World Fantasy Con, Day 2
Friday, Oct 28, 2011
Yesterday's lesson was that I should get enough rest; I hated being so tired at the two after-dinner panels. Friday morning I resolutely slept in, ignoring the siren call on the Con, and Kater's message that she was headed for the Con Suite. After lunch, I had a choice of a panel on Retelling Fairy Tales with Pat Murphy moderating, or Connie Willis discussing her role as WFC's toastmaster. Not to mention a great list of readings. It was a tough choice.
You know you're at a good con when you need three four selves: one to get enough sleep, and the others to attend all the great events on two tracks of programming and one track of awesome readings.
I went to Retelling Old Stories: The New Fairy Tales. Some of the points made:
I have to say I was surprised to learn that yes, there's still a problem. It isn't nearly as bad as it was 20 or 30 years ago, but it exists. Most readers are women. (Middle-aged women are apparently the major buyers of books in most genres, including Horror, which most people had assumed sold to teenage boys.) Most editors and agents are women. Most writers are women. But books by men get noticed more, reviewed more often, and are thus more visible. There was discussion of the "male gaze" vs the "female gaze." Things of interest to men are considered important, those of interest to women are not. Genres popular with women are denigrated ("chick-lit", romance); and blogger-reviewers denigrated as "mommy-bloggers." A librarian in the audience underlined the important of reviews in major venues. Unless books were reviewed by, say, the Publishers Weekly or the New York Times, they didn't appear on her radar and get into the acquisition process.
Kate Elliott had a story: An Amazon reviewer had said he liked her book, but gave it only one star because of its support of the "Homosexual Agenda." She was startled, though she was quite happy to support the "Homosexual agenda" (whatever that might be) but because that particular book didn't have any major gay characters. She actually emailed the reviewer to determine what might have caused the comment. Finally she realized it was because he was interpreting her sexualized descriptions of men (i.e., men viewed sexually through a female gaze) as being through a male, gay, gaze.
One more panel: A Sea of Stars. This discussed whether the sea was to fantasy what space was to science fiction. Though there were a lot of parallels, people felt that fantasy was for the most part land-based, whereas space-based science fiction was a whole sub-genre. In fact, it might be the other way around -- that space-lit took its metaphors from the great sea-faring novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Then I went on to the standing-room-only Neil Gaiman and Connie Willis in conversation. It was a delight; they're both witty and charming in a self-deprecating way.
The Hospitality Suite for dinner -- they had arranged a great buffet. In fact, I'd like to pause for a minute to give a shout-out to all those responsible for the Con Suite. They did an amazing job. Snacks, food, and a great atmosphere. And the whole thing generally looked very organized and under control.
After dinner, there was the autograph session -- all the authors sat at long lines of tables in the largest room so fans could get their autographs. For me, it was strange and wonderful and jaw-dropping. All these authors, including some I'd read as a kid, were sitting in this room. The sheer fantasy fire-power was amazing. After a bit, I found people I knew, and dropped in to chat with them.
The line for Neil Gaiman's signature was ... amazingly long. Though he was seated in the same room, the line went out the door to the adjacent ballroom, and out the door in that ballroom into the foyer. He stayed the full three hours, 8 p.m.-11 p.m. -- and then had another couple of hours the next morning. Though I'm a great fan (Neverwhere is my favorite of his books, followed by Good Omens) I was intimidated enough not to even try.
(PS Was too tired to post this or Saturday's journals on time. I'm playing catch-up now.)
Yesterday's lesson was that I should get enough rest; I hated being so tired at the two after-dinner panels. Friday morning I resolutely slept in, ignoring the siren call on the Con, and Kater's message that she was headed for the Con Suite. After lunch, I had a choice of a panel on Retelling Fairy Tales with Pat Murphy moderating, or Connie Willis discussing her role as WFC's toastmaster. Not to mention a great list of readings. It was a tough choice.
You know you're at a good con when you need three four selves: one to get enough sleep, and the others to attend all the great events on two tracks of programming and one track of awesome readings.
I went to Retelling Old Stories: The New Fairy Tales. Some of the points made:
- Fairy tales offer psychologically acute metaphors for everyday issues. Red Riding Hood is about adolescence and the wolf in men; Hansel & Gretel about abandonment; Beauty and the Beast represents the fear of marriage to a stranger in a strange place. Sleeping Beauty can be a metaphor for adolescence - or of the rivalry between a mother and daughter as the child grows up
- Many themes are universal. Cinderella stories, where the weakest wins, for instance, or Changeling stories. Graham Joyce told the story of the Bridget Cleary murder from Ireland around 1900. Bridget was a young wife who had been ill. Her husband became convinced that his wife had been abducted by the fairies, and Bridget was actually a changeling. Together with some neighbors, they decided they must burn her so she would vanish and the real woman would be returned. Bridget died, and Michael was convicted of manslaughter.
- "Disneyfication" removes dark and dangerous (and sometimes, feminist) elements, and because of its ubiquity, can completely change the story. Pat talked about the need to "get the Disney out of people's heads."
- Modern retellings are often about reframing or refiltering the story from a different perspective. It might use, for instance, a feminist perspective; or one from a different character than the usual main character in the story.
- Fairy tales end where novels keep going. They're a compressed art-form. Or -- are they just truncated at a convenient point? Some version keep going, usually becoming increasingly dark. There is a version of Beauty and the Beast (or is it Cinderella) in which she returns home for a visit when told her father is dying, and is murdered and her stepsister sent in her place.
- Are aliens the new fairies? Do they provide the sense of otherness and danger that fairies used to do?
I have to say I was surprised to learn that yes, there's still a problem. It isn't nearly as bad as it was 20 or 30 years ago, but it exists. Most readers are women. (Middle-aged women are apparently the major buyers of books in most genres, including Horror, which most people had assumed sold to teenage boys.) Most editors and agents are women. Most writers are women. But books by men get noticed more, reviewed more often, and are thus more visible. There was discussion of the "male gaze" vs the "female gaze." Things of interest to men are considered important, those of interest to women are not. Genres popular with women are denigrated ("chick-lit", romance); and blogger-reviewers denigrated as "mommy-bloggers." A librarian in the audience underlined the important of reviews in major venues. Unless books were reviewed by, say, the Publishers Weekly or the New York Times, they didn't appear on her radar and get into the acquisition process.
Kate Elliott had a story: An Amazon reviewer had said he liked her book, but gave it only one star because of its support of the "Homosexual Agenda." She was startled, though she was quite happy to support the "Homosexual agenda" (whatever that might be) but because that particular book didn't have any major gay characters. She actually emailed the reviewer to determine what might have caused the comment. Finally she realized it was because he was interpreting her sexualized descriptions of men (i.e., men viewed sexually through a female gaze) as being through a male, gay, gaze.
One more panel: A Sea of Stars. This discussed whether the sea was to fantasy what space was to science fiction. Though there were a lot of parallels, people felt that fantasy was for the most part land-based, whereas space-based science fiction was a whole sub-genre. In fact, it might be the other way around -- that space-lit took its metaphors from the great sea-faring novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Then I went on to the standing-room-only Neil Gaiman and Connie Willis in conversation. It was a delight; they're both witty and charming in a self-deprecating way.
The Hospitality Suite for dinner -- they had arranged a great buffet. In fact, I'd like to pause for a minute to give a shout-out to all those responsible for the Con Suite. They did an amazing job. Snacks, food, and a great atmosphere. And the whole thing generally looked very organized and under control.
After dinner, there was the autograph session -- all the authors sat at long lines of tables in the largest room so fans could get their autographs. For me, it was strange and wonderful and jaw-dropping. All these authors, including some I'd read as a kid, were sitting in this room. The sheer fantasy fire-power was amazing. After a bit, I found people I knew, and dropped in to chat with them.
The line for Neil Gaiman's signature was ... amazingly long. Though he was seated in the same room, the line went out the door to the adjacent ballroom, and out the door in that ballroom into the foyer. He stayed the full three hours, 8 p.m.-11 p.m. -- and then had another couple of hours the next morning. Though I'm a great fan (Neverwhere is my favorite of his books, followed by Good Omens) I was intimidated enough not to even try.
(PS Was too tired to post this or Saturday's journals on time. I'm playing catch-up now.)