Eastercon: Tanith Lee GOH interview

I'm writing up and posting, separately, notes on each panel that I attended at Eastercon. They're date-stamped with the date of the actual panel. I'll post an entry with links to all of 'em once I've finished writing up notes.

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Saturday 14:00 Guest of Honour: Tanith Lee interviewed by Sarah Singleton.
SS: Is it true that you were a French revolutionary in a previous life?
TL: Probably not, but I did believe it for a while.
(It was hard to get The Gods are Thirsty -- 'massively flawed but with great passion' -- published. She turned down a UK publisher who offered to take it if she cut the last third: needed the money but no.)

SS: You talk of writing as channelling -- is that what it's like?
TL: Not a voice, hard to describe. "What my characters are, I become." Sometimes has to 'dig through the wall' when blocked: "I've been blocked 2 or 3 times. It was like being deserted."

She writes longhand, can't use a computer.

Esther Garber, her writing alter ego: based on Colette; gay; wants to write a novel called Cleopatra at the Blue Hotel. TL speaks of her in third person: "she's a character, she writes through me". SS compares Esther to Sarah Waters.

SS: Current projects?
TL: trying to interest publisher in a novel about 'big bad human-loving dragons'. Also another YA novel, a future city where books have been burnt, they just have scraps they use as a kind of tarot. Also lots of short stories, including one for a Vance anthology. Also, unofficial novel (acronym 'ATC OTC') that nobody knows about. "Apocalyptic, terrifying and very funny."

TL: Metallic Love was written because of pressure from fans.

SS: is tackling issues - esp. those affected young women - gruelling?
TL: Not when I'm writing but when I read back.
SS: theme of justice rather than redemption.
TL: karma prevents retribution.

TL: "Very little with me -- about 2% -- is conscious choice."

TL: "When I'm being me I'm very female. When I'm a writer I can be anything."

SS: asking about collaboration with John Kaiine (husband).
TL: he wrote diary entries and read them to her; she picked up when he was interrupted, pastiching his style.

Audience (Kari): What happened after the end of Day by Night? (Effects of stories)
TL: I've been wondering that myself.

TL: Never had a fear of showing others her work: "I just knew it mattered." "I don't matter. What matters is what I do."

TL: Cyrion: she didn't know the ending, was finding clues in her own writing. Backbrain, subconscious processing.

Audience: New Flat Earth books?
TL: They're reprinting the old ones plus 2 new ones (scheduled 2010). Collection The Earth is Flat and final novel Earth's Master.

TL: She doesn't keep up with the genre -- scared of accidentally stealing someone else's ideas -- but Liz Williams has restored her faith in SF.

She was 21 when she wrote Don't Bite the Sun and has written nearly 90 books.

On revision and changes of direction, not always understanding how the plot works ... if something is really stalled it has to be left for a while.

Audience: Do you do much rewriting?
TL: Not when it flows. Usually in the sticky bits where it doesn't read well. She wants the rhythm of the words: resists heavy-handed editing that loses the rhythm and flow. She tends to write long.

Eastercon: Novel Discussion: Tanith Lee - Drinking Sapphire Wine

I'm writing up and posting, separately, notes on each panel that I attended at Eastercon. They're date-stamped with the date of the actual panel. I'll post an entry with links to all of 'em once I've finished writing up notes.

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Saturday 10:00: Novel Discussion: Tanith Lee - Drinking Sapphire Wine (Craig Gidney)
One of my favourite Tanith Lee novels, so I made the effort to get up early: so did about ten other people. Slightly unnervingly, one of them was someone I haven't seen since the early 90s.
Points discussed:
- written in the 1970s, a response to the hedonism of the 1960s.
- it's not a utopia; there's no meaning to anything
- Don't Bite the Sun, the second novel in the duology, is more 'adult' -- about growing up and leaving.
- in some ways the end of Don't Bite the Sun is a triumph of conservatism, reinstatement of the family unit
- the colony of exiles is a big threat to the cities, hence the attack
- the gender-switching doesn't mean that the unnamed protagonist [henceforth 'P'] is sexless: long discussion of whether P is predominantly female or not.
- the gender-switching might seem pro-gay but it's often done to permit heterosexual sex: only a male and a female can marry -- and 'marriage' (which can be temporary) is a prerequisite for sex
- connection with Lee's 'sex and death' theme
- underlying themes of not taking responsibility; what you think you want versus what you really want; quest for happiness
- is Metallic Love a prequel?

Eastercon: "It's Just a Story": China Mieville's GOH Feature

I'm writing up and posting, separately, notes on each panel that I attended at Eastercon. They're date-stamped with the date of the actual panel. I'll post an entry with links to all of 'em once I've finished writing up notes.

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Saturday 11:00: Guest of Honour: China Miéville: "For God's Sake It's Just A Story! A Reader's Guide to Ruining SF."
- On whether the author's intention matters: on whether the original context in which a work was created matters. ('No' to both.) So it's perfectly valid to interpret an old text in light of current thinking.
- Adverse reaction to political reading is based on fear of books and guilt about the society that created them. (A great deal here on the innocence or guilt of literature.)
- Authors shouldn't argue with reviewers, except about strictly factual matters. They're not qualified. Some authors are good critics of their own work: some aren't. (Later, in response to audience question: some readers have discovered aspects of CM's own work that he was unaware of. No examples though.)
- when can a reader ignore statements of authorial intent, such as Rowling's revelations about Dumbledore? All the time: if not in text, doesn't count.
- cleaning up Enid Blyton's books (renaming Fanny to Franny, for example) deprives a whole generation of children of the opportunities for dirty jokes.
- Zenna Henderson's 'People' books as Mormon propaganda
- on Lovecraft's xenophobia: "the shoggoths, which look a little bit like Russians..." Er, right.
- "Ezra Pound's poetry would not be what it is if he didn't hate Jews so much"
- The Sparrow ( spoilers )

Very interesting remark from audience: "Is the worst insult to a book to say that it's not worth interpreting?"

Eastercon: Fantastic London

I'm writing up and posting, separately, notes on each panel that I attended at Eastercon. They're date-stamped with the date of the actual panel. I'll post an entry with links to all of 'em once I've finished writing up notes.

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Saturday 12:30 Fantastic London. From Dickens to Iain Sinclair, London is one of the most imagined cities in the world. Why is that, and what does a fantastic imagination add? (Neil Gaiman, Geoff Ryman, Louis Savy, Graham Sleight)
GR: London is a palimpsest of fiction and imagery. Writing needs a strong sense of place and London is instantly recognisable.
NG: London is layered in time: one foot down = one century back. "Any pattern you want to find, it will give you."
Looking for patterns in Sinclair's Lud Heat but didn't have the datum to complete the pattern: 'Lud Shed', he discovered from the author, is Sinclair's own house.
LS: filmmakers have fun playing with and destroying landmarks
GR: The London Eye is now an icon for London in the way that the Eiffel Tower is for Paris.
GS: J G Ballard's London is drained of meaning -- alienation. (Like Heathrow!)
GR: talking about the complex under the Shell building -- tunnels for transporting wounded troops to St Thomas' Hospital, a theatre designed by Cecil Beaton with stars in the ceiling, a railway branch to Necropolis.
NG: The Mall has removable traffic lights -- so it can be converted to an airstrip in 25 mins, should evacuation of Buckingham Palace be necessary. (Also why it's so wide.)

- Fantastic Cities Based on London (New Crobuzon, Viriconium ...): how do we recognise London?
GR: globalisation has lessened London's individuality. Still not a 24-hour city.
GS: the Blitz, a traumatic event that has left visible scars
NG: plague pits. The dead past is not dead.

- Audience asks for fantastic London in film.
LS: London in The Golden Compass is based on Wren's original designs

NG on the golden age when it was safe on the streets: 'always 35 years ago'

GS: steampunk is a very London genre whether specifically set in London or not.
NG: lots of brass things that ratchet, and possibly some steam. No punks.

Audience to NG: Has moving away from UK changed your imaginative relationship with London?
NG: Neverwhere was the first novel he wrote in the US. Recreating what he'd left behind. There's still a big London novel he wants to write -- nearly started it in 1998 but wrote American Gods instead. A book in which London reconfigures itself temporally: 'Covent Garden will always be in the 1770s'.

Audience asking about darker side of London, plague / Ripper etc, does that influence London's popularity in the fantastic?
NG: it makes everything credible.
GR: Toronto a thriving city (NG: 'very clean') but not somewhere to explore the dark side of humanity.
Tourist London is the celebrity side -- nothing like the real city.