Fantasy Forest 2025.

Isn’t it strange that if you turn up in something different, even at Fantasy Forest, where everyone is “different,” people don’t recognise you.

This year, the SoGgies went as Steampunked Magicians to celebrate the Earthsea Books of Ursula Le Quinn. Our inspiration being the School of Wizardry, Roke Island, Thwil.

Being that Le Quinn's avowed intention was to create a fantasy that was not so Northern European-centric, we thought these amazing robes would bring some exotic colour to Fantasy Forest.

Le Quinn was one of the most important Fantasy and Science Fiction  writers of her, or any other, generation.  She began writing full-time in the late 1950s, and she achieved major critical and commercial success with the novels A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) and The Left Hand of Darkness (1969); these have been described by Harold Bloom as her masterpieces, she won  Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel, becoming the first woman to do so She received numerous other accolades, including eight Hugo Awards, six Nebula Awards, and twenty-five Locus Awards; in 2003, she became the second woman honoured as a Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The U.S. Library of Congress named her a Living Legend in 2000, and in 2014, she won the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Le Guin influenced many other authors, including the Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, David Mitchell, Neil Gaiman, and Iain Banks. After she died in 2018, critic John Clute wrote that Le Guin had "presided over American science fiction for nearly half a century", while author Michael Chabon referred to her as the "greatest American writer of her generation.”

If you haven’t read her books, you should. If fantasy is your thing, start with the Wizard of Earthsea. If cerebral SF is your thing, then start with The Left Hand of Darkness.

The costumes that  Nikki, Helen and I wore we brought from the Royal Opera House sale in Aberdare. They had been designed and made originally for a production of the Trojans at La Scala, Milan; they have been to San Francisco and on stage at the Royal Opera House, London. Rhys came as The Shadow. We blinged the costumes up a little and accessorised. I made the hats out of scrap leather.