World Fantasy, Day 1
Here I am at WFC. I got in just after lunch, and met Kater, who would be reading later. We did the Con suite, the freebie table, the book bags, and hung out. Shweta and Nathaniel came by with buddhistmippo in costume as Appa, but a combination of interior and exterior pollutants were already getting to be a problem.
As usual, there was the pleasant experience of standing in the lobby and running into people who I hadn't seen in a while. After the opening ceremonies, I went to Kater's reading: the opening scene of Treemaker (which I've blogged about before).
Later, I heard Erin Cashier (who writes as Cassie Alexander) read from her book Nightshifted, due out mid 2012. The protagonist is nurse at a special ward in the County Hospital - the one for werewolves and vampires and other supernaturals.
I got invited for dinner to Outback with a lovely group of people who I'd never met before, and had a wonderful evening with Grace, Marian, and Sarah (who's from Perth, Australia). Got back and still had time to attend a couple of panels, both very good -- but I was running out of steam and didn't do them justice in terms of alertness.
The Monster as Protagonist dealt with the humanizing of monsters in fiction: Like Grendel, or the whole genre of the wildly attractive vampires and werewolves. Some of the ideas:
Magic and Metaphysics was a discussion of whether fictional magic required a "system" to be believable, or whether that made it too scientific. The debate was enlivened by Ted Chiang representing scientific rationalism, while Mark Teppo said he was a practicing magician. The description of magic they tended toward was a world in which the Universe responded to an individual rather than impersonally to the laws of nature. (I personally wasn't convinced that this was useful definition in the context of fiction, but it was certainly an interesting one.) Ted made the point that some novelists -- like Kelly Link and China Mieville -- use magic to create a sense of strangeness in their works, and so they don't really need self-consistent, well-described systems of magic. Altogether quite fascinating and I was annoyed with myself for being too tired to fully appreciate it.
Don Clary came to the last panel in a marvelous and enormous balloon crown. A writer of screenplays, he makes these balloon sculptures as a hobby and as creativity enhancers. (The picture here is used with his permission and shouldn't be reproduced without asking him.)
As usual, there was the pleasant experience of standing in the lobby and running into people who I hadn't seen in a while. After the opening ceremonies, I went to Kater's reading: the opening scene of Treemaker (which I've blogged about before).
Later, I heard Erin Cashier (who writes as Cassie Alexander) read from her book Nightshifted, due out mid 2012. The protagonist is nurse at a special ward in the County Hospital - the one for werewolves and vampires and other supernaturals.
I got invited for dinner to Outback with a lovely group of people who I'd never met before, and had a wonderful evening with Grace, Marian, and Sarah (who's from Perth, Australia). Got back and still had time to attend a couple of panels, both very good -- but I was running out of steam and didn't do them justice in terms of alertness.
The Monster as Protagonist dealt with the humanizing of monsters in fiction: Like Grendel, or the whole genre of the wildly attractive vampires and werewolves. Some of the ideas:
- We're moving away from black and white to a more sophisticated understanding that monsters, too, have their own lives and motivations.
- In supernatural romances, vampires and werewolves and so on are the ultimate "bad boys" who can be tamed by their love for the protagonist.
- Species differences may be a substitute for social class as a romantic barrier.
- The challenges of describing the viewpoint of non-humanoid monsters without alienating your readers.
Magic and Metaphysics was a discussion of whether fictional magic required a "system" to be believable, or whether that made it too scientific. The debate was enlivened by Ted Chiang representing scientific rationalism, while Mark Teppo said he was a practicing magician. The description of magic they tended toward was a world in which the Universe responded to an individual rather than impersonally to the laws of nature. (I personally wasn't convinced that this was useful definition in the context of fiction, but it was certainly an interesting one.) Ted made the point that some novelists -- like Kelly Link and China Mieville -- use magic to create a sense of strangeness in their works, and so they don't really need self-consistent, well-described systems of magic. Altogether quite fascinating and I was annoyed with myself for being too tired to fully appreciate it.
Don Clary came to the last panel in a marvelous and enormous balloon crown. A writer of screenplays, he makes these balloon sculptures as a hobby and as creativity enhancers. (The picture here is used with his permission and shouldn't be reproduced without asking him.)