Westercon report: Friday
Jul. 3rd, 2015 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjJust a few notes to help me remember how much fun I'm having. I got in really late Thursday evening and did nothing but crash in my room. After almost enough sleep, I wandered down to get a coffee and pastry while waiting for reg to open and bumped into Kathleen Sloan & husband (who I know of old from filking). We got caught up on life in general and somehow the conversation morphed into careers in failure analysis in various industries.
After getting registration squared away, I listened to the panel "No more evil priests in red" asking the question: why/how did sff get stuck on a "religion is inherently evil" theme and what works or authors present religion and spirituality in positive ways that integrate with the story. There was some running joke(?) about how James Blish was not to be mentioned that I didn't get, being unfamiliar with whatever work of his was being referenced. Despite some infelicities of speaker flow and a fair amount of un-nuanced historical generalization, there was good coverage of the topic and many of the usual suggestions for positive authorial treatment in science fiction (Herbert, Bujold, Russell). It was suggested that classic fantasy (e.g., Tolkien, Lewis) has been more comfortable with religious themes and that perhaps science fiction drifted to an opposing pole in quest of being "un-fantasy" as well as there being a wave of "science is god" sentiment. (I think this overlooks a strong theme of "evil priests in red" in fantasy, especially medievaloid or secondary-world settings.)
Bumped into Lisanne Norman whom![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
la_marquise_de_ had suggested I look up and we made dinner plans. After that I took a turn in the dealers room, verified that Cargo Cult Books has both Alpennia books (as he had at BayCon) so I can make appropriate referrals. Had a long chat with Janet Wilson Anderson of alteryears.net, catching up on life and discussing recommended references on non-English costuming of the 1820s (answer: there aren't any good ones).
My first panel as a participant was "How does your writing vary in different lengths?" The panel stayed solidly on topic and was quite lively. There was a good mix of backgrounds and takes on the question, though much agreement on the big picture. Discussions included: How much/how many facets can you fit in a given length? Do you write to a target length or see what the story wants to be? (Both) Should beginners hone their craft on short fiction (much agreement) or plunge into saga length if that's where their imagination takes them? How do markets, especially for e-books, affect length logistics? Do readers have shorter attention spans these days?
Lunch break, and then wandered back to the dealers room. At some point I'd done a little game of reading through the participant bios and noting names of authors who sounded interesting but that I wasn't familiar with, then cross-correlated against what programming they were on. One of the interesting-looking people, Kater Cheek, was at the signing table in the dealers room and I stopped by to allow myself to be talking into buying one of her books and then chatted for a bit with her and the other signer on genre and community and this and that. (I think I may have added another technique to my toolbox for "moving from surviving cons to enjoying them".)
This made me late to the next panel I attended "No Sympathy for the Devil" on how to make irredeemably evil protagonists into relatable characters. A fair amount of discussion on tv & movie villains (e.g., Bond villains, Hannibal, several I didn't quite recognize). One suggestion stuck in my mind: have the "evil" character love someone or something.
Next I dropped by the Broad Universe readings which are often good for finding new authors to taste. Nothing really clicked for me this time, though if you're the sort that likes a supernatural/steam-punk mashup, you might do worse than check out Elizabeth Watasin.
Left that a little early to make sure I got to the next panel I was on: "Endangered Languages". A bit of an odd topic for an SFF con, perhaps, although we tied it in on a number of occasions. It was an extremely lively panel with a lot of provoking and/or intriguing discussions. I made a valiant effort to hold up the side for "endangered languages are not simply of concern as a potentially lost resource for those of us in the dominant culture to 'consume'; the loss itself is typically a symptom of larger underlying patterns of cultural suppression and erasure." (I wasn't the only panelist touching on this, but there was an unfortunate tendency to talk about language loss in terms of what we as outsiders to those linguistic cultures would lose and what we might do to "save" them, which is all kinds of problematic if unexamined.)
After that, Lisanne and I met up and spent several hours over a lovely dinner and long-ranging conversation. So thanks ever so much tola_marquise_de_ for making the connection! And then I decided I needed some alone time for the rest of the evening, and here I am lounging in bed and typing up a con report. I was thinking about trying to get some writing in, but I think I'll opt for extra sleep (since last night got shorted a little).
After getting registration squared away, I listened to the panel "No more evil priests in red" asking the question: why/how did sff get stuck on a "religion is inherently evil" theme and what works or authors present religion and spirituality in positive ways that integrate with the story. There was some running joke(?) about how James Blish was not to be mentioned that I didn't get, being unfamiliar with whatever work of his was being referenced. Despite some infelicities of speaker flow and a fair amount of un-nuanced historical generalization, there was good coverage of the topic and many of the usual suggestions for positive authorial treatment in science fiction (Herbert, Bujold, Russell). It was suggested that classic fantasy (e.g., Tolkien, Lewis) has been more comfortable with religious themes and that perhaps science fiction drifted to an opposing pole in quest of being "un-fantasy" as well as there being a wave of "science is god" sentiment. (I think this overlooks a strong theme of "evil priests in red" in fantasy, especially medievaloid or secondary-world settings.)
Bumped into Lisanne Norman whom
la_marquise_de_ had suggested I look up and we made dinner plans. After that I took a turn in the dealers room, verified that Cargo Cult Books has both Alpennia books (as he had at BayCon) so I can make appropriate referrals. Had a long chat with Janet Wilson Anderson of alteryears.net, catching up on life and discussing recommended references on non-English costuming of the 1820s (answer: there aren't any good ones).My first panel as a participant was "How does your writing vary in different lengths?" The panel stayed solidly on topic and was quite lively. There was a good mix of backgrounds and takes on the question, though much agreement on the big picture. Discussions included: How much/how many facets can you fit in a given length? Do you write to a target length or see what the story wants to be? (Both) Should beginners hone their craft on short fiction (much agreement) or plunge into saga length if that's where their imagination takes them? How do markets, especially for e-books, affect length logistics? Do readers have shorter attention spans these days?
Lunch break, and then wandered back to the dealers room. At some point I'd done a little game of reading through the participant bios and noting names of authors who sounded interesting but that I wasn't familiar with, then cross-correlated against what programming they were on. One of the interesting-looking people, Kater Cheek, was at the signing table in the dealers room and I stopped by to allow myself to be talking into buying one of her books and then chatted for a bit with her and the other signer on genre and community and this and that. (I think I may have added another technique to my toolbox for "moving from surviving cons to enjoying them".)
This made me late to the next panel I attended "No Sympathy for the Devil" on how to make irredeemably evil protagonists into relatable characters. A fair amount of discussion on tv & movie villains (e.g., Bond villains, Hannibal, several I didn't quite recognize). One suggestion stuck in my mind: have the "evil" character love someone or something.
Next I dropped by the Broad Universe readings which are often good for finding new authors to taste. Nothing really clicked for me this time, though if you're the sort that likes a supernatural/steam-punk mashup, you might do worse than check out Elizabeth Watasin.
Left that a little early to make sure I got to the next panel I was on: "Endangered Languages". A bit of an odd topic for an SFF con, perhaps, although we tied it in on a number of occasions. It was an extremely lively panel with a lot of provoking and/or intriguing discussions. I made a valiant effort to hold up the side for "endangered languages are not simply of concern as a potentially lost resource for those of us in the dominant culture to 'consume'; the loss itself is typically a symptom of larger underlying patterns of cultural suppression and erasure." (I wasn't the only panelist touching on this, but there was an unfortunate tendency to talk about language loss in terms of what we as outsiders to those linguistic cultures would lose and what we might do to "save" them, which is all kinds of problematic if unexamined.)
After that, Lisanne and I met up and spent several hours over a lovely dinner and long-ranging conversation. So thanks ever so much to
la_marquise_de_ for making the connection! And then I decided I needed some alone time for the rest of the evening, and here I am lounging in bed and typing up a con report. I was thinking about trying to get some writing in, but I think I'll opt for extra sleep (since last night got shorted a little).
