Cons and Cloud-castles
The Clarke continues to be delightful, developing at a leisurely pace, but so sure in structure and tone with sharp hints of big stuff to come it doesn’t feel like a rudderless boat but like a big train gradually building speed and velocity.
Delight: when the main character is finally brought on stage, it’s only for a few lines. The chapter is a story about someone else. BG info dump as story.
But I have to stop now, or I’ll stray into spoiler territory.
Besides, there was a fun topic brought up by sdn here this morning that threw me back into well-trod but enjoyable mental paths. What if one were to organize a con? Or rather, the programming track of a con?
Actually, I’ve done both-not big ones, but I’ve co-organized two Mythcons, actively helped with many others, co-organized one SFRA con, and seem to be an advice person for next year’s, as they’ve taken a surprising number of my suggestions. (“They” being my spouse and his academic bud Dave Meade, down in Texas, so that’s maybe not so surprising.)
Supposing I were program chair at a big con.
Going past wish-fulfillment (hiring Christopher Lee to read bedtime stories at the very end of each day, so one can sail off to untroubled sleep on the tide of images from “The Prize Giving at Market Snodsbury,” say, or “Piper at the Gates of Dawn”) into reality.
Where do I begin? With the fact that there are two things that appeal to me on panels: discovery and exploration. Discovery draws me to panels about subjects whose periphery I’ve just brushed, but I still don’t really see my way in. Had I been at Worldcon I would have attended that Anglo-Saxon panel because I am lamentably ignorant on that subject.
So there’s a topic right there: Northernness--What is it, what should one read, and who uses it well in modern literature?
Discovery. What about the new horror, which seems to be reemerging among younger writers? I see it but I don’t read a lot of it because I’m a wuss about horror. Too much of it in real life, I just keep avoiding it in fiction, even when someone tells me it's good. Then there are all the nifty on-line sites where more young writers are emerging, shaping story in new forms, and I can’t keep up with them all. How about the interstitial gang-is there really a there there, or is it more of “what we like” as the New Weird seems to be? Again, I just don’t know enough to formulate any kind of panel ideas and of course what am I missing altogether? Yeah, cool movements in graphic novels-manga-lots of things I simply haven’t had the time to explore yet. And then there is SF: space opera I know, but I don't know hard sf much. Singularity...alien encounter...Gwenyth Jones. AH. So many tracks right there.
Exploration of subjects I do know something about.
One that seems to me, anyway, to lend itself to several different panel topics is Patrick O’Brian. So maybe that would be the panel topic: Patrick O’Brian. Covered would be sources he drew on, from Cochrane and Marryat to Jane Austen at the fiction end, as well as various nonfics; how he fits into the writers who find the post-war-one world so grievous they escaped either back into history or into a other world (Tolkien would come up here, among others); why does he appeal to fans?
Oh, but what about just discussing his writing-how and why it works? No, no, don’t stray into a writing con, that would require a completely different approach.
How about a panel on the Dunnetteers-the writers whose work shows a very strong influence from Dunnett (who in turn shows a very strong influence from Dorothy Sayers). What elements do the newer writers pick and explore, and why does it work for the modern readership? I don’t mean just the Lymond idolizing (and character torture) or maybe there is an entire panel in that, too: Chartor and women. What about it?
Then there’s Fantasy of Manners. I really think there is a whole con here, for those interested in the subject. First a track on the background books-we’d have to spend a couple hours on the history of literature--then the contemporary books, what is it, why it works, when it doesn’t work and why, which works are subversive of the status quo and which reinforce it, and then an entire track on writing. Hoo dawggies I would travel a long way to attend that.
Delight: when the main character is finally brought on stage, it’s only for a few lines. The chapter is a story about someone else. BG info dump as story.
But I have to stop now, or I’ll stray into spoiler territory.
Besides, there was a fun topic brought up by sdn here this morning that threw me back into well-trod but enjoyable mental paths. What if one were to organize a con? Or rather, the programming track of a con?
Actually, I’ve done both-not big ones, but I’ve co-organized two Mythcons, actively helped with many others, co-organized one SFRA con, and seem to be an advice person for next year’s, as they’ve taken a surprising number of my suggestions. (“They” being my spouse and his academic bud Dave Meade, down in Texas, so that’s maybe not so surprising.)
Supposing I were program chair at a big con.
Going past wish-fulfillment (hiring Christopher Lee to read bedtime stories at the very end of each day, so one can sail off to untroubled sleep on the tide of images from “The Prize Giving at Market Snodsbury,” say, or “Piper at the Gates of Dawn”) into reality.
Where do I begin? With the fact that there are two things that appeal to me on panels: discovery and exploration. Discovery draws me to panels about subjects whose periphery I’ve just brushed, but I still don’t really see my way in. Had I been at Worldcon I would have attended that Anglo-Saxon panel because I am lamentably ignorant on that subject.
So there’s a topic right there: Northernness--What is it, what should one read, and who uses it well in modern literature?
Discovery. What about the new horror, which seems to be reemerging among younger writers? I see it but I don’t read a lot of it because I’m a wuss about horror. Too much of it in real life, I just keep avoiding it in fiction, even when someone tells me it's good. Then there are all the nifty on-line sites where more young writers are emerging, shaping story in new forms, and I can’t keep up with them all. How about the interstitial gang-is there really a there there, or is it more of “what we like” as the New Weird seems to be? Again, I just don’t know enough to formulate any kind of panel ideas and of course what am I missing altogether? Yeah, cool movements in graphic novels-manga-lots of things I simply haven’t had the time to explore yet. And then there is SF: space opera I know, but I don't know hard sf much. Singularity...alien encounter...Gwenyth Jones. AH. So many tracks right there.
Exploration of subjects I do know something about.
One that seems to me, anyway, to lend itself to several different panel topics is Patrick O’Brian. So maybe that would be the panel topic: Patrick O’Brian. Covered would be sources he drew on, from Cochrane and Marryat to Jane Austen at the fiction end, as well as various nonfics; how he fits into the writers who find the post-war-one world so grievous they escaped either back into history or into a other world (Tolkien would come up here, among others); why does he appeal to fans?
Oh, but what about just discussing his writing-how and why it works? No, no, don’t stray into a writing con, that would require a completely different approach.
How about a panel on the Dunnetteers-the writers whose work shows a very strong influence from Dunnett (who in turn shows a very strong influence from Dorothy Sayers). What elements do the newer writers pick and explore, and why does it work for the modern readership? I don’t mean just the Lymond idolizing (and character torture) or maybe there is an entire panel in that, too: Chartor and women. What about it?
Then there’s Fantasy of Manners. I really think there is a whole con here, for those interested in the subject. First a track on the background books-we’d have to spend a couple hours on the history of literature--then the contemporary books, what is it, why it works, when it doesn’t work and why, which works are subversive of the status quo and which reinforce it, and then an entire track on writing. Hoo dawggies I would travel a long way to attend that.