Worldcon Day 4, Sunday
So Sunday was awesome. I had another sudden spoon failure, but not until nearly 4pm, and panels only run until 6 and I'd seen everything I really wanted.
Cory Doctorow reading: I can't remember what the name of the book was, but it's about kids from Northern England running to London to be anarchists and avoid saddling their parents with the shame of harbouring Known Copyright Infringers. It seemed like a fairly transparent rant about the evils of excessive copyright law with a thin veneer of ok sf over the top, but it was still interesting and I did enjoy the Q&A beforehand where he ranted about the evils of excessive copyright law (on which point I am in 100% agreement)
He said copying is very much inherent to 21st Century art, I'd say both it's creation and consumption (and the two blur)
He gave the example of Charles Stross as a roughly equivalent author who didn't release his books as Creative Commons and wasn't quite as successful, hopefully there will be a positive feedback loop as more publishers and authors take that path.
In the abstract he is in favour of the laws for corporations being different (and stricter) than those for individuals.
I went to the dealers room and bought "Guardian of the Dead" by Karen Healey as part 1 of my Plan to Fangirl at her. Helen D helped me on my quest, I tried to buy it from one of the little stores but only Borders had it.
Anachronistic Fiction: Successors to Steampunk, with Dave Cake (do you mind me linking your lj?), Phillipa Ballantine, Jay Lake, Tee Morris and Charles Stross.
Something I hadn't really grasped until this panel: steampunk etc isn't about extrapolating the past, it's about extrapolating the science fiction of the past. Thus it tends to keep the bias and focus of the world as depicted by that science fiction eg the upper class white male able bodied etc British/Western European POV. My issue with the panel was that Tee Morris thinks that that is totally ok, and basically equated any steampunk that pays attention to the realities of the era with hard sf that explains how deflector shields work. He's a very loud guy who made lots of (admittedly amusing) jokes so his POV dominated quite a bit. Charles Stross made a valiant effort to talk about colonialism etc but eventually just sat with his head literally in his hands not saying very much. Anyway, here's the stuff I wrote down…
Our understanding of the Victorian era comes via the Edwardians, who liked to present their parents as a bunch of old fuddy duddies. There was actually a fair amount of social mobility, people just lied and said they'd always been upper class (see: Dickens)
Also a pair of working man's pants cost the equivalent of $600 etc which affected fashion (I'm not sure what steampunk related point he was making, but it's interesting anyway :))
Steampunk is much less political than cyberpunk.
Diesel punk: based on the sf of the thirties eg "Sky Captains and the World of Tomorrow"
iPunk: based on now (just a cute name, not sure the genre is actually being written yet :))
I asked if there was sf extrapolating from non Western sources, a fellow audience member suggested Yellow Blue Tibia.
Talking about how much more fun the genre is to write if you gloss over the realities of the time (which I do agree with up to a point) Tee Morris and Phillipa Ballantine talked about a powerful self sufficient female character in a joint work they're writing (I think? Maybe just Phillipa Ballantine is writing it?) and Charles Stross went on a rant about how women in that era were their husband's property, I'm not sure what he was suggesting as an alternative (I haven't read his steampunky stuff to see how he addresses gender in it) Someone mentioned Phillip Pullman's Sally Lockhart mysteries as addressing these issues.
Something I would like to have seen address but decided there was no way to ask a question about without ranting about how Everyone Was Wrong (which does not seem to be accepted audience behaviour at Worldcon), and which came up in the fantasy panel I'll get to later, is the assumption that all escapist fantasy must romanticise and replicate the status quo of past eras, and that anything that tries to give minority viewpoints or explore social justice must be realistic and dull. My escapist fantasy is not being a rich white male explorer or the Chosen One who becomes King and Restores Order, it's basically that of cyberpunk (though I admittedly don't actually like most cyberpunk that much): the feisty little guy (or girl) fighting the oppressive status quo. But I guess I'm weird.
Then I ducked into the signing room and got Karen Healey to sign my book. She KNEW WHO I WAS (having read my previous entry via google alerts or something) So I pretty much died of fangirly squee ^_^ She wrote "For Sophie, in feminist fierceness" in my book and I will treasure it always. *waves fangirlishly at Karen should she come by this entry too*
The Case for a Female Doctor with Tansy Rayner Roberts,Carolina Gomez, Paul Cornell, Kerrie Dougherty and Catherynne M Valente .
I was a bit worried this would either be people arguing or everyone agreeing and then having nothing to say, but it was actually really cool. Having an actual Dr Who writer present changed the dynamic significantly, though he didn't act like his opinion counted for more except for having more experience of the nitty gritty of BBC productions.
Genre creep means people see things as character traits set in stone when they really aren't eg the Doctor is asexual/doesn't use guns/etc… except when he does.
He or she will have to be human looking or noone will relate.
How do we know the doctor isn't already female? (Or genderqueer/intersex etc, though noone brought up that possibility)
Current BBC policy means they need to be moderately attractive, though a sufficiently famous actor can counteract this. More likely young and female than old and male. And definitely British.
Having a female doctor means you can have a single male companion without a totally male dominated show. (Personally I'd like a male and female companion who aren't in a relationship)
Narrative in Videogames with K A Bedford, Rowena Cory Daniels, Leanne Taylor, Peter Watts.
This was a really good panel.
The writer is usually brought in at the last minute, after the designers have made the levels to be cool to play and the artists made the monsters to be cool to look at, neither with much consideration of anything remotely resembling a coherent narrative. It does offer a creative challenge!
Bioware has narrative designers who understand the programming language.
Stuff like Baldur's gate is based on D&D or whatever which is a preexisting coherent world that takes care of the worldbuilding nicely.
Most plots railroaded, sometimes this is better than adding in badly written branching just because it's expected.
Ico: no dialogue.
Clever games turn the limitations into a feature of the narrative eg Bioshock plays around with the way players just follow quest orders, other games have AIs as characters (of course they act like a computer!)
Unkillable secretaries in Deus Ex, and other suspension of disbelief killing stuff done to stop you breaking the game (better than ones that let you break the game)
Interactive fiction, worth checking out?
Recs: Heavy Rain, The Barren, Jim Munroe, Every Day the same dream
Japanese games like dating sims are very narrative heavy.
Monarchy in Fantasy with a bunch of people, can't find the list, sorry. Kate Forsyth, Glenda Larke, Fiona MacIntosh...three other Australian fantasy writers.
I was rapidly running out of energy and getting grumpy, I ended up having to leave halfway through. I asked a very incoherent question I can barely remember.
This tended here and there toward being an ad for how great the panelists books are, which was a bit annoying. But otherwise it was interesting.
Some feel monarchies are a useful shortcut that lets you get straight to the story without worrying about explaining the political system. Glenda Larke sees this as a bug not a feature (&hearts Glenda Larke)
Common alternatives: democracy and dictatorship.
The line between thuggish warlord and king is thin.
Some kings were elected, see Poland and Malaysia. Much drama after kings death having elections (as in "Curse of Chalion". Or the new pope!)
Others have very limited power, "federal", power mostly lying in hands of barons etc.
Meritocracy allows for less drama (really?) Can be messed with my magic etc.
Not many theocracies.
Don't have to portray monarchy as good or fair, and few do. Don't have to make the peasants unthinkingly obedient either. (Personally I think it makes sense for them to be obedient but not mindlessly so. It's enlightened self interest not to anger the king! My grasp of the attitudes people actually had then is weak, though)
At 6pm there was a big photo of all 120ish people from Perth at the con, thanks to the ever amazing Anna.
Was alas too sleepy after dinner to go to the Hugos (which makes me a little sad. As it was I was barely awake enough to make it to the hotel restaurant for dinner) and collapsed into bed.
This entry was originally posted at http://alias-sqbr.dreamwidth.org/355198.html. There are
comments.
Cory Doctorow reading: I can't remember what the name of the book was, but it's about kids from Northern England running to London to be anarchists and avoid saddling their parents with the shame of harbouring Known Copyright Infringers. It seemed like a fairly transparent rant about the evils of excessive copyright law with a thin veneer of ok sf over the top, but it was still interesting and I did enjoy the Q&A beforehand where he ranted about the evils of excessive copyright law (on which point I am in 100% agreement)
He said copying is very much inherent to 21st Century art, I'd say both it's creation and consumption (and the two blur)
He gave the example of Charles Stross as a roughly equivalent author who didn't release his books as Creative Commons and wasn't quite as successful, hopefully there will be a positive feedback loop as more publishers and authors take that path.
In the abstract he is in favour of the laws for corporations being different (and stricter) than those for individuals.
I went to the dealers room and bought "Guardian of the Dead" by Karen Healey as part 1 of my Plan to Fangirl at her. Helen D helped me on my quest, I tried to buy it from one of the little stores but only Borders had it.
Anachronistic Fiction: Successors to Steampunk, with Dave Cake (do you mind me linking your lj?), Phillipa Ballantine, Jay Lake, Tee Morris and Charles Stross.
Something I hadn't really grasped until this panel: steampunk etc isn't about extrapolating the past, it's about extrapolating the science fiction of the past. Thus it tends to keep the bias and focus of the world as depicted by that science fiction eg the upper class white male able bodied etc British/Western European POV. My issue with the panel was that Tee Morris thinks that that is totally ok, and basically equated any steampunk that pays attention to the realities of the era with hard sf that explains how deflector shields work. He's a very loud guy who made lots of (admittedly amusing) jokes so his POV dominated quite a bit. Charles Stross made a valiant effort to talk about colonialism etc but eventually just sat with his head literally in his hands not saying very much. Anyway, here's the stuff I wrote down…
Our understanding of the Victorian era comes via the Edwardians, who liked to present their parents as a bunch of old fuddy duddies. There was actually a fair amount of social mobility, people just lied and said they'd always been upper class (see: Dickens)
Also a pair of working man's pants cost the equivalent of $600 etc which affected fashion (I'm not sure what steampunk related point he was making, but it's interesting anyway :))
Steampunk is much less political than cyberpunk.
Diesel punk: based on the sf of the thirties eg "Sky Captains and the World of Tomorrow"
iPunk: based on now (just a cute name, not sure the genre is actually being written yet :))
I asked if there was sf extrapolating from non Western sources, a fellow audience member suggested Yellow Blue Tibia.
Talking about how much more fun the genre is to write if you gloss over the realities of the time (which I do agree with up to a point) Tee Morris and Phillipa Ballantine talked about a powerful self sufficient female character in a joint work they're writing (I think? Maybe just Phillipa Ballantine is writing it?) and Charles Stross went on a rant about how women in that era were their husband's property, I'm not sure what he was suggesting as an alternative (I haven't read his steampunky stuff to see how he addresses gender in it) Someone mentioned Phillip Pullman's Sally Lockhart mysteries as addressing these issues.
Something I would like to have seen address but decided there was no way to ask a question about without ranting about how Everyone Was Wrong (which does not seem to be accepted audience behaviour at Worldcon), and which came up in the fantasy panel I'll get to later, is the assumption that all escapist fantasy must romanticise and replicate the status quo of past eras, and that anything that tries to give minority viewpoints or explore social justice must be realistic and dull. My escapist fantasy is not being a rich white male explorer or the Chosen One who becomes King and Restores Order, it's basically that of cyberpunk (though I admittedly don't actually like most cyberpunk that much): the feisty little guy (or girl) fighting the oppressive status quo. But I guess I'm weird.
Then I ducked into the signing room and got Karen Healey to sign my book. She KNEW WHO I WAS (having read my previous entry via google alerts or something) So I pretty much died of fangirly squee ^_^ She wrote "For Sophie, in feminist fierceness" in my book and I will treasure it always. *waves fangirlishly at Karen should she come by this entry too*
The Case for a Female Doctor with Tansy Rayner Roberts,Carolina Gomez, Paul Cornell, Kerrie Dougherty and Catherynne M Valente .
I was a bit worried this would either be people arguing or everyone agreeing and then having nothing to say, but it was actually really cool. Having an actual Dr Who writer present changed the dynamic significantly, though he didn't act like his opinion counted for more except for having more experience of the nitty gritty of BBC productions.
Genre creep means people see things as character traits set in stone when they really aren't eg the Doctor is asexual/doesn't use guns/etc… except when he does.
He or she will have to be human looking or noone will relate.
How do we know the doctor isn't already female? (Or genderqueer/intersex etc, though noone brought up that possibility)
Current BBC policy means they need to be moderately attractive, though a sufficiently famous actor can counteract this. More likely young and female than old and male. And definitely British.
Having a female doctor means you can have a single male companion without a totally male dominated show. (Personally I'd like a male and female companion who aren't in a relationship)
Narrative in Videogames with K A Bedford, Rowena Cory Daniels, Leanne Taylor, Peter Watts.
This was a really good panel.
The writer is usually brought in at the last minute, after the designers have made the levels to be cool to play and the artists made the monsters to be cool to look at, neither with much consideration of anything remotely resembling a coherent narrative. It does offer a creative challenge!
Bioware has narrative designers who understand the programming language.
Stuff like Baldur's gate is based on D&D or whatever which is a preexisting coherent world that takes care of the worldbuilding nicely.
Most plots railroaded, sometimes this is better than adding in badly written branching just because it's expected.
Ico: no dialogue.
Clever games turn the limitations into a feature of the narrative eg Bioshock plays around with the way players just follow quest orders, other games have AIs as characters (of course they act like a computer!)
Unkillable secretaries in Deus Ex, and other suspension of disbelief killing stuff done to stop you breaking the game (better than ones that let you break the game)
Interactive fiction, worth checking out?
Recs: Heavy Rain, The Barren, Jim Munroe, Every Day the same dream
Japanese games like dating sims are very narrative heavy.
Monarchy in Fantasy with a bunch of people, can't find the list, sorry. Kate Forsyth, Glenda Larke, Fiona MacIntosh...three other Australian fantasy writers.
I was rapidly running out of energy and getting grumpy, I ended up having to leave halfway through. I asked a very incoherent question I can barely remember.
This tended here and there toward being an ad for how great the panelists books are, which was a bit annoying. But otherwise it was interesting.
Some feel monarchies are a useful shortcut that lets you get straight to the story without worrying about explaining the political system. Glenda Larke sees this as a bug not a feature (&hearts Glenda Larke)
Common alternatives: democracy and dictatorship.
The line between thuggish warlord and king is thin.
Some kings were elected, see Poland and Malaysia. Much drama after kings death having elections (as in "Curse of Chalion". Or the new pope!)
Others have very limited power, "federal", power mostly lying in hands of barons etc.
Meritocracy allows for less drama (really?) Can be messed with my magic etc.
Not many theocracies.
Don't have to portray monarchy as good or fair, and few do. Don't have to make the peasants unthinkingly obedient either. (Personally I think it makes sense for them to be obedient but not mindlessly so. It's enlightened self interest not to anger the king! My grasp of the attitudes people actually had then is weak, though)
At 6pm there was a big photo of all 120ish people from Perth at the con, thanks to the ever amazing Anna.
Was alas too sleepy after dinner to go to the Hugos (which makes me a little sad. As it was I was barely awake enough to make it to the hotel restaurant for dinner) and collapsed into bed.
This entry was originally posted at http://alias-sqbr.dreamwidth.org/355198.html. There are
comments.