Worldcon, Saturday

[tamaranth]

06/08/2005 | 10:00 | L(Boisdale-2) | British Landscape and the Fantastic | Where we live informs the stories we tell. How is the British landscape unique, how has it changed, and how has it influenced British SF writers? | Sarah Ash Jessica Rydel, Susanna Clarke, Peter F. Hamilton, Elizabeth Hand, Deborah J. Miller
DM: Influence of British weather as important as landscape.
JR: there are parts of the (historical) landscape that can't be accessed via research, but possibly by imagination
EH: the 'ancientness' of parts of the UK, e.g. Cornwall, can be overwhelming enough to make her feel physically ill
PH: what about urban landcsapes?
DM: Ediburgh as a maritime city: incessant seagull-noise. Made-up legends about the catacombs. "The Victorians have a lot to answer for."
SC: Difficult to find parts of a city that haven't changed for centuries -- but rural landscapes are less liable to change. Films don't manage 18th-century London (often filmed in Prague!) as well as they manage Middle-Earth.
JR: Sul or Sulis -- the goddess of the spring at Bath
EH: old cities have layers, not just physically but from every depiction / description we read or see
London is a vast deep palimpsest, continually destroyed and built up. It's almost impossible to evoke every layer of it. Mike Harrison evokes London as the eternal city. Ruins and reality.
Greer Gilman (audience): SF is a literature of the transcendant: fantasy, the literature of the indweller.
British landscape supersaturated in time ... ideas, stories crystallising out of it.
It's a shifting palimpsest. There's a lot of fantasy about one time irrupting into another.
Audience: the role of rivers in landscape, to bring people in and take them away: a key element.
Question about the British countryside in SF, as opposed to fantasy.
EH: Mike Harrison's Signs of Life ...
There can be too much history: tricky to use UK landscape, there's too much fact to insert imagination ...
Question: How does the British landscape influence the pessimistic cast of British SF? I didn't note any direct response to this one: the weather?!
Question: Why has Britain kept its legends and folklore, and France hasn't?
JR: France has kept its legends but they're more codified, as per the Academie's policing of the language. In England, a C19 sentimental interest and C20 rediscovery of folk songs both helped to keep the myths alive.
Audience: also, stronger influence of Church (anti-myth?) in Europe than in UK.


06/08/2005 | 11:00 | M(Jura) | Rainbow Over the Future: Complex Families, Queer Neighbours | In the West, gay marriage is often seen as opening the door to polygamy. How much of this do we see in SF? Heinlein paved the way, and writers such as Bradley and Delany turned it into a highway. But what does the future look like for family life? | Barrett Brick, Lynn Gold, Ellen Klages, Geoff Ryman, Andrew Trembley
This was more of a muted morning conversation than an actual panel, and it never really coalesced: I made my escape fairly early and went to sit in the sun. Some good kilt jokes though, and the assertion that Marion Zimmer Bradley used to publish lesbian porn.


06/08/2005 | 12:00 | L(Lomond) | How Do We Reinvent Time Travel? | The genre seems to have run out steam, no one even wants to subvert it anymore. What can we do? | Stephen Baxter, Harry Harrison, Kim Stanley Robinson, Connie Willis
No Connie Willis and no explanation of her absence: shame, as she was lauded by the other panellists. HH talked a lot about his own work: KSR said that he actually wanted to talk about time and pacing within the novel: SB talked about the subject of the panel.
HH: time travel is a moribund idea. Hard work to do the (historical) research. One variation is alternate history.
Time travel novels usually have a circular form, rather than a linear one.
Time travel fun to write -- and if a writer has fun, so will the readers.
SB: new stories for new generations. Re alt history, our understanding of history changes -- geographical determinism etc.
KSR: thinking of time travel as distinct from alt history. The difference is in perspective: time travel most often about going back, about bringing a modern perception to the ancient world.
(Years of Rice and Salt is a three-character novel.)
A writer can't be too technical about the actual time machine.
Time travel stories need plots with loops and paradoxes, with knots that need breaking. "There's nothing else that can be done in terms of plotting."
Time in the novel -- KSR covers a few seconds per page, SB covers hundreds of millions of years.
KSR: drama first (close focus, timescale in minutes) and summary as filler -- but summary detracts from pacing and interest.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is almost entirely summary, hardly any dialogue.
The novel as time machine: time in the novel is elastic.
SB: The simplest form of time travel is walking from one place to another. (Talks of new series co-written with Arthur C Clarke, with the Earth a patchwork of different periods of historical time.)
KSR: Olaf Stapledon as an influence on Virginia Woolf. Stapledon sent Woolf a copy of Star Maker, which she read and told him was 'exhilirating'. (This in 1938.) Later, she seems to have tried to incorporate 'deep time' in her last novels, esp Between the Acts. The 'deep time' perspective is one of the things that distinguishes novels from films -- a case of perspective, a long-shot, that was especially valuable in the run-up to WW2 when Stapledon was publishing.
SB: characters in films who behave like time-travellers -- he cites Rose in Titanic, "like a time-traveller, frustrated by the conventions of her time". (My example would be Elizabeth in Pirates of the Caribbean). Becoming more common in historical drama -- a modern-viewpoint character as observer, as per Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.


06/08/2005 | 17:00 | M(Argyll-3) | Geek Eye for the Technophobe Guy | Wary of Wi-fi? Prevaricating on a PDA? If you think Bluetooth is something your dentist might diagnose, this panel is for you! | Our panel of experts will take a tech-resistant fan and rebuild him/her into a walking Singularity... | Michael Abbott, Tanya Brown, Steve Davies, Andrew Ducker
In which we were cruel to Michael Abbott, threatened him with hair straighteners, festooned him with things that flashed ("no, it is not a cyber-sporran") and more or less convinced him, I think, that he needs a PDA in order to read books (e.g. Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, surely the single heaviest three-part novel in my possession) more easily on the move. Andrew Ducker lost points for not knowing what time it was, on account of his phone battery being low. Andrew, you are an Embarrassment to Geekdom. Audience suggestions included groovy new hearing-aid that will replay last ten seconds of conversation, handy for those of us who stare into space and don't listen. I want one. For panels like this one. (I could've been relaxing in audience of panel on homoeroticism, as opposed to homosexuality, in fantasy ...)


Absolute highlight of my con. First of all, it was on a ship. (I'd intended to visit this anyway, even before I found out about the party -- for which I expect my invitation, via old address, any day now <g> Thanks to major_clanger for letting me be the stunt bugshaw). Secondly, they gave us bags full of pirate costume as soon as we boarded. Eyepatches! Bandanas! Pirate loot! A cutlass! ARRRR!!!
Also, I got to drink a lot of passable wine, and have some very interesting conversations. Both Delia Sherman and Ellen Datlow can quote large chunks of dialogue from Pirates of the Caribbean. I was talking to a woman in a splendid Naval dress coat (amateur production of The Pirates of Penzance) for about ten minutes before someone actually introduced us, and I discovered I had been talking to Jan Siegel, a.k.a. Amanda Hemingway, whose early novel Pzyche I have rated highly ever since first reading it at the age of 14 or so. Don't worry, I didn't drool unbecomingly or go all gushy. Oh no. I ran away.
Other fun conversations with [insert list of fun people here]. Many photo opportunities. Fun freebies, including Naomi Novik's first novel, Temeraire, reviewed elsewhere on this LJ -- everyone got the sampler of the first couple of chapters, but I was intrigued enough to pick up the ARC.
Un-fun, and extremely patronising, conversation with a 'gentleman' who shall remain nameless; he clearly had no idea of, and no interest in, what I do; he asked about my blog and what I posted there, and (in a way that indicated he hadn't bothered to listen to my reply) handed me a copy of his book, with the immortal line, "You clearly don't have enough to do, 'tamaranth', why don't you read this and review it on your ... blog?" Wouldn't have minded so much if he hadn't been very obviously reading the name off my badge. Oh dear, I seem to have lost the book somewhere. Possibly the Hilton, where we went afterwards: boo, full of loud people pushing and bouncing and shrieking.

Comments

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

The party at the Tall Ship (Incidentally, is that section supposed to have a title? I looked in my convention guide, but as it's not in there that I can find I assume it's some sort of private party?) sounds like it was a lot of fun. The nameless gentleman who was promoting his book clearly didn't know much about marketing, though. "At least *pretend* to be interested" is probably lesson number one there.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

The party's tagged, on master post and on the lj-cut, as "Not really a programme item: Voyager Party on the Tall Ship": no, it's not a programme item. And the nameless gentleman also forgot lesson zero: 'do not be rude when trying to promote your book' ...

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. Me clearly gone blind.

And the nameless gentleman also forgot lesson zero: 'do not be rude when trying to promote your book' ...

... 'for it will gain you nothing but the loss of some extra dead trees you paid for, without any benefit accruing.'

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Yeah, "Rainbow over the future" was pretty vague, I know, I was on it (in the kilt). When it finally shaped up (as much as it did, which wasn't much) it turned more towards a discussion of the complexities and considerations needed to be made to support non-traditional family structures. It wasn't utter crap, but it wasn't remotely near the best panel I've ever been on.

The bit about MZB doing lesbian pulps and short stories is substantiated. My husband used to spend a lot of time at her house in the early 80s and still has good connections with Diana, DonJohn and many other members of her extended family.

Interaction attendees seemed to be starved for queer-themed panels. The "Queer SF" panel on Sunday was utter crap, but filled the room to overflowing. I would have left if I didn't want to catch up with some folks who were sitting in the audience.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I meant to catch the Queer SF panel, but it clashed with something that lured me more. (Possibly only on grounds of being closer to the panel before it!) Any high points?

And that was a great kilt. I stole your joke about cargo kilts, I'm afraid ...