A Curious Statistical Anomaly

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.

We drove up from Maryland to Burlington, MA yesterday.  We got a late start and didn’t arrive until 10:30 p.m., so we missed the Thursday night programming.  On Thursday’s Readercon has an evening program schedule that is open to the public.  It’s a way for people to see what a convention is like in order to determine if they want to come back for the rest of the weekend and buy a membership.

Being exhausted we just checked in, set up the computers and tried to get to sleep.  Unfortunately, my laptop decided it didn’t want to work either — guess it was a rough trip in the back of the car.  After a few searches on the program that was causing the problem, we found a fix and downloaded it to Hyperion’s machine and then installed on mine.  So, I’m now back to limping along with only the usual problems until the new laptop arrives later this month.

Friday:

We manged in spite of the late night to get up, find food, get to Registration to get our badges, and begin to set up the SFRevu table in the Dealer’s Room.  We were surprised at how much easier it was to get set up when we had from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. to set up.  Of course, we also had to figure out how to work around the things that we forgot — like our signs.  Luckily, the hotel has a business center with a printer.  Once we finished the setup, I’d missed all the morning program items that I’d hoped to see but that’s life and decision making — you have to miss something to do others.

2 p.m. I Don’t Think We’ve Ever Been in Kansas: Non-Western Cultures in Fantasy.

Panelists: Nalo Hopkinson, Shariann Lewitt, Theodora Goss (Leader), Catherynne M. Valente, and Darrell Schweitzer.

Panel Description:  When it comes to settings, authors of both epic and urban fantasy— as attested by such recent novels as Daniel Fox’s Dragon in Chains, Ekaterina Sedia’s The Secret History of Moscow, and Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death—are increasingly diversifying beyond the mainstay models of North America or western Europe. For some writers and readers, the choice of geographies offers a chance to stretch beyond their comfort zones; for others, it can be an exploration and a reclamation of their heritage. How do these different approaches  affect  the  fiction they create—and how do  they affect our readings of the  books?

Panelists discussed ways to write a story using a culture not your own: respect it, talk to people who are native to that culture, read books written by people native to the culture, don’t exotic-ise it, look at the jokes and sayings of the culture, understand your assumptions and examine them closely to see if they are actually true.

Schweitzer suggest that if you offer details make sure they are right.

There was a  lot of discussion on using other people’s culture and stories.  The analogy that was decided upon was that telling another culture’s stories was like renting or leasing it — you have to return the story in the same condition that you got it.  You can’t trash it or abuse it because it isn’t yours.

Also, remember, no matter what you do as a writer, people will get angry with you so you have to do what you feel is right for you and the story and the culture.  People will get angry no matter what so be true to yourself and your internal moral compass.

3 p.m. The Best of the Small Press.

Panelists: Michael Dirda, Rick Wilber (leader), Robert Freeman Wexler, Sean Wallace, and Gavin J. Grant.

Panel Description: These days, many of the best novels and novellas, collections and anthologies are published by small presses in print runs that may only number in the hundreds. Most of these cannot be found on the shelves of chain bookstores, or even most independent and specialty shops. We’ll highlight the best works recently published by small presses—including many that Readercon attendees may not have heard about.

The panelists agreed that small presses or independent presses are where some of the best and most cutting edge writing is being published.

There was some discussion of unit prices and how they varied by the size of the print run, problems with distribution, pricing, and the effect of ebooks and whether small presses did ebooks (they do).

Books of note: Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow, Tachyon Publications; 1st edition (February 1, 2009); The Babylonian Trilogy by Sebastien Doubinski, PS Publishing; Limited and signed ed edition (May 1, 2009); The World More Full of Weeping by Robert J. Wiersema and Erik Mohr, ChiZine Publications; 1st edition (September 15, 2009); anything by Ashtree Publishing; The Third Bear by Jeff VanderMeer, Tachyon Publications (July 15, 2010);  Small Beer Press; PS Publishing; Aqueduct Press; Fairway Press; and other book titles, authors, and publishers that I was too far behind in writing to catch.

4 p.m. How Electrons Have Changed Writing and Reading. Cecilia Tan (speaker, this was a talk/discussion).

Discussants: Inanna Arthen, Leah Bobet, K. Tempest Bradford, Jeffrey A. Carver, Barbara Krasnoff, K.A. Laity.

Description: Ebooks, the Internet, social media networks, Paypal — have these really changed the writer/reader relationship forever? Not surprisingly, sf readers are early adopters of new tech and sf publishers are leading the way in new content delivery. Is it really possible with new tech for a writer to cut out the publisher and still make a living? Is the writer who wants to “just write” doomed to obscurity now? Writers,  what  forays  into the new frontier of  electronic publishing have  you made and what did  you  find out  there  in the  wild lands? Readers, what have you enjoyed and  sought  out,  what would you welcome?

The talk went over the changes over the last few years in publishing and eReader technology and Amazon’s Kindle and B&N’s nook among others.  A writer who has the eRights to their books and who puts it in Kindle format on Amazon can get 70% of the book price if priced between 2.99 and 9.99.  They mentioned that some authors are making money on their back list that is out of print by putting up the ebooks on various sites.

There was also some discussion of social media and other options such as subscription stories and serialization on blogs.  Things are changing.  This also puts more of the selling and PR work on the author and some are better at it than others.

Cecilia Tan will have a more coverage of this on her website.

Next I took a break to print up my note cards for my 6 p.m. panel.

6 p.m. Global Warming and Science Fiction.

Panelists: Steven Popkes, Paul Di Filippo, Gayle Surrette (moderator), Alexander Jablokov, and Paolo Bacigalupi.

Panel Description: The dangers of nuclear weapons and nuclear war were common themes in mid-­twentieth century sf, even before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The nearest comparable danger today is anthropogenic global warming. It’s our impression that sf has not given to AGW the same level of attention that it gave to nuclear matters in the past, and has more  often treated  the  issue as  worldbuilding background  than  placed it at the centers of  stories. Are we correct? Might this stem from today’s attention to extrapolation of multiple, simultaneous trends, and to the difficulty of writing about the near future? Does AGW’s more uncertain set of consequences make it harder to dramatize? What role does the controversy about the existence of a threat play? What approaches have gone yet untried? We consider sf’s take on  a warming world.

Since this was the panel I moderated, I can’t really say much about it, except that I thought the panelists made some very interesting and thought provoking comments.  Some that I remember:

That GW isn’t like nuclear war.  We didn’t then have the bombs in our houses.  We do have cars, lawn mowers, and other devices that put out carbon and cause greenhouse gasses.

The problem is that we’re all idiots and who wants to write that? — it’s not very satisfying.  In most of the past problems, it wasn’t our fault.  We could blame someone else, but now it’s us.

The story can be about GW if it’s in the background but it’s not a single item — it effects the economy, food production, transportation, the ecology, everything and those impacts need to show in the characters lives.  (very paraphrased).

No matter what happens with GW there will be winners and losers.  It may change the balance of who has power.

Once the panel was over we went to find food and then talked with friends and just called it a day.  Tomorrow is another full day of programming items and the Dealer’s Room wall also be open all day.

Today many people will gather together and celebrate a holiday.  They’ll gather with family and friends and enjoy a day off from work and perhaps see some amazing fireworks.  We’re celebrating our Independence Day.  Some may even stop to think that we’re celebrating our freedom to be who we want to be, to worship as we please, to have a say in our own government.   Lately, I’ve watched the people of this great country become afraid, to forget that we’re all immigrants, if you go back a couple of hundred years.  We’ve always fought for freedom for ourselves and for other oppressed people — maybe we need to rethink what we’re doing and where we’re going now.  Do we continue on the road we’re on, or rededicate ourselves to the premises on which our country was founded?

I wanted to put up a video to help celebrate the day but it was difficult to find “America the Beautiful” that focused on the many beauties of this great land.  But I finally managed to find one.  Enjoy.

Farm Fatale by Wendy Holden. Sourcebooks Landmark (July 1, 2010). Trade Paperback. ISBN: 978-1-4022-3716-4. Pages: 402. Price: $14.99 (Amazon: $10.79 Book/Kindle $9.99).

Book Description:

Cash-strapped Rosie and her boyfriend Mark are city folk longing for a country cottage. Rampant nouveaux riches Samantha and Guy are also searching for rustic bliss-in the biggest mansion money can buy. The village of Eight Mile Bottom seems quiet enough, despite a nosy postman, a reclusive rock star, a glamorous Bond Girl, and a ghost with a knife in its back. But there are unexpected thrills in the hills, and Rosie is rapidly discovering that country life isn’t so simple after all.

Review:
Rosie dreams of living in the country away from the noise of London’s streets, especially the one they lived on which always seemed to be under repair — with big trucks and loud noises. Mark, however, barely pays attention to Rosie’s chatter about finding a place in the country. He loves the city and doesn’t want to leave because he’s just about to get his own column in the newspaper where he works as an assistant editor on the Sunday lifestyle section. Besides, they don’t have the money to move. That worked out well for Mark, he went to an office everyday which got him out of the noise and their grubby little apartment. Rosie, a freelance illustrator, was stuck working in the noise day after day, trying to draw when she could barely hear herself think. It seemed hopeless.

But suddenly, Mark was all for moving to the country. It seemed that he did listen to Rosie’s talk on how good a move to the country would be because he pitched it to the senior editor for a column and they were going to let him run with it — provided he moved to the country.

They finally settled on a small village called Eight Mile Bottom. However all they could afford was a small terrace cottage (in the US a row house) with a small garden area. Rosie throws herself into country life getting to know the neighbors, the nosy postman, and barkeep at the local pub, and many other colorful characters. Mark, however, barely leaves the house, ignoring and insulting Rosie by turns as he tries desperately to come up with a column.

Interspersed with Rosie and Marks plot line is one involving Samantha, a has-been actress with delusions of grandeur, and her husband, Guy, a banker. Samantha thinks that hiring the newest, brightest, whoever (architect, interior decorator, new age guru) will somehow put her in the same social strata as the famous people the newest and brightest whoever was with, in whatever fashion magazine she found them in. Guy on the other hand is thinking he made a mistake in marrying Samantha. Seeing a great spread in a home magazine about someone elegant country home Samantha begins to scheme to sell their London home and move to — you guessed it — Eight Mile Bottom.

These plotlines alternate and spin around each other throughout the book. Throw in a reclusive rock star, some ghosts, a farmer desperate for a wife who doesn’t mind hard work, an ex-Bond girl who raises racing chickens, a very nosy postman, loud hippy SCA neighbors, great dialogue, a few plot twists, and you get a wonderful romantic comedy with a definite English flair.

My only problem with the book and it’s one that I have with most romances is that Rosie was too darn accommodating to Mark. Just because he’s extremely handsome isn’t any reason to stay with someone who treats you like hired help. He’s lucky it was Rosie — I’d have booted him out long ago. I wished fervently that I could reach into the book and hit her upside the head with a clue stick. In a way that means the book is very well written — if the characters didn’t seem so real — no matter how outrageous — I wouldn’t have cared.

Since this is a romance, you know there will be the traditional HEA or happy ever after. What you don’t know is just who is going to get that HEA — will it be just Rosie or someone else, or several characters. To find out you’ll have to get the book and settle in for a delightfully funny and occasionally poignant getaway to the English countryside with Farm Fatale.

The zines went live last night at midnight but I added at least four from people today and expect another one or two tomorrow. So the official announcements have not yet gone out to our mailing list.  If you want to be on the mailing list just go to either SFRevu.com or GumshoeReview.com and join the mailing list. We only send one email a month — we might do a special announcement email once in a blue moon and those, as you know, are pretty rare.

I expect that I’ll soon be back to actually  making posts with content soon. In fact, I’m working on a book review for tomorrow. It’s a fun, light romance with a British slant but oh, so relevant to most of us city folks dreaming of the quiet country side.

Finally, I’ve wrestled my Jali Sweater chart into submission and have almost completed a full pattern repeat. Yeah, me! I only ripped the entire thing out and started from scratch about 6 or 7 times before the light bulb over my head went on. Boy that’s embarrassing to know that somehow you forgot how to read between casting on and following the chart. But more about that project in another post.