A Curious Statistical Anomaly

We got a late start and by the time we had breakfast and got ready to hit the panels, we’d missed the 10 am panel we wanted to see. Then in the lobby, we got into a conversation and missed the 11 am panel. But we did make it to the noon panel.

NOTE: The photos of the panelists were taken with available light from two or three rows back so are a bit grainy. I did some Photoshop work to get the panelists to stand out from the darkness. But hope you’ll get the idea of who was there. Panelist are always listed left to right from the audience point of view or as you look at the photo.

Noon: Unexamined Assumptions in SF.
Panel: Mikki Kendall, James L. Cambias (leader), Kenneth Schneyer, Darrell Schweitzer, Anil Menon.
Description: In a 2011 blog post, James Cambias complained of “[convention] attendees and panelists dusting off old, unexamined assumptions” in SF. For much of its history, SF developed a set of unexamined assumptions that became default conventions of the genre—that space exploration will move systematically outward from the moon to the planets, that the explorers will be cisgender heterosexual American or European males, that aliens will fight us in (peculiarly two-dimensional) space battles, and so on. 21st-century SF has made some notable efforts to roast these chestnuts, but it has its own set of assumptions, which this panel will mercilessly dissect and offer alternatives to.

Some questions were raised and dealt with such as: Why would you have clone slaves when born people are certainly cheaper. Why would any alien want to come all the way to Earth when whatever the book/movie/whatever gives as a reason could certainly be found in their own solar system? Schweitzer suggest the only reason would be if people of Earth tasted good making us alien sushi.

There was also a lot of talk about the economics of SF and fantasy and how they seldom, if ever, seem to apply. Why is a post apocalyptic society uniform? Shouldn’t they all be varied by which small group survived with their culture attached but changed for the harsher environment?

The thought was raised that in many SF stories they could just as easily take place without space. Why doesn’t any SF story show how we got from here to, say, the Star Trek universe where everything is peacefully one Earth government and a kind and benevolent Federation? Does the expectations of the audience fashion the story?

1:00 PM. The Autopsy, Postmortem Changes, and Decomposition: A Primer for Writers.
Speaker: Laura Knight.
Description: What happens after we die? Despite the incredible surge in popularity of forensic science in popular media, many myths and misunderstandings continue to surround the autopsy, and postmortem changes like rigor mortis and subsequent decomposition are often misrepresented. Further, medical examiners and coroners have often been depicted as insensitive and crude, eating a sandwich in one hand while wielding a bloody scalpel in the other. Dr. Laura Knight, a forensic pathologist and medical examiner, will present actual autopsy photographs, along with a non-sensational narrative description of the autopsy process and a detailed explanation of the changes to the body after death.

Dr. Knight gave an enlightening and tight presentation that actually fit in the time allotted and allowed for a short Q&A. She had a slide show to accompany her talk. She began with the difference between Coroners and Medical Examiners (M.E.), the training required for an M.E., then she went over how an actual autopsy is performed (the sequence, the standard items that are looked for, and some of the problems that arise).

The room was very warm and the pictures rather graphic. A couple of people had to leave during the talk. If any author is writing a crime story and needs to have a forensic autopsy as part of the discover of the cause of death, they would find this topic extremely helpful — It’s not like seen on CSI Anywhere.

2:00 PM. The City and the Strange.
Panel: Howard Waldrop. Ellen Kushner, Stacy Hill, Leah Bobet, Amanda Downum, Lila Garrott (leader).
Description: In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs writes, “By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange.” N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance trilogy demonstrates that epic-feeling fantasy can still take place entirely within the confines of a single city. Fictional metropolises such as Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris, China Miéville’s New Crobuzon, and Catherynne M. Valente’s Palimpsest are entire worlds in themselves, and the fantasy cities of Lankmar and Ankh-Morkpork shine as centers of intrigue and adventure. In what other works, and other ways, can cities be stand-ins for the lengthy traveling quest of Tolkienesque fantasy?

The panelists talked about some of the differences between real cities and made up cities. Made up cities must have a feeling to the reading of a history of culture and they need to work. Real cities are not homogenous they have small pockets or neighborhoods that vary from those neighborhoods that surround them. It was agreed that some of this information could be supplied via impressions rather than specific information.

Someone on the panel said they remembered a quote that, I paraphrase from my notes, “the city is where you go to meet people you don’t know and aren’t related to.”

Further discussion centered on hidden world cities or 2nd world cities in fantasy and the city as a wilderness or unknown territory as much as the country setting could be unknown territory.

3:00 PM. Theories of Reading and Their Potential Insights into Fantastika.
Panel: Shira Daemon, Eric M. Van, Gayle Surrette, John H. Stevens (leader/speaker), Suzy McKee Charnas, Rick Wilber, Kate Nepveu.
Description: We talk about reading at Readercon every year, but we rarely talk about our understanding of reading as a mental process of cultural practice. John H. Stevens will summarize some recent theories of reading from neurological, psychological, anthropological, and literary perspectives, followed by a discussion about what these ideas might be able to tell us about how we engage, interpret, and codify fantastic literature. In what ways is fantastika read like any other sort of text, and in what ways might we read (and write?) it differently?

I was on this panel but as with the other panelist, just got to listen to John’s presentation from a front row seat. The top photo above were the three of us to the left of John Stevens from the audience point of view and the smaller photo are the panelists to the right of Stevens. Unfortunately, Suzy McKee Charnas was directly behind Stevens from where my husband was sitting so doesn’t show in the photo.

John’s talk took up the entire time for the panel since there were several questions from the audience. His material is fascinating and he’s writing a book on the topic covering theories of reading from several different disciplines — anthropology, sociology, and neurology. He’s also been blogging about his research and musing on SF Signal in his column The Bellowing Ogre.

Visit to the Book Dealers Room:
One of the wonderful things about Readercon is that they have only book sellers in their Dealers’ Room. Unfortunately, even though I review books, I also buy a goodly number of books. I also love looking at the covers of books that I’ve only see the advanced reader copy of — and most of the time with no cover art.

Then we met friends for dinner and catching up on what panels they went to while at Readercon.

8:00 PM. Critical Fictions & Other Fabulous Beasts; or, Learning to Read and Write All Over Again.
Speaker: Henry Wessells.
Description: You think you know how to read? This look at critical fictions and other modes of reading/writing will suggest that it might be time to learn it all over again. The critical fiction is a piece of fiction or poetry where form (story) and content (critical function) are inseparable, a work of art that explicitly declares itself as a critique of another work of literature and explicitly makes use of that earlier source text. Henry Wessells will cover the precursors, techniques, and current practitioners of the critical fiction, and tell you why. Is it literary mash-up for people who shudder at Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? Come find out. See the suggested reading list at http://criticalfiction.net/readinglist.html.

I was excited by the topic description but rather disappointed in the actual lecture. The room was warm and Mr. Wessells read several poems and a short story, as well as an introduction to a book. The introduction he read might have been more interesting if it had been pared down to the part essential to forming a definition of ‘critical fiction’ rather than so centered on the one author and book. I totally fail to see the difference between critical fiction, homages, and pastiches. When asked about this he said it depended on the author’s intent, guess that’s a great reason to read the introductions and forwards to books and stories — to get a heads up from the author.

I plan to check out the link to the suggested reading list, since I’m sure that my failure to grasp what Wessells was more on my side than his due to the hour and the temperature of the room. Any one interested in the topic based on the description should check out the site listed in the description.

We then called it a night but on the way to our room got folded into a conversation in the lobby — thus another late night for us.

Slept in a bit late on Friday. Well didn’t sleep well — never do the first night in a new place. Got up and ready to go. Registration opened at 10:00 AM. There was a program item we wanted to see at 11 so we made sure to get down to registration on time. The line was already quite lengthy. I got my registration material in the green room but my husband had to go through the pre-reg line. That’s when we hit the first snag. His registration wasn’t there so back in line for the at-the-door and filling out the forms. Finally completed the process at ll:32 AM.

If you’ve been here before you know that registration is down a side hallway. It was crowded and hot, very hot. Many of the people leaving were joking about forming a registration survivors support group. It was truly amazing that people didn’t spontaneously combust from either heat or bad tempers, especially those working at registrations who didn’t get to leave that heat for much longer than those getting registrations. That doesn’t even take into considerations the problems with some of the technical equipment. GOOD JOB in a bad environment, people.

The first panel we managed to get to was at noon.

Noon: Muzzling the Horse’s Mouth.
Panelists: Graham Sleight, Veronica Schanoes (leader), David G. Hartwell, Michael Dirda, Ruth Sternglantz.

Description: Conventions, zines, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook provide many venues for writers to shape the dialogue around their works. When it’s hard to avoid information about what a writer intended, how does that affect the critical reading experience? As readers and as critics, can we feel confident that we would have seen on our own what the writer has revealed to us? How do we differentiate and prioritize between our own insights and those shared by the author? Does the writer’s emphasis on some aspects of a work make it harder to see other aspects? And what happens when the critic’s desire to convey information about a work—such as an author’s stated intentions—comes into conflict with the critic’s desire to demonstrate a viable personal reading of the text?

What that description all boils down to is: does an author’s published intent about his work effect the critical reader? Many felt that the text should speak for itself and if the author’s intent doesn’t get borne out by the text than the readers interpretation is just as valid as the author’s.

The topic did move onto the difference between reviews and criticisms. Reviews are for people who haven’t read the book and criticisms are for those who have read the book. It was felt that all reviews are subjective views for the reviewer. Panel members felt that the best reviewers present a sincere response to the work. Readers get to know a reviewer’s taste and can then learn to trust the reviewer to either be close to their own taste or opposite to their taste. (Personally, I had one reviewer that I knew if that person hated the work then there was a good chance I’d enjoy it.)

Panel talked about how many times what you get out of the text is sufficient to enjoy the work. However, with some books a second reading can add richness and texture to your experience. (This was mostly said in relationship to the works of Gene Wolfe.)

Another interesting side issue was on audio books. There was the feeling that audio books add a paratext as the narrator (not author) reads the book using pacing, inflections, and other performance tricks that may change the experience for the listener to be different from that of a reader. [In a panel on Saturday, a blind woman talking about text-to-speech readers said she preferred the mechanical reader rather than a person because it allowed her to get an experience more like reading — when she was sighted.) Ruth Sternglantz said (and I’m paraphrasing) that audio books are not reading text but a reading of the text.

1:00 PM: Theological Debate in Fantasy and SF.
Panel: John Benson, Ellen Asher, James Morrow, Sonya Taafte, Harold Tonger Vedeler.

Description: From Spenser and Bunyan to Michael Chabon and Stephenie Meyer, writers of speculative fiction have engaged in fine-grained, subtextual theological positioning and debate. Leaving aside instances of more obvious religious maneuvering, what happens when implicit or encoded theological dialogues become invisible to readers, either because the passage of time has stripped away their contexts (as with, say, High Church vs. Low Church Anglicanism in Victorian fiction), or because they are only available to the initiated (as with Meyer’s LDS-inflected fantasy)? Are these vanishings a loss? Is there something insidious about books whose surface narratives conceal debates to which we lack access, or do these dimensions enrich the texts? Are we ‘better’ readers if we try to suss them out?

Religion for the purposes of this panel was defined as “God is in the details.”

Reader may get the moral message from a work but not the actual religious underpinnings. Panel and audience talked about specific books such as reading The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe as a young person and understanding the right/wrong, good/evil, strength of family unit, etc. but totally missed the Christian message. One person said they actually thought it was a Mithras tale.

The writer doesn’t necessarily add religious underpinning but the religion is so much a part of the writer’s world view and core beliefs that it is intrinsic to how he or she see and interacts with the world and thus it shows in the text.

There was also a lively discussion of whether it even mattered if you didn’t recognize the religious underpinnings. Was the reader’s enjoyment any less valid if they didn’t get it? Most thought that it didn’t really matter if they recognized which religion if they got the basic moral message being conveyed.

One comment that I found interesting was that mysticism is flexible and theology is not. I hadn’t really thought of it in this way before but did see it as being more or less a valid way of looking at things.

2:00 PM: Serendipity in the Digital Age.
Panel: David G. Shaw (L), John Benson, John Clute, Michael J. DeLuca, Kathryn Morrow, Michael Dirda.

Description: Libraries are closing off their stacks from patrons and sending robots to retrieve requested books; brick-and-mortar bookstores are being supplanted by Amazon’s massive warehouses and recommendation engines. While these arrangements increase efficiency on the business end, they destroy serendipity on the reader’s end. Yet sites like Wikipedia and TV Tropes give us what Randall Munroe called “hours of fascinated clicking,” trails of discovery that strongly resemble the old-fashioned bookstore or library experience. Can those sites teach us how to recreate browsing in our browsers? Should Amazon look more like the new online edition of the Science Fiction Encyclopedia?

We all love to browse in bookstores and library stacks. However, more and more libraries have closed stacks and many bookstores are closing or there are none near you and you end up with online sites that have recommendation engines which are often not really your taste or not finding things by chance.

On the other hand the panel agreed in principle that we’ve never really had true serendipity since bookstores and libraries don’t have everything but only what the buyers believe the patrons will want. There’s always been a limiting factor on what we can browse and that hasn’t changed. So, we need to try harder to find that gem that wouldn’t normally be the kind of thing you read but that you stumble across anyway.

3:00 PM: Anthropology for Writers.
Panel: James L. Cambias, John H. Stevens (L), Christopher M. Cevasco, Francesca Forrest, Harold Torger Vedeler.

Description: In a 2011 blog post, Farah Mendlesohn wrote, “‘Worldbuilding’ as we understand it, has its roots in traditions that described the world in monolithic ways: folklore studies, anthropology, archeology, all began with an interest in describing discrete groups of people and for that they needed people to be discrete.” This panel will discuss the historical and present-day merging and mingling of real-world cultures, and advise writers on building less monolithic and more plausible fictional ones.

The conversation among the panelists was interesting and wide ranging but the key to this panel was summed up at the very beginning by Harold Torger Vedeler in three points:

1. Worlds must change over time allowing the characters to act in a historical context.
2. No world is homogenous. Story may look at only one group but the other societies will have an impact on that one.
3. People often say one thing and do another. They may idealize their culture but then what they actually do doesn’t agree with that idealized culture.

4:00 PM: Sherlock Holmes, Now and Forever.
Panel: Veronica Schanoes, Ellen Asher, Michael Dirda, Victoria Janssen, Fred Lerner.

Description: Sherlock Holmes is everywhere right now: in TV series like House, BBC’s Sherlock, and the upcoming Elementary; in the Robert Downey Jr. movies; and in books and stories being written about Holmes and his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. What accounts for the endless appeal of this character? Are we ever going to get tired of brilliant and slightly mad detectives? Or is it all really about Watson, as suggested by our collective urge to keep telling and retelling Holmes’s stories?

Lively and interesting points were made by the panelist and the audience. The key element, it was agreed, to remember is that there is a distinction between the stories by Conan Doyle and the interpretation of the stories in movies and in other media and the continuation or addition of new material by others writing about Holmes and Watson.

Key reasons why the stories are still popular was thought to be the atmosphere of the stories and the friendship of the two main characters.

Evening: We decided to call it a day. Went out for dinner and found Brave was showing so went to see it more on that later.

That’s it for Friday. I hope to have my Saturday of Readercon report up soon.

We got out of the house just about on time — meaning we were an hour late (11:00 AM) and we arrived at the hotel at 9:30 PM.

After the drive and several slow downs along the way, we arrived just as the ambulance and fire department were finishing up. The next morning we had a note under the door saying that the alarm in the lobby had been pulled accidentally. [We heard later that someone got distracted when talking and tried to open a door but instead grabbed the alarm. I don’t know if this is what actually happened but it is plausible.] We thought that explained the ambulance but today (June 14th), we learned that while setting up his booth in the Bookstore, one of our book-dealer friends suffered a heart attack. We were of course shocked to hear this and are hoping he’s doing well and recovers quickly.

Anyway, the hotel, as always, is comfortable and since we’ve been coming to Readercon for several years now it’s a known facility. The programming is all on the same floor at ground level. The lobby is available for sitting and talking and there’s an in-hotel pub for talk and a drink. The con suite is again on the 6th floor and the Kaffeeklatches are on the 8th floor.

We checked in and essentially called it a night. Guess we’re not as young as we used to be, but then who is.

The Disappearance of Georgiana Darcy: A Pride and Prejudice Mystery by Regina Jeffers. Ulysses Press; Original edition (April 17, 2012) ISBN: 978-1612430454. Trade Paperback. (List: $14.95 / Amazon: $10.17 / Kindle: 9.66)

When The Disappearance of Georgiana Darcy opens, the Darcys are worried because they haven’t heard from Geogiana since she headed north to open her husband’s home and ready it for his return. Georgiana and Colonel, now Major General Fitzwilliam were married in a previous book. However, the Darcys can’t do much about it as they’re preparing for Kitty Bennet’s marriage. There’s plenty to keep everyone busy.

Things take a desperate turn when notice is sent to the family that Major General Fitzwilliam was dead. Efforts were made to contact Georgiana, knowing she shouldn’t be alone at this time of grief. However, the news is shocking when they learn that Georgiana is missing and presumed dead on the moors. The Darcys spring into action to find out what happened to her.

Meanwhile, the reader is privy to a second story line. A lovely woman was found injured on the moors and taken to the MacBethan’s castle. Her memory is fragmentary at best after a fall from her horse. She has hazy memories of screams and pleas for help prior to awakening in a very plain room in the castle. The Lord of the castle takes her under his protection. She’s beginning to fall in love with him but something is holding her back — she feels there may be someone else in her past. More than that, she’s aware that she’s not an injured guest, but a prisoner and must watch all she says and does.

Then of course there’s another tread throughout the novel of George Wickham and his thirst for vengeance, his greed, and his hatred of Darcy. His actions twine about the other two plot threads.

Jeffers manages to keep the reader guessing as to the identity of the woman in the castle. Is she Georgiana? If so, how could she even think about falling in love with someone other than Fitzwilliam? If she isn’t Georgiana, then who is she? Does that mean Georgiana is really dead?

The point of view characters never really give away the few facts the reader is really desperate to know concerning Georgiana. They only know what they can learn from others or interpret from what they’ve found out. Even when you’re in the mind of the injured woman in the castle, you don’t learn who she is because her head injury means she doesn’t know who she is either.

The pace drags in a few places but seem to be mostly when the reader needs information that the characters have learned or are in the process of learning. Otherwise, it moves smoothly between the various plot lines and characters, all filling in needed information and helping us get a better feel for what is happening and the background.

That said, I found the book frustrating. At any time the author could have told us who the woman was and what had happened to Georgiana. By the end, when all is revealed, I felt that I’d been sitting on pins and needles for hours hoping everything would turn out okay and fearing that it wouldn’t. That Jeffers could pull such an emotional reaction from me, speaks to how well I thought she handled the misdirection and obstruction required by the main story line of Georgiana’s disappearance.

The characters are all very much as they were in the original work by Austen. There’s been no appreciable change to their basic character except that Geogiana, in the first part of the book, has come into her own as a strong, independent minded woman of her times. There are far more characters as lives have moved on, and there have been marriages and children added to the various family groups. Luckily, there’s a list of the major characters and their relationships to bring readers who haven’t read previous books up to speed on who’s who.

The book was released in April so should be readily available to those who enjoy the Pride and Prejudice follow-on books. If you’ve already read the book, I’d love to hear your opinions.

A while back I somehow managed to stubble over The Lizzie Bennet Diaries on youtube. I’ve now caught up on all the available episodes and must wait for the next one. So, I thought I’d share.

Lizzie Bennet is a graduate student in communications. She has two sister’s. Jane who is older than Lizzie and Lydia who is the youngest. This story line has no Mary of Kitty. They all live at home. Times are tough and the economy being what it is and money being tight, Mrs. Bennet is determined to marry off the girls. She’s targeted their new neighbor Bing Lee for Jane.

So, things are the same but different. The writers have done a great job of updating Austen’s Pride and Prejudice for modern times. If you’ve read the books or even if you haven’t you’ll enjoy Lizzie’s video blog — technical work filming and editing being done by her best friend Charlotte Lu.

Here’s the first episode:

Give it a try and let me know what you think. This show really needs more viewers. How else can I share the excitement.