SF authors in fake UFO shock!

Last weekend I was one of the author guests at Schlosscon in Schwerin, Germany. Despite my shameful inability to understand more than a few words of German, I had a great time. The fifty or so fans there were enthusiastic and friendly. Schwerin is an attractive old town, centred around a castle on a lake, and is the site of this year's national garden show, around which three fans took me on Friday before the con started. I took at least a hundred pictures at that show alone. Here are some of the rest.



German SMOF Birgit Fischer (known to all as BiFi) with a copy of The Cassini Division in German.





Magazines and logo of the Science Fiction club Deutschland.



SF publisher Dieter von Reeken (left), and fan Dieter Schmidt (right) with an astounding array of fantastic books.



Karla Schmidt and Dirk Fleck with their German Science Fiction Awards.



Mario Kanzenbach displays his incredibly detailed models, including one that made the cover of the International Plastic Modellers Society journal.



Fellow author GoH, hard-SF writer and professional photographer H.D. Kline shows what to do with a landscape photo that has too much sky.

Special thanks to Ecki Marwitz, Matthew (Matthias Kunkel), Thomas Recktenwalds, BiFi, Alex, Dieter Schmidt, Mario, and Roger. And best wishes to the British fan Wilf James, who is himself a member of German fandom, who'd hoped to translate for me, and was sadly unable to make it to the con, as he was in hospital.