Dispatches from Fighting Fantasy Fest 4

A picture of Jonathan Green, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, the quality of which may explain the lack of photography accompanying this piece.

On Saturday, September 3rd, approximately 400 Fighting Fantasy fans descended on the University of West London in Ealing for the fourth Fighting Fantasy Fest. It had been three years since the last Fest, allowing this year's event to fall on the 40th anniversary of the franchise -- and to mark that occasion, two new gamebooks were launched, one of which was the first entry by co-creator Steve Jackson in the series since Creature of Havoc in 1986. It all added up to give the event a buzz you might not think possible for a convention for a 40-year-old series of childrens' books. This was going to be something special.

After claiming one's programme and various freebies (the Fighting Fantasy-branded dice are not quite as nice as the ones that were available from certain retailers with purchase of Crystal of Storms or the Return to Firetop Mountain reprint two years ago, but still very nice nonetheless) from registration, everyone who could fit into Weston Hall (renamed Firetop Mountain for the day) for master of ceremonies Jonathan Green to officially open the event. If Jonathan was at all tired from pulling the whole event together, he didn't show it at all, but did have to bring us the news of a few last-minute cancellations due to COVID or personal situations -- of particular disappointment was Geraldine Cooke, the editor at Penguin who commissioned the series in the first place, but hey ho. The first talk, with Green interviewing Crystal of Storms author Rhianna Pratchett, was both insightful and entertaining, with amusing revelations including the fact that you can't use the word "sandwich" in an FF book.

I then ducked out briefly to buy copies of the two new books and get some autographs (if I have one minor criticism of how the event was run, it's that it could have been more obvious where some of the signees were located for this bit, but it wasn't a huge problem or anything), then managed to get back in time to see 95% of the next panel, led by former range editor Marc Gascoigne, accompanied by recurrent contributors to the franchise in the 80s and 90s Peter Darvill-Evans and Paul Mason, and one-off author Keith P. Phillips. The contrast between the veterans of Games Workshop, who were hired from within as it were, and an author hired on the strength of his submission from outside worked really well here, although the best revelation wasn't even anything to do with FF -- it was that Darvill-Evans managed to get the rights to release original Doctor Who fiction whilst working at Virgin Publishing in the early 90s, in the face of apathy at the BBC, by drawing up a contract himself and sending it to someone at the Beeb to sign!

Staying with the panels, next up was Sir Ian Livingstone himself and the illustrator for his new gamebook Shadow of the Giants, Mike McCarthy. Having been critical of the new style of illustrations used for the Scholastic books before now, it was a little cathartic to hear Ian himself -- in extremely diplomatic terms -- admit that he wasn't keen on it and it was his own initiative (coupled with market research) that saw the two new books return to something far closer to the 'classic' style. We also got to hear his potted history of the franchise, which contains stories that are always amusing to hear no matter how familiar they are to long-term fans -- I found his thoughts on the series being caught up in the "Satanic Panic" of the 80s, as seen in the most recent series of Stranger Things, particularly amusing. (There was also plenty of stuff the veteran wouldn't have heard before; apart from a previously unseen sketch of an unused cover design for The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, when his slideshow brought up a scan of an actual 80s petition to have the series banned, he noted "I have their addresses!")

There was then a break for lunch, also allowing me to get a proper look in the new-for-this-year dealer's room -- apart from having a few new Marvel gamebooks available a month before general sale, I was also able to see and buy some of the Lone Wolf Definitive Editions for the first time, and get a shock when I discovered one of the people demonstrating miniature painting (including the convention-exclusive Zagor 75mm figure) was someone who used to work in the college I went to.

Board games were also being played during the break, but I didn't get a chance to look at them, because at the start of the lunch break the convention also had to contend with its biggest logistical issue -- the autograph queue for Steve & Ian themselves, as all 400 guests lined up to get books signed (and then sometimes going back to the end of the queue for more!) Despite the daunting sight of a line threatening to stretch out of the door at one point, the organisers dealt with this very well, especially when Steve had to leave temporarily for his afternoon panel, and everyone in the queue was so friendly and ready to chat amongst themselves that the wait really didn't feel like an issue. Steve & Ian themselves were also nothing short of heroic -- both men's STAMINA held up impressively, to the point that Ian was still happy to sign books for anyone who'd missed out earlier even as everyone was packing up at the end of the day.

Anyway, amidst all this was Steve's panel with Jonathan Green (I had to miss the earlier one with Alan Langford, Duncan Smith and Tony Hough, sadly), again discussing his new book -- although they'd been out for a few days, the panels were wisely held under the assumption that most attendees would have brought their books at the event itself and not yet had a chance to read them, and both worked very well, providing some tantalising hints for the new adventures without ever straying into outright spoilers. We also learned that the reason why Jonathan gets a co-writing credit with Steve for Secrets of Salamonis is that after Steve was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease a few years ago, Jonathan did some work helping to collate Steve's ideas together to the point that Steve felt he deserved a co-writer's credit.

The final panel of the day saw illustrator Iain McCaig join us live from his home in Canada via Zoom. Iain is best known these days for his work as a concept artist on movies including the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars, but has a relationship with FF stemming back to the first ever advert for Games Workshop. As with his previous talk at the second Fest in 2017, Iain was quite simply astonishing, a masterclass in someone talking about a subject they love, and the whole thing was not affected at all by his not being there in person (when someone asked him about the implications of recent advances in AI for artists, you'd think he was there in person). His whole career was covered, from the revelation that Darth Maul only has horns because someone misinterpreted his concept art for the character, to him recently redrawing his original Games Workshop advert from 1980 for the cover of Dice Men, the forthcoming history of the company.

With the talks finished, next up was the charity auction, hosted with aplomb by Ian Livingstone, the highlight of which was someone paying £50 for two Scholastic copies of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain which had been removed from the printer too early and were still joined together, basically making them unreadable. (A framed page from Warlock signed by Steve, Ian and illustrator Russ Nicholson fetched £310! A sealed copy of the Nintendo DS adaptation of Warlock also went for £100, in spite of Ian's comments about the game's quality...) After things started disassembling, the evening ended with a screening of the gaming-miniatures-with-live-action-heads film Argh and the Quest for the Golden Dragon Skull, which I had to leave partway through to catch my train home -- it was perhaps a minor mistake not to go into this straight from the auction, since the percentage of the crowd who stayed to see it wasn't huge and I wasn't the only person to have to duck out during it -- but what I saw seemed pretty funny, with the audience particularly appreciative of Ian's cameo appearance.

Overall, though, FFF4 was a very strong day indeed. Going back to my comment about the last panel being a masterclass in someone talking about a subject they love, I felt that was really a way to sum up the entire day -- an event where you could tangibly feel the love and affection for this 40-year-old franchise of children's books.