Thanks to friend and fellow writer-translator Laurent Queyssi (whose work has appeared in English in The New Accelerator and at StarShipSofa), I was able to attend Utopiales: my first time at the European science fiction and fantasy convention held every November in Nantes.
Since I’ve had the pleasure of translating for him before, editor Julien Wacquez also had me on a panel to discuss his ambitious bilingual digital magazine Angle Mort/Blind Spot, which tries to bring the worlds of science and science fiction more closely together by featuring research papers alongside short fiction, as well as in-depth interviews with everyone it publishes.
Blind Spot board meeting.
Moderated by translator, editor, and fellow Blind Spot staffer Sylvie Denis, the panel took place at 2pm on Halloween in the Agora de M. Spock, a curtained space right across from the convention bar.
Utopiales proved a fairly mind-blowing glimpse into the French spec fic scene, with a loose, inviting setup, crack organization, and lots of drunk camaraderie. I went home, bags heavy, with a long reading list from the lush book display.
