On Books, Cooking and Conventions...
As most of you lot know, I've spent the last week and a half enjoying a trip to the UK. It was one of those strange periods that seemed like it was over too quickly, yet seemed to last forever. From the fly-by 'hello'-'goodbye' at the Tun, to the drive up to Coniston, the week spent reading, cooking, eating, arguing, laughing, even hiking (no, really!) in the beautiful lake district (photos to follow once I get un-lazy and process the lot) to the distinctly deja-vu experience of conventioneering in Glasgow, this time with active panel participation! As I'm too lazy to construct much in the way of a coherent, let along complete narrative, I shall stick to a few highlights.
What happens in Conistons stays in Coniston...mostly
After driving up from coalescent's, a music and haribo-fuelled ride in a Honda filled with books, a few bags, an absurd amount of shopping, myself, coalescent, grahamsleight and despotliz (and, of course, a break for lunch with immortalradical, wg and danmilburn in Brum), we unloaded absurd numbers of books and large quantities of food in a very nice self-catering cottage in Consiton. By and by, more people arrived, I cooked the first of several large meals (started out slow, just some pasta), and we settled in. The following days were marked by reading (books read included: Ender's Game, Before Sunset, Air, The Summer Isles, Pacific Edge), making truffles and cake using absurd amounts of chocolate (about 1.5 kilos), and proceeding to test my ability to cook for 14. Which was a lot of fun, and it seemed to go down quite well. If pressured, I may be tempted to don a silly (virtual) chef's hat (not actually, though, unless despotliz feels like abusing photoshop...) and throw out some recipes. We'll see. Beyond that, there was a bit of hill climbing, the odd snapshot, several deeply meaningful and possibly slightly drunkenly shouty discussions. But I couldn't possibly confirm any of that.
Concusion, or: how to run a great Eastercon
I had a fantastic time. Drank very little, didn't spend overmuch on food, did the skint thing by staying at the EuroHostel (and though the breakfasts at the Con Hotel looked wonderful, my waistline probably thanks me for selecting the cereal and toast alternative), saw many an interesting, thought-provoking panels (most of which others have commented on in more eloquent detail than I can be bothered trying to match), had a number of great discussions, and even sat up behind microphones three times, twice as a mere panelist, once as a moderator (eek!).
Being on a panel is fun, tales of dissecting penguins in advancing states of decomposition are apparently amusingly disgusting, and moderating is even more difficult than it looks. The first panel was on the politics and law of Battlestar Galactica (is it SF's answer to 'The West Wing'), and featured five pretty darn verbal panelists. It stayed quite fresh, decent amount of audience interaction, although some of the tangential comments/approaches to the show did somewhat underline a difference of approach between myself and a number of the other panelists/audience members; maybe it's my lack of interest in fanfic of any stripe, but I don't care to read things into a text (televised, filmed, written) that I cannot support quite strongly from within the text itself. It's why I don't care to theorize overmuch about what's wrong with the Island on 'Lost', nor about who the Lords of Kobol are/where new BSG diverges from the Old. There's enough in the themes, the Story itself, sometimes the metaphores, to keep my attention, without having to build a fan-built meta-mythology around it all. I suspect I take a - dare I say it - slightly more 'literary' approach to critisizing and watching TV than many, which I may well have been formed by the newsgroup discussions that lie at the beginnings of my fannish involvement. Also, my political/legal approach is somewhat more American than that of most other panelists and audience memebers - without buying wholesale into the literalism/'Our way is the best way' which plagues many US defenders of their system of government - but at the same time I have a more skeptical view of the degree in which any political system is truly more 'nuanced' or 'adult'; the position many seemed to hold that a European show in the same circumstances would display less 'individualism' and more solidarity (to which I say: 'HA!', but anyway...). Might have been interesting to 'prep' that one with various panelists in advance, as it could have streamlined the discussion and let us got to some of the topics that we didn't have time to give the attention they may have deserved.
The "Mad Biomedical Tales" panel, apparently a mainstay of cons for years in its technical incarnation, went pretty well, I thought. There was a definite 'putrefication' theme running through a number of stories, which may have been in part my fault, but still. Very loose, informal, silly, fun kind of panel, and (I hope) fairly entertaining. The final panel, on the monday, was titled 'Return of the Robinsonade' - shows/books featuring small, isolated communities seem to be increasingly popular, but are they an excuse for poor plotting and libertarian fantasy? It was...unfocussed. Unsure of what it wanted to do or be. Part of the problem was me, moderating: I wasn't entirely sure how to drag this one where it needed dragging to to form a moderately coherent 'narrative thread' for the discussion. I did try, from time to time, to pull things back to the original question (it tended to drift towards more 'metaphorical' isolated communities rather than actually isolated communities, which leads to overgeneralizations of limited value) but I don't have huge amounts of experience in managing discussions with more 'formal' structures. Another issue was probably the selection of panellists, who, while all intelligent, articulate and interesting, didn't necessarily have a lot of common ground to discuss some of the works on, and weren't entirely sure why they were there (I was the only panelist who'd seen full seasons of both Lost and Battelstar Galactica, one had seen neither, the other two had seen one show each, and nobody on the panel had read any 1632, the series of novels also referenced in the program description; solved that by involving the audience quite heavily relatively early on). In hindsight, and if I'd actually had the time (I was asked to moderate the panel pretty much the day before I left for the UK for a week with zero internet access), this one would've required more in-depth prep with the panel to try and come to an agreement on what exactly we were interested in discussing. But still, as first experiences go, I guess it could've been a whole lot worse, and I had a great time doing it. I'm certainly up for a repeat.
What happens in Conistons stays in Coniston...mostly
After driving up from coalescent's, a music and haribo-fuelled ride in a Honda filled with books, a few bags, an absurd amount of shopping, myself, coalescent, grahamsleight and despotliz (and, of course, a break for lunch with immortalradical, wg and danmilburn in Brum), we unloaded absurd numbers of books and large quantities of food in a very nice self-catering cottage in Consiton. By and by, more people arrived, I cooked the first of several large meals (started out slow, just some pasta), and we settled in. The following days were marked by reading (books read included: Ender's Game, Before Sunset, Air, The Summer Isles, Pacific Edge), making truffles and cake using absurd amounts of chocolate (about 1.5 kilos), and proceeding to test my ability to cook for 14. Which was a lot of fun, and it seemed to go down quite well. If pressured, I may be tempted to don a silly (virtual) chef's hat (not actually, though, unless despotliz feels like abusing photoshop...) and throw out some recipes. We'll see. Beyond that, there was a bit of hill climbing, the odd snapshot, several deeply meaningful and possibly slightly drunkenly shouty discussions. But I couldn't possibly confirm any of that.
Concusion, or: how to run a great Eastercon
I had a fantastic time. Drank very little, didn't spend overmuch on food, did the skint thing by staying at the EuroHostel (and though the breakfasts at the Con Hotel looked wonderful, my waistline probably thanks me for selecting the cereal and toast alternative), saw many an interesting, thought-provoking panels (most of which others have commented on in more eloquent detail than I can be bothered trying to match), had a number of great discussions, and even sat up behind microphones three times, twice as a mere panelist, once as a moderator (eek!).
Being on a panel is fun, tales of dissecting penguins in advancing states of decomposition are apparently amusingly disgusting, and moderating is even more difficult than it looks. The first panel was on the politics and law of Battlestar Galactica (is it SF's answer to 'The West Wing'), and featured five pretty darn verbal panelists. It stayed quite fresh, decent amount of audience interaction, although some of the tangential comments/approaches to the show did somewhat underline a difference of approach between myself and a number of the other panelists/audience members; maybe it's my lack of interest in fanfic of any stripe, but I don't care to read things into a text (televised, filmed, written) that I cannot support quite strongly from within the text itself. It's why I don't care to theorize overmuch about what's wrong with the Island on 'Lost', nor about who the Lords of Kobol are/where new BSG diverges from the Old. There's enough in the themes, the Story itself, sometimes the metaphores, to keep my attention, without having to build a fan-built meta-mythology around it all. I suspect I take a - dare I say it - slightly more 'literary' approach to critisizing and watching TV than many, which I may well have been formed by the newsgroup discussions that lie at the beginnings of my fannish involvement. Also, my political/legal approach is somewhat more American than that of most other panelists and audience memebers - without buying wholesale into the literalism/'Our way is the best way' which plagues many US defenders of their system of government - but at the same time I have a more skeptical view of the degree in which any political system is truly more 'nuanced' or 'adult'; the position many seemed to hold that a European show in the same circumstances would display less 'individualism' and more solidarity (to which I say: 'HA!', but anyway...). Might have been interesting to 'prep' that one with various panelists in advance, as it could have streamlined the discussion and let us got to some of the topics that we didn't have time to give the attention they may have deserved.
The "Mad Biomedical Tales" panel, apparently a mainstay of cons for years in its technical incarnation, went pretty well, I thought. There was a definite 'putrefication' theme running through a number of stories, which may have been in part my fault, but still. Very loose, informal, silly, fun kind of panel, and (I hope) fairly entertaining. The final panel, on the monday, was titled 'Return of the Robinsonade' - shows/books featuring small, isolated communities seem to be increasingly popular, but are they an excuse for poor plotting and libertarian fantasy? It was...unfocussed. Unsure of what it wanted to do or be. Part of the problem was me, moderating: I wasn't entirely sure how to drag this one where it needed dragging to to form a moderately coherent 'narrative thread' for the discussion. I did try, from time to time, to pull things back to the original question (it tended to drift towards more 'metaphorical' isolated communities rather than actually isolated communities, which leads to overgeneralizations of limited value) but I don't have huge amounts of experience in managing discussions with more 'formal' structures. Another issue was probably the selection of panellists, who, while all intelligent, articulate and interesting, didn't necessarily have a lot of common ground to discuss some of the works on, and weren't entirely sure why they were there (I was the only panelist who'd seen full seasons of both Lost and Battelstar Galactica, one had seen neither, the other two had seen one show each, and nobody on the panel had read any 1632, the series of novels also referenced in the program description; solved that by involving the audience quite heavily relatively early on). In hindsight, and if I'd actually had the time (I was asked to moderate the panel pretty much the day before I left for the UK for a week with zero internet access), this one would've required more in-depth prep with the panel to try and come to an agreement on what exactly we were interested in discussing. But still, as first experiences go, I guess it could've been a whole lot worse, and I had a great time doing it. I'm certainly up for a repeat.