So how did the SF Twitterati react to the election?
“I kept forgetting Gordon Brown WAS PM all this time,” wrote comics ace Bryan Hitch. “He always looked like he was pretending and knew it.” A few hours later, he added, “When I wake up in the morning, is Obama going to be Prime Minister? Bring Maggie Back; can’t hurt. The USA did okay with senile Old Ronnie!”
His Ultimates cohort Mark Millar was also up all night and staggering out of bed the next morning with: “Woke up with hangover to find everyone has lost the General Election!”
Warren Ellis was strict with himself about not staying up all night Twittering and failed magnificently: “I am determined to not write twitters about the election all night,” he Tweeted, but before long we got: “Prime Minister Batman’s electoral batphone is not ringing. Does no-one want to cut a bat-deal to form a government?” (We suspect a little Bailey might have been imbibed during election night in the Ellis household).
Ashes To Ashes' s Matthew Graham’s allegiances were easy to spot: “If Cameron gets in I’m fastening balloons to my house and going off to that place where dogs can talk!” he Tweeted.
Simon Pegg was always likely to be the most prolific Twitterer on a night like last Thursday, though: "Worried if the Tories get in I won’t be able to take my kid to Monkey Music cos it will be banned as part of their fun-strangling iniative,” he Twittered, adding, “The biggest swing of the night has been the number of foxes moving into the cities. It will be 36% safer than the country under the Tories.” And then the next day, “How fitting! UK politics hung itself!”
So, what’s to be assumed by this evidence? That the majority of SF & F’s greatest are anti-Tory? Will a Con-Lib pact have disastrous results for home-grown science fiction? Will the Tory’s get their way and neuter the BBC, thus taking Doctor Who ’s budget back to what it was in 1979? We wait with baited breath...
