A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Georgette Heyer’s Regency World by Jennifer Kloester. Published by Sourcebooks. ISBN: 978-1-4022-4136-9, 387 pages including index. Trade Paperback. $14.99 (Amazon: $10.19; Kindle: $9.68)

Georgette Heyer’s Regency World by Jennifer Kloester is just what the title implies, it’s a book about the Regency World that made up the background for Heyer’s Regency books. It helps to explain to today’s readers the nitty gritty details of what it was like to live in that time, in that society, and explains a lot of the customs, rules, and etiquette of that period. Now I know that makes it sounds like it would be incredibly dull and boring but, in fact, Kloester’s book is extremely readable. I started with the intent to read it front to back and before I was in more than 30 pages, I found myself reading a bit that made me think of a question, so I checked the table of contents and index and thereafter I skipped and dipped into the book at will, checking on those things that had niggled at the back of my brain when reading one book or another.

I wanted to read this book because I read a fair number of books that take place during the Regency Period. I will admit that I don’t read a lot of Georgette Heyer’s Regency novels. So, while the book is filled with examples from Heyer’s writings, I wasn’t familiar with the works cited; however, that’s not a problem because Kloester gives enough background that if you’ve read in the period you’ll get pick up what’s being explained from the books you have read.

Georgette Heyer’s Regency World is well organized so that the reader can go to a specific section to find an answer to questions about what the society was like and how it worked. Chapters are titled: Up and Down the Social Ladder; At Home in Town and Country; A Man’s World; The Gentle Sex; On the Town; The Pleasure Haunts of London; The Fashionable Resorts; Getting About; What to Wear; Shopping; Eat, Drink and Be Merry; The Sporting Life; Business and the Military; and Who’s Who in the Regency. Each chapter in the table of contents is listed with a subset of what’s included in that chapter, for example; the chapter on Getting About includes: All Kinds of Carriages; On Drivers and Driving; Public Transport; On the Road; Long-Distance Travel; and Turnpikes, Toll-gates and Tickets. Each individual chapter starts with an overview of what will be covered in that chapter. I was surprised to learn that long distance travel was considered anything further away than 10 miles. That’s rather difficult to wrap your mind around when most of us travel further than that one-way to work now-a-days.

There are also black and white illustrations throughout the book. I found the pictures of the various types of carriages, the cut-a-way view of a London townhouse, types of dress, and a circulating library, among others to be worth more than words while changing the mind pictures I’d built up while reading. There are also several appendices: A Glossary of Cant and Common Regency Phrases; Newspapers and Magazines; Books in Heyer; Timeline; Reading about the Regency and Where Next?; and Georgette Heyer’s Regency Novels.

For readers of books set in the Regency period, Georgette Heyer’s Regency World is an outstanding resource for understanding the world and society those characters lived in. For those who read books that take place in historical settings, the world has changed. Many of the social conventions that ruled the lives of the people living in Regency England no longer apply. Even during that period people who were born into the lower social classes found it difficult to deal with the myriad levels of behavior that those in the upper class were breed and trained to exhibit in their behavior. Many of the books set in that period mention the misunderstandings and missteps that characters took when moving into a higher social circle than that which they grew up in.

If you enjoy the Regency period, and want to have a better understanding of what society was like, this is probably the best, most accessible and readable book you’ll find on the subject. Even though I haven’t yet read Heyer’s Regency novels (I now have several on my to be read pile), I found Georgette Heyer’s Regency World a wonderful guide to the ins and outs of this social, cultural, historical time period of so many of the books that I read as a Jane Austen fan.

I’d like to hear other readers’ impressions of this work. Have you read it? Do you plan to?

As those of you who read this blog regularly know, I’m the chairperson of Capclave 2010. Capclave is the Washington Science Fiction Association’s annual convention, held this year in Rockville, Maryland. Our guests of honor this year are Connie Willis, Ann VanderMeer, and Jeff VanderMeer. There will also be many other guests — writers, editors, publishers, and of course fans of speculative fiction in all its various designations.

One of the things that we’re very proud of this year is the number and quality of the workshops we’ll be offering to participants. If you are registered to attend Capclave, there is no extra charge for being in a workshop, but space is limited and some have requirements (homework that’s due at the time of the workshop or before you arrive in the case of the VanderMeer workshop).

If you are already a member of Capclave and wish to sign up for one or more of these workshops, send email to workshops at capclave dot org (you know how to parse that email address I’m sure). If you haven’t signed up for the convention yet, check out the website and sign up then send your email asking listing the workshop you wish to be in.

Here’s the full list of workshops:

Workshops at Capclave:
Capclave 2010 is pleased to once again host a number of interesting workshops. Space is still available. If you are interested, send an e-mail to our workshop coordinator.

Online Content Workshop
Putting your comics, music, video, and fiction online is easy. Making it pay is harder, but it can be done. Join webcomic creator and comedy musician Rob Balder as he talks about making a living with the free content model. Get practical advice (feel free to bring a laptop/tablet and samples of your stuff) and work out a specific strategy for growing and monetizing an audience around your work. Two hour workshop.

Plotting Workshop
What makes a story a story? How do you construct a viable plot from a bare (naked) idea? We’ll start at the beginning, and by the end, you should have everything you need to know to plot your story. Allen Wold will lead this 2 hour session.

Reviewer’s workshop
A good reviewer does more then read free books and say “I like that”. Peter Heck, a regular reviewer for Asimov’s Science Fiction will demonstrate the hallmarks of a good review and how to create one. Bring a at least 10 copies of a review you’ve written and are proud of.

Wordsmith’s Workshop
Danny Birt will guide you through looking at writing from the perspective of the single word, and then work up from there, making sure that every word counts. This 1.5 hour workshop is good for beginners to professionals and is limited to 16 participants.

Writer’s Workshop
Allen Wold will lead a panel of authors in a hands on workshop. Learn many skills as you work on a short story. Session will be for 2 hours on Sat. and for those interested, a 1 hour follow-up on Sunday. Number of Participants is limited to 12.

Writer’s Workshop
Jeff and Ann VanderMeer will critique short stories of 12 participants. Each participant must write and submit a story of no more than 7500 words at least 2 months before Capclave (by August 22nd) to the workshop email address (workshops at capclave dot org). The story will be shared with the VanderMeers and the other participants. This will be a 2 hour workshop.

Hope your as excited about these opportunities to learn as we are to be able to offer them to our convention attendees.

The Washington Science Fiction Association is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2010 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction (published in 2009)

“each thing i show you is a piece of my death” by Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer, published in Clockwork Phoenix 2, edited by Mike Allen, Norilana Books (July 2009).

“Images of Anna” by Nancy Kress, published in Fantasy Magazine, edited by Cat Rambo (September 2009).

“James and the Dark Grimoire” by Kevin Lauderdale, published in Cthulhu Unbound, edited by Thomas Brannan and John Sunseri, Permuted Press, (March 2009).

“Race to the Moon” by Kyell Gold, published in New Fables, Summer 2009,  edited by Tim Susman, Sofawolf Press  (July 2009).

“Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” by Eugie Foster, published in Interzone (January 2009) / Apex Magazine (August  2009), edited by Andy Cox (Interzone) / Catherynne M. Valente (Apex).

“Siren Beat” by Tansy Rayner Roberts, published in Twelfth Planet, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (October 2009).

“The Pirate Captain’s Daughter” by Yoon Ha Lee, published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue #27, 10/08/2009, edited Scott H. Andrews.

“The Very Difficult Diwali of Sub-Inspector Gurushankar Rajaram” by Jeff Soesbe, published in DayBreak Magazine, edited by Jetse de Vries (October 2009).

The award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction. The award showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2009). An unusual feature of the selection process is that all voting is done with the identity of the author (and publisher) hidden so that the final choice is based solely on the quality of the story.

The winner is chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction Association (www.wsfa.org) and will be presented at their annual convention, Capclave (www.capclave.org), held this year on October 22-24th in Rockville, Maryland.

Conquering Mr. Darcy by Abigail Reynolds, Sourcebooks Casablanca, August 2010, ISBN: 978-1-4022-3730-0, 416 pages, Mass Market Paperback. [Note: Previously published as Impulse & Initiative: What if Mr. Darcy had set out to win Elizabeth's heart? (Pride & Prejudice Variation)]

To Conquer Mr. Darcy, by Abigail Reynolds, is truly a “What If” novel. The critical question is what if Mr. Darcy didn’t give up on Elizabeth after his first disastrous proposal and Elizabeth’s unequivocal refusal? What if instead of meeting her again purely by chance at Pemberley, he returned with Bingley to Netherfield and made a concerted effort to win Elizabeth’s love and respect.

The book begins with Colonel Fitzwilliam stopping at Darcy’s townhouse in London. Georgiana has been worried about Darcy. Ever since the visit to Rosings, Darcy has spent his time alone, in the dark, drinking himself into a stupor and refusing to see anyone. This is totally out of character for him to be so depressed but he stubbornly resists all efforts to find out what is bothering him. Fitzwilliam luckily is a soldier and he barrels in where Georgiana and Bingley fear to tread and drags the story out of him. His advice is to go after Elizabeth if she means that much to him and win her.  For to do otherwise is evidence that he really doesn’t care. Darcy is angry but he pulls himself together and sets out determined to win Elizabeth.

At this point, we’ve diverged from the original story of Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, and Reynolds has to weave her story between the incidents of the original story with a few changes. Darcy supports Bingley in his desire to marry Jane Bennet. Thus Darcy is with Bingley when he visits Jane and can pursue Elizabeth’s good opinion.

You can imagine that things are awkward at first as she’s refused his offer of marriage and while his explanation of his dealings with Mr. Wickham have somewhat changed her opinion of him, she doesn’t care to be more than acquaintances. Darcy on the other hand, really makes an effort to be civil and courteous to Elizabeth’s family members. He makes sure that he meets Elizabeth when she goes for walks and rambles and essentially treats her as you would a wild animal — kindly, slowly taming her — getting her used to the idea of him being around.

Reynolds uses much of the original dialogue and manages to incorporate Elizabeth’s trip with the Gardiners and Lydia’s pseudo-elopement with Wickham. Of course, the changing relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy, changes the way these events play out.

And for purists, I have to mention that his book is a romance — there’s several very steamy scenes along with some that are more conventional for the time period such as holding hands, kisses. But, the real non-cannon event is Elizabeth and Darcy having sex prior to their marriage. Reynolds builds up to this slowly over the books so that when it occurs it seems a logical extension of their relationship within context of this book. By the way, this doesn’t give anything away as it’s on the blurb on the back of the book and in the Amazon description. So, purists are warned.

In summation, I felt that it was a well done. Reynolds took her “what ifs” and wove them into the plot points of the original books so seamlessly that you might have to refer back to the original to scope out the magnitude and number of changes those what ifs cause. At heart To Conquer Mr. Darcy is a romance — now it’s just a bit more racy romance than we’re used to between these two well-loved characters.

[Note: Edited 10 Aug 2010 to change book title to match the actual published title as it change since I read the review copy.]

We’ve lost power off and on this evening but this last time it’s seemed to stick and we’re still without power after 30 minutes. I realize we’re lucky but nothing has happened near us this evening the storm was hours ago at 3 p.m.-ish and it’s now 11 p.m. Oh, well, guess I get to try out that early to bed, early to rise makes one healthy, weathly, and wise — not.

I’m going to get the flashlight and read because I’m running on battery power here on the laptop. So, what do you do when the lights go out? Play games? Charades? Read by candle light or flashlight? Sleep? Wondering what options others have taken when there’s no electricity?

Sometimes during the bleakness of not being able to come up with the right words, you find yourself wandering the corridors of the internet and you find something that … well, I’ll let you be the judge.

I got to admit that this one has something going for it that many of the vampire, zombie, werewolf mashup don’t — it completely skips trying to fit in with any actual books and goes for the plight of women in 1810 in high society.

Comments? Thoughts? Is violence ever the answer to boredom?

My computer has been slowing down to a near dead stop over the last few weeks. Booting up takes over a 1/2 hour most mornings and I have to wait minutes not seconds or even partial seconds for each command to execute including moving the cursor from one field to another — it driving me crazy. But the mail brought my new laptop today. I’m slowly getting it up and configured and files moved.

So…hopefully tomorrow or Sunday, I’ll do the last Readercon day (Sunday) report and then get back on schedule.

11 a.m. The New and Improved Future of Magazines (Part 2)
Panelists: John Joseph Adams, Sean Wallace, Robert Killheffer (Leader), John Benson, and Leah Bobet.
Panel Description: After last year’s “The Future of Magazines” panels, participant K. Tempest Bradford wrote: “The magazines and anthologies that I love tend to have editors who have taken the time to examine themselves or their culture, to expend their knowledge of other people and ways of being, to open their minds. These magazines and anthologies contain far more stories I want to read by authors of many varied backgrounds. As I said, it’s not fully about print vs. online, it’s about better magazines and books.” This time, creators and proponents of both print and online magazines collaborate on determining ways that any genre magazine can create a brighter and better-read future for itself, using Bradford’s comment as a launching point.

This first part of this panel was on print media only and was last year. This year they were discussing print and online media. Things had changed so much that online was now a growing area for magazines

Leah Bobet championed the need to use the online media or internet as it should be used and do more stories in hypertext and other newer narrative arts.

Narrative tends to be linear using the page after page top to bottom print magazine structure. The nature of the internet allows for different art forms but as magazines have moved to the digital format and online they’ve retained the linear narrative form we’re all used to.

John Bensen talked about how things continue to cycle. Once the radio had stories. A reader would read a complete story or novel on the radio. Now we have podcasts which essentially are stories that are read to us. The difference is that it’s digital and the listener can not only choose the time they listen to it (rather than being limited to the radio program schedule) but can download the story, book, or program they want to hear.

There was a discussion of how important accessibility is for the materials you’re putting up. Print is fine but if it can’t be found by a reader it’s not accessible. The internet is much more accessible to people since it’s available worldwide and many people can find it with a google search. Magazines are sometimes print, online, and available in several different formats for ereaders and as podcasts. Thus accessible to a number of users no matter how they want to access it.

All mentioned that receiving email or electronic submissions make their jobs much easier. It’s easier to format. They can respond quicker. And putting a magazine together is also easier when you collect the electronic documents.

Bobet mentioned Anthology Builder where you look through the stories available and pull them together to be the anthology that you want to read. It used print-on-demand technology.

Noon Travel Literature
Panelists: James L. Cambias, Michael Dirda, Howard Waldrop, Fred Lerner (Leader), and Debra Doyle.
Panel Description: The link between genre fiction and travel literature is one of honorable standing: even discounting obvious crossovers like Gulliver’s Travels or Lucian of Samosata’s True History (arguably the earliest work of science fiction), what is The Left Hand of Darkness if not a travelogue of Gethen, or why are maps of Middle-Earth included in every edition of The Lord of the Rings? Ursula K. Le Guin’s Changing Planes reads like a Baedeker of the next universe over, but our sense of wonder and desire for a different world might be as easily satisfied by Bill Bryson in Australia, Jan Morris in Italy, or Charles Dickens in America. Should it be? Panelists and attendees are invited to discuss the pleasures and perils of travel literature, starting with their favorites.

The panel differentiated between guide books and travel books. Guide books tell you about the place in rather clinical detail. Travel books are a more personal experience with a place and its people.

Mentioned that at the turn of the century just about every American who crossed the Rio Grade wrote a travel book about their experience. These books seemed to see travel as a lark. However, they also seemed to see the place they traveled to as being there only for their entertainment and amusement.

Dirda mentioned his liking those travel books by the young, sandy-haired British gentleman who goes off to travel a foreign land. These also tend to be travel as a lark. Examples of this type of writing: T.E. Lawrence’s writings while he traveled with his father; Mo Willems’ You Can Never Find a Rickshow when it Monsoons: The World on One Cartoon a Day; John L. Stephen’s Incidents of Travel in the Yucatan and other Incidents of Travel books mostly dealing with South America; The Travels of John Mandeville The Fantastic 14th Century Account of a Journey to the East; most of Jules Verne’s work is travelogue – Around the World in 80 Days; Charles M. Doughty’s Travels in Arabia Deserta; Well’s War of the Worlds in a very good travelogue of the home counties as Wells bicycled all over taking notes before writing the scenes; Kipling’s Kim and Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy; H.P. Lovecraft since you could draw a map of Arkham from reading his stories and the descriptions of the place; Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, though one panelist thought it was more prose poems; Lucian’s True Histories, these are real tall tales.

Many of Kiplings techniques of travel writing are used by SF writers – just say something and don’t explain it. SF is travel to place you can’t go or don’t exist but you must make it real.

2:00 p.m. Everybody Loves Dirigibles: Science for Tomorrow’s Fiction.
Panelists: Paolo Bacigalupi, John Crowley, Jeff Hecht (Leader), Joan Slonczewski, Charles Stross, Michael Swanwick.
Panel Description: According to William Gibson, “We can’t spin futures, because the present has become too brief.” By the time the fiction is written, the science has moved on: “Nothing gets quainter faster than that history you just made up.” But is there really only a synaptic gap’s width between cutting-edge and outmoded? It’s taken decades for viruses to come up to competition with radiation as the biomedical handwave of choice; the prominence of airships in the popular imagination remains undaunted by the fact that the zeppelin hasn’t been cutting-edge since 1932. And who’s writing the great novel of the Large Hadron Collider? Our panelists compare the current state of the scientific field with the fiction it’s inspiring—or should be. What ideas endure beyond the obsolescence of their science? What latest developments remain unexplored?

(This is by Hyperion) Despite the fact the dirigibles were in the title, the panel was technically more about how technology passes you by while you’re busy writing your story. And despite this fact, a good 25% of the panel was about dirigibles. Why? Because everybody loves them. There is something about certain technologies that just won’t let them die in our imaginations, no matter how hard governments and corporations insist on ignoring them. Dirigibles haven’t been financially viable as transport since the 1930s. Charles Stross mentioned that it wasn’t really the design of the Hindenburg that caused the disaster. Well, unless you count the fact that they used rocket propellant to seal the hull. It was the US embargo on exporting helium that did it in. If it had had the helium buffer it was supposed to have, the accident probably wouldn’t have happened.

Other dirigible related information dealt with local lifters, which move very heavy items that helicopters either can’t handle, or if they can, can’t operate in residential areas. One of the more interesting bits concerned the, now defunct, CargoLifter company from Germany. When they went bankrupt, a consortium of Eastern businessmen bought up their hanger. The hanger is so large that they’ve turned it into a tropical resort 30 miles east of Berlin. Inside is artificial seashore, complete with sand beach, and a rainforest. They actually have balloon tours of the inside of the hanger. Finally it seems that the final doom for dirigibles is simply speed. They don’t move fast enough for our modern age. Joan naturally pointed out that the bacteria which can be used to generate vast amounts of hydrogen in an economical manner, actually they reproduce extremely quickly. But nobody gives bacteria any respect.

Other than dirigibles, nuclear power was a favorite topic. Nuclear powered space probes, nuclear powered airplanes; which had the unfortunate side effect of killing the passengers because they couldn’t afford the weight of the shielding, and nuclear powered trains (well, electric trains powered by nuclear power). The first is still on the drawing boards, the latter is thankfully long ago abandoned, and the last is in France. The anecdotes surrounding these technologies which once formed the backbone of the future as foretold by science fiction fans showed an anticipation of permanence. And in fact, most of the technologies have endured, although only in niche environments, or mutated nearly out of recognition. There was a time when every car had a cigarette lighter. They still exist, although you can’t light a cigarette anymore. Instead they’ve become the ubiquitous power source for running your cellphone, laptops, and GPS systems.

All in all, a good time was had by all, good questions were asked, good answers (although sometime drifting sharply off topic) were provided, and lots of good information on a wide range of beloved technology was given. Now I’m still waiting for my flying car. And has anybody seen my jetpack?

5:00 p.m. Interview with Nalo Hopkinson. Interviewer was Jim Freund.

I always find the Guest of Honor Interviews interesting and this one was certainly no exception. Freund ask some questions and Nalo regaled us with stories of her father who was a Latin and English teacher as well as a Shakespearian actor. She mentioned that among the people of the Caribbean she’s known as her father’s daughter rather than a writer/author.

Hopkinson is a Clarion graduate attending the workshop in 1985. She said she went feeling that she had nothing to say. She could put words together but didn’t know what to say with those words.

She mentioned that when she writes a short story, she can sense the shape and trajectory but when writing a novel it’s like seeing an oncoming train through thick fog. (a very useful analog to my mind)

They talked about her work reading stories on CBC (the Canadian equivalent of NPR), the anthologies that she edited and her novels. She mentioned working on Mojo: Conjure Stories how after she accepted a few of the stories, she could see the shape of the anthology and the rest of the stories were taken with that shape in mind. When she realized that, she thought those rejection notes that say, “Sorry but this does not meet our needs at this time,” just might be the truth.

She’s funny, sincere, committed to writing the best work she can and in being honest in her writing which she says is very scary. But what helps is seeing how open Chet Delany is and he’s still there doing okay.

All in all, it was an interesting chance to listen to a writer I admire talking about her life and her writing.

After the interview, we closed our table in the Dealer’s Room for the day and sought dinner. We’re now back in our room and have decided to call it a night. Readercon is always fun but I’m just coming off a pretty bad fibro flare and I’m exhausted and we still have Sunday to get through. The Dealer’s Room closes at 2 and we’ll leave shortly after that. Then we have a 10 hour drive home not counting the detour to Providence, RI to visit my son for a few hours on the way home — haven’t seen him since Christmas.