Worldcon, Thursday

[tamaranth]

04/08/2005 | 15:00 | M(Barra) | The Matter of Britain in British Music: An investigation into the Matter of Britain as portrayed in British music, from Purcell to Birtwistle -- and beyond | Sarah Ash
Only lasted about 20 minutes in this: it was a small, warm room; I needed to get to a panel at 3:30; and the (squeaky) door kept opening as people looked in, found there was nowhere to sit, and went away. Sarah Ash coped valiantly with continuous interruptions: played us music ranging from Bax's Tintagel (1917) to Purcell's King Arthur (1691), and discussed the changing perception / treatment of the Arthurian myth, from the Victorian view of a gentle and courteous Arthur to the fiercer warrior-king portrayed by Treece, Sutcliff etc. She even found an excerpt from Harrison Birtwistle's opera Gawain (1991) that didn't make me scream and run away.
Wish I'd got to stay longer and talk about Purcell (especially differences between the British mythology in King Arthur and in The Fairy Queen).


04/08/2005 | 15:30 | M(Argyll-3) | Hans Christian Andersen & the Dark Side of Fairy Tale | Fairy tales really aren't very nice; they encode the fears and prejudices of adult society. By the time you leave this panel you might have doubts about the red shoes you wanted so much. | John Clute, Greer Gilman, Edward James, Faye Ringel, Jo Walton
Discussion started with 'what distinguishes fairytale from mythology, written stories from oral tradition?'
GG: written stories are "the light of common story refracted through a particular -- or in Andersen's case peculiar -- mind."
None of us have experienced oral fairy tales: folklorist (?Dundas) has said there are no more oral myths to be harvested. surely this is Western, not global?
EJ: 4th century BC ref to 'the lies of the poets' -- they knew it was made up, not myth.
JW: Andersen not only wrote down existing tales but created new ones
JC: fairytales are only light when they've been lightened. The heart of fairy story is the need to get through to the end.
EJ: If you're a devout Christian, 'The Little Matchgirl' has a happy ending.
JW: fairytales from / set in "a world you wouldn't know that Christianity had ever touched".
Audience: fairytales are a subset of folk tales, set in another realm. Myths are set in the real world, long ago. Legends are set in the real world, more recently. Living memory / folk memory?
JC: Andersen deeply delusional (thought he was the King's son, Dickens' friend). Had an inaccurate view of which of his works mattered -- he was proudest of a bad novel
JW: Same as A A Milne. Repressed authors giving themselves permission to write freely in children's fiction: they won't be as uninhibited in adult-oriented works. .. Tolkien rated Silmarillion higher than LOTR
JC: Andersen's fiction subversive ...
FR: 'ballet girl', ballerina, as metaphor for prostitution
JW: there's a lot of sentimentality too, but we don't remember the purely sentimental stories.
GG: "without the shimmer of the sentimental, perhaps the stories wouldn't have been given to children."
Myth is like physics, up and down, how and why. Fairytales more like biology, red in tooth and claw.
Panel compares Andersen with Lovecraft -- Andersen more disciplined, happier to accede to editors' wishes.
He has an SFnal streak: EJ mentions 'The Great Sea-Serpent', a tale about the transatlantic phone cable (JW: sounds more like Kipling)
JC: Kipling, like Andersen, wrote animate fiction, where the characters are the ideas, are the narrative drivers.
JW: (response to audience q. 'would Andersen's stories have worked without an educated underclass?') it's treating children as the underclass. Middle-class writings about poverty, tending towards the patronising.
GG: Western literature "a warp of sadism and a weft of sentimentality", a moire of shot silk.
EJ: 'The Little Mermaid' is a repulsive story.
FR: 'The Little Mermaid' is 'Titus Andronicus' for fish.


04/08/2005 | 22:00 | M(Argyll-1) | I'm Sorry I Haven't an SFing Clue | Those famous opening notes tip you off immediately, this is the antidote to panel items... Remarkably well-preserved jazz trumpeter Tony Keen is the chair, and scoring duties are the responsibility of the lovely Cardboard Buffy. | Ben Jeapes, Tony Keen, Ken MacLeod, John Meaney, Christopher Priest
Given that half the contestants hadn't got the email (and may well have been cowed by being presided over, not by Cardboard Buffy but by Cardboard Aragorn), this went surprisingly smoothly. And was funny.
Ken Macleod, during the Charades round, Iron Council: "Between you and me, I think it's about time we had a revolution."