I must admit I’d never heard of FenCon, the Dallas based fan-run convention, until this year’s ArmadilloCon where I ended up sitting on a Doctor Who panel with one of the FenCon organizers. After we had verbally spared for a while about various aspects of the British Time Traveler’s 45 year existence, he suggested that I might enjoy a visit to FenCon later in the year.

Checking out the guest list and schedule, I decided to give it a try, and I’m glad I did.

FenCon seems to be a unique mixture of science fiction, hard science, media and music, and was easily one of the best organized and most enthusiastically supported cons I’ve been to in a while. From what I heard I believe that attendance was the best ever this year at something around 750 people. Certainly the con areas of the hotel seemed to be constantly busy and most panels and events were well attended.

I was highly impressed with the con event organizers who worked with me to make sure I got on the panels that interested me the most and that my schedule was spaced out enough for me to enjoy some of the other events, and even grab the occasional meal.

Over the three days I participated on panels on subjects as diverse as ePublishing & The Kindle, the Future of Manned Space Flight (where I shared the podium with a couple of NASA rocket scientists – very cool), Writing Media Tie-Ins (photo below), Torchwood, and Doctor Who. The later being a little intimidating as Doctor Who TV screen writer, Paul Cornell was sat in the audience.

Talking of Paul, one of the highlights of the weekend, was appearing as a contestant on his “Just A Minute” game show panel – in which he does a SF/F spin on the venerable BBC radio show.

Everyone at FenCon was very friendly and welcoming (well except from one lady at the Kindle panel who didn’t like my statement that we are moving away from a text based society to a more graphical and visual based one). It was great to see a few familiar faces from ArmadilloCon, but for me the over-riding memory of this Con will be of meeting and getting to know new friends such as Paul Cornell, writer and TV critic Candace Havens, media tie-in writer / editor Keith DeCandido, novelist Stephen Patrick, and more.

I think FenCon will be on my list of ‘must do’ conventions each year now – and seeing the guest list for next year’s event, it should be another great one.