Nine Worlds Geekfest 2014

August 7, 2014

On Aug 8-10 this year we’ll be hosting the second Nine Worlds Geekfest, and we’ll be taking over every corner of the massive Radisson Blu Edwardian convention hotel at Heathrow. August last year saw the first Nine Worlds Geekfest, and it was an resounding success with over 1500 attendees. In our first year, we became the largest annual residential popular culture / sci-fi convention in the UK. 2014 will see us reaching for new heights with lots of new content, some old favourites returning, and so much cool fun you’ll wish you had a time turner to get to more stuff.

From the beginning, Nine Worlds aimed to be an umbrella for all different types of fandom and geekery to get together, party, and share their favourite stuff with each other. We’ve invited in big organisations like The Victorian Steampunk Society (who run the Asylum steampunk convention) and TitanCon (who run Northern Ireland’s huge Game of Thrones convention) to present their amazing material. And we’ve got individual enthusiasts who run fascinating content like our Fanfic, Doctor Who, and our Future Tech tracks. And groups between those two extremes, like the London Skeptics, Rock Club London, and the Haberdashery social gaming collective who present their areas of awesome geekery.

In total we’ll have over 25 tracks presenting content in 2014, delivering more than 350 sessions over the three convention days. Enough to satisfy even the geekiest of geeks. Mix that all up with parties, comedians, book launches, discos, swordplay masterclasses, the UK’s top Queen tribute band, costume parades, sci-fi sing-a-longs, and bit of quality beer, and that’s what a geekfest is.

Nine Worlds is 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.

Diversity and inclusion are important foundations for Nine Worlds, wide ranging in not only scope of content, but in attendance. Specifically, we’re working to dump the sexism that infests many geek spaces and sci-fi cons. We’ve got a strong anti-harassment policy and we’ll work hard to make Nine Worlds a safe space for women, LGBT+ people, people with access issues, and other groups that are often marginalised at geek/fandom events.

All proceeds from the Nine Worlds convention will go to our charity partner English PEN, a charity that supports persecuted writers around the world and is the UK’s oldest human rights organisation. None of the Nine Worlds organising team are being paid for their work.

Oh, and where does the name Nine Worlds come from? Well, we liked it because it sounded inclusive, like lots of things are going on in one space. We always intended for Nine Worlds to be home to many strands of geekery and fandom. And we also liked it sounding kind of outer spacey and sci-fi. But the name actually refers to the Nine Worlds of Norse mythology, including Asgard (home of the Gods) Midgard (Earth), and Jotunheim (home of Giants). And our mascot, Ymir, is a cuddly Frost Giant from Jotunheim. So, insofar as Nine Worlds has an aesthetic, its soul is born from Norse mythology.