From Twitter 04-25-2011

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Eastercon ...

Currently suffering a recurrence of the dizziness / sudden fatigue that last year resulted in a spectacularly bloody head-furniture collision. Luckily I'm better at managing it now, so while I did have to pace myself, I survived Eastercon without any trips to A&E.

Part of 'pacing myself' involved frequent solitary downtime, despite which I was still too vacant to hold up one end (corner?) of a conversation by Sunday evening. Damn! Lots of interesting, smart people who I don't see enough of, and I had to retire, zombified.

Did swim every day (lovely luxurious pool), get lots of daylight (nice light lounge bar), avoid crowds (spacious venue), wander through the bluebell wood, and spend Friday afternoon sitting by the lake reading. (Kindle problems resolved, at least temporarily, with help from Amazon.)

My Panels, let me show you them ...

Friday evening: Not the Clarke Award. I was hoping to stir up dissent in this, but tragically the rest of the panel mostly agreed with me. <g> Was pleased to find my gut feeling re the Ness (that it doesn't stand alone) contradicted by owlfish and others: was amused by moderator major_clanger's comment that The Dervish House doesn't need a map in the front because it's a real place. (Although, actually, my argument stands.) My free drink for this panel was djinn and tonic.

Saturday evening: Doctor Who viewing with gummitch and doubtingmichael. I liked 'The Impossible Astronaut' very much.

Sunday morning: Outsider View of Fan Fiction. Somewhat blunted by there being no outsiders in the audience. We did have a nice chat about why we write fanfic and why it is just as 'real' as Proper Published Stuff.

Sunday evening: Sex Love or Money: Modern Vampire Fiction. Was at a disadvantage in this one, as I don't do TV and have neither seen nor read the Sukie Stackhouse / True Blood canon. Did manage to burble on about early Laurell Hamilton and very early Anne Rice.

Monday afternoon: Great Women of SF. Courtesy of iansales, we had a List of 150 Women SF Writers. (la_marquise_de_ and I scribbled on it quite a lot.) Didn't manage a lot of meta in this, though did raise the point that quite a few of the writers on the list were one-hit wonders -- one SF novel, then fantasy or mainstream. I'm thinking about whether this is as true of male writers as it is of female writers -- or indeed whether I'm extrapolating from too few data points (Mary Doria Russell, Rhoda Lerman, Sarah Hall, Amanda Hemingway, Audrey Niffenegger are the ones that spring to mind right now).

Also very much enjoyed the Diana Wynne Jones Memorial panel, Alternative Histories, the BSFA Talk (Prolegomena to a Steampunk Catullus -- Dr Gideon Nisbet extremely funny and erudite) and the BSFA Awards, which picked the winners I would've picked. Brain currently too post-connish to discuss here at any length, though: sorry!

Late Lunchtime Links

Three four interesting things I read today ...

• A Short History of the Female Mad Scientist


• Teenager's social experiment -- faked pregnancy


• Becoming a Vampire Without Being Bitten: Reading Expands Our Self-Concepts, Study Shows


• The Mellified Man (a concept I recently encountered in K J Parker's Blue and Gold, as well as elsewhere)

Kindle update

After this morning's call to Amazon customer support, my Kindle worked a lot better.

Now it is a lot worse (won't switch on / off, picture of Virginia Woolf seems to have mutated) and is going back.

Am wondering if I exposed it to fluffcthulhu over the weekend ... but cannot remember, as aforementioned Old One ate my brains too.

meanwhile cannot access any of my notes on Dervish House, whine