LuxCon 2024

LuxCon, which celebrated its tenth anniversary this year, is a large comicon-like festival in Luxembourg, Europe’s ‘‘seventh smallest country.’’ It did make me wish to visit a convention in Liechtenstein next, just for comparison! While the main attraction of the festival is its truly impressive cosplay display, it is also home to numerous roleplay­ing and board game en­thusiasts, with a large dealers’ room. Some of the merchandise, such as those related to the hugely successful German SF franchise Perry Rhodan, may be less familiar to Anglo­phone readers, but the atmosphere is friendly and inviting regardless of what language you speak. People in Lux­embourg move fluently between Luxembourgish, German, and French–or English, for those of us who are more linguistically challenged!

There is a vibrant book track. This year’s guests were myself, Samantha Shannon, Cheryl Morgan, and Peadar Ó Guilín, who is considered LuxCon’s good luck charm, having been to every LuxCon since its incep­tion. The book team was led by enthusiastic author and playwright Jean Beurlet, a native Luxembourgian with a real passion for the country–a highlight of our visit was a guided tour by Jean around Luxembourg City which included a visit to Rue Hugo Gernsback and to Luxembourg’s medieval complex of underground tunnels. It was fascinating to have buildings pointed out which were once owned by the Gernsbacher family, an insight into a place that can lay a reasonable claim to be the birthplace of modern science fiction. On our first night we attended the monthly space bar event, dedicated to Luxembourg’s small but flourishing space industry com­munity, who have come from all over the world to work on new lunar missions. Sci­ence and science fiction intermingled.

We took part in numerous panels through the two-day festival, which runs over Saturday and Sunday. Local pub­lisher and author Cosimo Suglia talked on the ‘‘What’s All This Punk About?’’ panel about his recent Solarpunk anthology, col­lecting short stories, mostly in English, from local authors, many of whom turned up for the traditional author meetup on the Saturday. Audrey Martin, a local au­thor and one of the organisers, took part in discussions on female representation with Cheryl Morgan, Samantha Shannon, and Keren Landsman, while a similarly titled panel also took place in French.

The weather was gloriously warm and sunny, so when not doing panels we were mostly outside, enjoying the many food trucks and Luxembourgian sausages–and, in my case at least, the free beer for us ex­alted guests of honour–a perk which I feel all future conventions should emulate!

On Sunday evening we were taken to the other side of Luxembourg–public trans­port is free throughout the country–to see the old steelworks and have dinner. We all chose to stay late on Monday to take the tour with Jean throughout Luxembourg City itself, which sits nestled in a deep valley surrounded by steep cliffs and criss­crossed by im­posing bridg­es. It does not disappoint–even its founding myth, from a thousand years ago, in­volves the union of a prince and a mermaid!

I only got to say a brief hello to LuxCon’s chief organ­iser, Gérard Kraus, who was busy running around ensur­ing the smooth running of the con. An avid collector, he once welcomed Hugo Gernsback’s grandson to LuxCon, a fact I was fascinated to discover. The past is very much alive in Luxembourg wherever you turn, and if Hugo Gernsback left it as a young man to seek his future in America, now Luxembourg’s Space Agency is seeking to go to those same stars he once dreamed of. Ten years in, LuxCon is only growing bigger. If you’ve ever wanted to visit one of Europe’s hidden jewels, this is as good a reason to go as there can be!

—Lavie Tidhar

Photographers: Keren Landsman and Melanie Schons

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to continue quality coverage of the science fiction and fantasy field.

©Locus Magazine. Copyrighted material may not be republished without permission of LSFF.