Robert Rankin (on the right) at the largest Steampunk festival in Europe.

I managed to get to the front of the book signing queue and became the proud owner of signed poster 1/250 above.

He also personally inscribed a copy of his latest novel,  Mechanical Messiah (above). I’ve been a fan of his ‘far fetched fiction’ for some time. This escalated after hearing the audiobook edition of the Brightonmicon. His recent forays into the Steampunk genre are a mixture of outrageous running jokes with some historical anchors. The immersion helped give a tongue-in-cheek slant to some of the characters in my own Steampunk work in progress, The Crystal Parliament.