Anticipation Retrospection
Anticipation
It's been well over a week since I got back from Anticipation, this year's Worldcon in Montreal and yet I've not posted a retrospective on the whole thing. Mostly because I've been lazy, partly because I've been busy with family and friends who have come down, and a little bit because I was letting the experience ferment, and see what rose to the the top as highlights. Originally, I intended to write a post for everyday at the end of the day, but lack of internet access where I was staying and underestimating how much time I would spend at the convention. With my new little netbook, I took a lot of notes at the convention, and not all of them need to be included, so I've condensed them to the most interesting things I saw.
For those of you who don't want to read lots of texts, you can see all the photos we took here, and Karen has a photo post with the best pictures and captions.
The first day of the convention, Thursday August 6th, started a bit later at noon, as many people were arriving and getting registered, but Friday, Saturday and Sunday were 12 hour days, and Monday was done by 5pm. With some time to kill, Karen and I spent some time browsing, seeing what a science fiction convention is actually like. The number of dealers around was somewhat disappointing because of the hassle in bring merchandise across the Canada-US border, and many didn't bother to come. There was free internet access in the dealer room, which also doubled as the main area, with tables and displays, but the the rest of the building was covered by the building's wifi which “fees apply” too, fees that turned out to be over $500 for the length of the convention. Cory Doctorow said that it was “a big fuck you” to potential customers, because it could not possibly cost the convention centre that much to offer the service.
Most of the activities of the convention were topic panels, which would have up to five panellists (rarely more), who had a connection with the topic. The panellists would discuss the topics and then open the floor to audience questions. This was very much like university with seminars, lectures and note taking. However, an informal atmosphere pervaded, and some of the less well attended panels generated a lot more audience participation.
Many of the panels I attended dealt with cultural impact of science fiction, related to racism, gender, post colonialism, appropriation, sexuality, and the continuing dominance of Anglo-American works and their perspectives. Sounds dense? It was. Science fiction has had a unique ability to tackle taboo issues, because alternate settings create a sense of distance between the reader and the material, allowing the reader to consider such issues free from cultural baggage. Also, science fiction's status as a literary outsider has allowed it to be more open to different perspectives.
However, the flip side of the issue is, that science fiction is still a product of its time, often unable to escape contemporary perspectives on issues, even when the setting is far into the future. Aliens almost always are a commentary on some aspect of our own humanity, rather than incomprehensible intelligences as portrayed by Stanislaw Lem. The dominance of Anglo-American science fiction means that the future is often a very Western place, with a paucity of other cultural perspectives. Discussion of “ Racefail '09” came up a number of times. I even went to a panel title “Putting the World Back into Worldcon”, but the writers there were European or Japanese.
Other panels I went to dealt with intellectual property reform, led by the very animated Cory Doctorow. Fair Copyright reform has been a big issue for me, and much of the credit for turning me on to it goes to Cory. It also turns out the science fiction publisher Tor, represented on the panel by their chief editor Patrick Neilsen Hayden, as long been a proponent of new approaches to copyright, like the http://creativecommons.org/Creative Commons license, something many publishers won't use on principle.
I got to meet Cory afterwards. I am a huge fan, counting him among my most important influences on my writing, and got him to sign some books, including his copyright reform essay collection Content. Now, if anyone mentions copyright, I can hit them with the hard copy and tell them to read and be radicalized.
The other major category of panels I attended dealt with history, either as alternate history or it's intersection with fantasy. One panel with Guy Gavriel Kay discussed the large proportion of fantasy writers who have degrees in Medieval history, and how pseudo-Medieval settings dominate the genre, right down to favorable portrayals of monarchies. Another panel discussed how useful historical research was to reading and writing fantasy, but no one seemed to think that it was very unimportant.
I got to see author SM Stirling on a panel about the Napoleonic Wars, and then one about why only some histories get alternates. Basically, the American Civil War and the Second World War get oodles and the panelists ranted about how ignored the First World War is, even though it is a far more dynamic period. It was also mentioned that war was often used as a starting point for alternate history because it is a field where individual actions can have a very large impact on history, which is usually dominated by socioeconomic trends. I talked to Stirling afterwards about some obscure turning points in history that would make for good alternate histories.
I even sat on a panel about realism in fantasy, because only one panelist showed up. The discussion was about a trend in contemporary fantasy towards producing more realistic secondary worlds, with workable economics, societies and metaphysics. Some readers and writers are not fond of this, preferring to leave it out. I love world building, and very much demand that this information be there, just not as infodumps. The panel basically agreed.
I went to a number of other panels on diverse topics such as Tarot, how TV science fiction trails written stuff by a generation, surveillance societies and Paul Krugman's personal ruminations of a life of reading science fiction.
Although panels dominated our schedules, Karen and I did attend other things like the opening ceremonies, complete with an acrobatic performance; an early morning walk with fans and writers; the Hugos, which was much like any other awards ceremony; a costume competition for a convention that had far less cosplay than I had been led to expect from photos of other conventions; and kaffeeklatsches, which are more personal sized meetings with authors. Karen and I went to one with the Cecil Street Irregulars, where the writing group outnumbered fans, one with David Anthony Durham, with only four people, and Karen went to see Larry Niven and I to see Karl Schroeder. It was loads of fun to just hang out with authors. I discovered just how friendly and approachable people in the fandom are. Perhaps it's because of the outsider status of science fiction forced them to stick together, as well as that creators are also fans and vice versa.
One of the more fascinating things to see at the convention was the conversation between Charles Stross and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman. The discussion ranged all over the place, but Stross did most of the talking, looking at the intersections between and science fiction and economics and their complete transformation of everyday life in the past two centuries. Krugman mentioned that he got into economics because it was the closest thing to actual psychohistory.
Even though Worldcon is the first and oldest of all science fiction conventions, dating all the way back to 1939, it isn't the biggest. There was somewhere between 2500 and 3000 people there on any given day, compared to the tens of thousands other conventions regularly draw. The only explanation I can think of is that Worldcon has always focused on the literature, instead of movies, TV, video games and comic books, although all of those can be found there. I've complained about it before, but it really seems that most self identified science fiction fans don't actually read any of it. And that shows in the attendance difference between literature and media conventions.
Karen and I didn't get to see much of Montreal beyond the downtown core because Worldcon ate up so much of our time. We visited Chinatown a lot because it was right next to the convention centre and jam packed with cheap and delicious restaurants. The streets there were pedestrian only and it was a polyglot of languages - French, English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Korean, Vietnamese, etc. It felt incredibly cyberpunk.
We spent our evenings hanging out in front of the residence at McGill, drinking beer with an Australian Chemistry Phd student, an American student doing French immersion for the summer, a Mexican student doing the same and several girls from Venezuela, sent out of the country by wealthy parents because of Hugo Chavez. During the weekend, a large evangelical youth group arrived for a conference, and were made uncomfortable by our drinking of beer in public. After being invited to go to church with them (I declined as I was attending a panel on Rennaissance Atheism at the same time), they explained that their denomination was the New Apostolic Church, which was supposed to be based on the heirarchy of the early apostolic church. I wondered if the mimicked all the petty squabbling, power struggles and theological infighting that characterized the apostles after Jesus.
The last night in Montreal was Karen's 25th birthday, so we went to go see Tori Amos in concert, since Karen is a big fan. We also met my first cousin Micheal there, since he is a deadhead of sorts, following Tori Amos to multiple concerts on each tour. We even met Tori Amos before the show. I enjoyed the concert, although I am not really a fan.
The trip back was much the same as the trip up, except we stayed in a motel rather than get eaten alive again.
It's been well over a week since I got back from Anticipation, this year's Worldcon in Montreal and yet I've not posted a retrospective on the whole thing. Mostly because I've been lazy, partly because I've been busy with family and friends who have come down, and a little bit because I was letting the experience ferment, and see what rose to the the top as highlights. Originally, I intended to write a post for everyday at the end of the day, but lack of internet access where I was staying and underestimating how much time I would spend at the convention. With my new little netbook, I took a lot of notes at the convention, and not all of them need to be included, so I've condensed them to the most interesting things I saw.
For those of you who don't want to read lots of texts, you can see all the photos we took here, and Karen has a photo post with the best pictures and captions.
The first day of the convention, Thursday August 6th, started a bit later at noon, as many people were arriving and getting registered, but Friday, Saturday and Sunday were 12 hour days, and Monday was done by 5pm. With some time to kill, Karen and I spent some time browsing, seeing what a science fiction convention is actually like. The number of dealers around was somewhat disappointing because of the hassle in bring merchandise across the Canada-US border, and many didn't bother to come. There was free internet access in the dealer room, which also doubled as the main area, with tables and displays, but the the rest of the building was covered by the building's wifi which “fees apply” too, fees that turned out to be over $500 for the length of the convention. Cory Doctorow said that it was “a big fuck you” to potential customers, because it could not possibly cost the convention centre that much to offer the service.
Most of the activities of the convention were topic panels, which would have up to five panellists (rarely more), who had a connection with the topic. The panellists would discuss the topics and then open the floor to audience questions. This was very much like university with seminars, lectures and note taking. However, an informal atmosphere pervaded, and some of the less well attended panels generated a lot more audience participation.
Many of the panels I attended dealt with cultural impact of science fiction, related to racism, gender, post colonialism, appropriation, sexuality, and the continuing dominance of Anglo-American works and their perspectives. Sounds dense? It was. Science fiction has had a unique ability to tackle taboo issues, because alternate settings create a sense of distance between the reader and the material, allowing the reader to consider such issues free from cultural baggage. Also, science fiction's status as a literary outsider has allowed it to be more open to different perspectives.
However, the flip side of the issue is, that science fiction is still a product of its time, often unable to escape contemporary perspectives on issues, even when the setting is far into the future. Aliens almost always are a commentary on some aspect of our own humanity, rather than incomprehensible intelligences as portrayed by Stanislaw Lem. The dominance of Anglo-American science fiction means that the future is often a very Western place, with a paucity of other cultural perspectives. Discussion of “ Racefail '09” came up a number of times. I even went to a panel title “Putting the World Back into Worldcon”, but the writers there were European or Japanese.
Other panels I went to dealt with intellectual property reform, led by the very animated Cory Doctorow. Fair Copyright reform has been a big issue for me, and much of the credit for turning me on to it goes to Cory. It also turns out the science fiction publisher Tor, represented on the panel by their chief editor Patrick Neilsen Hayden, as long been a proponent of new approaches to copyright, like the http://creativecommons.org/Creative Commons license, something many publishers won't use on principle.
I got to meet Cory afterwards. I am a huge fan, counting him among my most important influences on my writing, and got him to sign some books, including his copyright reform essay collection Content. Now, if anyone mentions copyright, I can hit them with the hard copy and tell them to read and be radicalized.
The other major category of panels I attended dealt with history, either as alternate history or it's intersection with fantasy. One panel with Guy Gavriel Kay discussed the large proportion of fantasy writers who have degrees in Medieval history, and how pseudo-Medieval settings dominate the genre, right down to favorable portrayals of monarchies. Another panel discussed how useful historical research was to reading and writing fantasy, but no one seemed to think that it was very unimportant.
I got to see author SM Stirling on a panel about the Napoleonic Wars, and then one about why only some histories get alternates. Basically, the American Civil War and the Second World War get oodles and the panelists ranted about how ignored the First World War is, even though it is a far more dynamic period. It was also mentioned that war was often used as a starting point for alternate history because it is a field where individual actions can have a very large impact on history, which is usually dominated by socioeconomic trends. I talked to Stirling afterwards about some obscure turning points in history that would make for good alternate histories.
I even sat on a panel about realism in fantasy, because only one panelist showed up. The discussion was about a trend in contemporary fantasy towards producing more realistic secondary worlds, with workable economics, societies and metaphysics. Some readers and writers are not fond of this, preferring to leave it out. I love world building, and very much demand that this information be there, just not as infodumps. The panel basically agreed.
I went to a number of other panels on diverse topics such as Tarot, how TV science fiction trails written stuff by a generation, surveillance societies and Paul Krugman's personal ruminations of a life of reading science fiction.
Although panels dominated our schedules, Karen and I did attend other things like the opening ceremonies, complete with an acrobatic performance; an early morning walk with fans and writers; the Hugos, which was much like any other awards ceremony; a costume competition for a convention that had far less cosplay than I had been led to expect from photos of other conventions; and kaffeeklatsches, which are more personal sized meetings with authors. Karen and I went to one with the Cecil Street Irregulars, where the writing group outnumbered fans, one with David Anthony Durham, with only four people, and Karen went to see Larry Niven and I to see Karl Schroeder. It was loads of fun to just hang out with authors. I discovered just how friendly and approachable people in the fandom are. Perhaps it's because of the outsider status of science fiction forced them to stick together, as well as that creators are also fans and vice versa.
One of the more fascinating things to see at the convention was the conversation between Charles Stross and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman. The discussion ranged all over the place, but Stross did most of the talking, looking at the intersections between and science fiction and economics and their complete transformation of everyday life in the past two centuries. Krugman mentioned that he got into economics because it was the closest thing to actual psychohistory.
Even though Worldcon is the first and oldest of all science fiction conventions, dating all the way back to 1939, it isn't the biggest. There was somewhere between 2500 and 3000 people there on any given day, compared to the tens of thousands other conventions regularly draw. The only explanation I can think of is that Worldcon has always focused on the literature, instead of movies, TV, video games and comic books, although all of those can be found there. I've complained about it before, but it really seems that most self identified science fiction fans don't actually read any of it. And that shows in the attendance difference between literature and media conventions.
Karen and I didn't get to see much of Montreal beyond the downtown core because Worldcon ate up so much of our time. We visited Chinatown a lot because it was right next to the convention centre and jam packed with cheap and delicious restaurants. The streets there were pedestrian only and it was a polyglot of languages - French, English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Korean, Vietnamese, etc. It felt incredibly cyberpunk.
We spent our evenings hanging out in front of the residence at McGill, drinking beer with an Australian Chemistry Phd student, an American student doing French immersion for the summer, a Mexican student doing the same and several girls from Venezuela, sent out of the country by wealthy parents because of Hugo Chavez. During the weekend, a large evangelical youth group arrived for a conference, and were made uncomfortable by our drinking of beer in public. After being invited to go to church with them (I declined as I was attending a panel on Rennaissance Atheism at the same time), they explained that their denomination was the New Apostolic Church, which was supposed to be based on the heirarchy of the early apostolic church. I wondered if the mimicked all the petty squabbling, power struggles and theological infighting that characterized the apostles after Jesus.
The last night in Montreal was Karen's 25th birthday, so we went to go see Tori Amos in concert, since Karen is a big fan. We also met my first cousin Micheal there, since he is a deadhead of sorts, following Tori Amos to multiple concerts on each tour. We even met Tori Amos before the show. I enjoyed the concert, although I am not really a fan.
The trip back was much the same as the trip up, except we stayed in a motel rather than get eaten alive again.