so glad to be able to listen to them live again!).
Counting Dragons and Going Home
You may remember that a few paragraphs earlier I wrote about one more dragon. Well it appeared to all of us on Saturday evening. During the Janusz A. Zajdel Awards Ceremony there was a short part devoted to the Dragons of Fandom. They celebrated 35 years of existence this year. The group is informal, and is a loose association of Polish fans that are active in fandom for a number of years. But going back to the Dragon. Barbara – the current chair of Dragons of Fandom (performing this role for many years) was invited to the stage. There Rynvord surprised her by handing her the plushy Dragon in a full “Imladris Dragon” aka “Polish Dragon” attire.
Rvynvord before handing the Dragon to Barbara.
On Sunday I just had one item I had to attend – Tabletalk with Ada Palmer. After it finished I got the autograph (so happy!) and I was able to go home. Luckily for me Justyna, Nelek, and Seji (with whom I was travelling back by car) decided that they want to see the IgNoble Dramatic Reading. Thanks to that I also had a chance to attend it. It was great! I laughed a lot, and possibly did not pay enough attention to the scientific details… What matters teh most is that I had a wonderful time. When the invited readers finished their part I volunteered to read one more piece. This time it was in Polish. Considering that we had international guests in the room (they made part of the readings earlier) I proposed that I can try reading it in English. What have I done…? I do speak English, but reading a text for the first time and doing impromptu translation was hard. It got even harder once I got to the poem the paper was discussing, a very bad poem, I must say. I know that my translation was not fully correct, but I hope that it was at least a bit funny.
Reading from one of the scientific papers.
I could write more about the con, conversations, and programme. I could praise the great time I had (and it would be true). Yet everything good comes to an end, and so did my short adventure in Warsaw. We packed to the car and headed home. Next year there will be another Polcon (September in Zielona Góra), and another Bazyliszek (July in Warsaw) and I plan on attending them both. For now I have the memories…, and other conventions looming ahead!
You can find more pictures in my FB gallery.
My next post should appear within a couple of weeks.
* The winner in a short story category was Aleksandra Janusz for Dlaczego nie ma klanu kruka (Why there is no raven tribe). The trophy for best novel went to Andrzej Sapkowski for the prequel to The Witcher series Rozdroże kruków (Crossroads of Ravens).
** Once again sincere congratulations to the winners. Vinga received the Flame of Fandom trophy, and Mikołaj “Nelt” Rzeszótko got the Spark of Fandom trophy.
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DS Peter Grant and his extended family are trying to take a holiday in Scotland - Aberdeen to be precise. There's his partner, Beverley, a minor riber goddess, their twins, cousin Abigail (and DCI Nightingale who is training her in the arcane arts). And then there's Peter's mum and his dad, and old jazz musician, plus his band and their disreputable manager. Dad and the band have a gig at the Lemon Tree, a well known Aberdeen venue. It turns out to be a working holiday as a strange corpse (with gills) turns up, and Abigail's talking foxes spot some strange things. Expect giant seagulls, corrupt oil companies, selkies, mermaids, the local police force and some very strange goings-on culminating in danger on board an oil platform in the stormy North Sea. T(I was particularly intrigued because in my muso days, I played a gig at the Lemon Tree, and stayed
Another Grimdark winner for Joe Abercrombie, well read by Stephen Pacey.