Eastercon Diary – Easter Sunday 27th March 2016 – New Visions Of Manchester

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Poor Anne Charnock must have thought I was stalking her today as the first three events I attended all heavily featured her on the panels and in discussion. Here she was talking with fellow author, Mark Hill about their own Manchester set writings and work relating to the city in general. It was something of a companion-piece to the earlier study of Manchester In Speculative Fiction. Mark Hill agreed with me that some regional writing has an arbitrary sense of location, and that geography of a city can easily be gleamed from Google maps, etc. A story in which characters refer to passing Manchester’s Arndale Centre could just as easily refer to passing Birmingham’s Bullring shopping mall, or ‘hey, look, the Eifel Tower’. A true work of a city should leave readers thinking the work could not have been truly set anywhere else but there. After the event I went out for food, at a nearby-take-away which has a pub next door, Cask Bar, which allows customers to bring in their own food. I wish more bars not serving their own meals allowed such practice. Arthur Chappell