Playing hookey
Not with work or anything, but with my responsibilities. Instead of reading some of the anthologies waiting for me, I’ve got Ilium, by Dan Simmons, to read. It’s mine, it’s just been with someone else for an awfully long time. Long enough that I’ve bought the sequel, Olympos, and haven’t read it yet – despite the fact that my hands almost literally itch every time I see it lying there on my bookshelf – because I must re-read the first so that it’s clear in my mind.
I love this book. I love it a lot. In fact, I love almost everything by Simmons, but that’s another issue. There aren’t too many books that manage to combine the Trojan stories with lovely, breath-taking scifi (yeh, OK, there’s Simon Brown’s Troy anthology – did I mention and I did a podcast on it?! – but short stories are a different teapot of eels from a full-blown space opera epic novel). It confused me delightfully the first time I read it, and I am loving reading it again – because I already know what various things mean, but there’s a lot of detail that I’ve forgotten and it’s just wonderful.
Pity I didn’t get this at the start of the holidays… as it is, I’m going to have to play a little bit of hookey when I go back to school next week, as I’ve got too much on this weekend to be able to finish it…
The Moneypenny Diaries
I started and finished it this morning. Apparently ‘edited’ by Kate Westbrook, Jane Moneypenny’s niece, it covers 1962: starts with Bond’s wife Tracy dying (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, I think), and ends with Bond in Japan (You Only Live Twice). Lots of stuff in between, of course, some of it about Bond – but mostly about Moneypenny, naturally enough. There’s a romance, intrigue, all the stuff you’d expect. It’s separated into months, with each month starting with a short bit from Westbrook about her search to validate the contents of the diaries.
My mum and sister told me it was great, so they loaned me their copy. I have to admit that I didn’t read it in all that much detail. I’m not really in a Cold War mood, and the writing wasn’t quite good enough to sucker me in completely. Which is why I was able to read it in a couple of hours. It was pretty good, and I would definitely recommend it to fans of Bond and the Cold War. Interestingly, it’s written with lots of footnotes, explaining exactly who various personages are in ‘real’ life. Some of them definitely are/were real, others I’m not sure about – they could be, and Westbrook has woven them into the story, or she’s just made people up conveniently. I’m actually happy with either explanation, personally.
And it’s totally up for a sequel, too, which I think I would probably read.
Tagged!
Tagged by GJ
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4-7 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest (unless it’s too troublesome to reach and is really heavy. Then go back to step 1).
6. Tag five people.
From Shakespearean Negotiations, by Stephen Greenblatt for which AB will be so proud of me:
“The storm in the play seems to several characters to be of more than natural intensity, and Lear above all tries desperately to make it mean something (as a symbol of his daughters’ ingratitude, a punishment for evil, a sign from the gods of the impending universal judgment), but the thunder refuses to speak. When Albany calls Goneril a “devil” and a “fiend” (4.2.59, 66), we know that he is not identifying her as a supernatural bring – it is impossible, in this play, to witness the eruption of the denizens of hell into the human world – just as we know that Albany’s prayer for “visible spirits” to be sent down by the heavens “to tame these vild offenses” (4.2.46-7) will be unanswered.”
You’ll notice that’s not a full 4-7 sentences, but I thought it was enough – and it’s the end of the sentence, too.
Resolution
Having gone to a very interesting seminar this afternoon, given by Stephen Knight, about Myrddin/Merlin – which I will blog about maybe tomorrow, when I feel more human – I have renewed my determination to read more academic books. I was good at this for a few years out of uni, but I have got slack recently – unsurprisingly – and while my brain hasn’t quite turned to moosh (I hope), it’s getting a bit sluggish. So I aiming to read, realistically, maybe 10 academic books a year. Some of those will be popular-ish histories, because I do so love them; some will be more academic, I hope – I plan to re-read many of my uni course readers, at least the history ones that are relevant to school and the English ones that I am interested in; I also made good inroads on this resolution by beginning Greenblatt’s Shakespearean Negotiations, this evening: it’s been on my shelf for a few years now, and I have never got past the intro. It has the best opening line ever – way better than Pride and Prejudice: “I began with the desire to speak with the dead.” And some of my 10 will also, I have vowed, include education books. Just recently I have realised that I don’t put quite the effort and love into my vocation as perhaps I ought. I am undertaking some steps throughs school to improve that, but realise that I need to spend some external time on it too, sad as that might be.
Anyway. Expect, at random intervals, posts about these academic texts. And feel free to ignore them at will.
Troy
Not the movie, not a person, but a collection of short stories by Simon Brown. Despite the fact that I had been warned to the contrary, I rather did expect that all of the stories would be genuinely and obviously connected to the Greek myths. This was not the case. All of the stories were quite good, but I admit that the stories that were very definitely set in the Trojan context were my favourite. I won’t go into it in too much detail now, because there’s another project coming up that I will reveal more about soon… but I have to share my joy over one story.
“The Masque of Agamemnon” had me crowing with joy from the first paragraph to the last sentence. It is just so clever, so beautiful, so enjoyable… I can’t really explain it. I tried to explain it to J, but since he doesn’t know the stories very well it didn’t make all that much sense to him. But just the title – so clever! (Although damned by Schliemann.) And the ending – brilliant! And the merging of scifi with the stories – ! My incoherence shows, I hope, my inchoate appreciation rather than a Sunday night brain.
It also reminded me that I have Dan Simmons’ Olympos stil looking at me accusingly, unread… but I haven’t read Ilium in ages, and I have to before I read this one, and it is still loaned out to someone.
The cover of Troy is lovely too.
*sigh*
This was one very, very good purchase from NatCon. And it’s one of the copies with signatures from Simon Brown, Sean Williams (co-wrote “Masque”), and (!) Garth Nix, who wrote the Introduction (on which I have mixed feelings, but I think I like it).
NatCon #4 (and last, fear not)
Monday.
Started off away from the con – had ‘coffee’ with the lovely Alison and Kate. We were meant to go to Brunetti’s in the city, but they were closed. So we wandered to Burke St, and sat in a cafe for 15 min or so having ordered coffee and not getting any love; then we left and went to Laurent (I want to go there a lot), and I had a delicious chocolate and almond croissant. And a hot chocolate.
Then, back to the con.
And then to lunch. Took the gang (it really felt a bit like a gang by that time) to Deli France, and it finally proved that Melbourne really is the Food Capital.
Then back to the con. And sitting in the lobby, to be in a convenient place to see people signing out of the hotel. Rachel was good and went to the closing ceremony, but I never did hear if it was worthwhile.
Lots of sitting, lots of talking… me gaining review copies of stuff to read, particularly for LastShortStory.
I left at about 4pm, because J was going to be home at about 4.30 or so and he was a bit sick. It was hard to leave. Good friends in three days? Crazy, but true.
Thus endeth my first convention.
NatCon #3
Sunday.
I skipped on the earliest panel, feeling a bit guilty because surely that’s what the con is meant to be about? – but then I spent time with Alisa and Tansy et al, and it was ok. (At least, I think that’s what I did… maybe that was the morning I read? I dunno; I forget.) I did go to the panel “Science fiction and Fantasy in the School Curriculum” – which was sort of interesting, except that the main person on the panel was a bit of a twit. I got quite annoyed by him. Particularly when he was saying things like: “All due respect to my fellow educators…[insert insulting comment here].” Very annoying. Oh, and then there were the “only geeks who get beaten up at lunch read scifi/fantasy at school” comments.
Anyway, after listening to how people use/have used the genres in curriculum – and a few kids whinge about how creative writing never gets taught (a. some would say it can’t be taught; b. yes many of us don’t know how to teach it because it’s not a prereq to become an English teacher and that is not a bad thing about us; and c. … whatever) – I decided to have my say. I asked, basically, why we should include it. I understand the desire to get kids to enjoy your likes – heck, that’s why I teach history – but why were they getting so het up about it? Cath Ortlieb gave me a good answer… Ian got all huffy under the collar. Which was pretty funny. And then, because it was that time and because I had made my point, I left with Rachel to go to Cassiphone’s book launch. I won a book! And, in fact, I won Splashdance Silver, which I already own but got signed, so that’s very “ooooh.” Oh, and chocolate. Lovely. Lost Shimmaron looks like it will be a very entertaining series; I liked the mermaids in Seacastle.
Back to the con… and to an hour of movie trailers! Much fun! It’s great watching trailers with like-minded people. Yay Transformers.
For the rest of the afternoon, I stooged around. Went to a little bit of a “Create your own Space Opera” panel hosted by Paul Kidd (two space squid make a double decapod…). Missed the apocalypse panel. Went to dinner at a very dodgy cafe with Alisa, Ben and Rachel… and then went to the Orb #7 launch and the preliminary screening of The Liminal. A very funny (sometimes deliberate, sometimes not) film made on a shoe string. Most of the cast was there, which was nice. And then there was Renaldo, First Sheep in Space. Which was quite funny, although I imagine funnier if you know the fans involved. I particularly liked him starring in Violence of the Lambs, and Baa Wars.
NatCon #2 redux
The good vs evil panel was good (see how I’m picking up almost from where I left off?), and Tansy provided a good moderator – and even got a few words in edgewise, despite efforts to the contrary.
I stayed in the room afterwards, and listened to Gill Pollack talk about food and how it is important in world-building, and give some interestin foody anecdotes. She also threw chocolate at/to the crowd, but since I had already received a few of her choc beetles I declined. I did try the grains of paradise, which are/were supposed to be an aphrodisiac… no dice.
I was then thinking of staying on for a talk on new stuff in alternative history, but given who the speaker was I left. Rather quickly. Enough said about that… I then hung out with all my new-found pals, went and had dinner at a Japanese restaurant in China Town (go figure), and made it back for the free booze and nibbles at the launch of Dark Space (which I’m looking forward to; I think I managed to get named second reviewer for ASif!) and The Darkness Within (eh; not so much). And then – the Ditmars! which apparently recognise “excellence in science fiction, fantasy and horror by Australians” in the previous calendar year. GirlieJones won herself three!! Including Best New Talent! Ah, vote rigging, so much fun… but seriously, it was great; the look on her face was priceless (each time!), and they were of course well deserved.
Finally, it was off to my very first Room Party, hosted by Cat Sparks and Rob Hood, to launch Daikaju #2 – very exciting. As were the drinks: champagne with blue curacao and a lolly dinosaur. Excellent!
And then home, and to bed.
NatCon #2
One thing I had to decide was how many panels to attend. I knew that at least Alisa and Tansy weren’t planning on going to many, but I figured that since I had paid the money to be there – and it was my first con – I should try and get as much out of it as possible. Plus, I was still feeling a bit nervous about all the new people I had met and whether we would manage to keep being friendly for the whole weekend, so I figured I need somewhere to go for refuge, should it come down to it!
I went to one of the first panels of the day… on Second Life, of all things. People who… go on? play on? use? utilise? Second Life fascinate and bewilder me. I found out that people really do make money from it, and was fascinated that they had an in-world funeral for someone because – and these are the dude’s words – the avatar’s player died in the real world. Eventually, though, I got bored, so I left and went to the end of a panel discussion on cliche in fantasy – and wished I had been there for the whole of it, because it sounded like they were actually having a fun and intelligent conversation.
Rachel and I then went along to Richard Harland’s “HIstory of imaginative fiction for YA/children,” which was really more a history of childhood/changing perceptions thereof, rather than the books that have been part of it (someone actually asked him whether Gulliver’s Travels was meant to be for kids… hello!! Are you kidding?!). It would have been more interesting if I didn’t already know pretty much everything he was saying.
Rachel then left because she didn’t want to hear Isobelle Carmody talking about the next book in the Obernewtyn series. I stayed, because I’m a bit of a sucker. She was interesting enough – and she confessed that The Stone Key will, in fact, be the penultimate book, not the ultimate, because she couldn’t fit it all in… it’s meant to be out in November, and then the last should be out next year.
I will now take some time out to whinge about the programme of Convergence2. It was Convention Lite. I understand there were some problems with the guests of honour, but… the panels were not what I expected. I wasn’t interested in the ‘how to be a writer’ panels, but I understand why they were there and was happy for writers to get that forum for dicussing ideas. But there weren’t that many of them, and there weren’t many others either. I was expecting more like the panel I went to in the afternoon – “IS fantasy really all about good vs evil?” – which I was interested in and had to attend because Tansy was on the panel…. But surely this is the very place where these sorts of genre questions can be discussed? Like what makes things fantasy (which I know has been discussed previously), how science-y should scifi be, etc…? Maybe all of these things have been discussed at previous cons and everyone else is just jaded.
This has turned into a long post, and I am tired. I shall leave it here and continue anon (where anon = tomorrow, or any time after that).
NatCon #1
Yeh, so who did I think I was kidding? Me, start doing marking at 9.30 on a Tuesday night? When I’ve been out to dinner with a friend on a flying visit from Pasadena (UCLA, don’t you know… fluid mechanics, in fact), and J has managed to breathe enough to play trumpet (just) so I stayed and listened to Dry White Toast practise for a while (pacing around to get my steps up – that’s a whole other story – and reading), and then talking to cassiphone for ages.
Marking? Pft. They can wait.
So. NatCon. Convergence 2. My very first convention (and didn’t it show).
I was, to be honest, quite nervous. Meeting people in real life is a bit nerve-racking, when you’ve got on so well over email… and then there were the fears of the Real, Uber Geeks who might be there and who might either weird me out or make me feel inadequate.
Fortunately, I picked Alisa up from the airport on the Thursday night, and we talked pretty much the whole way back to the hotel, so at least I had a fairly good idea that we could, indeed, hold a real-time conversation as well as an email conversation.
On Friday, I rocked up to the hotel and met up again with Alisa, and met Ben, which was cool – and then off to meet Tansy, thus completing our quartet. Tansy’s partner Finchy and daughter Raeli were there too – she graciously allowed me to sit down, which was nice, and we played Giraffes Falling Off Chairs a bit. I also met Rachel then, and daughter Abby – starting something of a trend for the whole weekend, really, that group. Alisa, Rachel and I went off to look at buttons for a while (don’t get me either of them started! Abby was very funny – “I’ll have a handful of the red ones…”), then I ditched them when they also went to look at fabric. Went back to the hotel, got all officially rego’ed up, and had a look through my convention bag – always a good way to judge the quality of a conference, in my opinion. I got Aurealis #11, which doesn’t have a cover, which I thought was special until I heard someone had #1 (new idea of the weekend: round up back-issues of the major Aussie small press – I’m thinking ASIM, Aurealis, Borderlands… and read them, and then I can look like I’ve been in this scene for much, much longer than I actually have). Plus a bunch of other promo stuff that I still haven’t had a chance to look at.
Dinner was with a whole big bunch of people, because Cat just seems to gather people in her wake like a mini tornado. Have to admit, I was a bit scared by the horror writer group, until I discovered they are actually all lovely. Which was a relief. Fourteen of us went to the Shark Fin Inn, and it was all very jolly. I felt a bit out of it for a while, but eventually realised that was just me, not them, so I got over it.
So that was the first day.
Edit: I can’t believe I forgot the after-dinner entertainment! There was a Great Debate, about whether mass media is killing our beloved genre. Cat was on the against team, and her partner Rob Hood was on the affirmative. Jack Dann was the moderator, and as a Jack Dann newbie I thought he was pretty funny (I can imagine it would get old quickly). Apparently there was a deal of confusion between the teams about what the topic meant and who should be saying what, and the first speaker was way, way out in left field. I ended up agreeing with Cat’s team, because I already thought that anyway – mass media isn’t killing scifi and fantasy.
Then we went to the bar. People were getting drunk. Alisa managed to avoid people she wanted to avoid. It was good.
Randomly Yours, Alex 