Balticon – Day 2, May 28, 2011
I wish we could have slept in today. Yesterday was really busy though, looking at what I wrote, it doesn’t really appear to be that much. Didn’t matter. I was tired when I got up. First order of business was to talk to programming about getting off one of the panels that I was on today. I’d been placed on an audience participation type panel that was game based — think What’s My Line or Pick the Real Definition of the Word type thing but different. It just was not my cup of tea and staying on the item would be a disservice to the panelists and the audience. Tracked down the right person and got replaced and gave a great sigh of relief.
Next we helped set up the Capclave table and spent some time talking to people about Capclave, WSFA Press, and our upcoming guests of honor — Catherynne M. Valente and Carrie Vaughn. Check out the website and consider coming to Capclave this October — it’s bound to be a lot of fun.
1:00 PM – Belmont – Favorite Shared Worlds. Panelists: Gayle Surrette (M), C. J. Henderson, Michael Hanson, Richard Groller, Neil Levin, Charles Gannon.
Description: Fans, Authors and Editors talk about their favorite shared worlds, old and new. And maybe even toss around ideas form some new shared worlds!
Unfortunately, this panel had a problem — the panelists and moderator showed up but we had no audience. Paolo Bacigalupi was scheduled to do a reading in Belmont at 1:00. Programming moved his reading to Chesapeake — unknown to us they also placed a very large sign outside the door that said that his reading was moved. This was a good idea and they’d told us to announce before our panel started that his reading had been moved. The sign outside the door however didn’t mention that another panel had been moved to replace the reading — our panel.
So, while we waited for an audience to show up, the panelists discussed shared worlds including the newly revived Heroes in Hell, Wild Cards, and Shad’aa. We swapped information and ideas on the topic while waiting. After about 20 minutes we said our goodbyes and went on with our day.
Having some time before my next panel at 4:00 PM, I met up with Hyperion and we checked out the Art Show which had some nice pieces way-way out of our range and some interesting new pieces we hadn’t see before. After that we took a turn in the dealer’s room checking out the offering there. Some beautiful items on sale. We each got a pocket watch with steampunk-ish finishes. We then checked out all the booksellers. You’d think with all the books we have that we wouldn’t need to buy any more for quite a while. After all, each of our To-Be_Read piles are really multiple stacks not to mention the eBooks on our eReaders. Nevertheless, we found several we’re considering for later in the convention.
4:00 PM – Salon C – How Plausible is Today’s Hard SF?
Panelists: Michael Swanwick, Douglas Fratz, Gayle Surrette, Brett Talbot, David Bartell.
Description: Past science fiction stories were either fantastic or built on known science. Now theoretical physics and accelerating developments in biology have led to more fantastic leaps of speculation in what used to be hard science fiction. Is the science in today’s SF at all plausible or is today’s SF drifting towards fantasy?
The conversation went very well between the panelists. There was discussion of physics, biology, classic writers and new, and how writers handle the science of their books. Interestingly, it was brought up the the more expert a writer is in a field the less likely they are to enjoy books with their field depicted in a book or to write about it themselves. There was also talk of how there are just some givens — you need to travel between solar systems so you have FTL and move on with no detail as to how it works other than to keep the time of travel consistent with distances. Many other areas were covered but now I can’t remember who said what or what was covered. Hannu Rajaniemi’s Quantum Thief was highly recommended as were other writers.
We then helped at the Capclave table until it was packed up for the night. We then attended a short WSFA Press meeting and went out with friends for dinner. Coming back to the hotel, we stopped in a couple of parties and called it a night.
Tomorrow, I’ve got a 9:00 AM panel — after which I hope to get to see some other panels. One can always hope.