It all started with Dan Dare in the Eagle Comic, then, once ten year old me arrived in Australia my hero became Simon Black as described by Ivan Southall. I devoured American pulp fiction - rarely, though, through the magazines themselves and more through the book collections that found their way into our school's library. I volunteered in the library (great way to avoid the football field) and pored over the book catalogues to find sci-fi titles to convince the librarian to buy. Wyndham, Asimov, Heinlein, Sturgeon, Silverberg et al filled my waking hours. Andre Norton turbocharged my imagination. Harry Harrison shaped my sense of humour. Le Guin changed my life. Since then, science fiction has been my most significant window into the world. Aussiecon Four in Melbourne was an eye opener. It was wonderful to hear people I was reading at the time, like Charles Stross, Kim Stanley Robinson, Gregory Benford and Lucy Sussex. Most of all, though it was the thousands of fellow fans and the resultant feeling of vindication - others, many others, read science fiction! The fantastic writers and stories on offer from around the globe in 2019/20 means for me that CoNZealand is an opportunity to joyously revel in my science fiction-ness and pause to think about what those stories are telling us about our world today.