So, you might be wondering, what's this 'Nine Worlds' thing people are talking about? Well, we're a group of sci-fi convention fans putting together a weekend-long, multi-genre, residential GeekFest in London next summer, on August 9th-11th. We've named it Nine Worlds GeekFest. The idea behind Nine Worlds is to create a large fan-run multi-genre geek event in London. For years we've been going to huge US sci-fi cons like Dragon Con and GenCon and SDCC, and we got to wondering why nothing like that exists in the UK. France can drum up over 20,000 sci-fi fans for Utopiales, even Finland can find 15,000 fans for FinnCon. But when it comes to large fan-driven residential multi-genre sci-fi cons in the UK, pickings are pretty slim.

That said, we're not really a sci-fi con either; we're more than that. We started off self-defining as a sci-fi con because there aren't really any other models (or words) for what we're trying to create. But we always intended to be inclusive of all kinds of things from board games to costumes to Doctor Who fandom to skeptics. As we're been developing the project, the label Sci-Fi Con has been fitting less and less well, and eventually, we decided that GeekFest is a better description. And while there'll be lots of sci-fi/fantasy TV/film & lit stuff going on at Nine Worlds, there'll be even more other stuff like science and creative writing and film making, that have no direct link to sci-fi (other than a degree of overlap in fan bases).

We're really looking to make Nine Worlds about fan-led events, and having conversations with creators (writers, directors), rather than focusing on merch and celeb signings. The merch and celeb market feels pretty well covered by the soulless corporate expos. We've rented out the entire conference space and hotel rooms of two large neighbouring Heathrow conference hotels for the weekend. So, we have lots of space, which is great because we've got lots and lots of content organised into a couple of dozen tracks.