Odyssey Con X
Has it really been 51 weeks since we last posted? Well, we have had a rough year, but you don't want to hear about that. What prompts today's post was attending Odyssey Con X in Madison, Wisconsin this weekend. Richard was on 3 panels. He was moderator for one focusing on Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series which has gotten young people interested in Greek and Latin mythology--a staple for our (Perri and Richard's) generation but which had fallen into desuetude. Perhaps these books succeed, where even popular TV series like Hercules and Xena sparked no such revival (they were a mish-mash in which the Trojan War was contemporaneous with Julius Caesar), is that they are well-written, set in the modern world, are generically similar to the Harry Potter series, and make careful use of Greco-Roman myth. Kids are inspired to learn more about the Greek gods who are the parents of the modern demigods like Percy (son of Poseidon) and Annabeth (daughter of Athena) whose adventures are recounted in the books. Then Richard was on a panel on books as intellectual property, since as a librarian he knows a little about the issues surrounding the not-yet-finalized-and-maybe-won't-be Google Book Settlement (there was another librarian and a copyright lawyer also on the panel, plus a couple of writers). The 3rd panel was on alternate history; since Harry Turtledove was also a panelist, all the rest of us had to do was ask him leading questions and let him tell us all about this subgenre of science fiction.