home > SF > cons > Concourse: Eastercon 2004

The 55th British Easter Science Fiction Convention
9--12 April 2004, Winter Gardens, Blackpool

GoHs: Mitchell Burnside Clapp, Danny Flynn, Sue Mason, Christopher Priest, Philip Pullman

Our first time back to Blackpool since 1992. We were reacquainted with the land of towers and piers, where even the trams get SFnal. The con wasn't at the Norbreck this time, but at the truly astonishing Winter Gardens, with whose enormous rooms and unique decor even a willing suspension of disbelief struggles occasionally.

Programme highlights

• Academie Glorianna -- Weapons display
• Sue Mason -- GoH interview
• Panel -- Alternative Histories
• Francis Spufford -- George Hay Memorial Lecture
• Panel -- Classic SF
• Mitchell Burnside Clapp -- GoH talk
• Panel -- Not the Clarke Awards
• Danny Flynn -- GoH talk
• Clute & Nicholls -- The SF Encyclopedia
• Chris Priest -- GoH talk
• various -- filk
• Panel -- Superheroes --- pen and ink, or silver screen?
• Panel -- Holistic Hitchhiking
• Panel -- Modern SF
• Lucy Smithers -- How the Embryo knows its Arse from its Elbow
• Panel -- Retelling the Fairy Story
• Panel -- Computers in SF
• Philip Pullman -- GoH interview
• Christina Hansen -- Farscape
• Masquerade
• David Wake et al -- Tartan Restrung
• Panel -- Modern Fantasy

Academie Glorianna -- Weapons display

• In high stress situations, we use ~ 25% of our intelligence -- we need "cues" and trained reflexes to help
• The first fight in the film The Duelists has probably the most accurate swordplay in a film -- they are trying to gauge each other's skill level
• the sword is the only early weapon not derived from a hunting, agriculture or manufacturing tool
• The fuller -- the groove in the blade -- is not to let the blood run out, it is purely to make the sword lighter
• the pommel is the counter-weight to the weight of the blade
  • kinetic energy E = mv²/2, force F = ma
  • so velocity counts for more than mass -- if exert a constant force, get most energy from a high acceleration (high end velocity), which means minimum mass
• Use the Whole Weapon -- hit them with the pommel, etc
• Sacrifice -- discard the weapon (and use another one!) if necessary

Sue Mason -- GoH interview

• Medieval banquet last night
  • teaching our wench how to trollop
  • played "spot the authentic item" -- carrots, and chicken -- and the carrots were orange, not purple
    • started off playing "spot the inauthentic item" but that was too easy -- the oompah band was an extreme
• Mythcon'82 -- my first con -- I discovered the bar -- the Samurai Wookies -- filk
  • filkers were the first to welcome me -- I'll not have a word said against them, unless I'm the one saying it
• I have dyscalclia and dyslexia -- I doodle to concentrate -- well, I doodle
  • my Art CSE -- you had to produce 9 pieces -- I had 27 -- some very surreal pieces -- I hung them in my first con art show, and won best newcomer
  • I won the Art Hugo last year, but didn't go to the WorldCon -- I was moving house
• Plokta Cabal -- we eat too much, drink too much, and occasionally produce a fanzine -- www.plokta.com
• TAFF visit
  • Minnesota State Fair -- like Blackpool in taste level
    • I was taken to it, along with Patrick Nielsen Hayden from NY -- he oozes cool -- he was more weirded out by it than I was -- I'm working class British: I may not do uncouth, but I know what it is!
      • faces made of grain, the Butter Queens, ...
  • my TAFF guest hotel room (Chicago) was very nice -- it even had a TV in the loo!
    • they has a news item about the Minnesota State Fair
• Medieval reenactment
  • Valkyries in stockings and suspenders -- we weren't very authentic
  • English Civil War -- very muddy and wet
    • they had a water tanker for the cows -- it sank in the field -- they decide it would be easier to remove empty -- not if you drain it under the tanker! -- they were still digging it out three weeks later
  • Lesser Spotted Norfolk Toilet Fairy -- they clean toilets at Easter in Norfolk
• in 1995 we wanted a "get out of the WorldCon free" card, so we ran the Eastercon -- it didn't work -- we worked like dogs there, and again at the WorldCon.
  • I hosted the Masquerade
    • I'd never hosted a Masquerade before -- I made several bad muffs
  • also painted 4 door panels -- teddy bears in space suits and dragons -- I was supposed to have help, but the gophers were busy elsewhere -- took 7 hours
• I won a WorldCon Masquerade, at the Holland WorldCon
  • I was told I'd been entered, on the boat on the way over -- I had no costume! -- so I wore a dress I had with me, and won anyway -- it wasn't a very good Masquerade that year ...
  • there are people already working on the 2005 WorldCon costumes
• I have no shame
  • I'm conducting an experiment to see if a computer can spontaneously combust because of the amount of slash on it
  • a shop in Blackpool was displaying some of my artwork in its window -- the police asked them to remove it
  • I've been to several Anime cons -- mainly for the pretty boys -- the Japanese are equal opportunity pervs
• I don't know if there is any fannish ghetto I haven't plumbed
  • I went to Star Trek Media cons before I'd ever seen any Star Trek -- my Dad didn't let us watch it at home
    • one of the guests was Q -- I wondered why Desmond Llewellyn was going to ST cons -- the committee didn't disabuse me
• I'm off to the Belly Dancing now

Panel -- Alternative Histories

John Dallman, Simon Bradshaw, Harry Harrison, Edward James

• When it's a serious academic subject, it's known as "counterfactual history"
  • can also apply cliometrics ("futurism") to events in the past
    • example: what would have happened if the railroads hadn't changed the US economy
  • Tristram Hunt claims it has put back history 100 years by resurrecting the "great man" theory
• You can't just change certain decisions of Great Men, because those decisions are consistent with their whole lives
  • you can kill them off
• if Nelson had been killed earlier during Trafalgar -- it would have made no difference -- his genius was to have fully briefed all his captains beforehand
  • one of his captains said "He's not signalling again is he? Oh, "England Expects ...'. That's a signal worth sending"
  • even if he had lost the battle of Trafalgar, would it have made any difference in the long run?
    • it was different in that it was such a decisive victory, annihilating the French fleet -- it encouraged Napoleon to got to Russia earlier
• if you have an agenda for how historical events ought to have played out, it's easier if you can get rid of the element that stopped it
  • Tristram Hunt -- he's a Psychohistorian, isn't he?
• Very few "honeypots" of turning points
  • but the American Civil War, and WWII, have loads of them
  • they can be done well, but there's so many of them
  • there are some good German counterfactuals of WWII
  • when people write alternate WWII they usually want to write about Nazi-dominated Europe -- a more interesting take is that the Germans did invade, but it failed, and stopped the war earlier
  • Greg Benford brought in the Norse Gods -- because it's difficult to come up with a credible AH were the Nazis did better -- they were so lucky anyway
• why is there so little AH Britains based on turning points in 20th century history?
  • because you can't sell novels in the US based on obscure details of British history!
• is there a turning point earlier than in West of Eden? [ie, 65 My]
  • you could have the Big Bang come out differently, with different physical constants
    • The Gods Themselves
  • James Blish, Black Easter
    • "I've done the End of the Universe -- they want a sequel!" So you say, "Meanwhile, in a Universe very like our own ..."
• the real historical detail is usually very much crazier than anything you make up
• is there a continuum, from the AH being the story, to just being its backdrop?
  • you have to have both
  • some writers want to see how to get there, some just want to play there
• why has it got so popular?
  • because we don't like the world we've got!
  • SF readers are very well read -- it's a way to give them something different
  • the right wing historians have to do something -- they can say "this is serious counterfactual"
    • Newt Gingrich makes Tom Clancy look like Virginia Woolf
• there's technical AH, with different engineering
  • Steven Baxter has not so much carved out a niche as strip-mined an entire area -- NASA after Apollo 11 went to Mars, instead of building a space station -- there was so much archive material available the story nearly wrote itself
• is it so popular because you get a lot of background for free?
  • half the fun is throwing in the twist
  • it's appealing having familiar characters in different settings -- even if rather improbable
    • like Eastenders in Brighton!
• there's a group of Internet bods -- not historians or writers -- interested in spinning out AHs -- soc.history.whatif -- low signal to noise
• Kim Newman -- makes one fictional character real -- eg Dracula -- the fun is the way the characters change but the history remains the same -- Dracula marries Queen Victoria!
  • Teddy Bear's Picnic -- Britain in Vietnam, with the Likely Lads!
  • He never invents characters, they are all fictional or historical -- there are whole fansites analysing his works
• why no English Civil War AHs? what if Cromwell continues?
  • Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series is set in such an AH, with effects on American colonisation
  • or if the Royalists win? there might have been a much bloodier, later American Revolution
• Pavane is set in a world where Elizabeth I is assassinated and the Armada succeeds
• The Years of Rice and Salt -- Black Death kills many more in Europe
  • it's a lovely idea, but he doesn't pull it off -- the current day stuff is too similar
  • plus those awful interludes of Tibetan mythology
  • it failed as a novel, but is okay as AH -- he didn't seem to know how to end it
  • it's good to see the Chinese view -- there are very few non-Western AHs
• what if Bloody Mary had died earlier -- before she became "Bloody" -- and Elizabeth I is remembered as "Bloody Bess" for killing off the Jesuits?
• we all live in an AH where Kennedy died early enough that we still have a good opinion of him
• the game is to make the biggest historical change with the smallest perturbation -- I can stop WWI by killing off an obscure English doctor -- the one who was the Kaiser's physician and didn't spot he had throat cancer

Francis Spufford -- George Hay Memorial Lecture

The Fall and Rise of the British Boffin

• an eloquent diatribe against the stereotypical British boffin, having to struggle heroically against all the odds of underfunding, derived from his book Backroom Boys

Panel -- Classic SF

Edward James, Chris Priest, John Clute, Peter Nicholls

• we're looking at books we may have forgotten, which will be difficult: we've forgotten them!
• time travel into the past is impossible -- classic SF was written in the Garden of Eden, and could only be read by those innocents who lived in the Garden -- it is not possible for us to do
• taproot age: Wells, Verne -- First Genre: Edgar Rice Burroughs -- Classic/Golden Age: Asimov, Heinlein, Pohl, van Vogt, ... who hammered out a vocabulary built on by subsequent writers
  • once you've read books built on them, you cannot read the classics and know what it was like -- you know too much
  • I was born in 1939 -- I was reading Heinlein as it was published -- my kids who are under 20 cannot read it in the same way
  • we're now used to good writing -- we cannot read Asimov and look past the writing
• there are ways to approach this stuff
  • Heinlein's For Us the Living is a very very bad book -- written before his classics, unpublished until now -- this makes it clear that Heinlein and cohort were living in a larger world than the genre created a few years later under the aegis of John W Campbell -- Golden Age SF was created by people more sophisticated than it was
  • reading protocol -- we can read Golden Age SF knowing it was written by people who meant it, not by children in the Garden of Eden
• "classic" is in the eye of the beholder -- look outside SF to the "real" classics like Shakespeare, Dickens
  • The Voyage of the Space Beagle -- it's only claim to being a classic is that it's old
  • all classic literature was originally written for a popular audience -- the only exception I can think of is James Joyce, and Milton -- SF passes this test!
  • classics must endure -- Dickens is still read, and not as a period piece -- can't say this of World of Null-A, Foundation, etc: they are pretty flawed bit of work
• look back at the classics and see what's wrong with them
  • Asimov -- can't do women characters -- his non-fiction is his best writing
    • J. G. Ballard said "an hour spent not reading Asimov is an hour gained forever"
  • Heinlein -- embarrassingly awful writer
  • H. G. Wells -- The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man -- true classics
  • John Wyndham -- The Day of the Triffids gets better with age: it's about SDI and GM food!
    • I like Wyndham less because I don't like the "slick" style he writes for
  • The Martian Chronicles changed my life as a teenager, but I find it almost unreadable now
• something can be an SF classic because it made an important contribution to forming the genre, even if it is badly written
• Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars (Against the Fall of Night) -- he writes stiffly and like Biggles -- but even so, this is a foundation text for a whole sub-area
• van Vogt was a hack writer and only borderline sane -- he put madness into SF -- completely unfettered flow of ideas -- he got on his plot and rode madly off in all directions
• Starship Troopers is a much better book, and less simplistic, than is sometimes thought -- it's not exclusively militaristic -- it's quite thoughtfully right wing
  • Heinlein started going badly wrong at Stranger in a Strange Land
  • Heinlein is the grown up default voice of SF -- he was sophisticated, but dumbed himself down deliberately
  • the fact that Heinlein wrote several different deliberate styles shows that his original genre SF was a deliberate style
• even Dickens is getting more difficult to read without historical intervention
  • with SF the "frame" has to be understood from the start -- it is very "time bound"
• what about short stories?
  • The Voyage of the Space Beagle, Foundation, The Martian Chronicles -- they're all fixups
• I started reading SF in the early 60s -- it was possible to read a large representative chunk of virtually everything -- today I wonder what people new to SF read -- clearly they can't read everything
  • Kingsley Amis' New Maps of Hell -- doesn't mention many of our current big names -- he was unaware of them -- he later admitted he couldn't keep up
  • most people who lived on Earth are alive today -- SF books similarly
  • when we started the SF Encyclopedia we thought we could do it -- we learned very quickly that wasn't the case
• so when anyone says "SF" they mean something different
  • it is increasing perceived through the visual media -- the centre has shifted
  • we generalise SF to an "it" and make generalisations about "it" -- we need to look at individual works, it's the only way to understand it
    • no it isn't!
    • 1960 is the last year you can call it an "it"
• Golden Age writers were imitators, not innovators -- generic SF largely grew out of Wells, who was reprinted in the 1920s -- the first years of Amazing Stories republished nearly all of Wells, 30 years old
  • could you enjoy van Vogt without knowing this background? I couldn't
• are we showing our age by accepting the Golden Age = classic definition? -- isn't Neuromancer a classic now?
  • it's only a 45 minute panel!
  • nobody reads 1920-1930s SF today -- between Wells and the Golden Age is far more complicated than Wells -- but most is such appalling crap you can't read it! -- later prose styles and storylines settled down enormously -- pre-classic SF is radically pessimistic -- Campbell was consciously creating a positive literature
• Wells' "When the Sleeper Wakes" is a truly amazing vision of the future
  • a lot of Heinlein is clearly based on this Wells, not the other Wells
• isn't SF about ideas with the literature secondary? and the ideas are old-hat now
  • ideas are altered by the language you use -- they can't be separated
  • you can enjoy an idea even if it never came true -- you can "reimagine" it if it's a good story
  • I recently reread Daniel Galouye's Dark Universe -- I didn't expect to like it -- but the tale is so good -- a deeply living text
• who decides the canon?
  • SF is like pop music -- everyone does it for money in the beginning -- ten years later, if people are still talking about it, it's becoming a classic
  • SF is the literature of ideas -- but it still needs a good story, otherwise the idea is thrown away
  • there are a lot of voices -- there's no point at which a book is a classic or not
  • there's a lot of consensus -- it annoys me -- I really like Le Guin, but I don't like the way she's picked out as being the person to write about
• what would you recommend?
  • Gene Wolfe, Book of the New Sun
  • J. G. Ballard, The Four-Dimensional Nightmare
• is the true SF sentiment found in the short story, not the novel?
  • I agree completely for the 1925-1935 era, but the balance has shifted
  • also, those original stories were illustrated
  • 1950 was a real turning point -- paperback books -- new market

Mitchell Burnside Clapp -- GoH talk

• fandom -- the opportunity to belong, but not conform -- is something I embrace
• access to space -- the calling of my heart
• technology progress -- things happen suddenly, then plateau -- in response to their environment or ecologies
• old SF -- some things look so quaint, yet others are still impossible
  • David Gerrold, When Harlie was One -- sentient computer the size of a room
  • space travel in SF is an utter commonplace plot device -- it's not a "device" device -- there's no science behind it
• computers nowadays not used much for "computation" -- more for office functions, and communications
• what punctuates the equilibria? what causes plateaus and speciation? -- it is very difficult to point to the ecological pressures
  • technological speciation laregely economically driven
  • I have a phone with a camera in it -- an idea that didn't exist 3 years ago
  • no-one has come up with a way of making money from human space travel, yet
    • do make money from satellites
• every major decision I made was towards becoming an astronaut
  • then I was interviewed by NASA -- selection takes a week -- in my late 20s
    • my resting heartbeat is ~60 -- it was 130 for a whole hour of an interview
  • standard interview question: "what is your biggest weakness" -- it needs a good sympathetic answer
    • "my piano playing is so technically perfect it undermines the composer"
    • "my perfect French is undermined by my lack of Quebec slang"
  • I replied "Kryptonite" -- no-one smiled, no-one laughed, and only a few caught it -- this was the beginning of my realisation I didn't want to be with these people
  • insiders -- after a while, will do anything not to jeopardise the chance of flying again -- that's why you never hear criticism from inside NASA -- only after they've left
• NASA has created an infrastructure for space -- but hasn't got it right
  • their manned space fight is political, not economic
  • nothing apart from war happens for purely political reasons -- space is not done anywhere privately
  • economics -- the motivation is not simply to make money, but to be seen to make money -- to get investors
• Pioneer Rocket -- a company I set up with friends in 1995
• all the satellites ever launched could be piled up at the back of this room [admittedly quite a large room] and not cause a problem
• let's say you are operating a constellation of 77 satellites to give global mobile phone coverage -- look at your business plan -- satellites, launch, customers, advertising, ... -- the launch slice is ~10-15% of total (for low orbit, ~50% for geostationary) -- and that slice has the lowest uncertainty -- a new company offering free launches doesn't help your overall business plan! -- all cheap launch companies are doomed, economically
• so we've shifted our focus to human space flight capable machines -- simple designs -- converted Lear Jet to 100 km sub-orbital flight -- sell rides to people for $100,000 and demonstrate a market
• successor project -- a sub-orbital passenger plane
  • at some Mach number, air is just getting in your way -- you should go around the atmosphere, not through it
  • take off/land with air breathing engines
  • 40 person commuter airline -- London/NY in 45 minutes
    • same throughput as a 747 -- smaller "packets", but faster
  • smaller craft allow more decentralised network of routes
  • fuel per passenger per seat mile is less than conventional aircraft
  • fewer facilities needed -- you get nothing to eat, and you should have gone before you let!
• we home-school our children -- it's not just for crazy religious people, it's for everyone!
• next generation craft are not orbital -- generation after that could frighten earth orbit -- by the time you can do the antipodes, that's essentially earth orbit
• can ease take-off by in-flight refuelling
• how do you get round the three hour checkin and two hour immigration times?
  • there's a lot of streamlining possible -- auto-visa, standard baggage, immigration before departure -- small capacity means smaller airports and less loading time
• the biggest security concern for NW Australia is discovering that they've been invaded
  • miles and miles of nothing -- the Indonesians could have a million people on the ground before it was noticed!
• air traffic control -- can you stay stacked for two hours?
  • no -- but flight duration is so short, can have landing clearance before you leave -- do as much as possible before you leave

Panel -- Not the Clarke Awards

Francis Spufford, Caroline Mullan, Claire Brialey, Liz Sourbut, Edward James

A discussion of this year's Arthur C Clarke shortlist

• The shortlist for the Arthur C Clarke 2003 award is:
  • Steven Baxter -- Coalescent
  • Greg Bear -- Darwin's Children
  • Tricia Sullivan -- Maul
  • Gwyneth Jones -- Midnight's Lamp
  • William Gibson -- Pattern Recognition
  • Neal Stephenson -- Quicksilver

• traditionally, juries tend to expect the books to stand alone, rather than being in a series -- but this year there are several in series -- and two are arguably not SF at all!

• Quicksilver
  • it's perfectly clear to me it isn't SF -- it's arguably fantasy since one character is immortal -- but it's essentially an historical novel
  • it's long, but it is Neal Stephenson! -- it's a novel about science
  • the only tenuous justification for SF is that it's about the early years of the Royal Society -- it's a treatment of science -- but I don't believe this line of reasoning
  • of course it isn't SF, but it's a novel that takes a SFnal sensibility and does something with it -- a way of seeing the past through the same eyes that see the future -- and it's very well written -- I'd be happy for Neal Stephenson to tell me about anything -- which is lucky, because he does!
  • Wolfe says it contains a homeopathic dose of SF
  • it's such a good book -- it's not a no-hoper
  • it's a very long introduction to a story -- I can see how the jury argued it in -- and as it's there, the jury have had the SF argument -- but there will be wailing, howling, and gnashing of teeth if it wins
• Darwin's Children
  • I haven't read the prequel -- it stands up very well as a stand-alone novel
  • Darwin's Radio was excellent, and wasn't even shortlisted -- it was a very good year -- Darwin's Children is a classic middle novel of a trilogy -- most characters don't move in the course of the book -- it's a novel in suspense -- it needed to be written, as a bridge to the conclusion -- it weaves together existing characters into a solid backdrop -- a very good book, but the middle of a trilogy
  • it stands alone if you haven't read Darwin's Radio, but doesn't if you have -- it's in three parts itself, a bit disconnected and rushed
  • I didn't know there was a third volume -- I've read Darwin's Radio, and liked this less -- it's so gloriously different from Michael Crichton who writes the endlessly same plot of something bad happening and scientists close it down -- lots happens off stage
  • I liked it -- it has an odd structure -- I have read Darwin's Radio -- does have a slick best-seller style
  • the USA develops concentration camps across the country for a decade, despite democratic protests and peace camps outside -- he's going to have to work hard to get this to work
  • it's a warning showing that American democracy is very easy to subvert
• Midnight Lamp
  • it's the third of five -- it reads very much as a middle book -- it's not possible to understand if you haven't read the previous
  • I haven't read the first two -- I lost interest very soon -- in the sequence it may be very good, but that's not the point of the Clarke Award
  • The first book, Bold as Love, did win two years ago
  • don't start here -- the first 20-30 pages is infodumping -- the opening sequence backstory is not handled well
  • so much is needed from the previous book for this to make sense -- I haven't enjoyed it as much as Bold as Love -- I don't think the characters can carry five books
  • Gwyneth Jones is one of my favorite writes, but this is my least favorite of her books
• Pattern Recognition
  • it's not SF -- it has the feel of SF because of the style and sensibility -- it's good, enjoyable, well-written, but not on this shortlist
  • it's the best book, very well written, and we should throw it out
  • it's the best novel -- read it!
  • if the Award is about pointing people at SF -- people who read this wouldn't know anything about SF
  • it's stylish, thought-provoking -- but it shouldn't be winning the Clarke Award
  • if literature had been doing this when I was younger, would I have needed SF?
  • it's so well-written, there's a sense of disappointment at the end -- it's about less than I thought it was going to be -- "it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive"
• Coalescent
  • Steven Baxter has been nominated for the Clarke Award more than anyone else and never won it
  • I was dreading reading this because I'm an historian of the period and I was afraid he'd do it badly -- he does get some details wrong, but on the whole he does it well -- but then you realise it's volume one of three and he's not going anywhere here
  • it's structured as an extended Prologue -- the last 25 pages is in the far future, which is a disservice to the preceding 400 pages -- for what it is, it's very good -- Baxter writes entry level SF very well
  • the premiss -- humans have a genetic disposition to eusociality -- naked mole rats are the mammalian ants and termites -- someone faced with surviving the Fall of Rome might go underground -- evolution operates on the underground society for 2000 years to give a eusocial society
  • but on page 400 he stops dead, loses all the characters, and springs forward 10,000 years to a very depressing future
  • he often takes the long view where humanity has evolved into something I don't want to be -- eusocial people are almost all female -- is Baxter's point that only females are passive enough to be drones?
  • there lots of clever thought -- the best Baxter for several years -- a two-stranded story
  • it's clear the next volume will follow on from the future bit -- the most disappointing bit
  • this panel has read only the shortlist -- so we don't get the "feel of the year" from reading the full 40 books -- the mood of the moment form the shortlist is very pessimistic -- concentration camps of Darwin's Children, pointless destruction and violence in Quicksilver, the Fall of Rome here
• Maul
  • it's SF and it's stand-alone -- it's unique on the shortlist! -- it's very good -- it would be my choice to win
  • it's another dissolution of civilisation
  • very big on different biological issues
  • structurally very interesting -- a two strand narrative with a fascinating relationship between them -- lots of powerful women, real people, flawed, who make mistakes but carry on anyway -- man are rare, prized, oppressed -- I found myself sympathising with characters I never expected to
  • fastest switchback in the opening scene I've ever seen
  • it's literally one of the most exciting openings I've seen
  • I really didn't understand the relation between the narratives: I must reread
  • Clarke judge will reread the shortlist -- a rereading can alter perceptions
• I think there are some very good books left off this list -- Ian Macleod's Light Ages -- Justina Robson's Natural History -- Felaheen, ...
• the shortlist should give a good snapshot of what's going on in SF, but it's a bit out of focus
• there's too much going on outside the shortlist -- three of the books are about the evolutionary potential of the human race -- that's not a concern for some authors -- it's very heavily weighted

• what book do you think should win, and what will win?
  • I think Maul will and should
  • I think it will, but I don't think I can second guess a jury that put this shortlist together
  • I would pick Maul
  • I still like Darwin's Children -- but the jury has the habit of picking something mad, so they'll pick Quicksilver -- but they should pick Maul
  • I think Maul should win it -- often what wins is everyone's second choice -- so maybe Pattern Recognition will be the jury's choice
  • if it's second choice game playing, it might be Coalescent -- a sort of "lifetime achievement" award -- a reason sometimes used when you've ruled out other reasons

• read these books!
• Clarke Award judges are asked to read ~40 books in 7 months, then have to read the 6 shortlisted again -- the judges rotate -- try to maintain a balance between authors, critics, and readers -- if you feel you might be up for the job, make yourselves known!

• later : Felaheen won the BSFA award
• [later still: Quicksilver won the Clarke award]

Clute & Nicholls -- 10 years of the SF Encyclopedia

• decision points -- what to put in and what to leave out
• there are a number of errors -- in dates, in titles
  • authors are very unreliable sources -- the date might be the year of signing the contract -- the title might be the one they preferred, not the one published -- they might include books being worked on
• it's becoming harder -- "date" is not so well defined, with print on demand, with eBooks, etc
• there were some upset authors -- but not that many
• the 2nd edition is much better than the first
• CD -- Grolier were more interested in bells and whistles than in content

Chris Priest -- GoH talk

• my first con was RePeterCon (the second Peterborough Con) in 1964
• fan writing has a friendly familiarity, no punches pulled, sharp critical ability -- I like this, and it's not like the mainstream
• Peter Weston has written a history of British fandom of the era, to be published in ~6 months time
• I'm proud of being a fan -- I still publish a fanzine -- as a writer, you just sit in a room alone, and write -- I've been writing for 40 years
• some of the older among you will remember the "New Wave" -- it passed me by, really -- I paralleled some of it, was was never really of it -- I've never liked writers' cliques
• in 1973 I wrote Inverted World -- it was written at a bad time: the three day week, Watergate, ... -- it wasn't reviewed very well, and fizzled -- a year later it appeared in translation in France -- it became a best-seller, for a week -- it's been in print there for 30 years -- tops polls of favourite books in France -- I had a good translator -- also, the English starts out "I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty miles" which translates to the rounder "1000 kilometres" -- but it's the only book of mine that they've heard of in France
• in 1975 I went to Australia, and loved it -- when I got back I was homesick for Australia -- I was blocked for ~3 years -- the I wrote The Affirmation -- it was a changing point -- I had found my voice, and become a different kind of writer
• in 1989 my (non-identical) twin children were born -- since ~1980 I've had an academic interest in twins -- separated at birth studies -- the existence of identical twins allows you to compare lives -- all my books from 1990 onwards deal with twins, doubles, mistaken identities, etc
• there's a comics writer who has changed his name to Christopher Priest -- I was a bit upset -- I suggested he might have more success if he changed his name to that of a more prominent writer, like Harlan Ellison...
• politicians often use doubles -- Hitler and Stalin used doubles -- Churchill's famous wartime speeches used a voice double -- I Was Monty's Double -- Saddam Hussein allegedly had 12 lookalikes
  • there's a crank conspiracy theory about Rudolph Hess -- the peace mission was a double, who was replaced by another, while the real one came over too -- so for a while we had three Hesses and they had none!
  • George VI was one of three brothers who looked similar and had similar names -- George was his middle name, his first name was Albert, called "Bertie" -- Edward VIII's names included Edward Albert George -- the younger brother's first name was George and included Edward -- (I wonder if one wrote SF under the name Bertie George Wells?) -- he died in a seaplane crash, in the mountains -- there's a lot of secrecy surrounding the crash -- there was another body -- maybe it was Rudolph Hess, or his double, or his double's double! -- led to The Separation, about doubles
• Many from that con in 1964 have since died -- but we carry on!

various -- filk

several filk concerts over the weekend

• a lament that they spun off the wrong vampire series -- including the line "I wanted Spi-i-i-ike", entitled, naturally enough, I'm Watching Angel Instead.
• Death singing It's Your Party and You'll Die If I Want You
• Mitchell Burnside Clapp regaling us with his hit Falling Down on New Jersey, and being regaled in turn with the Anglicised version Falling Down on Milton Keynes, with the great line about the Brighton Metropole

Panel -- Superheroes --- pen and ink, or silver screen?

Philip Pullman, Gerry Webb, Danny Flynn

Do superheroes work best on film, or should they be left on the pages of comics?

• PP -- I'm here under false pretenses -- I don't write SF, or fantasy -- I try to write realism, and this is what it comes out like! -- I learned to read with Dan Dare -- I'm not much of a fan of superhero films
• what is a superhero? where do you draw the line? special powers? magic powers?
• DF -- my favorite is Mutley -- but he's not a real superhero
• the first, biggest, best is Superman -- everyone else is an imitator, except the magic ones -- Dr Strange -- Mandrake the Magician, but it's just hypnosis
• I never took to Superman, because I could never be him -- it's all inadequate teenage fantasies -- Batman was the man
• and Batman is more "romantic" -- sordid city streets, darkness -- it's difficult to relate to Superman because he's invulnerable -- that's why they had to invent Kryptonite
• Tarot in Ace of Wands -- I wanted to be like him -- long hair, flares, platforms, ...
• I took my son to New York a few years back, to see Gotham City -- he's a real Shadow enthusiast, because of the film
• definition: fights crime with a specific secret identity and costume -- so Batman is a superhero, and so is Captain America, but Morse isn't
• Watchmen -- exposes the fascist underside -- unhappy is the land that has to rely on superheroes because that way fascism lies
• Superman came from The Reign of the Supermen -- overman fascist rulers -- originally the baddies
• Victorian penny dreadful -- Spring-Heeled Jack was a costumed superhero -- it's been around for a long time
• what about Sherlock Holmes? Biggles?
• Sherlock Holmes fits the pattern -- outside normal patterns of the law, quirky, almost "supernormal" deductive powers -- also there's a formal structure to the stories -- in Baker Street, a stranger arrives with a problem, go out and solve the problem, come back to Baker Street
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?
  • I haven't seen the film yet -- is it any good?
  • No!
• film can do anything now -- reaching diminishing returns -- not so involving as it's not people, it's pixels -- I'm more emotionally involved in a crudely drawn strip than a slick film
• it's frightening what you can do now -- what will it be like in 10 years?
• superhero films are much more possible -- there are lots of subtle effects in Spider-Man -- but superheroes are invented for lonely inadequates, so fit better in a personal book
• there's a difference between reading, where we have to contribute more, than in a film where it's done for you -- you put more in, you get more out
• it's all computer generated -- we'll soon be cynical about everything we see on screen -- 1000 orcs charging down a hill, oh, it's pixels again
• Robin Hood -- a costumed superhero?
• Orson Welles wanted to do Batman with Gregory Peck -- there's a website
  • it's a fake!
• superheroes are to some extent "impossible" -- a sketched page can show so much more, because of what it doesn't convey -- it has to be unreal to work
  • could you do a live action superhero film in an unreal, comic book mode?
  • Dick Tracy?
• I don't believe it's all "just pixels" -- you can scan over words in a book, too -- and you can invest in a film, too -- it's a different experience, but it can be done
  • but I think the over-realism of CGI works against that -- makes it harder
  • by overelaborating, it shuts down areas where you can invest imagination -- The Lord of the Rings film didn't work for me
• Wonder Woman -- superheroines
• there's a lot of mutation from evil to hero -- Spring-Heeled Jack started out as a villain -- in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen many were originally villains -- Batman in the animated series is quite scary
• the moral ambivalence is interesting -- Marvel Comics in the 60s discovered that superheroes have psychological problems
• what about the uniforms? the Village People aspect? have they conquered the gay front?
• in the comics Dan Dare is just a man -- the recent Channel 5 animation is different -- it's very difficult to bring 1960s stuff up to date
  • Dan Dare is the same source as the Festival of Britain -- the socialist People's Festival -- democratic socialist optimism -- very powerful vision
  • yes, Dan Dare lived in a socialist universe -- concern about world food, etc
  • it all crashed in the 60s -- comics are before that time, films after
• long-lived heroes go through cycles -- Batman was originally outside the law -- 50s/60s custard pies -- then Vietnam turned things dark again -- today, it's the fear of what these people could do, even though they're trying to do good
• any ideas for new superheroes?
  • someone who can move between RW and cyberspace -- digitise themselves
  • Green Nature powers -- Gaia -- something beyond the given tech
• superheroes invented for merchandise, not storytelling?
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
    • they started as an underground comic making fun of "mutant" comics -- corrupted by marketing
  • Pokemon
• are computer game characters like Sonic or Crash Bandicoot superheroes?
• Atlee made more socialist changes than Lenin -- and without killing anyone -- SuperClem!
  • in a socialist world, command economy, individual has no control, so dreams of superheroes -- now, I have a lot more personal power, so less need to fantasise about being a superhero?
• Is Buffy a superhero?
  • she has two identities, and superpowers
  • a lot of superheroes that start on TV like Buffy don't translate well to comics
    • maybe because Joss Whedon writes fantastic screen plays, and the comic writers don't?
  • Buffy works well because of all the ancillary storytelling -- when you translate from one medium to another, you always lose something
• what about radio?
  • Dan Dare on Radio Luxembourg was wonderful -- it's much more vivid on radio
• are we now more interested in ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances
  • Sam and Frodo
  • Buffy is an "ordinary person" with powers she doesn't want
  • Peter Parker!
• as technology moves on, we get the chance to improve on what went before -- if the new stuff has equivalently rich quality of imagination, it will work
  • technology may have cut the ground away from the need for superpowers -- cars give us superspeed
  • but people will always create superheroes to look up to -- they will always be with us -- they are a part of us

Panel -- Holistic Hitchhiking

M. J. "Simo" Simpson, Flick, Gerry Webb

Douglas Adams, his life and works

• Simo -- this is the first year since 2000 that I haven't brought out a book about Douglas Adams
• GW -- my son wouldn't have been born without Douglas Adams -- I was lecturing at Warwick University -- I saw my wife-to-be -- I used the line "is this guy boring you? I'm from another planet!"
• Simo -- my son's middle name wouldn't have been Ford
• GW -- I own a Ford Prefect!
• the film is 9 days away from starting shooting - we're mooting tee-shirts saying "we've waited 25 years: it better be good"
  • there's a rumour that Bill Nighy turned down Dr Who to play Slartibartfast
• the 3rd radio series has been recorded last October -- 6 part adaptation of Life, the Universe, and Everything -- mostly the original cast -- problems with lawyers and rights -- it's the film that's preventing it being aired
• Ken Campbell played Poo Doo -- a part based on Ken -- but Ken can't play Ken!
• GW -- We went to see a Ken Campbell one man show -- it was a private showing -- we sat next to John Cleese -- my wife went into labour -- I was told off at the hospital for taking her to the theatre
• Ken Campbell had very inventive theatrical ideas for the HHGttG stage play -- which ended up limiting the audience size to 80 -- the audience were moved around the players -- seats ended up being subsidised by a factor of 10
• GW -- Douglas Adams and I were thrown out of the Leeds 79 con banquet -- because they didn't know who he was!
• Douglas had a reputation for knowing the best restaurants -- he liked his food and drink
  • lots of eating, lots of drinking, dropped dead at 49
  • there's a moral from his life -- do not spend several decades drinking enormous amounts, the sign up at a Californian gym!
  • he crammed 150 years into those 49
• the first radio series, they got around by hitchhiking, because he was penniless -- by the third book the main means of travel is by expensive Italian restaurants -- the books reflected his life
• he had an accountant who stole £3/4M from him, them topped himself, which meant he couldn't get it back
• the film was never going to happen while he was alive, with a controlling interest
• the Rainbow play production hadn't had a proper dress rehearsal -- the first night lasted 5 hours
  • the Dish of the Day sequence was written for the play
  • there have been some interesting stage productions, and some truly terrible ones
  • there are none now, because the film in production negates the stage rights
• I'm a great Red Dwarf fan -- I can see parallels
  • I don't think Red Dwarf would even have been considered if HHGttG hadn't been a success
  • it too started as a radio show -- sketches
• will the film be any good?
  • it's being produced by a subsidiary of Disney!
  • so was Pulp Fiction -- it's like saying I don't want to see anything by Sony because it will be in Japanese
  • it will look very good
• US amy have the same average intelligence as the Brits, but it's spread differently -- the US elite get Brit humour
• I don't know how Americanised it will be -- but they were never going to change The Answer -- that was one of Douglas' anecdotes that wasn't entirely true
  • aliens will be Henson puppets -- I have a lot of confidence in Henson
  • the Vogons are 7ft tall, and operated by four people
• the one thing Douglas Adams was really good at was beginnings

Panel -- Modern SF

Chris Priest, Cheryl Morgan, John Clute

• JC -- there's no consensus where Modern SF begins and Classic SF stops -- I would start at cyberpunk
• classic SF flounders in the 50s -- modern SF starts in 1984 -- in between there were significant texts
• William Gibson, Michael Swanwick, Kim Stanley Robinson, ... all began around then -- seriously distrusted by the "Old Guard"
• Neuromancer -- famously written by someone who didn't know about computers but could write about what it was like to live in that world
• moved from stories about heroes who end up "owning the world" to ones that "figure out paths through the labyrinth"
• CM -- I'd start later -- around 1995 -- because that's when I started reading vast quantities of SF
• CP -- well I go back to 2003!
• Peter Weston backed out of this panel -- he says he hasn't read anything from the last 15 years -- that's quite recent
• It's difficult to write and read -- I can't remember the last SF I read that I wasn't professionally involved with in some way
• Richard Calder polarises the readership -- half think he's a pornographer and bad writer -- half think he's fantastic
• burnout is a problem -- Joanna Russ wrote of the "wearing out of genre materials" like robots -- there are three phases
  • discovery of the robot concept
  • rich period -- three laws, variety of uses, ...
  • decadence -- coal powered robots, paranoid ones, ... -- the genre is over, and you can no longer treat them seriously
• can argue the same for SF itself -- and the decadent age is upon us!" -- certainly in some areas , such as ones done to death by TV series -- they are over-familiar
• it is so very difficult to write a generation starship novel without a fresh approach
  • Richard Paul Russo -- Ship of Fools (= Unto Leviathan) -- a pure decadence novel
• our minds work readily in trilogies -- my model is
  • foundation / charismatic founder
  • established church
  • renaissance
• space opera has gone through precisely this sequence -- renaissance is Vernor Vinge, Alistair Reynolds, Dan Simmons, ...
• modern SF is rewriting 50 year old central forms -- some have been dead for years -- but there are interesting new works -- completely innovative and extremely traditional
• modern SF writers assume readers understand this is counterfactual -- not a vision of the future -- exorbitant things can be told without the audience breaking up and laughing, but being "carried away"
  • counterfactuals are "nonsense" rather than "mistakes"
  • stopping trying to be predictive, so can use counterfactuals to explore other aspects
    • such as politics -- Ken MacLeod, Charlie Stross
    • John C Wright, The Golden Age, ... -- a libertarian series -- where one is "free" to treat women as slaves...
    • Justina Robson -- am ore domestic politics, relationships between technology and workers
• some try to do the hard SF thing -- take cutting edge science and try to make a story -- but the real science is getting more bizarre!
  • Mark Budds, Clay (???) -- pervasive biotech
  • Chris Moriatry, Spin State -- mining Bose Einstein condensates for quantum teleportation
  • Alistair Reynolds includes fairly cutting edge physics -- Redemption Ark has interesting FTL travel
  • Wil McCarthy -- uses black holes as building technology, and quantum dots [wellstone]
• it's getting harder to sound sensible, because the science is so bizarre
• some of these novels are intensely interesting for those who understand the physics, but maybe less interesting in the way they are told
• SF had an inclination to "clean cut" stories -- ignoring side effects -- nanotect/biotech are more "dirty" worlds
  • modern space operas are more dirty, side effect worlds
  • material more complicated than any single element of the novel
  • 20th century SF -- the further into the future, the cleaner and easier
  • 21st century SF -- the further into the future, the older, "dirtier", harder to understand
• CP -- Bruce Sterling talks about "slipstream literature"
  • I'm very skeptical of this labelling, because labelling leads to orthodoxy (like "cyberpunk")
  • but over the years I've heard people refer to my stuff as "slipstream"
• slipstream is an approach to literature/arts activity bigger than SF -- rockbands, films, mainstream, ...
  • it's headed towards a niche, but is extremely interesting and energetic
• I see Life of Brian as a slipstream film -- Memento as a slipstream thriller
• it's taking a "right angled" view, a "left of field" view
  • in SF, there's Chris Priest, Brian Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, John Sladek
• Spanish film -- Intacto -- about communicable luck -- it's not SF, but SF readers can immediately understand this kind of thing
• It's not a label -- it's a way of working -- the future of SF -- there is life in the speculative metaphor
• "slipstream" and "interstitiality" depend on models to generate new stories -- but those models are no longer fully believed in -- they can exist only as long as the things they interstice (the "walls") are understood -- but as the genres mix, everything looks slipstream!
• David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas -- 2 of its 6 parts are pure SF -- all of the parts make no sense until put together, and then makes sense only because we a re still familiar with these genres -- probably couldn't be written in another 30 years time
• "New Weird" movement -- related to Trotskyist requirement for constant revolution, because of the way things keep solidifying
• is anyone doing a renaissance of First Contact/First Settlement stuff -- of Stableford stuff?
  • mainstream critics understood Karen Joy Fowler's first contact novel Sarah Canary not at all -- whereas SF critics understood it completely as a metaphor of Western imperialism
  • Robert Charles Wilson, Blind Lake -- is the best first contact novel
• we're past the point of taking single new ideas -- now we have to take, say, space opera and cyberpunk
  • we're past the clean cut classics -- we're into a new richness, but a "dirty" richness -- but it's hugely more interesting than I thought it was going to be five years age
• maybe a single idea can fit better into short fiction
  • Ted Chiang, "Story of Your Life" -- lots of really big ideas
  • Zoran Zivkovic, "The Book" -- a novella where books are intelligent
• there's great difficulty in talking about modern SF without mentioning fantasy and horror, but we've made a good job of it
  • Gene Wolfe, Book of the Short Sun -- an amazing accomplishment -- unparalleled -- the religious intensity of the creation of a Good Man
• L. E. Modesitt -- mostly 20 volume fantasy trilogies -- but also a lot of "one off" SF
  • The Ethos Effect -- political SF -- how far would you protest against a bad tyrannical government, and when would that protest become a war crime itself?
• Liz Williams, The Poison Master -- "alchemy-punk" -- aliens give John Dee plans for a space ship
• Ian MacLeod, The Light Ages -- we'll be speaking on that tomorrow
• Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
• there's a huge amount at the moment -- we're at a climax, not an end

Lucy Smithers -- How the Embryo knows its Arse from its Elbow

Developmental Biology 101

• how does a featureless ball of cells become an organism?
  • pretty simple systems can lead to quite complex structures
• patterning -- making regions and subregions with identities
• axes
  • A/P -- anterior/posterior -- head tail
  • D/V -- dorsal/ventral -- back/front
  • left/right -- needed to fit the organs in the body
• gene expression -- DNA --> mRNA --> protein, which has a function
  • if we can see the RNA being made, there is probably a protein doing a job, but this is harder to see
  • genes can be activated/inhibited
  • signalling -- what makes a gene expressed or not
• the mouse -- stages include: egg (single cell) -- ball of cells -- these develop a hole and a clump of cells (blastocyst -- cyst means "hole" or "cavity") -- clump hollows out into a tube, the rest into a sort of placenta -- embryo
  • placenta (as opposed to yolk) => gets external nutrition => can grow significantly
• Xenopus -- African clawed toad -- known as "the frog" -- has yolk in all the cells -- stages include: egg -- ball of cells with hollow -- turning inside out (like pulling off a sock) -- tadpole
• the fish -- sits on all of the yolk
• the chick -- sits flat on the yolk
• the 3D way all these grow affects what they look like -- there are a lot of similarities
• featureless ball --> front and back
  • D/V in the frog -- the single cell has some asymmetry to start with -- the sperm breaks through the egg "shell" -- the "shell" rotates -- one bit is different from the rest -- this broken symmetry leads to chemical gradients and different gene expression
  • can mess with these gradients to alter the proportion of tail/body/head
  • there are fairly close tolerances, but there are also lots of other regulatory systems that drag things back within the correct ranges
• the mouse develops A/P axis first
  • all vertebrate embryos go through gastrulation -- from a ball to something long and thin
• recurring theme -- what looks like sending a signal is actually sending an inhibitor to another signal
  • make-an-anterior "signal" is actually an inhibitor of make-a-posterior
• cells move around a lot -- meander -- navigate by signals from other cells -- move by sending out "tentacles"
• signalling systems are used and reused in development
  • evolutionary good idea? detect problems early before a lot of resources invested in growth?
• there is a "coordinate system" from head to tail -- HOX genes, ~14 in a set -- flies have one set, vertebrates have 4 sets -- maybe these extra sets allow more interesting structures
  • HOX genes always arranged in same order on the chromosome
  • different genes get expressed along the axis, so can make different structures: neck, upper back with ribs, lower back, tail
  • adjusting the boundaries can quite drastically change body shape (no tail in humans)
  • gives coordinates, so can make limbs -- one signal for "grow a limb", another for "what kind of limb", forelimb or hindlimb
    • four-armed people?
• segmentation -- dynamic travelling wave of expression switching genes on and off to form segment boundaries -- change the parameters and get a different number of segments
  • six-legged chickens?
• L/R axis -- genes expressed on one side and not the other
  • node with rotating cilia -- rotate in one direction because of their shape -- so fluid flows in one direction
  • mutations that stop cilia moving give random L/R arrangements
• how do cells clock at same rate to give travelling waves?
  • delta-notch signalling keeps cells in train with their neighbours -- same frequency plus a phase shift
• how do you justify your work ethically?
  • most experimentation on embryos is before they even have a nervous system
  • mostly, you just desperately want to know how it works
  • I wear leather, and eat meat, so it's not inconsistent
• what's the evolutionary order?
  • fish came first, then frogs -- mice and chicks branched off about the same time, but there's been lots of divergence since

Panel -- Retelling the Fairy Story

Farah Mendlesohn, Philip Pullman, John Clute, Peter Nicholls

• William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience -- the fairy tale is the domain where experience and innocence intersect -- the future is always the same -- recurrence -- so most resonant in fantasy/horror, less so in SF -- the Garden of Eden is the fairy tale
• JC -- the SF novel fails when it returns -- fantasy accomplishes return, the underlying fairy story is recognised, and the land grows up and is healed
• PP -- how is it critics see so much in what I've read, that I haven't seen?
• fundamental story shape is the search for the Holy Grail -- what is missing at the beginning?
  • if nothing has gone awry, it's very hard to have a story
• James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover (poem) -- of a ouija board -- the "unseasoned tone" of fairy tales -- it's a very hard tone to achieve
  • film director's two main questions -- where do I tell the actors? where do I put the camera? -- what perspective am I seeing this from? -- it's important for fairy tales, too
  • I think the fairy tale camera is in long shot
• in much recent literature, the narrative structure of Grail Search is to discover the story -- a very sophisticated voice trying to adjust its voice until a discovery can be made
• Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock -- another use of fairy story: of being a fairy story, doomed to be it, try to escape it, transcend it
  • Howl's Moving Castle -- retelling of the laws of faery -- it's the worst to be the oldest of three -- you will fail the worst
• the basic fairy tale is "happy ever after"?
  • the pastoral ending is usually uninteresting
  • Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Arabesk -- is it a fairy tale? -- has lots of the elements
• may have a manuscript structure -- it is the novel, it will become the novel -- Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, etc -- a very self-conscious form
• self-consciousness is very interesting -- a Garden of Eden consequence -- can become embarrassment at telling a story -- awkwardness, archness, affectedness -- I wish these authors could overcome it, and just tell it, rather than telling us they are telling it, etc
• strangulation -- E. M. Forster is a beautiful example of how obtuse this can be
• it's a necessary part of growing up -- you have to grow up and go on -- pretend not to be embarrassed -- then, after a while, you won't be
• fairy tales typically don't end happily -- especially for the wolf! -- the restoration is often not happy
  • The Lord of the Rings is the most famous -- a pastoral ending in a diminished world
• Forster's claim that "the king died and then the queen died" is a story, "the king died and then the queen died of grief" is a plot, is very witty, and totally wrong
• there are retellings of "after the fairy tale ended" -- with Snow White divorced, etc
  • this is what happens when we change from fairy tale to novel, with psychologically realistic characters
• the Garden of Eden is obviously a myth -- and so it's not interesting to say so -- to say it's a fairy tale is less obvious, and so more interesting
  • it's a fairy tale, because it's where innocence intersects with experience
  • Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden -- finds Eden about halfway through the book
  • you can find a way in to Eden at any point, but usually only once, to get the pathos of loss
• grace versus wisdom
  • grace is a gift you lose with your innocence
  • wisdom is gained only by engaging with all the problems of the world -- this allows reentry to Eden "by the back door" after having gone right round the world
• myth involves the fear of death, ritual, it's teaching story, the existence of the Other Realm -- these sound different from the qualities of a fairy story
• myths are stories of origin, rites for whole societies -- what is absent from fairy stories is this overall structure that defines a culture
• try reading European fairy stories if you are Jewish -- there's a profound alienating culture to them!
• modern fantasy uses fairy stories because it doesn't have the confidence to create myths
• retelling can be very effective because the original is so well known, you can do interesting things by changing the motivations of the main characters
  • you can't assume this -- I Was a Rat was read to some New York school children -- they enjoyed it, but they didn't know the Cinderella story!
• what's the difference between telling a story, and writing one?
  • PP -- I've done a lot of telling stories, to school children -- the Iliad, fairy tales, ... -- I learned a lot -- we've lost the occasions to do this -- it's done differently -- it's not something you should do lightly -- it's very different from writing it down
  • many can do one and not the other -- I can't write fiction, but I can tell stories
• John Crowley, Little, Big -- the (failed) longing to find a story that can be told aloud
• fairy stories have a Judeo-Christian background, they're moral teachings -- do you feel the retelling that don't do this make them less powerful?
  • the Judeo-Christian heritage is something invented by Christians!
  • 1001 Nights -- equally moral, and equally relevant
  • Japanese tales -- mostly through anime
  • fairy tales are not consciously subversive, but many are impossible to translate into an establishment form
  • The Juniper Tree -- perfectly formed, totally mysterious -- novelised many times, eg by Barbara Comyns
• the real Grimm's tales are much darker -- the vengeance aspects particularly -- that's been lost, sadly
  • you notice these aspects more when you're grown up -- Snow White's mother's red hot shoes don't have the same impact on children as on adults who imagine the reality more
  • and children like gore and ick
• is the original damaged when it is used in modern novels because they are so much longer?
  • all fairy tales are translated, changed, altered -- but maybe not lengthened
  • a novel that circles around can work -- a novel that tries to expand point by point doesn't work
  • Charles de Lint uses a bicycle pump to expand fairy tales
• Jane Eyre is Beauty and the Beast -- it's not Cinderella, because there's no fairy godmother
  • Charlotte Bronte was probably not conscious of this, but it's still the better for it
  • Little Lord Fauntleroy, Heidi, Anne of Green Gables -- are all Beauty and the Beast -- as is any story of a little child who charms a grumpy grandparent
• you should give children as much of the fairy tale s and folk tales as you can -- you should tell them "this is too grown up for you, don't read it yet"
• we live in 2004 and are fallen -- but there's nothing wrong in trying to recover
• reading fairy stories makes us scared again -- that is good

Panel -- Computers in SF

Charlie Stross, Bridget Wilkinson, Andrew Adams, John Dallman

• computers in fiction are written about by people who know nothing about them -- in Real Life, what we are using them for isn't things like speech recognition or real world interaction, so it's not surprising they're disappointing
• computers were written about before they existed -- subsequent writers follow them, not reality -- the mythology of fictional computers
• there are about 10 microprocessors per person in the EU
  • washing machines have serial interfaces -- people haven't realised this yet
  • which is why cyberpunk felt new
• monolithic AIs go back to Capek's Robots
• there's the idea you can have AIs with speech processing only -- no embodiment -- a purely verbal intelligence would find interaction with Real Life as easy as we find 11D string theory
• intellectual prostheses are more interesting than AI
  • a grad student plugged into the Web is more productive at tracking down information than a previous generation experienced professional
• arguably, we do have only one computer -- Google
  • ten years ago, the most complex computer in the world was the telephone system
  • the global computer of today is different -- it doesn't have just one "face"
• the environment becomes intelligent
  • Dijkstra " asking if a computer can think is like asking if a submarine can swim"
  • CS -- "AIs will resemble us the way a 747 resembles a seagull"
• Iain M. Banks Culture -- benevolent superminds
• Ken MacLeod -- oh look a transhuman intelligence, let's kill it before it turns us into pets or lab animals
  • if we end up with transhuman intelligences, they'll have a better theory of mind than we do, so a better theory of how we work than we do
• there are people putting things like SETI@home into viruses -- to steal a clustered supercomputer!
• how often do you see spam in SF? -- only very occasionally
  • I want to return this 21st century to the manufacturer -- it's obviously defective -- I want my jet pack!
• more and better autonomous robots is a route to embodied AI
  • automatic vacuum cleaners -- they can be quiet, because they are only low power -- don't need to get all the dirt up in one or two passes
• SF AIs are anthropomorphic so that you can talk to them!
  • hence all the talking cats...
• Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky -- how many of the audience here think that Focus is a rather interesting idea...?
• we assume that a ruling computer would be intelligent -- but the Treasury Economic Model has more political power than Tony Blair
• AI is what computers can't do yet
• mind uploading as a thought experiment
  • Moravec -- replacing brain cells one at a time
  • someone has recently dome the "Moravec operation" on a lobster -- and it worked
  • but neurons are much more complicated than our simple models -- and there are the hormones -- and neural growth and change
• fictional computers don't have bugs, unless needed for the plot
  • and they don't tend to be reprogrammable machines, but much more specific
  • they're not real, they're standing in for something else
• what's this fictional treatment of data -- as if it can't be copied?!

Christina Hansen -- Farscape

• the German title translations are the worst I've ever seen
  • and the dubbing is awful -- Crichton is a whiny teenager
• the miniseries should air at the end of the year -- it will follow on from the last episode
  • but they were blown to bits!
  • everyone in Farscape has already died at least once -- so bringing them back again shouldn't be a problem
• the surreality is always part and parcel of the plot
  • I think "Won't Get Fooled Again" is the best episode
  • "Scratch 'n' Sniff" is great -- it was a last minute editing decision to put it into that format, because it wasn't working as a sequential piece
• we tried to get an episode nominated for a Hugo
  • people want to vote for the series, not an episode -- episodes can split votes
• it's very adult -- lots of black leather, and a strange piece of bondage furniture in every season
• great use of slang and cultural references
• interesting gender representations -- interesting to look at how the men are represented
  • Crichton starts off as a New Man -- then becomes very macho -- but also gets shown in very vulnerable situations -- the macho is a reaction, and the vulnerable scenes show there's something behind that
  • D'Argo has pretty much the opposite journey
  • Rygel is an equal opportunity lecher
• I get surprised when they miss Rygel and Pilot off the credits
• the gender balance among fans is ~50/50
• every character is a different alien species -- even true of the guest parts!
• it's funny, but it's not comedy -- not like Red Dwarf, more like Buffy
• Jim Henson was a puppeteer -- Brian Henson is an SF fan
• all the characters' actions have consequences -- and they have to deal with them, forever -- things just slowly fall apart
• when Firefly approached the SF Channel they were told "no, it's too science fictional"

Masquerade

Not originally timetabled, but run by popular demand

• Most regal feline and owner -- Princess Heather and White Cat
• Bravest Knight -- Knight of the Gold Dragon
• Most Chilled -- Ice Princess of California
• Best Roar -- African Lion God
• Best Medieval Babe -- Queen of the Salvaged Velvet
• Most Etherial Dance -- The Sea Queen
• Best Hobbit Feet -- Michelle the Dragon Slayer -- from Middle Earth via Sunnydale
• Best in Show / Best Workmanship -- White Rabbit Esq
• The Arrakis Press Briefing
• Barbarossa of Seville
• Most Dysfunctional Family -- Mother Nature, Sheep and Wolf
• Medieval Foot Soldier
• Best Presentation -- The Steam Cavalier
• W.M.D.
• Nation Defence Award -- Baron van Otto

David Wake et al -- Tartan Restrung

held in the ... brilliant ... Pavilion Theatre

• how it all began -- Captain Tartan as a Toy being hunted by String Cutter Deckard, by way of the Matrix
• brilliantly self-referential: half-way through the Prompt [Bridget Bradshaw] becomes an integral part of the plot
• brilliant use of location, as we see scenes inside and outside the theatre
• just ... brilliant! (ribs still aching)

Panel -- Modern Fantasy

Ian MacLeod, Cheryl Morgan, John Clute

• what are we talking about when we are talking about "fantasy"?
  • I think subdivisions are good -- they're not sensible, but they are extremely expressive
  • error of clean-cut properly separated subgenres of the last 200 years
• "magic realism" is a posh term of the embarrassed mainstream editors to justify publishing weird stuff
• we're in chaotic times, moving into a new world -- there's a huge amount of ferment
  • we will lose the really powerful benefits of knowing what we are reading
  • the so-called "mainstream" is one of the most restrictive genres invented -- mimetic fiction
  • books not adhering to a particular genre will become more common
• it's a dreadful thing to be overhyped as a first time author -- the publishers treat them like scum when their own hype fails
  • Rowling's popularity of on the wane -- Bloomsbury need another hot author -- this time of adult fantasy -- their unfortunate victim is Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell -- book is due in October, yet the publicity is already in operation
    • Neil Gaiman says that it is "the best fantasy novel written in the UK for 50 years"
    • watch out for the hype!
• Ian MacLeod, The Light Ages -- essentially fantasy
  • categories -- as a reader/writer, I've always disliked them -- there's no clear distinction between SF and fantasy -- it shouldn't be the tail wagging the dog
  • when I first started reading SF -- Asimov, etc -- I decided I didn't like fantasy -- not that I'd read any! -- New Maps of Hell is very dismissive -- someone recommended The Lord of the Rings -- which, according to a 13 yr old friend was an SF novel -- then I got into Lin Carter's adult fantasy series
  • fantasy still has this initial hostility from SF readers -- and I still don't read much of it
• [A Marxist critic] is very interested in SF because of the dialectic nature -- but is completely dismissive of fantasy because it is made up nonsense!
• 90% of fantasy is a betrayal of 20th century fantasy -- it's just dynastic trilogy fantasy with no real subversive refusal of this world
  • The Light Ages is about wrongness in this world -- rage at corporate destructiveness -- underlying redemptive argument
• in bookshops, straight SF and the sharecropping media SF are separated out -- not the same with fantasy -- the sharecropped Tolkien is muddled up with the real fantasy we want to buy
• inequality is something I always thing about
  • princesses in palace intrigues are fine in there own way
  • mainstream has moved from princess/palace to terraced house/underground
  • fantasy should also be moving in this direction
• the world is turned over by what happens in the book -- The Lord of the Rings exemplifies this -- the characters are changed, but so is the entire world
  • even though some things change, life goes on, and much remains the same -- the everyday needs to be covered, too
  • question society, but also question whether revolutionary actions are good
• Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen -- fascinating takes on fantasy -- also has an anthology: Album Zutique
• K. J. Bishop, The Etched City -- writing fantasy influenced by French works of ~100 years ago -- very different from Tolkienesque
• Tolkien is misread by the sharecroppers
  • The Lord of the Rings is not a happy book -- everything defended is going to die -- magic is thinning -- profound sense of loss -- transformation
  • 90% of fantasy books create fantasies of the Shire
  • any sequelisable fantasy is likely to be a betrayal
    • a series is a soap opera revolving around a fixed landscape
    • modern fantasy maps are likely to be unstable/unreliable
• Mary Gentle, Ash, 1610 -- magnificent -- I think 1610 was the best book of last year
• China Mieville -- Iron Council is out in a couple of months
• Elizabeth Hand -- Mortal Love is out soon -- Bibliomancy is the four best novellas I've read in a long time
• it's frequently argued that SF's key experience is the novella or short story -- fantasy works well at the shorter length -- liberated from the need to explain, from maps, from rationality
• Gene Wolfe, The Wizard Knight -- goes back to David Lindsay, Voyage to Arcturus -- to generate the kind of fantasy novel that circles around, tries to penetrate darkness, to find truth -- does this in a very taxing fashion, building up to a bombshell
• Robert Holdstock, Mythago Wood -- mined and explored the Englishness of fantasy
  • fantasy can lie very close to our own world -- the wood at the bottom of the garden, the house across the road -- you do not need maps for this
  • you cannot map Mythago Wood -- it is bigger inside than out
  • Holdstock's recent work is some of his best work in years
• other stuff you might like
  • John Crowley, Ægypt series
  • George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire -- a good example of a giant fantasy novel
  • J. Gregory Keyes, The Briar King -- good, but a bit soap opera-ish
  • Steven Erickson
  • R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness that Comes Before -- projected long series
• there are no editors left -- it's a real problem
  • editors are told to leave books alone, by the publishers, because it's too expensive
  • Moby Dick seriously needed an editor
• SF tends to be thought of as an American genre -- fantasy is based on mythology -- and everyone in the world has their own mythology
  • Fedoke [sp???], Kij Johnson -- Japanese
  • Johanna Sinisalo, Not Before Sundown -- Finnish, about a troll -- won the prestigious Finlandia prize
• "New Weird" means exactly the same in fantasy as in SF -- the point is to blur the boundaries, mix up bits of SF, fantasy, Horror, ...
  • the Not the Clarke Awards panel complained that two of the books weren't SF -- Quicksilver and Pattern Recognition -- but Gwyneth Jones' is fantasy, and they recommended The Light Ages as something that should have been short-listed!
• there's a convention in genre fiction, because of sequels, that no-one who dies "off-stage" really dies
• Guy Gavriel Kay -- historical novels in a slightly parallel world
• Pullman was asked "do you think it is possible to write a children's book that adults can enjoy"!
  • this is one of the distortions currently occurring
  • His Dark Materials has caused me to go back and read other children's books
  • allows a certain release from certain kinds of complexity
• Ellen Kushner, Thomas the Rhymer
• I wonder at the effect of the Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings films on the genre
  • fantasy is being somewhat reabsorbed into the mainstream -- this is somewhat good, somewhat bad -- it's re-energising the mainstream
• there will be a certain sense of loss over the next few years -- the mainstream is getting away with writing SF/fantasy and not calling it that -- they're getting the fruits whilst still criticising the genre -- but that's life
  • given the stupidity and corruption of the publishing establishment, one can forgive authors almost anything -- except denial