Readercon
Well, I have returned from Readercon, and thought I could share some of my thoughts and experiences on the convention, which was quite a lot of fun. Conventions, whether academic or otherwise (and I'm not entirely sure where Readercon falls in that), are really more social events than anything else, and so I'll start there.
I met a number of very nice people, using Gay, Bejeweled Nazi Bikers of Gor as a sort of calling-card. These included Samuel R. Delany, Charles Stross, Greer Gilman, Inanna Arthen and Caitlin Kiernan, as well as Jen Matteis (who was kind enough to give me in exchange a copy of Three Stories with her own very fine work in it) and the very nice lady in the Con suite. Since I gave away all of my copies, I know there were many more people who got one, and my apologies for those I have omitted in my post-con delirious haze. Another copy was given to the "winner" of the Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition, at which, God help me, I pegged the John Norman quote right away (he does love his semicolons).
There were some fine panels: how to make money writing was very useful, since the country is in a mild depression these days, and it was well-attended. The panel on sex was interesting too, and raised the question of the author's responsibility to the reader. It was noted that in the Romance genre it has become common to include the types of sex acts in the story as part of the description, to which Caitlin Kiernan and others objected quite strenuously, stating that all the warning the reader needed was the author's name. There is, it was argued, also the problem of giving away the story with such descriptions.
While this is true (if I pick up a novel by Penni Fitzmon, for example, it is reasonable to expect it to have tentacles, and I don't really need a warning), I think it depends on the genre. Since Romance is a highly consumer-focused genre, publishers need to consider readers and their tastes much more carefully than they should in more "literary" forms. As Kiernan put it, her work is, at least partly, meant to "punch you in the nose".
And a good nose punching by a book (think of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, for example), is an important part of the reading experience sometimes, and no author should need to apologize for that. Another part is sometimes to laugh, which brings me in a very clever way back to my experiences at the con.
The real reason to write isn't to make money but to have people read and appreciate what you have written, and in this way Gay, Bejeweled Nazi Bikers of Gor has been a smashing success; the first page was read after the Kirk Poland competition and made people laugh, which is the story's intent. In that spirit, here is a Normanesque summary of Readercon:
It was a weekend on Gor, in the high city of Lexington, in the great towers of the Marriott hotel, where many tarns perch on the high towers of the hotel in the mighty city, built by the labors of slaves, constructed of stone drawn from the nearby quarries by thralion or by wagon, the stonecutter's guild not dealing muchly with the merchants of the Con but rather directly with the government of the Con, led by the mighty men and free women and slaves of the High Council of Readercon, dealing under the aegis of the Con organizers, so to speak; and muchly did Blergus and I walk the halls with the other mighty Gorean warriors, seeking the truest of modalities of Science Fiction and Fantasy literature as decreed by the Pope-Kings. For there were many panels, attended by many lovely slaves and mighty masters, this being a Con on Gor, where the rightness of the modalities of master and slave are muchly and clearly defined as is right in our very genes, coming from our manly Spartan ancestors, who were truly the manliest of men in their manhood.
And muchly at the great contest of the mighty Kirk Poland did they read of eyeballs and battleaxes and manly, throbbing things to which the slave girls could only tremble in their true modalities as beautiful slaves, being of Gor where the rightness of proper modalities is maintained; for this befits their ancient genes and evolution with the many generations of manly men who were out with their manly bikers like Cobra, or watering their houseplants in manly Gorean modalities, or doing other such Gorean things, did the words of the mightiest of Gorean warriors get read in all their modalities, so that even the names of small Gorean streets, which might have one name at one end of the street and another at another as described in a long description by the slave Tiffany, were placed as they should be in accordance with the modalities of our beings.
And that's as much of that as I can manage without needing medical attention. So with thanks to sovay for cajoling me up to Lexington on a hot summer weekend, I now return you to your regular, non-Gorean programming.
I met a number of very nice people, using Gay, Bejeweled Nazi Bikers of Gor as a sort of calling-card. These included Samuel R. Delany, Charles Stross, Greer Gilman, Inanna Arthen and Caitlin Kiernan, as well as Jen Matteis (who was kind enough to give me in exchange a copy of Three Stories with her own very fine work in it) and the very nice lady in the Con suite. Since I gave away all of my copies, I know there were many more people who got one, and my apologies for those I have omitted in my post-con delirious haze. Another copy was given to the "winner" of the Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition, at which, God help me, I pegged the John Norman quote right away (he does love his semicolons).
There were some fine panels: how to make money writing was very useful, since the country is in a mild depression these days, and it was well-attended. The panel on sex was interesting too, and raised the question of the author's responsibility to the reader. It was noted that in the Romance genre it has become common to include the types of sex acts in the story as part of the description, to which Caitlin Kiernan and others objected quite strenuously, stating that all the warning the reader needed was the author's name. There is, it was argued, also the problem of giving away the story with such descriptions.
While this is true (if I pick up a novel by Penni Fitzmon, for example, it is reasonable to expect it to have tentacles, and I don't really need a warning), I think it depends on the genre. Since Romance is a highly consumer-focused genre, publishers need to consider readers and their tastes much more carefully than they should in more "literary" forms. As Kiernan put it, her work is, at least partly, meant to "punch you in the nose".
And a good nose punching by a book (think of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, for example), is an important part of the reading experience sometimes, and no author should need to apologize for that. Another part is sometimes to laugh, which brings me in a very clever way back to my experiences at the con.
The real reason to write isn't to make money but to have people read and appreciate what you have written, and in this way Gay, Bejeweled Nazi Bikers of Gor has been a smashing success; the first page was read after the Kirk Poland competition and made people laugh, which is the story's intent. In that spirit, here is a Normanesque summary of Readercon:
It was a weekend on Gor, in the high city of Lexington, in the great towers of the Marriott hotel, where many tarns perch on the high towers of the hotel in the mighty city, built by the labors of slaves, constructed of stone drawn from the nearby quarries by thralion or by wagon, the stonecutter's guild not dealing muchly with the merchants of the Con but rather directly with the government of the Con, led by the mighty men and free women and slaves of the High Council of Readercon, dealing under the aegis of the Con organizers, so to speak; and muchly did Blergus and I walk the halls with the other mighty Gorean warriors, seeking the truest of modalities of Science Fiction and Fantasy literature as decreed by the Pope-Kings. For there were many panels, attended by many lovely slaves and mighty masters, this being a Con on Gor, where the rightness of the modalities of master and slave are muchly and clearly defined as is right in our very genes, coming from our manly Spartan ancestors, who were truly the manliest of men in their manhood.
And muchly at the great contest of the mighty Kirk Poland did they read of eyeballs and battleaxes and manly, throbbing things to which the slave girls could only tremble in their true modalities as beautiful slaves, being of Gor where the rightness of proper modalities is maintained; for this befits their ancient genes and evolution with the many generations of manly men who were out with their manly bikers like Cobra, or watering their houseplants in manly Gorean modalities, or doing other such Gorean things, did the words of the mightiest of Gorean warriors get read in all their modalities, so that even the names of small Gorean streets, which might have one name at one end of the street and another at another as described in a long description by the slave Tiffany, were placed as they should be in accordance with the modalities of our beings.
And that's as much of that as I can manage without needing medical attention. So with thanks to sovay for cajoling me up to Lexington on a hot summer weekend, I now return you to your regular, non-Gorean programming.