Sunday was good, too
Yeh, overloading on the old blog, ain’t I?
Sunday I did not run. I was tired, and wanted to give my knees a rest – having a room on the first floor, and being terrified of the lifts after hearing about them breaking down all the way back at last year’s natcon, gave the knees quite a workout!
I went to another academic panel, On the Historiographic in the Fantastic. It was primarily about the engagement between history and fantasy. The presenter – whose name I’ve forgotten – made an interesting point to begin with: for a genre proud of transgression, it’s also obsessed with its own categories and delineation. Very true. Anyway – she said fantasy is always engaged with history: using ‘real’ historical stuff, and/or making up its own history. Post-Enlightenment, history came to be posited as rationalist, scientific, positivist, etc – in contradistinction to ‘romance’, myth-making, and so on, which is where fantasy is situated (or has been situated). I wrote down a lot more, but won’t put it here because at least some of it doesn’t make sense to me anymore! – suffice to say all this got me thinking about Geoffrey of Monmouth, and those other ‘historians’ whose works we read today as fantasy. Big crossover there.
After the panel I went to City Church of Christ, which was awesome – a very diverse group of people; the minister preached the gospel loud and clear! It was embarrassing to be from an Anglican church, though; there are some vocal Perth Anglicans who don’t believe in the physical resurrection of Christ which is just, like, stupid (if you’re a Christian).
Got back in time to go to Mark Bould’s talk, which I think I will blog separately because it was so damned cool. Anyway – then lunch with , and onto one of the highlights of the con: Rob Shearman and Ian Mond doing a live commentary on the Dr Who episode Dalek! We got front row seats, and it was fantastic. Had a drink with some friends – went to dinner with Kathryn, “MacDog,” and Matt… sorry we stooged you with the bill for a while there, guys!!
Then… oh then, it was Ditmar time. I won two of them! – well, the Snapshot team and my cohorts and I won one. You can see a full list of winners here. My row was the place to be. And didn’t we just love it!
Then, finally, the mother of all room parties. I don’t know how many people there were over the night – lots – probably 20 or 30 at any one time. Sean provided some mighty fine tunes, and someone else provided The A-Team theme. I kicked everyone out, finally, at about 2am. People keep making a big thing of me doing that, so I’m left wondering: do room parties never get moved on by the room’s inhabitants? Or did I do it in a particularly memorable way?
Saturday #2
So after Dedman came Helen Merrick, who was also fascinating, talking about the science in women’s SF – which is something I’m enthralled by, having been a science-y type at school (I struggled all through year 12 over whether to do science or history at uni… no one told me it was possible to do both!). Anyway, to start with she looked at why women write SF in the first place: that many grew up reading it, and also have a background of science. It also allows women to engage with science, and critique it. There’s apparently been very little research done into the science in female-authored SF. Her take, though, is that the science can be liberating for women; it can be critiqued for social/ethical consequences, as well as critiquing the institution, methodology and hierarchy; and show ways of ‘doing science’ differently. In essence, the talk was Cool, and gave me a list of reading I should do….
Then, I ditched the academic programme, and went off to hear about The New Space Opera. Have I mentioned how much I love space opera? I love it. Anyway – this panel also gave me things I need to read, which is so totally fine. Despite not having any time for reading. Possibly my favourite quote of the entire con was Ken McLeod talking Ian Banks: apparently he said he wrote his Culture novels intending to “conquer the moral high ground for the left.” Yeeah! Anyway, a lot of the panel was more about the panelists talking about their own stuff and why/how it’s space opera, which was a bit of a pain when I hadn’t read any of it. Interestingly, you can make heaps more dough in writing fantasy that in scifi; didn’t know that. The panel did, though, pose an interesting question: can space opera survive modern technology and science? It started amidst the optimism about science of the 1920s and 1930s; can the pessimism of the 00s make us set space opera aside? I wonder whether we’ll keep reading it, but with a nostalgic rather than optimistic view.
Then.. oh my! It was our turn to do a panel! Me, Ben, Alisa, and Jonathan (with Tansy a noticeable absence), talking about that crazy Last Short Story thing. People were there! And asked questions! And seemed genuinely interested in the answers…. There were a few odd comments, but that’s ok. It was far more enjoyable than I had expected.
Another book launch that night… Alisa and Kathryn and I went out dinner after, and I had the hottest prawn and onion salad in the entire world. Followed by a reading from Rob Shearman’s new book Tiny Deaths, which I bought and made him write in and am happy to recommend to people having only heard the two stories that he read at the con. The kids roaming the room were a bit of a pain, though. This was followed by heading back to my room (notice a pattern?), and watching Claire McKenna’s movie Liminal, which I saw last year and wasn’t nearly as good on a computer screen sans speakers. Basically we talked over the whole thing, commentating, which was funny in its own way. Once again, I managed to kick people out at midnight.
Saturday #1
… when I went running again, but this time only for 40 min or so because my back started hurting. Hopefully pilates will help with this.
I went to some of the academic panels, and by goodness they were great.
Robert Savage’s “Paleoanthropology of the Future” (which can mean at least two different things, as far as I can read) was awesome – about 2001, and how scifi looks at the development of Human. He made a link between the hero-journey (which I remember from doing classics) and the development of man: needing some sort of external shove, for instance, to get started, and how at the end the hero/man is the same but different. He posited that Moonwatcher, Floyd, and Bowman are all fundamentally the same character, but (I think) different aspects (I could be murdering his whole premise here, of course). Women, in this story and in the story of Man’s Development (in the classic model), are removed – and I hadn’t really noticed that: the three women in the story are a little girls and two stewardesses: they are there to provide comfort and that’s it. The bit I really liked was the idea of how 2001‘s narrative arc follows the arc suggested by paleoanthropology. The latter requires evolution or similar, which doesn’t really fit in with narrative requirements, so Clarke has the extraterrestrial influence, which fits in with the idea of “the donor” from the hero-journey arc. A couple of other interesting points: the development of Dave into the star-child // conception, when the pod goes into the sun (so the hero is the father of the child, and so is still recognisable). Also, that HAL // the leopard in the opening segment as an external motivating influence. And of course, the other possibly conclusion to the story is that HAL goes through the monolith, and comes out as… IBM? :)Â There’s also the parallel between HAL being shut down and Dave in the hotel room, at the end, regressing. So Dave and HAL are very similar, even (and this is my take) aspects of the same idea.
(Dr) Stephen Dedman’s talk on Captain America was quite fascinating, too – I know nothing about the superhero, so it was interesting to hear about his development and mutations over time. Especially as he was born out of a Congress request for publishers to put out stuff that was in line with the government’s policy on war! The (ab)use of comics would make a fascinating book, I think. The change from all-American hero fighting the dirty Hun, to whether he should be shown fighting the Vietnamese at all, to finally fighting Americans in thrall to an evil American general is quite some development.
And then there was Friday
It was great running on Good Friday morning: almost no traffic, and almost no people! I ran down to and along the Esplanade – they have a huge bloody river in Perth! And fountains… I don’t remember when there were working fountains in Melbourne. Oh – and that was after waking up at 5.30am Perth time, which my body was insisting was 7.30 for us, despite having gone to sleep at about 2am for us (midnight in Perth). Very confusing… fortunately my ability to doze off again seems to be reappearing.
Hung around with Alisa, Ben and Tehani for a bit of the morning – they were setting up their table to flog their wares (primarily 2012 and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine – Australia’s pulpiest magazine! (I adore it).
The first panels I went to were about the history of Dr Who – the pre-production stuff, like how Dr Who basically started because the BBC had an opening in their scheduling, and the fact that its producer was the first female producer and the youngest producer to boot, at the BBC. That’s cool. Interesting to hear that it seems like lots of people wanted Dr Who to fail, for a whole range of reasons! It also seems that TV people stuffing around with their programming has been going on for as long as TV has existed (and probably happened/happens in radio, too) – changing series lengths, etc. The soundstage they had to deal with makes it seem remarkable they managed to make anything, frankly, and seems a testament to the actors and the crew. And then – to top it all off, and to drive home what they’d been talking about – the panel did an overview of the first season of Dr Who, which was very cool. Those guys clearly know their Who trivia, which was fun…. It was fascinating to hear about the growth in viewers (up to 10 million for the episodes with the Daleks!), and about the interaction of the actors – and development of the characters, too.
Zara’s talk on “why we love children’s SF” was fantastic – a survey of 900 respondents, asking when they started reading scifi, what they liked as a kid, what they didn’t like, etc. I really must take the time to read The Inter-Galactic Playground. It sounds like a very cool project Zara has got herself involved in! – and gave me a list of books I really ought to chase up, too…
Anyway… then went and had a drink with a few people, then it was the launch of 2012 and Workers’ Paradise, both of which I can highly recommend. After that, another book launch! – Magic Dirt, a collection of Sean Williams’ stuff. Rob nearly choked on the little packets of magic dirt (actually gravel or something similar), and blamed me for it…. Eventually had a bit to eat at the Indian restaurant around the corner at about 9pm, then back to the hotel bar, then nearly went to a room party… but it was too loud and hot, so I bailed and went to bed. It was, after all, midnight.
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.
NatCon
I have an enormous amount to say about Convergence 2, and I’m not going to say it now. It needs to sit in my head for a while, and ferment. And brew a little. And… digest… and other appropriate bodily verbs. Basically I need to get around it, my very first convention. It was a bit overwhelming. But the best bit was meeting people, of course – my lastshortstory buddies, and others whom I didn’t know from a bottle of disinfectant beforehand, and now will certainly be keeping in contact with. Incredible what three and a half intense days will do, plus a shared love of scifi and fantasy.
So stay tuned. Ruminations on the con, and the nature of good and evil, to come….
Randomly Yours, Alex 