Claudia and Constanze were in Uppsala, Sweden last weekend, where this year’s Eurocon took place. From Thursday afternoon until the Dead Dog Party on Sunday evening, fans and authors, nerds and artists from all over Europe met here. South Sweden showed us its sunniest side; during the day it was around 25 degrees, even if at night (with still wonderfully blue midsummer skies) it could go down to 5 degrees. Tested for you at 3am on the way back to the hotel!
Our two team members also acted as delegates for Germany at the meetings of the European Science Fiction Society and at the voting for the ESFS Awards, which are presented annually at Eurocon. The Chrysalis Award, in which each country nominates an author who has made a name for himself or herself in the last 3 years, was given to “Shooting Star” Aiki Mira. The “Hall of Fame” award (you can only win once in this category) for Best Magazine went to Germany: Future Fiction Magazine, edited by Uwe Post and Sylvana Freyberg, received not just a certificate, but also one of the cute dala horses that were chosen as the award sculptures this year.
For those who are not (yet) familiar with the whole con business, the Swedes have summarized nicely on their website what to expect from a Eurocon. If you want to delve deeper into the matter, you should visit the website of the European Science Fiction Society ESFS. There you can find information about past and future Eurocons and even a manual “How to run a Eurocon”.
Next year’s Eurocon will be held in Rotterdam from August 16-19 (one week after the Worldcon in Glasgow!), and in 2025, we will head to Mariehamn on the Åland Islands, where the con takes place June 26-29. We are bidding to host 2026 in Berlin – the decision on this is made 2 years before each event, so in this case next year in Rotterdam.
We were also allowed to briefly present our application for 2026 and showed a few slides. Since we do not yet have an exact date and a firm decision on a location, we simply summarized MetropolCon 2023, what we would like to improve, what the participants liked, and of course what we will do until the decision in summer 2024. Here is the presentation for you to download as well:
