Readercon 25 con report!
Readercon 25! It was a thing that happened, with lots of the most intelligent and amazing people I know--SFF writers and readers.
Here's what I did:
Thursday, as per tradition, I met up with sabredanse for dinner at Burton's, and then we attended the free part of the event. We went to the following panels: (this time we didn't walk out of any!)
Power Differentials in Reviewing, with Kevin Clark, John Clute, Amal El-Mohtar, Lila Garrott, Alex Jablokow, Gregory Wilson. Otherwise known as "most of the panel disagrees with John Clute," the end. Most of what I took away from this panel was that John Clute thinks review anonymity is a bad thing, and had clearly never considered the case where someone might use a pseudonym to avoid harassment. At one point I may have leaned over to Jess and said, "I think he's benefiting from some power differentials in reviewing."
We joined up with fellow VPeep John W for the next panel, What Won't You Write? with (VPer! and Hugo nominee!) John Chu, Kameron Hurley, Romie Stott, and David Shaw. Nothing really surprising in this panel--people shy away from racial caricatures, sexual assault of women, and other deeply problematic things, in both their reading and writing. At the end Jess asked the panel if they felt there was any value in reading objectionable material which might otherwise have merit. She says this as a big fan of Elizabeth Moon, whose work would have been on some panelist's no-fly lists due to the rape in Sheepfarmer's Daughter.
This actually led to a really interesting discussion (with the addition of Dave*, who popped into the panel room to visit with us) afterward about reading difficult material.
Mostly that evening I was delighted how well Jess and my VP friends got on, and wished she had been able to join us for the rest of the weekend.
Friday I didn't arrive until 7pm or so, and I went to:
An Illustrated Guide to Fantasy Maps, presented by Jonathan Crowe, who used to run... I guess you would call it a map fan site? called The Map Room. This was probably my favorite event of the con! The panel pretty much was what it said on the tin: "Jonathan Crowe describes fantasy map design elements, looks at good and bad executions of the fantasy map design, compares fantasy maps with their real-world historical equivalents, and explores some new and different takes on the fantasy map." I found the statistics on things like how often profile mountains appear in fantasy maps intriguing, and the comparisons to historical maps gave me some interesting ideas for drawing maps for G&F.
Among the "bad fantasy maps" we looked at was Bujold's self-drawn map for The Sharing Knife, which prompted an interesting discussion when it turned out her editor? agent? publicist? was in the audience, and spoke up. She mentioned she had argued for a professional cartographer to be brought in, but had been shot down (by Bujold herself? by the rest of the team? Dunno).
After that was Dealing with Discouragement, with LJ Cohen, Brett Cox, Gemma Files, Barbara Krasnoff, and Bud Sparhawk. Something I still have a lot to learn about! Alas, I'm not sure I learned any new strategies, unless it's the "24-hour wallow" after receiving a rejection. That said, I am always simultaneously surprised--and yet unchanged--by the knowledge that other writers face as much self-doubt as I do. I also really liked the conclusion that you should continue writing not "because you can't do anything else"--Brett Cox dismissed that as bullshit, and I agree--but because even knowing it may never be published, you still feel the need to tell the story.
Amusing side note, from Cox's introduction: "recently I've moved into writing poetry, because writing short stories was just too lucrative."
I was really excited for Jess Nevins' talk at 9pm on The Gothic in 19th-century Science Fiction. I know Nevins primarily because of his commentaries on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but he's also the author of The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana. Needless to say, he knows his shit when it comes to 19th-century literature, and this lecture was incredibly informative.
It was also, I regret to say, poorly presented. I was dismayed when I realized the entire lecture was just going to be Nevins reading from an essay he'd written. Occasionally he would stop to make humorous interjections--"that's why Scooby Doo is a female gothic"--but mostly it was just him reading for forty minutes. It left me wishing I'd just looked the article up on his blog.
Even better, a couple of dudes came in right before the end of the panel and started asking ignorant questions. One of the important points of the lecture was the difference between the male gothic (in the tradition of The Monk) and the female gothic (in the tradition of The Mysteries of Udolfo), and how they influenced 19-century science fiction in separate ways. I guarantee if you show up during the Q&A and say, "What do you mean by male and female gothic? I've never heard that term before," you will make everyone in the audience want to punch you. Seriously, don't be that guy. (Someone even spoke up and said, "Dude, he just spent the last hour explaining that," and guy whined, "But I wasn't heeeeeere!")
Saturday I arrived at the con around 12:30, and caught the end of New Models of Masculinity, with panelists Erik Amundsen, John Benson, Kameron Hurley, Catt Kingsgrave, and Bart Leib. Nothing much to say about this--we need dudes who aren't dudebros.
In the 1pm hour, I went to Integrating Exposition, with panelists Jeanne Cavelos, Glenn Grant, Daryl Gregory, Mary Rickert, Sarah Smith, and Melanie Tem. They discussed many of the interesting ways authors have integrated exposition, and which have been most successful. Jeanne Cavelos was really fond of Tyrion Lannister in this role--a odd but charismatic character explaining what the reader needs to know.
One thing I've realized was that I had "show, don't tell" pounded into my writer brain at an early age--literally, this was probably the first lesson of writing I learned. So my approach to exposition tends to be complete avoidance, telling the reader the minimum they need to know to understand what's going on. I got into a whispered conversation with Matt, who has read the first 15k words of Lioness v2, about a certain infodump when the main character is reading a dossier. I told him that was the kind of thing I intend to go back and edit, but he seemed to think it wasn't so exposition-y as to be a problem.
All in all, the techniques the panelists spoke about were so clever, and so different than what I would use, that this panel that left me feeling like I am wildly out of my depth as a writer :( I realize as I say this that I'm seeing highlight reel--the novel after multple edit passes--which I should expect to reflect my experience as I write. That only somewhat mitigates the dissonance.
(endlessgame said of me: "I find it so interesting, how writing seems to simultaneously be the thing that stresses you, and the thing you use as stress relief." Very true!)
At 2pm I went to Portrayals of Code-switching, with Chesya Burke, Geoff Hart, Daniel José Older, and Tom Purdom. Language is interesting to me, and power is interesting to me, and as the panel concluded, code-switching is about manipulating power. In general I found myself agreeing with the presenters, but didn't have a ton to add. I'm still thinking about Older's assertion (discussing Junot Diaz's fight to not have the Spanish in his works italicized) that italicizing it changes its significance, and makes it less representative of what a "Spanglish" conversation looks like, where there are no boundaries between the two languages. I guess it's marked in the same way that pointing out that a character is black (where white is assumed to be "default") is marked, but it's not something I've put any thought into before. My privilege, I guess.
After this panel I also caught up with VPeeps Alex and Devin, who flew out from California just to see me! Or something ;)
Next up--and my last panel--was Dark Fantasy and Horror: What's the Difference? with Jeanne Cavelos, Ellen Datlow, Gemma Files, Jordan Hamessley, Jack Haringa, and Steve Rasnic Tem. A huge panel, in other words :) I went to this one because I couldn't convince Matt to go to the butts panel next door ;) But it was actually really thought-provoking. I think I embraced Cavelos' definition the best--dark fantasy is fantasy that uses some of the conventions of horror (like vampires, for example), but doesn't seek to evoke a sense of dread. There was also an interesting side note by Jack Haringa, who has edited some anthologies with S.T. Joshi, about Lovecraft's Dream Cycle, which stands in contrast to the rest of his work, and can probably be considered dark fantasy more than horror. He didn't say it, but the conclusion this led me to is that dark fantasy probably has more optimism than horror; the Dream Cycle stories stand out as the only ones with happy endings.
I kind of wanted to ask if Night Vale would be considered horror or dark fantasy, but that felt way off topic, since I'm not sure it's either.
Somewhere in here Matt dared me to write a "Western horror mystery," after someone (Cavelos?) mentioned we don't categorize books in a consistent way, i.e. "western" is determined by setting, "horror" is determined by a feeling evoked, "mystery" by plot, etc.
After that panel we all gathered for the VP dinner at the Lemon Tree. My class, 17, had a good representation, as well as sprrwhwk's class, 16, and the upcoming class, 18. Other classes were less well represented, alas! Dave*, who organized the event, made a toast, Uncle Jim did magic tricks, and we ate delicious Thai food and had great conversations. I especially enjoyed chatting with Lauren R., a VP16er who writes for RPGs.
We got back to the hotel around 7, but nothing in the evening slots appealed, so we just hung out in the hotel bar, or on the back patio, or in the lobby, until the party at 10. I have especially fond memories of our conversations with Chris Gerwel, a VP15er and now a staff member, about what we called "the Muppet gap"--how in our generation there's a gap between people for whom The Muppet Show was their primary experience of the Muppets, and those for whom Muppet Babies was where it's at. Chris, like me, falls on the Muppet Babies side of the spectrum; it was either him or John W. who said, "Yeah, when I first heard about the Muppet Show I thought it was so odd that they made a show where the Muppets grew up." I mentioned how much of an influence Muppet Babies was on me, and how I thought it was so genius that they never actually left the nursery, just daydreamed about it.
"Yeah, really it's a prison narrative."
"One Day in the Life of Fozzie Bearovitch?"
At the VP party, I spent most of the time in a room with pts, sprrwhwk, Coral, John W, and VP18er Robert D, discussing everything and nothing about SFF--the obligatory Heinlein roast and toast, our introductions to SFF, "doing due diligence" on the classics of SFF, etc. Since Paul's day job is as a translator (he's translated the manga and light novels of Spice & Wolf and Haruhi Suzumiya, among other titles), we talked about translation a lot, and it occurred to me to ask him if he'd ever read Le ton beau de Marot, Douglas Hoftstadter's book on the topic. Much to my surprise, he had! And so had Robert! So we discussed that a bunch, explained it to the others, argued about the merits of other Hofstadter works (that was mostly Paul and Robert; I haven't read anything else by him).
That was the end of the con for me; I decided that skipping out on Sunday was the best thing for my mental health.
All in all, it was a simultaneously exhausting and mentally stimulating weekend for me. Funny how that works.
Here's what I did:
Thursday, as per tradition, I met up with sabredanse for dinner at Burton's, and then we attended the free part of the event. We went to the following panels: (this time we didn't walk out of any!)
Power Differentials in Reviewing, with Kevin Clark, John Clute, Amal El-Mohtar, Lila Garrott, Alex Jablokow, Gregory Wilson. Otherwise known as "most of the panel disagrees with John Clute," the end. Most of what I took away from this panel was that John Clute thinks review anonymity is a bad thing, and had clearly never considered the case where someone might use a pseudonym to avoid harassment. At one point I may have leaned over to Jess and said, "I think he's benefiting from some power differentials in reviewing."
We joined up with fellow VPeep John W for the next panel, What Won't You Write? with (VPer! and Hugo nominee!) John Chu, Kameron Hurley, Romie Stott, and David Shaw. Nothing really surprising in this panel--people shy away from racial caricatures, sexual assault of women, and other deeply problematic things, in both their reading and writing. At the end Jess asked the panel if they felt there was any value in reading objectionable material which might otherwise have merit. She says this as a big fan of Elizabeth Moon, whose work would have been on some panelist's no-fly lists due to the rape in Sheepfarmer's Daughter.
This actually led to a really interesting discussion (with the addition of Dave*, who popped into the panel room to visit with us) afterward about reading difficult material.
Mostly that evening I was delighted how well Jess and my VP friends got on, and wished she had been able to join us for the rest of the weekend.
Friday I didn't arrive until 7pm or so, and I went to:
An Illustrated Guide to Fantasy Maps, presented by Jonathan Crowe, who used to run... I guess you would call it a map fan site? called The Map Room. This was probably my favorite event of the con! The panel pretty much was what it said on the tin: "Jonathan Crowe describes fantasy map design elements, looks at good and bad executions of the fantasy map design, compares fantasy maps with their real-world historical equivalents, and explores some new and different takes on the fantasy map." I found the statistics on things like how often profile mountains appear in fantasy maps intriguing, and the comparisons to historical maps gave me some interesting ideas for drawing maps for G&F.
Among the "bad fantasy maps" we looked at was Bujold's self-drawn map for The Sharing Knife, which prompted an interesting discussion when it turned out her editor? agent? publicist? was in the audience, and spoke up. She mentioned she had argued for a professional cartographer to be brought in, but had been shot down (by Bujold herself? by the rest of the team? Dunno).
After that was Dealing with Discouragement, with LJ Cohen, Brett Cox, Gemma Files, Barbara Krasnoff, and Bud Sparhawk. Something I still have a lot to learn about! Alas, I'm not sure I learned any new strategies, unless it's the "24-hour wallow" after receiving a rejection. That said, I am always simultaneously surprised--and yet unchanged--by the knowledge that other writers face as much self-doubt as I do. I also really liked the conclusion that you should continue writing not "because you can't do anything else"--Brett Cox dismissed that as bullshit, and I agree--but because even knowing it may never be published, you still feel the need to tell the story.
Amusing side note, from Cox's introduction: "recently I've moved into writing poetry, because writing short stories was just too lucrative."
I was really excited for Jess Nevins' talk at 9pm on The Gothic in 19th-century Science Fiction. I know Nevins primarily because of his commentaries on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but he's also the author of The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana. Needless to say, he knows his shit when it comes to 19th-century literature, and this lecture was incredibly informative.
It was also, I regret to say, poorly presented. I was dismayed when I realized the entire lecture was just going to be Nevins reading from an essay he'd written. Occasionally he would stop to make humorous interjections--"that's why Scooby Doo is a female gothic"--but mostly it was just him reading for forty minutes. It left me wishing I'd just looked the article up on his blog.
Even better, a couple of dudes came in right before the end of the panel and started asking ignorant questions. One of the important points of the lecture was the difference between the male gothic (in the tradition of The Monk) and the female gothic (in the tradition of The Mysteries of Udolfo), and how they influenced 19-century science fiction in separate ways. I guarantee if you show up during the Q&A and say, "What do you mean by male and female gothic? I've never heard that term before," you will make everyone in the audience want to punch you. Seriously, don't be that guy. (Someone even spoke up and said, "Dude, he just spent the last hour explaining that," and guy whined, "But I wasn't heeeeeere!")
Saturday I arrived at the con around 12:30, and caught the end of New Models of Masculinity, with panelists Erik Amundsen, John Benson, Kameron Hurley, Catt Kingsgrave, and Bart Leib. Nothing much to say about this--we need dudes who aren't dudebros.
In the 1pm hour, I went to Integrating Exposition, with panelists Jeanne Cavelos, Glenn Grant, Daryl Gregory, Mary Rickert, Sarah Smith, and Melanie Tem. They discussed many of the interesting ways authors have integrated exposition, and which have been most successful. Jeanne Cavelos was really fond of Tyrion Lannister in this role--a odd but charismatic character explaining what the reader needs to know.
One thing I've realized was that I had "show, don't tell" pounded into my writer brain at an early age--literally, this was probably the first lesson of writing I learned. So my approach to exposition tends to be complete avoidance, telling the reader the minimum they need to know to understand what's going on. I got into a whispered conversation with Matt, who has read the first 15k words of Lioness v2, about a certain infodump when the main character is reading a dossier. I told him that was the kind of thing I intend to go back and edit, but he seemed to think it wasn't so exposition-y as to be a problem.
All in all, the techniques the panelists spoke about were so clever, and so different than what I would use, that this panel that left me feeling like I am wildly out of my depth as a writer :( I realize as I say this that I'm seeing highlight reel--the novel after multple edit passes--which I should expect to reflect my experience as I write. That only somewhat mitigates the dissonance.
(endlessgame said of me: "I find it so interesting, how writing seems to simultaneously be the thing that stresses you, and the thing you use as stress relief." Very true!)
At 2pm I went to Portrayals of Code-switching, with Chesya Burke, Geoff Hart, Daniel José Older, and Tom Purdom. Language is interesting to me, and power is interesting to me, and as the panel concluded, code-switching is about manipulating power. In general I found myself agreeing with the presenters, but didn't have a ton to add. I'm still thinking about Older's assertion (discussing Junot Diaz's fight to not have the Spanish in his works italicized) that italicizing it changes its significance, and makes it less representative of what a "Spanglish" conversation looks like, where there are no boundaries between the two languages. I guess it's marked in the same way that pointing out that a character is black (where white is assumed to be "default") is marked, but it's not something I've put any thought into before. My privilege, I guess.
After this panel I also caught up with VPeeps Alex and Devin, who flew out from California just to see me! Or something ;)
Next up--and my last panel--was Dark Fantasy and Horror: What's the Difference? with Jeanne Cavelos, Ellen Datlow, Gemma Files, Jordan Hamessley, Jack Haringa, and Steve Rasnic Tem. A huge panel, in other words :) I went to this one because I couldn't convince Matt to go to the butts panel next door ;) But it was actually really thought-provoking. I think I embraced Cavelos' definition the best--dark fantasy is fantasy that uses some of the conventions of horror (like vampires, for example), but doesn't seek to evoke a sense of dread. There was also an interesting side note by Jack Haringa, who has edited some anthologies with S.T. Joshi, about Lovecraft's Dream Cycle, which stands in contrast to the rest of his work, and can probably be considered dark fantasy more than horror. He didn't say it, but the conclusion this led me to is that dark fantasy probably has more optimism than horror; the Dream Cycle stories stand out as the only ones with happy endings.
I kind of wanted to ask if Night Vale would be considered horror or dark fantasy, but that felt way off topic, since I'm not sure it's either.
Somewhere in here Matt dared me to write a "Western horror mystery," after someone (Cavelos?) mentioned we don't categorize books in a consistent way, i.e. "western" is determined by setting, "horror" is determined by a feeling evoked, "mystery" by plot, etc.
After that panel we all gathered for the VP dinner at the Lemon Tree. My class, 17, had a good representation, as well as sprrwhwk's class, 16, and the upcoming class, 18. Other classes were less well represented, alas! Dave*, who organized the event, made a toast, Uncle Jim did magic tricks, and we ate delicious Thai food and had great conversations. I especially enjoyed chatting with Lauren R., a VP16er who writes for RPGs.
We got back to the hotel around 7, but nothing in the evening slots appealed, so we just hung out in the hotel bar, or on the back patio, or in the lobby, until the party at 10. I have especially fond memories of our conversations with Chris Gerwel, a VP15er and now a staff member, about what we called "the Muppet gap"--how in our generation there's a gap between people for whom The Muppet Show was their primary experience of the Muppets, and those for whom Muppet Babies was where it's at. Chris, like me, falls on the Muppet Babies side of the spectrum; it was either him or John W. who said, "Yeah, when I first heard about the Muppet Show I thought it was so odd that they made a show where the Muppets grew up." I mentioned how much of an influence Muppet Babies was on me, and how I thought it was so genius that they never actually left the nursery, just daydreamed about it.
"Yeah, really it's a prison narrative."
"One Day in the Life of Fozzie Bearovitch?"
At the VP party, I spent most of the time in a room with pts, sprrwhwk, Coral, John W, and VP18er Robert D, discussing everything and nothing about SFF--the obligatory Heinlein roast and toast, our introductions to SFF, "doing due diligence" on the classics of SFF, etc. Since Paul's day job is as a translator (he's translated the manga and light novels of Spice & Wolf and Haruhi Suzumiya, among other titles), we talked about translation a lot, and it occurred to me to ask him if he'd ever read Le ton beau de Marot, Douglas Hoftstadter's book on the topic. Much to my surprise, he had! And so had Robert! So we discussed that a bunch, explained it to the others, argued about the merits of other Hofstadter works (that was mostly Paul and Robert; I haven't read anything else by him).
That was the end of the con for me; I decided that skipping out on Sunday was the best thing for my mental health.
All in all, it was a simultaneously exhausting and mentally stimulating weekend for me. Funny how that works.