home > SF > cons > Concussion: Eastercon 2006

The 57th British National Science Fiction Convention
14--17 April 2006, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Glasgow

GoHs: M. John Harrison • Brian Froud • Elizabeth Hand • Justina Robson • Ian Sorensen.

Back to Glasgow (and the same, but now renamed, Moat House Hotel, the main hotel of the Glasgow Worldcon), next to, but not in, the Armadillo. An excellent con, with many new varied, interesting, mainly on-topic, panels, good lectures, and great GoHs.

Programme highlights

• Panel • How do New Things Happen?
• Elizabeth Hand • GoH
• Panel • There Ain't No Such Thing as Free Speech
• Panel • To Infinity and Beyond?
• Panel • Desert Island Geeks
• Captain Tartan: The Director's Cut

• Panel • The New Calvinism
• Panel • How Much Hangs on the Chads?
• Panel • Aesthetics and Ethics in Children's Literature
• Panel • Not the Clarke Award
• M John Harrison • GoH
• Alice Jenkins • George Hay Memorial Lecture
• Panel • Twelve Monkeys and a Chicken
• Panel • All Quest Fantasies are basically Pilgrim's Progress rewritten
• Panel • Defining Sentience
• Panel • Saturday Night Quiz Show

• Panel • Up Close and Personal
• Panel • Philosophy and SF
• Panel • Harrison, Harrison, and Clute
• Justina Robson • GoH
• Brian Froud • GoH
• Panel • Won't Get Fooled Again
• Panel • Writing Other Cultures
• Panel • Staging the Fantastic
• Masquerade
• Ian Sorensen • GoH

• Mat Irvine• Space as it should have been
• Sarita Robinson • Victim or Survivor?
• Panel • Does anyone watch Broadcast TV any more?
• Panel • Does your towel know where you are?

Panel • How do New Things Happen?

Peter Weston, Eddie Cochrane, Dave O'Neill, Phil Bradley

What is the process by which gadgets get into the real world?

• EC: I trained as a materials scientist, and have been a software developer since 1982
• DO'N: I trained as a mechanical engineer, but moved into sales
• PB: I'm an Internet consultant
• PW: I'm a "metal basher" -- marketing industrial products

• Charles Parsons, turn of the century, invented the steam turbine for marine propulsion -- made ships go a lot faster -- couldn't get anyone interested -- fitted out a yacht [Turbinia], waited for 1897 Fleet Review at Spithead -- steamed up and down at 30 knots in front of all the paraded battle fleet, and German fleet -- noone could catch him! -- Brits still not interested, but Germans were. [The turbine driven destroyer HMS Viper was launched two years later]
  • he was actually trying to develop it for electrical generation -- such a tiny market, wasn't considered important -- but it was new, so actually easier to break into -- harder to move a new product into an established market
  • first time propeller "cavitation" problem seen -- needed to be redesigned
  • needed lots of innovations to get benefit of steam turbine
• there are kids today who've never seen a CD -- used up an entire technology in 20 years
  • photography is going the same way
  • in certain industries it's very different -- aircraft haven't changed much since 1950s, in terms of speed/ceiling -- the industry is outrageously resistant to change
  • there will be 2bn mobile phones soon -- 1.2bn GSN phone users now
• there are factors needed for new tech to work: cheap to make, make a lot of money, make life easier, governments can use it to kill people, have porn applications -- if it has at least two or three of these, it will work
• Whittle, gas turbine -- again, the Germans were flying it first
  • need someone who really believes in the tech
• LCDs developed because CRTs were too expensive
• people used to expect no change during their lifetimes -- are now looking for change
• technology used to be for a purpose -- now change is the paradigm -- disruptive
  • Voice Over IP (VOIP) -- people are stopping using conventional phones -- changes the way we think about phones -- pay by minute will go
  • next big change -- the way people watch TV -- no longer scheduled TV
  • Arthur C Clarke's Profiles of the Future -- comms satellites -- predicted that every Indian village will have one 10' satellite dish, and will get programmes on crop management -- now, it's only 1', hundreds of channels, none on crop management!
  • in Europe, there's pretty much 100% penetration of mobiles -- Africa/Asia can't lay cables -- and if you do, they will be stolen -- so mobiles are ideal
  • we are only 20 years from when the monthly phone bill was a significant household expense
  • can try to block VOIP with Digit Rights Management -- it's a losing battle -- will have to change business models
• I'm surprised PDAs haven't taken off in the same way
  • I've had PDAs, but then I got a mobile phone -- carrying 2 bricks that don't talk to each other is a pain -- now they've merged/converged -- but not as good as just phones, because of battery life, etc
• Web 2.0 applications -- easy to set up, eg photo sharing, shared calendar -- hope to make money by advertising, or being bought by Google/Yahoo -- most will go out of business in ~18 months
• manufacturers like to stay with their current products -- eg, steel car bumpers
  • even happens in IT -- punched cards to start batch jobs -- we had a 1930s Hollerith and a 1960s ICT hand card punch -- they were part compatible
• most new products bomb -- Interactive CD, Laser Video discs
  • Motorola were saved by RAZR -- one product that worked out of 100s that didn't
  • Gestetner -- they weren't just making copying machines for fandom! -- every office had a Gestetner
    • in 1961, they were approached by an unknown company, Xerox, with a new technology -- rebuffed, by everyone -- made an agreement with Rank, not in the copying business, hence Rank-Xerox
• lots of examples where the best tech crashes and burns -- Betamax -- currently, the Blu-ray DVD format is another Betamax, losing out to HD-DVD
• people used to expect things to last for years and years -- now, expect to last a few years, then buy a new one -- quite happy with built-in obsolescence -- encourages new gadgets
• I had a Saturday job in Rumbelows, in 1984 we sold three video recorders (units, not models!) -- you paid £550 for a long play, 14 day timer model -- I bought a new VCR for £32 a few years ago -- DVD player for £19
  • in the 1980s, CD-ROM drives, single speed, cost more than £500
  • in late 1980s, CD-ROMs were being used to distribute everything, monthly updates, with annual subscriptions of ~£25000
  • San Jose Computer Museum has a Cray supercomputer -- state of the art not that long ago!
• British Nimrod -- airframe is a DeHavilland Comet, 1952 -- different engines, avionics, control systems, same airframe
  • some of the 747s flying are over 20 years old
  • new Airbus are the only new designs in 20 years -- but still same speed/ceiling!
• guns haven't changed significantly
  • 1911 Colt 45 automatic pistol -- looks virtually identical to modern version
  • AK47s do need pressed steel, but fairly wide tolerances
    • look at the Hitler, sorry, History, Channel -- by every sensible metric, the AK47 wins over "better" guns -- you can bury it in mud, use variable ammo, ...
• influence of outsourcing to the Far East
  • now they are all tooled up, they will start doing design
  • not too worried -- need a global difference in cost, and the price differential is eroding fast -- top Indian companies have some salaries within 20% of UK
  • also, need a locked down spec, else you don't get what you want
  • trick is to be in the fashion industries
  • Koreans are scary -- the most aggressive, clever, hard working people ever - don't believe in holidays, or sleep -- if we send a support engineer, have to send 2 per day
    • but again, differentials eroding
    • China is the only place it's not eroding -- can afford bigger teams -- not always an advantage!
  • an Indian sw company is subcontracting to Dublin, because it's cheaper

• Is this highly disposable culture going to be a problem?
  • people won't care
  • pay to buy, pay to dispose -- will end up dumping in China
    • communities in China that strip and recycle Western junk computers

Panel • There Ain't No Such Thing as Free Speech. And a good thing too!

John Jarrold, Lisa Tuttle, Peter Harrow, Farah Mendlesohn

Just where should SF writers avoid going, and what are the consequences when they go there anyway?

• Stanley Fish. There's No Such Thing as Free Speech: And It's a Good Thing, Too. OUP, 1994
• speech costs money, and has consequences
• as a publisher: can I get this through the company? will the book trade take it? does it work as a story?
• you can come up with weird, startling, offensive ideas that will make people sit up or throw up -- but is that a good reason to do it? -- even if it has a lot of impact, and "works"?
• as a lawyer, I can say there is no such thing as free speech -- I bill at £165/hour -- and High Court libel trials are much more expensive -- there is a social contract about what is said -- you are permitted to say what you want to say, but you may need to bear the consequences -- privacy laws are a new utopia, for lawyers!
• most non-fiction books are read for libel, especially biographies -- fiction less so -- can't libel the dead, so historical fiction is safe, and futuristic is usually safe -- never in 15 years have I sent a novel to a lawyer
• in general, SF is what you wrote when speech was very expensive, when you could end up in a Gulag
• some do it just because you can write about really horrific things
  • Clive Barker interview -- he said he embraces the dark side, finds the most terrifying and unpleasant aspects of human nature, and plays with it
  • in some places it's shut down, in others it's just popular culture -- eg rap song lyrics, who cares?
  • there are Japanese chat rooms about suicide
  • these ideas become part of the culture -- intellectual authors are having fun, but readers might not read it in the same light -- but you can't know what people will do -- can't not write just because it might be read by mad people -- but you do have to ask "why am I doing this?"
• new Glorification of Terrorism laws
  • what about the new BBC adaptation of the Robin Hood mythos? -- V for Vendetta?
  • artistic freedom versus a strict interpretation of the law -- Human Rights Act -- the judiciary tends to be protective of human rights
• self censorship -- the Hayes code to avoid legislation in the US film industry -- went from lesbian sex in the 1920s to twin beds for married couples
• the point of laws is not to lock people up, but to stop them doing the things that would get them jailed
• the biggest threat is "hurt feelings" -- political correctness
  • Connie Willis wrote a brilliant short story about teaching Shakespeare after it had been self-censored -- there were about four lines left ["Ado", collected in Impossible Things]
• to publish a book is expensive -- a best seller may cost easily £1M in advances, printing, advertising -- we don't do this if we expect a court case, unless it will sell a lot more copies! -- usually want the easiest route -- but can't legislate for individual's response -- I love shooting things in games, but I've never actually shot a human being -- just because one person does, do you ban it for all? -- there's no black and white answer
• in the US lately, giving money to political parties is being equated with free speech -- the richer you are, the more free speech you have! -- protecting the ability of rich people to buy government
• the Internet offers opportunities to oppose the newspaper monopolies -- but there are people buying up bloggers!
• you are only a target for libel in the UK if you are rich -- if you have no money, no-one will sue you , so you can say what you want! -- only need to worry about extra-legal direct action, eg Salman Rushdie -- eg in US, against people speaking on Pro Choice
• that's what we used to associate with small communities -- free speech limited by reaction of neighbours -- but now applying to much larger groups -- may be retreating from individualism
  • problem is lack of middle ground
  • I love living in a multicultural society -- I feel so much safer, being a minority -- I feel much safer in London than I did in York
• not seeing a huge amount of of fiction about freedom of expression -- depends on author -- mostly the story comes first, second, third -- sometimes takes a while, maybe in 5 years time we'll see more
  • Eastern European SF -- a way of evading the censor
  • so, is repression a creative space?
  • if you can't speak out, funnel it into something else -- but at a remove -- harder for us to see what they're doing
• what are currently expensive things to write about?
  • religion -- is and has been
  • religion, religion, religion -- even more than politics
  • religion -- I've had to serve an enforcement notice to close down a mosque, I've annoyed a Buddhist temple, and a Methodist chapel -- it felt worse for my personal safety than the travellers' camp -- and I'm just doing my job
  • not allowed to write sex for fun -- only for love or promiscuity
    • Mike Carey's first novel has two people just having sex -- noting horrible happens to them because of it, they don't fall in love, ...

• do you ensure freedom by pushing boundaries?
  • no-one should force authors
  • I hope there will always be authors who want to do this
  • a penniless author living outside the jurisdiction has relatively little to fear -- can publish on the Internet -- but if you are rich and live in the UK, may think twice -- dissidents often leave the original country to write about it -- it's one of the worries about the Glorification of Terrorism law: one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter
  • Rob Latham: importance of pushing taboos of New Wave

• what do you think about the way TV pulls programmes when planes crash, etc?
  • I was watching UK Gold Dr Who, and it was the wrong episode! It should have been the last of the Key to Time, where they kill the princess -- but Princess Di has just been killed
  • we play a game -- what's the most ridiculous thing they'll pull?

• Spycatcher on the Internet -- censorship here didn't work -- but in the US, a Californian website might offend under Kansas law and be prosecuted there -- beginning to happen internationally
  • US has a long history of extraterritoriality, including tax laws -- even the UK is looking to this -- eg, that person shot in Gaza, there are calls to prosecute under UK law -- current libel case in France between Telegraph and Times -- jurisdiction shopping -- virtually everything published will offend someone somewhere, they'll have to look for it, but they'll find it, and be offended
    • eg, Danish cartoons

• with mass communications, there are more people to offend
  • also opportunities to break laws you didn't even know existed -- it's a global society, but we haven't worked out how to live in it
  • most people affected don't see the need for global rules, just their rules
  • can now be extradited to the US without right to examine evidence, and for crimes that don't exist here
    • what about burning the US flag in London?

• price of free speech
  • Body Shop sold to Loreal, co-owned by Nestle -- sales plummeted
  • Ratners ceased to exist as a high street name
  • boycott of Danish products -- a wholly legal way of reacting
  • in fiction -- what works for an individual author -- cost is selling/not selling, being stabbed/not, being taken seriously/not -- we still don't know how to deal with the global village -- "let's just love one another" [sarcastically, to laughter]
  • I measure my words more carefully these days -- people get very quickly "hurt" on the Internet -- and it's out there for a very long time -- people you would never imagine come across it
  • have to be aware of everything you say -- everyone will have to become their own lawyer!

Panel • To Infinity and Beyond

Gus McAllister, Jack Deighton, Stephen Baxter, Huw Walters

How does a writer get across a sense of scale? Do you always want to?

• the sense of scale goes both ways -- huge, or nanotech
• Clute, in his streams of verbiage, comes out with little gems: the key technique is scale changes"
  • eg, James Blish, "Suface Trension" (novella from The Seedling Stars -- modified humans, here microscopic, living in puddles -- final zoom out to a 2" spacecraft
• I'm a big Greg Egan fan -- Schild's Ladder is about a change in spacetime -- steadily expanding sphere of different physics -- much bigger on the inside -- several months, have ravelled a few centimetres
• my work gives for of a "sense of claustrophobia" -- a colleague went to Africa and came back saying they had never realised how big elephants were, and had slides to prove it, but with no scale! -- need something to compare or measure against -- eg, the human characters
• similar joke in a Buffy episode -- a picture of a horned demon, but it turns out to be one foot tall -- the picture says "actual size"!
• in one of my Mammoth books, there's a catastrophic flood being watched by a mammoth -- no matter what I tried, I couldn't get across the immensity of the event -- then I put in a deer being overwhelmed, to give a sense of scale
• Larry Niven is a master of Big Dumb Objects -- Ringworld with its carved out seas -- very plain language, short direct concrete sentences -- flowery language doesn't do it
  • he also used the arch in the sky, and people trying to find the base of it
• Bob Shaw, Orbitsville -- a plane journey, with a sense of the scale defeating the engineering -- everything wears out before they can reach the next hole in the wall
• mistake can be trying to be too descriptive -- use suggestions to get the right image in the reader's mind
• scales in time -- in Evolution, had the rise of primates over 65M years, then into the future for a few more million years -- zoom out, zoom in again for an episode, zoom out again -- copying what Olaf Stapledon did in Last and First Men -- the Earth itself becomes a character, ageing
• Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt -- reincarnated characters help to give continuity over time -- but it ended up being a novel about reincarnation
• these scale changes are probably unique to SF
• time is dealt with very nicely by Vinge in Marooned in Real Time -- time lapse view of Earth as the continents change -- people live at different rates, coming out of stasis for different amounts of time, comparing their experiences
• the whole of Last and First Men is a line in Star Maker!

• what about psychological scale?
  • travel from London to Rome -- on foot took months, then weeks, now hours -- the Weber Harrington series is on a Napoleonic Europe timescale
  • it's also affected by social class -- in Pride and Prejudice, Darcy says something is only 50 miles -- he's got access to better tech then Elizabeth Bennet
  • the way time moves faster as you get older -- can that be exploited in SF?

• how confident are you that the scale you are putting down is being picked up?
  • not at all! just have to look at different reviews -- clearly they've all read a different book
  • strong and simple language -- in Time -- now, there's not that much past -- in the future, our present age won't be even a memory -- tried to use "afterglow of the Big Bang" to give that feeling
  • try to convey how it would be to be very old by confronting with a much younger character
  • if I'm immortal and you beat me, who cares? you'll die, become a footnote, then disappear forever, while I carry on
  • someone after so much experience wouldn't be recognisable human? like trying to write about technology after the Spike
  • the slow shrinking scene in Fantastic Voyage movie gives a wonderful sense of scale
  • zoom at the end of Men in Black -- Earth, solar system, galaxy, ..., game of marbles
    • the Powers of Ten film was modernised around the same time

• can't think of anything like that for time
  • Eric Frank Russell's "The Waitabits" are reported to be "unconquerable" because they move so slowly
  • the original Time Machine movie?
  • the Dr Who sequence in The Dalek Masterplan, the weapon that ages things, including Sara Kingdom
  • the Tom Baker episode, City of Death, with Leonardo da Vinci
• the great scales of geological time defeat even evolutionary biologists' imaginations -- so far beyond human scale
• on the moon -- nothing happens -- anything that would happen has happened already!

• comparing STL and FTL travel
  • Vinge -- A Fire upon the Deep -- FTL, big scale, whole galaxy -- A Deepness in the Sky, STL, so more impressive journeys because of very very long travel times
  • A Fire upon the Deep has a sense of scale, because there are hug scale events happening, yet there are web messages from people to whom they are just irrelevant
  • scale of galaxy from number of cultures and difference between them
• Columbus' journey is more impressive than any transatlantic flight
  • I took a 3 hour flight to southern Spain -- yet I was still inside the Roman Empire!
• change of scale between shipping and aircraft
• sense of scale -- the sun is a star -- the others are so far they are just points of light -- that intuition has penetrated

Panel • Desert Island Geeks

Clare Goodall, Mike Scott, Charlie Stross, Nojay, Zara Baxter

Which gadget would you want to be marooned with on a desert island?

• you may assume an infinite supply of AA batteries
  • like Voyager's shuttle mine, or Space: 1999's Eagle factor
  • [this proved a distraction, as everyone kept using this infinite supply of batteries to build large structures, like boats, and causeways to the mainland!]

• I got back to my flat -- it was cold, because the computers were off
• I want a Saturn V!
• I thought I'd need firelighters -- a small 3MW nuclear reactor would do -- but it's not needed with all those batteries
  • you could use your reading glasses
  • problem in Lord of the Flies -- Piggy's glasses were for short sight
• GPS for my kite surf board -- satellites already exist
  • who said the desert island was on this planet?
  • any civilisation will converge to GPS satellites
  • any civilisation worth while will have Google
• a shortwave radio transmitter with built in GPS
  • most of the best gadgets need infrastructure, which we're not allowed?
• people have been there, so there will be rats, so will need cats -- especially the Turkish Van, which swims and likes to catch fish -- as long as it cooperates -- so we need a cat toy -- a laser pointer!
• no light pollution -- clear skies! -- I want to learn the sky -- good pair of binoculars
  • can get a GPS gadget that you point at something in the sky and it tells you what it is
• I'd build a wonderful piece of art out of all those AA batteries -- the world would beat a path
  • can you build a ship out of AA batteries? would it float? can have things that inherently sink, as long as they move fast enough
• Is there something you wouldn't take? editors?
  • I think I'd take all my editors to a desert island...
  • [alarm clocks]
• I'd need a pollution generator to survive!
• I'm working down the hierarchy of needs, and thinking of things that do need AA batteries...
• I wouldn't miss digital TV -- it's not got enough bandwidth
• on the desert island, there will be a film crew filming you for bad reality TV programmes!
• people become slaves to technology that don't actually do them any good -- but will need medical backup, even for minor illnesses
• what is your luxury item?
  • my 60GB iPod plus 500 albums
  • a Swiss Army Bush Robot
• being away from Google can physically hurt
• I was at a con when Princess Di died -- didn't discover that for 2 days -- being at a con is like being isolated on a desert island -- with a load of other geeks
• I realised things were getting out of control when I asked some friends how many computers they had, and they lost count at 27
  • I came second under the 3ft rule -- how many computers within 3ft of you -- mine was 6
  • we have friends who compete over who has the best home network diagram on the Web

Panel • The New Calvinism: how hardwired is the soul?

Hannu Rajaniemi, Richard Morgan, Huw Walters, Mike Gallagher

Does posthumanism mean uploaded salvation for the lucky few?

• HR: I've just completed a PhD on string theory
• HW: I'm a computer programmer
• RM: I've made some stuff up about uploading
• the idea that cultural and technological evolution takes over -- exponential pace to a singularity -- including self-enhancement tech -- "post biology" might be a better term
• Greg Egan's Diaspora, Permutation City -- it doesn't matter if you're running consciousness on a lump of meat or a processor -- it's a computational process
• there's a moral dimension -- stamp a moral template on what is
• uploading is laden with philosophical assumptions -- what is being uploaded? who gets to go?
• is there a limit on the number of people who could take advantage? Moore's law? if the soul is 21g, how many terabytes is it?
• can project Moore's law back before he invention of ICs -- Difference Engine, etc -- still fits -- can project forward past current limitations -- all predictions about the Singularity (Vinge, Kurzweil, ...) say it will happen in their lifetimes -- Calvinist salvation?
  • Campbell -- "the first immortals have been born"
• there is also no reason why we can't feed everyone in the world -- limitations are not technological, but human issues -- also climate of fear

• Moore's law applies only to hardware -- software is much slower
  • yes -- AI, and fusion, are 30 years in the future ... still!
  • uploading requires software to emulate neurons -- more an issue of computing power
• what about Gödel's Incompleteness?
  • not a fundamental limit of AI, rather of logical axiomatic systems -- add new axioms -- this is a good thing -- uploaded person will never run out of things to do! -- mathematics is infinite
• need massive parallelism -- not intuitive to program
• if we have genuine AI, how do we write test software for it?
• uploading is basically a copying process, but I would still die?
  • but the version of you that gets uploaded doesn't experience that death -- the meat person dies, the sw version keeps going -- not a "single" "you" -- the idea that "you are copied and continue" isn't quite right
  • Greg Egan's Permutation City -- many many copies -- meat version commits suicide, because what's the point of continuing?
  • we're post human once we think about evading death -- we're shaped by the cycle of life and death -- question of "who is the real me?" will no longer be an issue -- the uploaded person will be radically different
• if you upload daily, do the previous versions get wiped?
  • backups -- never initialised, just stored -- problems if one accidentally gets initialised -- legal issues
• I work in the CompSec industry -- look at Vinge security issues, and apply to Egan -- looks less utopian!
  • issues of new tech come from where it goes wrong, gets misused
  • the fun comes from exploring the non-utopian aspects -- utopias tend to be boring -- someone has argued that, once we are uploaded, there will be native beings in the infosphere -- eg, spambots -- competing with us -- we will be at a disadvantage -- not native -- in order to survive, we need to start preparing our minds already -- especially getting pleasure from non-meat things
  • an uploaded consciousness in more Zen-like -- worrying about the equivalent of private property and money is kind of missing the point
• Stross, Accelerando, Scratch Monkey -- you'll be selling processing space and bandwidth
• there's an assumption that all your personality is in the brain, and that's all that gets uploaded -- but there's a lot more biology
  • copying and merging multiple experiences -- very difficult to do biologically
  • there's a big difference between the way we play with these ideas in fiction, and they way it would work in reality
  • I look at massive piercings -- "doesn't that really hurt?" -- the transgressives are the ones up for the post human experience -- the rest will want copies/emulations of current reality
• may be a generational thing -- initially will have memories of the past, but after many generations/copies, memory is gone
  • in Diaspora, there are many different kinds of uploadings -- virtual, robot bodies, ...
  • embodied minds -- relationship of mind to body and environment -- externalise lots of seemingly internal processes
• early adopters -- MS Virtual Body 1.0 will be so buggy -- only extremists, or people on the verge of death -- so initial culture will be deviant/distopian -- how do you move on from there?
  • it will become the norm! -- deviants/transgressives make the running, the rest of us follow, if it is adaptive
  • in Wired, there are virtual communities, condos in virtual space -- people are selling them -- they don't actually exist -- can only "play" with them -- selling for $10,000s -- weird
  • multiplayer games -- people buy virtual artefacts with real money -- the economy is bigger than some small countries
    • someone lent their friend a virtual sword over the weekend -- he sold it on -- the owner was upset, and killed him, in real life -- that's transgressive!
• will the real and uploaded worlds become cliquey, or interact?
  • I think there will be a lot of feedback -- especially linking physical objects to large associated information spaces -- virtual "Spine"
  • augmented reality -- the physical world will become more like the virtual world, and vice versa
  • the world is already fragmenting into SIGs, especially online -- will have many virtual groups
  • but humans are really good at conflict -- not just over resources, also religions -- ideological divides
  • eg, Enemy at the Gate -- even in a perfect world, people will still find things to worry about
  • virtual people will want control over the hardware and off switch
  • yes, but "where" will you turn me off?
  • uploading into a chemical computer might provide "alternative glands" -- uploaded into synthetic chemical meat
• early tech is expensive -- how to ensure there is no class divide?
  • might not be an issue once uploading is possible, because will also imply mature nanotech -- but in the short term, enhancements, smart drugs, etc -- how to deal with post human tech before post human economies -- rich people will be smarter/healthier
    • already true! but becoming more extreme
  • not just the rich -- I can't understand the mentality of the guarddogs of the rich -- we're very good at making sure the hierarchies remain in place
  • universal usage will happen only if it is necessary for the system to work -- eg, to ensure you can't escape by suicide
• different "polises" with different ideas about the ownership of ideas -- may go to war, over "stealing of souls"
  • conflict over ideas, going into conflict over what is personality
• achieving personal immortality without needing others -- that's Calvinism! -- you can do it for yourself -- so that's what the new Calvinism must be

Panel • How Much Hangs on the Chads?

Chaz Brenchley, Kate Solomon, Paul Kincaid, Jon Courtenay Grimwood

What Alternate History will we be writing about the timeline where Gore got elected?

• disputed votes due to "hanging chads" -- George W Bush won -- given what's happened since, how could it have been different? this panel takes the Gore/Bush election as a turning point
• a CIA report on Al Quaeda was not acted on -- if it had been... -- but Gore is not very exciting -- how to hang a plot on that -- better to write one where the machines were deliberately fixed
• the machines weren't updated in the poor black areas, and the problem had happened before
  • manufactured by a Republican company
• Gore Vidal is Al Gore's cousin, and is beautifully scathing of him -- "America has been a one party state for years. But with typical American extravagance, we have two of them."
  • Clinton sent cruise missiles into Afghanistan, blew up a factory in Sudan -- not that much difference between administrations
  • but Gore is not so owned by the oil companies
• SF writers have the characters they need in the administration
  • Gore wanted Milosovec removed -- he's pro-interventionist -- but not so stupid -- probably no war with Iraq
  • from a writer's point of view, sense of lingering grievance in the religious right if the election had gone the other way -- American conservatives think of themselves as victims -- more Waco/Oklahoma style incidents? -- a writer would go for a low level civil war!
• every chance that it might happen -- Bush has divided the nation in a way no previous president has achieved -- with obvious exception of Lincoln! -- nowadays they have whole teams of advisors -- a Gore victory would not have allowed he rise of the neocons
  • before America wasn't red v blue to the same extreme -- there's more polarisation of opinion -- really united a lot of "liberal" opinion
  • so why aren't people writing all these alternatives?
• the time gap isn't big enough yet
• Bush is still there -- it's not a complete tale yet -- an need to project forward
• The West Wing is one significant alternate history -- closest America has come to utopia for a long time -- has allowed Democrats to say "we would have done it differently"
• I follow American politics the same way as car crashes -- are people not following this up from fear? eg, the way people on the left in America are frightened of being hounded by the press, etc?
• in US universities, organisations are compiling lists of unacceptably left wing academics -- but fear won't affect authors in the same way...
• ...we are all paranoid anyway?
• the default position in American SF is to the right of the default UK position -- but I don't know any Americans who voted Republican!
  • I know fewer and fewer every year!
• American conservatism is becoming religious -- squeezing out the economic libertarians
• SF is becoming a popular genre for the religious conservatives -- show Al Gore victories being a disaster
  • Al Gore/feminist/pagan takeover
• Christian Right is splitting -- "ecologically correct" group in the Mid West
• growth of issues we thought were dead and buried -- anti-abortion, creationism in schools
  • a non-rationalist society has no place for SF
• Heinlein saw America going religious in 1940s
  • Nehemiah Scudder, Revolt in 2100 -- current situation projected forward?
  • post-Rapture fantasy is vast
  • looking at a secular/fundamentalist split
• both Bush and here in the UK -- a government can act in a way against the whole society -- ignore any popular movement against them
• I've been trying to avoid including British politics, because it's too frightening for those who have to live here
  • no longer left/right, now autocrat/libertarian split
• theocratic drift in many parts of the world -- Europe, ageing/not powerful still has a secular ethos -- fast forward 50 years, and I feel threatened!
  • China is still secular
• I feel nervous talking about US politics -- Europeans usually get it wrong
• someone once said, America likes a Democrat president, a Republican Senate, and a Democrat Congress -- no longer the case
• lots of very vocal commentary -- especially religious v secular -- very scary Christians who succeeded in hiding their scariness from regular Christians -- core succeeded in framing it as a moral debate -- now voters are starting to realise they've been lied to -- just because someone says they are church-going doesn't mean they are good
• a USian asked me, "what's it like to live under a state religion?" -- I said, "you tell me!"
  • in the UK there are state-funded religious schools -- scary
  • if Inherit the Wind was written now , the other side would be the heroes
    • I'm not so sure -- generally, the school boards who tried to get creationism in are looking for new jobs -- abortion is a lot scarier
• alternate histories should put other countries at the centre of the map as America wastes its military
  • America stopped funding Hamas -- Russia stepped in -- so political influence is moving
  • anti-science stance will affect them
  • Revolt in 2100 was isolationist -- not what we are seeing -- "let us make them in our image"
• good US newspapers have better political analyses than European equivalents
• it's an empire on a slide, which is always dangerous
  • End of Empire is great for fiction
  • Roman/British Empires -- invented mission of empire -- US does imperialist things, but without a mission, or the will to see it through
    • Bush government is interfering, but doesn't believe in nation building -- Gore does
    • difference between aftermath of WWI and WWII -- Gore would have attached an element of mission
  • British catastrophe stories, end of empire, things running down -- started in the US in the early 80s -- now a persistent theme -- optimism replaced by colder, less convinced worldview
  • it wasn't difficult only for Britain to deal with loss of empire -- hard for everyone else too -- same will happen with America and the rest of the world
• the majority of merger/acquisition activity is coming out of Europe at the moment -- money is flowing back to Europe
  • corporate multinationals really are multinational
  • up until six weeks ago, a big player was Iceland -- then it collapsed
• Stephen Baxter was very close with Titan!
  • let's hope he's not a very good crystal ball gazer -- every one of his novels wipes out the human race!

Panel • Aesthetics and Ethics in Children's Literature

Farah Mendlesohn, Amanda Hemingway, Liz Wein, Frances Hardinge, John Jarrold

"A little bit of metaphor, a Sunday school lesson or two, and lots of misery". Does children's fantasy have to be like this?

• Samuel Delany, in a new book about Wittgenstein -- he says you can't have something aesthetically appropriate without thinking about ethics
• I get irritated by moral sloppiness -- cheats, shortcuts, lies told to children -- especially in Harry Potter -- at the end of the first book, he got 50 points that made his team win -- even Enid Blyton wouldn't do that -- everything Harry does is good, but if others do it, it's bad -- I want some rigour!
• Anthony Horowitz books -- I'm an Alex Rider fan -- but one thing made me cross -- the young hero is unwilling to kill, but there are no consequences of the fact that he knocks a helicopter out of the sky, and presumably kills everyone -- no accountability, but it's not okay in different contexts, eg shooting people
• it's like deaths you can't see don't count -- Terry Pratchett has a lot to say about this in Only You Can Save Mankind
• FH -- my book has been accused of having an agenda -- there is a strong anti-censorship message in Fly by Night -- a v alternative 18th century -- superstitious dread of books and readers -- my hero is an author -- story and message come from the same roots
• I read Goldfinger at 9-and-a-half -- came across the word "lesbian" and didn't know what it meant
• if you tell children that right always triumphs, or that it is easy to do right, you are wrong -- need to talk to the age of the readers -- 11-16 year olds know there are shades of grey
• should never write down -- don't write for an age-group -- can be read by "older children" -- video game morality creeping in
• Only You Can Save Mankind explicitly sets out to address this, by treating video as reality
• there's a Private Eye cartoon -- couple at a literary party -- "I'm a children's writer. I write about life and death and conflicts." "I'm an adult writer. I write about going bald and fancying younger women."
• most of the moral issues are turned inwards, about jealousy over a boyfriend, or fashion -- it dumbs down the moral issues

• Truth is Beauty -- classical view of the relationship between them?
  • can you write a beautiful lie? -- you have to believe it to write it -- a Gene Wolfe book: it's a beautiful lie, but it works, because it's written from belief
  • Lolita -- unreliable narrator -- a third person narrator is so much more reliable

• In Harry Potter, Voldemort reveals why he's been lying -- deals with why adults lie -- to protect children from devastating truths
  • Rhiannon Lassiter, Waking Dream -- accept there are secrets at 8 -- still believe adults are great -- at 16, realise can't believe anything
  • Diana Wynne Jones, Hexwood -- characters brought back to life -- one forced to be a child, because he bred and trained children to fight his battles -- like Dumbledore is training children -- very abusive
  • the whole thing about destiny, seductive, giving up responsibility -- following what the older generation say to do
  • training moral imagination
• children's fantasy contains more lies -- feudalism aspects with no attention to socioeconomic underpinnings
  • a difference between truth and fact?
  • no-one ever dreams of being reincarnated as a skivvy
  • some epic VR games have currency that control the economy of the society -- blows open some of these issues
• classic example of no visible means of support: Narnia -- the beavers have a sewing machine!
  • Lewis was still writing in pre-Tolkien fantasy mode -- anything can happen -- modern fantasy is distinguished by the call for rigour
• I want stories -- then I want ethics/aesthetics on top
• I don't necessarily disagree -- the ethical element is there in a good story -- but Fly by Night starts with a story we all know -- but is immediately derailed, which derails our aesthetical expectations -- we're in a different tale -- the making of the classes
  • E.P. Thompson. The Making of the English Working Class
• it's an ethical story that a hugely aesthetic experience
• Germaine Greer said, that the biggest lie in literature is: if I love them enough, they'll love me back -- once you get rid of that, things are much better
• most 1950s children's literature has very little emotional stuff -- how people tick -- 1980-2000 there was a turning inwards -- "metaphor books" -- instead of being about how a kid goes out into the universe and learns how to deal with the universe, you get, learn a lesson, then bring it back to deal with the school bully -- this doesn't sell
  • I have problems with Harry Potter as an avatar -- I have no problems with Miles Vorkosigan as an avatar
  • even children who read everything know what's good and what isn't, and know that you can read for lots of different reasons
  • everyone reads a broad selection -- but some authors, like P.D. James, will show what's on the bookshelf, like all classics, to give an idea what a character is like
• as an editor, I often know in the first page if I'm going to make an offer -- of the 90% of the rest, I know in the first sentence that I'm not
• there's nothing wrong with reading for fun -- you don't have to get an ethical point out of it
• I don't think you shouldn't say that Agatha Christie doesn't make the occasional ethical point
• can tell if someone doesn't believe in what they are doing -- can happen in the middle of a series -- in Lilian Jackson Braun's Cat Who books (murder mysteries with Siamese cats), can tell she's now no longer doing it for fun, but just because it's a series
  • Enid Blyton's Naughtiest Girl books are clearly better than the others -- she clearly believes in this kind of experimental school
  • FH -- I wrote Fly by Night for fun -- not because I started off with a manifesto
  • Ursula Le Guin, Earthsea Trilogy -- obviously has a manifesto, but the story takes over and the agenda filters though
    • I find it incredible didactic -- first three mainly stay free -- but the fourth is dull and didactic -- because she went back to offer a "correction" once she became a feminist -- if she has
    • my favourite as a child was The Tombs of Atuan -- there are ethical issues, but they don't control the story
• my favourite is John Masefield's The Box of Delights -- but he cheats at the end making it a dream -- with characters on different levels in reality and the fantasy world
• my favourites are 42 out of the 46 Diana Wynne Jones books! -- not the direct sequels
  • Black Maria -- ruthless coercion of people using words
  • Hexwood -- everyone behaving despicably, by making easy choices in the cause of right
• I still have a soft spot for Dahl's James and the Giant Peach
• my favourite was T. H. White The Sword in the Stone -- the series gets sadder and sadder -- read it at 9
• my favourite is Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising series -- read first as an adult -- the first, Over Sea, Under Stone is Blytonesque -- the rest are marvellous
• my favourite is Pullman's Dark Materials
• my favourite was Kipling's Jungle Book -- I've never forgiven Disney!
• Joan Aiken's short stories are just perfect -- exquisite

Panel • Not the Clarke Award

Liz Batty, Claire Brialey, Tony Cullen, Andy Sawyer, Edward James

The panel give their own verdicts on the 2006 Arthur C Clarke Award shortlist

• The shortlist for the Arthur C Clarke 2006 award is:
  • Kazuo Ishiguro • Never Let Me Go
  • Ken MacLeod • Learning the World
  • Alistair Reynolds • Pushing Ice
  • Geoff Ryman • Air
  • Charlie Stross • Accelerando
  • Liz Williams • Banner of Souls

• Charlie Stross • Accelerando
  • it's not the winner
  • can often say "that's the sixth shortlisted book then" -- don't feel that this year
  • ultimately it's a fixup, not a novel
  • have to accept the judges definitions -- on what is SF, what is a novel -- but this is the least novel-ish
  • has its moments -- but comparing with Greg Egan's attempts to explain the unexplainable, in a very different world, wasn't sure this was quite there
  • I loved it -- you can treat it as a novel of nine chapters -- the most SFnal, full of exciting ideas
  • I've no objection to it as a fixup -- I enjoyed it as a whole, to my surprise
  • I found it on Charlie's website, downloaded it, and spent 2 months trying to read it -- only when I got a physical copy could I get beyond the first story -- I'm clearly not one of the people about whom Charlie is writing! -- really disappointed with the lobsters
  • I eventually had more objection to the cat -- the way its character changed didn't feel like development, but rather as a changing plot device
  • it's a very geeky novel
  • I wasn't sure which side of the Spike we were on for some of these characters -- would have like more from the point of view of the Vile Offspring
  • I didn't think it's the best book, but not the worst book on the list
• Liz Williams • Banner of Souls
  • I'd get rid of this -- I didn't find the world building very good -- pacey, but nothing more
  • yes, it was average -- I enjoyed it on an Edgar Rice Burroughs / Jack Vance level -- not the best
  • I agree -- first half is curiously dispassionate -- well paced and plotted -- very interesting ideas -- but felt detached from characters -- half the book before I wanted to know what happens
  • very good midlist book -- very vivid, smelly, dark gothic -- but I found it difficult to engage with -- it takes a while to get going -- impressed, but not the best of the year
• Alistair Reynolds • Pushing Ice
  • good book, but I'm not arguing it as best of the year -- book expands massively -- more and more impact on the people -- started off feeling very pacey, then deeper stretches of time and space, taking too long for things to happen
  • plot drives relationships between characters, rather than vice versa
  • I was several chapters in before something happened -- sense of expansion, then collapsed into melodrama of nasty aliens fighting
  • one or two very chilling moments with immense potential -- someone is resurrected, screaming, but later there's a mundane explanation -- bit of a letdown
  • it's Al Reynolds doing what he does -- it's a good Al Reynolds novel -- but I don't think it's the best -- it shows he's improving as a writer
• Ken MacLeod • Learning the World
  • Ken's doing what Ken does, and doing it very well -- but it doesn't stand out -- very nice first contact novel
  • of the ones we've discussed so far, it's the one I like the best
  • most accomplished of the ones discussed so far -- generation starship, interesting aliens, great changes of perspective -- I did enjoy it -- lots of familiar elements, some used in new ways -- but it doesn't stand out -- definitely something you should read, like all the books on the list
  • aliens aren't very alien -- you forget they are physically different
  • look like fairly cuddly bat-like creatures initially -- then change to human point of view, "they're horrible, they smell!" -- bit of a jolt
  • trying to make aliens as human as possible to make the point he wanted to make -- felt very comfortable, but didn't stick with me
  • very much writing for people who would get the SF jokes -- don't know if it would work for people not up in SF
  • I wouldn't be completely surprised if this ended up as the compromise candidate -- if this was for real, I'd probably be arguing more strongly to keep it in
• So, if none of these is the best, what is?
  • Air is the clear winner
  • hear, hear
  • absolutely
• Kazuo Ishiguro • Never Let Me Go
  • Just to be awkward -- I think Never Let Me Go is a wonderful book -- it's between that and Air -- they are by far the best written of the six -- is NLMG SF? -- it postulates a different technology and has you absolutely immersed in it as completely normal -- others compare it with Michael Marshall Smith's Spares, but it's less melodramatic, more desperate, more powerful
  • I both agree and disagree -- I saw it on the shortlist and smote my forehead -- the Clarke jury reclaiming literature for SF! -- I found it very interesting, compelling, moving -- but I don't feel it has an SF sensibility -- it has SF ideas, but is structured as an 18th Century gothic novel -- it's great, reading SF ideas written in a different way -- it's still about the idea -- if it was SF the idea would be part of the setup and would bring about change -- it's a great novel, but as an SF reader it doesn't work
  • I hated the book, but in a good way -- the horrible situation the characters are in -- in an SF novel, would expect them to escape/rebel, but they don't -- it's more like a horror novel
  • it's not in our gang, but it's not even trying to get there -- as an SF novel it doesn't work -- I couldn't work out how the world would get into this state -- worldbuilding, tech, things I want from SF aren't there -- it's a good novel, but not a good SF novel
• Geoff Ryman • Air
  • this is Geoff firing on all cylinders -- the last village in the world to go online -- very well-rounded character -- still living in my head -- fantastic writing
  • it has a fantastic background -- but it's about the people in the village -- and I love it
  • an SF novel about character -- they felt like people -- tech depicted in a way absolutely meaningful to me -- drawing of whole community and what was happening to them because of interaction with tech -- not sure I'm happy with the ending -- willing suspension of disbelief bouncing gently above the floor
  • can like sentiment/meaning of ending without liking the plot device he uses to do it
  • even though not told how Air works, still feels SFnal -- about process of change -- quality of writing, characterisation
  • the thing at the end -- it ruined it for me -- is that a problem?
  • not a big enough problem to ruin the rest of the book
  • it's not impossible -- 1 in 10⁹ chance -- but the fact that it happened to her as well as the rest of the stuff -- I chose to ignore it
  • the end was powerful -- the situation leading up to it did jar suspension of disbelief -- I got it back by thinking of it as an image
  • if it doesn't win, that will be why -- depends on how many men on the panel
  • not a gender issue
• we're unanimous! it's Air
  • do you feel that the Clarke judges will choose Air?
  • No -- because it's the best book! -- also I don't know how they would all work on a second read -- maybe some would have whole new depths, others wouldn't stand up
  • part of the Ishiguro is the twist (they're clones), so a second reading would be very different
• what's not on the list?
  • Double Vision, Tricia Sullivan
  • Transcendent, Stephen Baxter -- but it's the last of a trilogy

[Air did subsequently win the 2006 ACC award]

Alice Jenkins • George Hay Memorial Lecture

The Interaction of Science and Literature in the early Victorian "Age of Mind"

Panel • Twelve Monkeys and a Chicken

Mike Gallagher, Sarita Robinson, Sabine Furlong, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Liz Williams

Global epidemics are a perennial theme in SF, and thanks to Bird Flu the topic is more relevant than ever. How would we really cope with a pandemic?

• SF -- I'm a member of the Thames Valley Police Contingency Planning Unit
• SR -- I'm a researcher in disaster psychology
• MG -- I'm an environmental consultant, and ex forensic scientist

• disasters are used as plot devices to start a new order -- only three people left -- or as quarantine episodes, to find a cure -- anything else?
• I'm very interested as a writer in disease -- I have information as an STD in my novel -- alien initially transmits the knowledge -- will become an epidemic -- more interesting as a metaphor for memes/information transmission
• also a metaphor for what we're doing to the environment, ourselves
• disease as something people run away from, respond to -- way it's portrayed in films is quite different from reality -- public perception of the way we will respond is different from the way we actually will -- tend to go into a state of negative panic -- especially in acute cases, like fire alarms
• Great War -- we see it as a major killer -- more died in subsequent flu pandemic
• SARS epidemic -- very few people actually died -- being rewritten as having a major impact -- if can't personalise the risk, very difficult to respond to
• don't have the experience in the West -- grandparents generation had the sense that children could die, they had all lost someone
• we're very blasé

• can measures put in because of the fear cause more disruption than the epidemic?
• when that swan died, every newsreader said "it's the deadly virus" -- yes it is, for birds! -- 100 people have died, in very different social conditions and relationship to animals
• the price of rolling news -- always looking for a story, and to move it forward
• epidemic of memes -- cause a panic
• often other way around -- aware of risk for years, but when it arrives, nothing in place to do anything about it
• can't be afraid of everything all the time -- the highest risk thing I do every day is get in a car
• BSE -- people eat beef again now, because see the risk of chicken
• a chandelier life has been installed in a church because you aren't allowed to light candles on a ladder -- yet in 250 years they've never had an accident -- what kind of risk assessment does this?
• where I work, you can't stand on a footstool without going on a course!

• do we consider disease in a society as alien, coming from outside?
• disease as a fashion statement -- TB-like
• I've lost 9 people over the last 3 years to various things -- I was in hospital with a broken rib and internal bleeding -- but I never thought I might die -- denial?
• as soon as you have children, changes attitudes -- look after yourself better
• Russian attitude to risk assessment is very different -- they take a very robust blasé view
• NASA acceptable losses much higher in the past than now
• people are completely illogical about cancer risk advice -- I give advice to smokers -- believe what they want to believe
• In Glasgow there was an outbreak of cryptosporidium a few years ago -- used stockpiled bottled water -- made me think I should gradually increase my stocks
• In California, you are supposed to have an earthquake kit -- 3 days food, 5 days water -- no-one has it! -- had a 4.9 quake, people were phoning me up to ask what should be in the kit
• there was a quake and people couldn't cope because the fast food places were shut
• remember, water only keeps 6 months -- I have 72 hours food
  • [I suspect many fen, self included, easily have 3 days food reserves they carry round with them, subcutaneously...]
• if you seal yourself in with duct tape -- 48 hours, you're dead, no oxygen
• mobile phones go down -- access overload problems -- can be cut off to give emergency services access
• culture of information changed in last 10 years -- 10 years ago, governments issued B notices, now tell them everything
• after hurricane Katrina, there was a similar hurricane soon after -- that time the public believed the announcements
• huge cultural issue -- I wouldn't believe anything the American government told me!

• MMR vaccine -- will people trust flu vaccines that have a negative impact too?
• depends what happens in the first wave -- waves are about 6-10 weeks
• US started smallpox vaccination programme - people started getting sick -- had to stop
• MMR -- people don't understand the risks associated with measles -- if people are dying around you of bird flu, you'll want the vaccine

• London during Great Plague, compared to Black Death -- in the Black death there was panic/dread/helplessness -- in the Great Plague, only the very rich fled London -- still no mass panic when people started dropping dead -- minor riots over food -- people organised food distribution, etc -- quite stoical
• people don't tend to like new things -- so they just sit around and do the same old things -- new behaviours are hard -- that's why training is so effective -- it teaches people how to evacuate -- not through the same door they came in by
• Nanny State -- people waiting for central government to do something?
• after 9/11, the government recognised how much people were helping people -- set up community emergency response teams, basic training
• would that work in a pandemic, when helping is dangerous to yourself?
• The Postman, Survivors -- society wiped out, pockets of survivors -- any incomer could be dangerous
• will have panic and fear, but also spontaneous aid -- we're quite an altruistic species
• you have 3 days of supplies, your neighbour has none -- will you share?
• yes -- so they'll share next time -- iterated prisoners dilemma
• I wouldn't share, except maybe with my neighbour's child
• recovery time -- to recover from flu takes a while -- psychological recovery even longer -- Aberfan is still remembered

Panel • All Quest Fantasies are basically Pilgrim's Progress rewritten

Farah Mendlesohn, Juliet McKenna, John Clute, Deborah Miller, Paul Barnett

Is this true? Is so, is there anything that can be done about it?

• In PP, reliable information is given in the active voice, unreliable in the passive voice -- what parallels, what other structures?
• quest fantasies follow basic form of a story -- Bunyan grafted on to this basic form too -- drawing from same well
• parallels are suggestions rather than laws -- PP is also allegorical, so not a lot of wiggle room, unlike fantasy quests -- usually all begin similarly, not all end similarly
• PP different offshoot of same tree as modern fantasy -- many of Bunyan's choices, because it's allegorical, are how not to do a modern fantasy -- too wordy -- extended conversations -- women to be protected/nurtured
• structure -- PP feels like a movement to something anticipated -- modern is movement to recovery of something lost -- secular betrayal of Christianity by looking for recovery
• I saw this so vividly because I'm Jewish -- PP isn't a natural story for me -- what would a Jewish quest look like? -- deeply cynical -- Moses doesn't reach the promised land
• if we buck idea of quest as search for anticipated/return, what could we have?
• don't believe quest where it changes is modern -- hero suffers injury or hindrance, and is never the same again -- early mediaeval Romance onwards (including modern crime novels!)
• Hollywood is now very conscious of the idea of the Hero's Journey, since Lucas and his use of The Hero With a Thousand Faces
• problem for writer is to see that which you are reading -- author to play/reverse/transcend that -- patterns useful as heuristic, but would be deadly to write to
• my model is not return to the status quo, but recovery -- The Last Unicorn is classic -- the land is rescued, but it is a land not before met
• The Neverending Story is written consciously like that
• and we should distrust stories that are written to be that easy to understand
• every editor is looking for the same, but different -- identifiable, but new -- the worst submissions I get (in creative writing classes) are stock quest fantasy -- technically well word-smithed, but no heart -- more soul destroying to read than things rough round the edges but with core ideas
• The Tough Guide to Fantasyland -- read it!
• The Journey -- the way everyone believes what they are told -- you'd never get a group of Jews to follow
• one of the subtexts of PP is the nonconformism -- some sly digs at Catholicism -- Christian does question
• but his doubts are there to serve a function
• Voyage to Arcturus -- meets a new guide who tells him "everything you know is a lie" -- why does he not think the new guy is lying?
• it's an anti-PP -- radically different from most quest fantasies -- great novel -- absolute nonsense for the first 50 pages and then impossible to put down
• three quite distinct genres, and awkward transitions
• it's a "bracelet fantasy" -- keep adding a link until you stop -- The Wizard of Oz is the same
• why are there so many guides in PP and other quests?
• passive hero
• Raymond Chandler
• conscious drawing on Mediaeval Romance -- Marlowe is battered warrior -- shares a great deal with quest fantasy -- Marlowe is changed by what he's gone through -- that mode of crime fiction is difficult -- in a long series, had to be unaffected -- Marlowe never believes any of the guides
• has a knockon effect -- Thomas Covenant, set up as a doubter, doesn't believe guides -- makes us even more believe the guide!
• if you are trying to get somewhere, a guide is very useful -- structure of Romance, to have a transcendent guide, to go beyond
• Also, it enables dialogue: "as you know, Bob"
• knowledge -- found, not made -- old, recovered knowledge, in a book -- the old ideas were better
• cyclic nature of knowledge
• no-one made machine guns 1000 years ago -- in a fantasy quest, you'd find an old machine gun
• people are challenging the conventions
• not quite "old is better" -- it's that new ideas are fundamentally wrong
• in reaction to this, I wrote The World, breaking the rules
• the hero is looking for new info in spy novels!
  • it's still knowledge that exists, not new knowledge
  • that's SF!
• why is the Odyssey not a model for modern fantasy?
  • I think it can be -- but it's much too complex -- often used consciously as a quest for home -- and he's an adult, not growing up
  • Brian Stableford has a trilogy based on the Iliad
• What should we read?
  • The World!
  • The Dark Lord of Derkholm

Panel • Defining Sentience

Richard Morgan, Justina Robson, Andrew Wilson, Chris Beckett, Colin Gavaghan

How will we recognise self-awareness? Will it recognise us? And when does 'which is the real me' stop being a meaningful question?

• CG: lecturer in Medical Law and Ethics
• RM: feel slightly fraudulent -- my basis is noir -- assumption is that people are twisted and evil, and this will carry over to clones, etc
• JR: Silver Screen has a trial about whether a machine is sentient -- Living Next Door to the God of Love looks at consciousness
• CB: a robot becoming self aware, and the itself initially thinks this is a malfunction
• abortion/embryo research -- when does sentience begin, consciousness begin -- and when does it end? -- final stages of dementia, persistent vegetative state -- if they're not aware, does it matter what we do to them?
• Wikipedia definition
• horrible mire with the definition of consciousness -- never satisfactorily defined by anyone for any purpose -- is it going to have to be on a case by case basis?
• not even absolutely clear where we draw the line for abortion if defined by sentience rather than viability -- recent paper in BMJ says don't become sentient until 4 month after being born -- as in "basic capacity to feel pain"
• capacity to learn seems fundamental -- even nematodes, single-celled organisms can learn?
• The Meme Machine -- consciousness is an illusion
• I go for survivability traits -- less in dispute
• evolutionary advantage of consciousness -- better allows deception and deviousness -- can look at your own mind, understand others better, and trick them
• and cooperate and make friends!
• some people would insist even cats don't feel pain -- if so, why do they wreak revenge? -- so when out AIs deliberately wreak revenge on us ...
• we can make robots that recoil -- when does that become pain?
• emotional hurt as a form of pain
• dogs have a sense of dignity and don't like being laughed at -- makes sense because pack animals
• Richard Dawkins -- "the discontinuous mind" [in "The Salamander's Tale" chapter of The Ancestor's Tale] -- there aren't actually boxes, but a spectrum of change, but we find it difficult to see this, want to draw lines
• does a nematode worm feel less pain because it is less sophisticated, or does it feel a purer kind of pain because that's all it can feel?
• Jeremy Bentham -- Wikipedia on animal suffering
• Peter Singer -- contemporary philosopher -- animal rights -- we will look back and be horrified at the way we treat animals today
• once I've made the leap of faith away from solipsism, that other people can suffer, very little further leap to animals
• it's a luxury -- we can take more care -- can only afford compassion if survival is at least temporarily assumed -- as we get richer, can expand zone of compassion -- if being compassionate meant our extinction, we wouldn't do it
• octopuses are the only invertebrate covered by the animal legislation -- it's much further advanced in the UK than anywhere else
• what makes our pain worse is that we know it will go on
• we can tolerate pain if we know it's doing us good -- dentist

• maybe we could define consciousness as the ability to ignore pain for greater benefit -- so a wolf chewing itself loose from a trap would count
  • have to be sentient before can be conscious
  • can feel pain without any sense of self
  • how do you know?
• danger we may fail to recognise intelligent behaviour, because it's emergent like an anthill -- or vice versa, thinking it's intelligent when it's just an anthill
  • we'll fail to recognise it if we want their planet?
• psychiatric patients who lack awareness of their own condition -- yet there's no argument that they are sentient/conscious
  • they're not different forms of life -- they're human, but broken
  • hugely controversial legal issues -- does the right to be treated with dignity cover people with no concept of dignity (eg, vegetative, babies)
  • clearly doesn't affect the patient, but what about the people doing it?
  • and how the family feel -- only get to court when doctors disagree with families
• what if have all other features of consciousness, but don't feel pain, or are without feelings?
• there is no larger morality that the one we design -- it's just us
• the debate is the same as it was in the 60s -- despite vast advances in other areas like computing
• if you ask a military robot that has been programmed to know where it is damage, "are you aware", and it says "yes", how do you know if it is?
• Buddhists think of other sentiences in empathic ways -- not a very recent idea!
• what happens when you download people? are they still sentient?
• Natural History -- AIs that are not conscious -- deliberate -- they are manufactured and know it -- we have to create meanings -- these things do not do that

Panel • Up Close and Personal

Justina Robson, Brian Froud, Elizabeth Hand

The Fantastic in the High Street: SF and fantasy about everyday life

• 2nd world fantasy : The Lord of the Rings
• portal fantasy : Narnia -- go through a portal to get to the 2nd world
• fairyland is not somewhere separate -- keen it should be urban, not bottom of the garden, dingly dell, "somewhere else" -- want to film Tam Lin in a contemporary industrial town
• accustomed to fantasies in urban or (old time) pastoral worlds -- don't see a lot of suburban fantasy -- but (in US) most people live in suburbs! -- demographic shift not reflected in fantasy
  • Harry Potter is suburban fantasy -- at least, it starts there
  • children's stories are a bit like that -- Narnia
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• a film deal about to be pitched, based on Goblins, will be urban
  • is that because they're goblins, not fairies, so can go into a nasty urban environment, whereas fairies have to be pretty, rural things?
• I was on a plane, neighbouring passenger taken ill -- someone came to help -- must have been a fairy -- turned up out of nowhere, healed, disappeared again, travelling first class!
• Buffy -- California Valley Girl -- that is so alien and exotic to me, I never realised it was suburban!
• Americans think horizontally -- conquer, and move on -- Britain is a small island, layered, think vertically -- everywhere you stand, layers of history beneath your feet -- even in urban situations -- walking down alleys in London, that path has not changed in a thousand years
• difference between fantasy and SF -- US, new, creating it, SF, frontier -- fantasy, steeped in past of culture and land, buried in the land, the people have been there a long time
• Geoff Ryman -- Canadian model v different -- wilderness, so much still not despoiled/developed -- a landscape you can't find a pattern to, all the lakes -- v beautiful, but v inhospitable -- so Canadian fantastic is a natural world you can't comprehend -- the horror is just the world
• can you ever escape your mindset? it's set v young
• mine's a small town in a fairly inhospitable place -- Alan Garner's Elidor, children in Manchester, very realistic ruined desolate cityscape, with fantasy world erupting into it -- never got over this experience
• fantasy/mythic elements are a very powerful way of putting experience into the world, more than anything you can do in mainstream -- willingness to accept how much we crate -- mainstream is so limited, restricted to what's out there -- fairies etc are enormously emotionally complex structures, enormous amount of meaning -- vast architecture of meaning expressed in v small symbol
• fantasy is not an escape -- it's a reengagement with the real world -- I'm painting the inside of things -- in "reality" you are not allowed to do this
• literature of the fantastic -- few places left where we can express the desire/need for the transcendent -- E.O. Wilson, Consilience, people did not evolve to believe in evolution, evolved to believe in gods -- we have a need for transcendence/ecstasy -- explains drugs/religions -- we've lost that, but the need is still there
• chucked out the baby with the bath water -- gothic emerged from people looking at desolate landscapes -- war between people who take it literally, and those who realise it's part of the inner world
• even people who don't believe in fairies are jolted by my squashed fairies

• suburbia is the setting for YA novels -- this is their world -- also doesn't matter where they are, their world is always more fantastic
• the garden is nature contained, beyond is nature raw -- fairies at the bottom of the garden, at the edge -- suburban is a good metaphor for the edge -- a place where things can happen
• "the room was full of flaming oranges" -- Delany -- SF reading is not so metaphorical -- it's not a metaphor for sunlight, it's really full of flaming oranges!
• I read the first Gwyneth Jones as an SF book, and hated it -- the I realised it was a fantasy, and it's a great fantasy!
• Peter Straub -- he's written "ghost stories in which no ghosts appear" -- but you can read it as a ghost story
• John Crowley's four Ægypt books -- prologue to the fantastic starting -- just flickers -- but everyone knows it's coming -- unlike his Little, Big, which is fantastic from the start -- a Secret History of the World -- but we never find out what it is -- doesn't quite break through
• In the TV show Lost -- enormous frustration watching it! -- will you commit to something! -- but I kind of enjoy it -- once they do commit, it will be ruined
• you have to keep training new generations of publishers to trust you -- to trust that they will get a book -- but can't say at the beginning what it is -- if you let it grow, it will have great strength, allow it to come through
• everyday settings include things that you do every day -- constantly worrying about stopping to eat things in Narnia
  • domesticity in British fantasy is not there in US fantasy -- British fantasy really is the way the world works -- grounded
  • did Beowulf stop for tea?
  • feasting in Valhalla!
  • I was talking to an American GI who really loved the fact that Tommys would stop for tea, even in the middle of a war
  • when you've lost that, it's the end of the world!
• in 1977, looking at American fantasy art, I was convinced there wasn't a single tree in America! they were imitating each other, not looking at their own landscape
• the effect Bladerunner had on the genre -- suddenly all SF was grubby
• even with Star Wars, people were talking about the dinged up spaceships
• gives a sense of history
• sense of history is critical for fantasy -- goes between cities and country, both are old -- suburbs are new, not "dinged up" yet
• when dealing with the alien, need some reality to compare it with -- not a spaceship, but a boat
• it's the place of strangeness and danger you're warned against going to -- "don't go into the woods" -- mine was decaying warehouse industrial landscapes, cheek-by-jowl with suburbs
• don't have that in the States -- the commute to school will be through a single landscape

Panel • Philosophy and SF

Liz Williams, Paul Cornell, Justina Robson

SF often has pretensions to philosophical thought, but how rigorous is it really?

• SF is almost a literature about Cartesian duality -- also addresses solipsism -- however, they are enshrined as core concepts rather than interrogated
• what does philosophy cover? -- consistently attempts to address ethics, overtly -- even some of the worst Star Trek episodes embody moral agendas
• philosophy of mind
• extends into religion, thinking about thinking
• everything you do when creating a future is a criticism of the now -- so much is so unconscious -- can't be rigorous -- things appear in the story, then become conscious of them, then plan and it goes wrong, because the characters want to do something else
• when studying philosophy, it's out of context -- in SF it's forced into the context of everyday life
• even the worst fantasy novel starts from epistemology: what do they know? -- and ontology: what do they have in their world? (eg, unicorns?) -- world building implies philosophy
• Kant's theory of knowledge not really impacted on hard SF? limits of understanding?
• as constrained by our own biology -- that's where SF scores, looking at other beings
• Octavia Butler -- imagine your way out of your own biology

• criticism in philosophy of using SF as though experiments -- it's not real
• where is the real world on which your philosophy is based?
• no discipline that talks of rhinos in the living room has a right to criticise anyone else's!
  • [Russell v. Wittgenstein]
• if you chuck F&SF out of the window, you've robbed yourself of a very rich language
• the PhilSci Department to which I was attached regularly showed undergraduates SF movies to get points across
• how do you consciously have a discussion of this stuff?

• In some of Stephen Baxter's books, he starts from some point, builds theory X and theory Y into the fabric, shows how the world progresses
• Terry Pratchett does it so well
• it's the nature of jokes to sum up deep philosophical ideas in two lines...
• ...and dismiss them!
• I do sometimes put things into the mouths of characters to flag to the reader, having lost confidence in my own story-telling ability
• my biggest mistake with Woz was cramming in what I wanted to say about The Wizard of Oz

• I did a Maths/Philosophy degree -- one has all the answers, the other none
  • which is which?
• any scientist I've ever heard or read is far more in love with the unknown than the known
• Native Tongue is the best discussion of the philosophy of language
• I've a doctorate in the theory of science -- never addressed in my work because I don't know where to start -- don't know which theory I espouse
• can explore possibilities in fiction -- no constrained
• a criticism of philosophy is that it doesn't provide answers -- that's its strength -- a misunderstanding of its function -- it doesn't solve problems -- it can solve ethical problems

• Neal Stephenson
• I'm in awe of it!
• characters float through a world where philosophical principles sit there like attractors

• aesthetics -- emotional effect of sentence constructions
• Ursula Le Guin -- alien worlds with set of starting assumptions different from ours -- not just science but aesthetics
• underlying theory of aesthetics when I write -- sense of sublime related to sensawunder -- Kant's transcendence
  • sense of awe in response to big spaceships -- but no acknowledged as awe -- why?
• awe makes us small, and being small is not good any more -- SF as a search for transcendence
• Angel of the North -- embodies attempt to manufacture awe

• Naturalist Loren Eiseley's essay on a spiderweb in a canyon -- what of things that fall into our web only once?
  Curious, I took a pencil from my pocket and touched a strand of the [spider] web. Immediately there was a response. The web, plucked by its menacing occupant, began to vibrate until it was a blur. Anything that had brushed claw or wing against that amazing snare would be thoroughly entrapped. As the vibrations slowed, I could see the owner fingering her guidelines for signs of struggle. A pencil point was an intrusion into this universe for which no precedent existed. Spider was circumscribed by spider ideas; its universe was spider universe. All outside was irrational, extraneous, at best raw material for spider. As I proceeded on my way along the gully, like a vast impossible shadow, I realized that in the world of spider I did not exist.

  -- Loren Eiseley, The Star Thrower, p.202, 1978

• in archaeology, anything unknown is classified as "ritualistic"
• philosophy of science-- history of dealing with anomalies
  • caisson fever [bends] -- tried to cure the "disease" -- nothing in their experience to help ask the right questions
• "imagine a 4D hypercube embedded in an 11D space" -- I'm sorry, I can't!
• we can imagine things now that used to be v. difficult concepts -- new tools
  • engineer: "I can't imagine 11D" -- mathematician: "I imagine in nD, and let n tend to 11"
• maths -- you don't understand it, you just get used to it -- there are lots of things you can't understand, but you can get used to anything!
• SF is often an aesthetic attempt to activate the spiritual part of the brain -- Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, sheer awe!
• suggested title of Quatermass' biography: Failing to Deal with Anomalies since 1952
  • not a failure -- a mission statement!
• Greg Egan is required reading
• no-one has mentioned Philip K Dick yet!
• Stanislaw Lem
• Philip Pullman -- His Dark Materials

• SF style of thinking is essential for dealing with paradigm sifts, driving science in new directions
• there's a perceived inevitability of scientific knowledge and progress -- eg, in [the Alternate History of] The Years of Rice and Salt, we still end up at the same scientific positions
• it's the idea that some things are waiting there to be discovered
• some things like the Periodic Table are there, but technology is different -- and if you discover it 100 years later, it will be very different
• Moore's Law -- Intel etc use it to set their budgets!

Panel • Harrison, Harrison, and Clute

M. John Harrison, Niall Harrison, John Clute

• in the 1980s we reviewed as if reviewing were rational -- that was really transgressive
• JC: I'm old-fashioned enough not to believe what I say unless it is published -- publication is a portal -- it's where I'm a dinosaur
• NH: on-line writing as part of community -- publication is slower, more considered -- more a feeling of works in progress, not a final answer -- a bit scary
• JC: I've never generated anything that I haven't reshaped before it's gone out
• MJH: when younger I expressed some of my opinions a quotes from fake authorities

• did you have any trepidation when Appleseed came out?
• JC: absolutely none! -I was more interested in how the reviews were done than if they were positive or negative -- also, negative reviews are more interesting, positive ones are seen to be less deep
• MJH: I've been writing reviews for 40 years, and never asked who I'm writing for, what audience
• JC: we wrote then for our children
• MJH: I haven't got any children!
• JC: I don't have any children either!

• JC: we were acting as if an environment existed -- we told lies about it -- this brought that environment into existence -- "you are a real frog in our imaginary garden"

• do you regret your angry reviews?
• MJH: not a bit -- if I could go back, I'd be worse! -- I'd have all I know now -- it was a situation that needed changing
• JC: you get that angry because there's something you care about deeply -- I'm getting angrier -- and feeling that life's too short
• MJH: if you are trying to change things, it's because you want them to change, and if the don't change -- you can't keep hitting your head against a brick wall
• NH: I have the feeling that things are changing -- gives hope
• JC: I have an exile's consciousness -- I've been here since 1969!

Panel • Won't Get Fooled Again

Hal Duncan, Justina Robson, Graham Sleight, John Berlyne

Why don't we just completely trash the whole tired SF genre and try to take the discourse somewhere genuinely new?

• some elements of SF are so formula -- heros, techno-thriller heros, McGuffin devices
• the field is awash with movement, promising genuinely new things -- what's most disturbing is how quickly things that are revolutionary and successful become normalised, a trope -- look at what happened to punk -- it's not the transgressive force/emblem it once was
• I disagree -- it's an extraordinary time in SF -- it's not tired, it's continuously reinvented
• there's tremendous baggage -- how to reinvent, use ironically, transgress
• sense of estrangement -- cloning of superficial qualities makes it familiar, cliche
• like drugs? want the same hit again?
• but with enough difference not to be identical -- I recently reread all the short fiction of Joanna Russ -- amazing -- degree of anger with itself -- makes you realise that it's inherently quite a conservative field
• I'm not kicking against SF, I'm just writing what I want to read
• all the books we think are most exciting we read at ~14 -- the Golden Age -- we're all just trying to get back to our own Golden Age
• yes, the kind of SF that I like to read was stamped on me at that age, even though I'm not the same reader I was then
• the books you read then don't actually give you the same experience now
• don't go back and reread because it will be spoiled
• literature like to portray itself as the sophistication of moving to adulthood -- I think of it as the death of the soul
• I like stuff that challenges me, eg M. John Harrison's Light -- not an easy read -- one of the best 3 or 4 books in recent years
• I generally don't like to work enormously hard -- it's the story -- I don't want to think about philosophy and allegories and politics and ...
• SF&F are like the early 80s music scene -- heavy metal, prog rock, puck, various genres, and also Indie -- looking for that -- Indie fiction -- eclectic influences being merged
• what lies in store for today's 14-15 year olds?
• amazing time for hooking people on the genre -- Rowling has made an explosion, everyone thinks they can -- and some can
• Garth Nix -- YA list is less hampered -- I go to it when fed up with "sophistication" -- they're still young enough to have griffins and dragons and spaceships -- no censorship

• A lot of this applies to non-SF as well -- books date -- Martin Amis is very 70s -- Scott Fitzgerald very 30s -- not all is relevant anymore
• I can't believe in the futures that 60s and 70s SF put forward
• 1984 hasn't dated
• clunky gadgets date, but the human condition doesn't
• William Gibson, "The Gernsback Continuum" -- photographer hounded by pulps -- it's not a future you can believe in!
• It's the future we saw on Dr Who last night! [New Earth]

• Are there any tropes you want to get rid of, eg FTL, so that you can't always shoot your way out of trouble?
• that's suffering from disappointment as a writer wimps out -- but from the PoV of a writer, can't have enough of them!
• heros
• there's noting new under the sun -- excitement in reinventions, "I didn't see that coming" -- a new take on an old trope is great!

• short fiction is dying -- that's where the real speculative stuff was -- couldn't do "Fondly Fahrenheit" in a longer form
• change in reading habits and format -- half-hour TV show is good for that
• some of it is published under different labels
• Richard and Judy's top 10 -- 3 are SF, and they didn't even know!

• when any genre is great is when it's pulling stuff in from outside -- when it's inward looking, that's when it dies
• most damning book quote: "Robert Jordan has fully explored the world Tolkien only began to reveal" -- I don't want it more revealed!
• it's an act of communication -- there's a problem of despising the readership -- take Hal Duncan's Vellum -- it's a fine novel, sophisticated -- I didn't understand it fully, but it was a fun ride -- but what is not healthy is to lambast the genre and say: "you're all kids -- I'm going to write something you'll hate!" -- that's not an act of communication, it's an act of sulk! -- we don't get panels like this at Crime conventions
• we play lots of games -- it's about hierarchy
• it's our sense of inferiority -- geek hierarchy
• MJH's Light -- half was an act off communication, half was a big F*** Off -- something to be said for old-fashioned craftsmanship -- making a table out of wood that people can eat off -- write stuff that is engaging emotionally, but is complex -- can do both things
• Catch 22 -- it's completely accessible, also very complex, nonlinear, absurdist
• John Carey (1992) The Intellectuals and the Masses [Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1800-1939] -- his theory is that modernism, Eliot, Joyce, etc was constructed (semi)consciously as a literature to keep out the mob -- we are living with the remains
• Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination: 'Who are you?'/'Gully Foyle is my name.'/'Where are you from?'/'Terra is my nation.'/'Where are you now?'/'Deep space is my dwelling place.'/'Where are you bound?'/'Death's my destination.' -- it's a direct reference to Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man -- all that stuff it cool, but let's also give it a rollicking plot
• the story is the thing -- the rest is just along for the ride
• I resent being made to feel I wasn't quite clever enough to read what I've just read

• the secret of success known by publishers: publish something that's exactly like the last thing, but completely different

Panel • Writing Other Cultures

Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Liz Williams, Geoff Ryman, Johanna Sinisalo

Writers frequently want to explore or present unfamiliar cultures, be they human or alien. Can you do this convincingly, and if so, how?

• Put your hand up if you're from a different culture!
• From what?
• That's the point

• My first novel, Finnish, has trolls in it -- I was contacted for movie troll advice -- I was shown a picture of houses in caves -- why? -- because they live in houses -- they were wearing clothes -- why? -- intelligent beings wear clothes -- where does the light come from in the caves? -- no answer -- then they stopped talking to me...
• if you are not an SF writer, will make this kind of mapping of culture -- will never think biology or environment will affect culture -- we are hierarchical pack animals -- religion is the transcendent alpha male
• we don't treat story telling with enough respect -- it's a dangerous process -- most stories are prisons that trap us -- have to be even more careful when writing about other cultures / parts of ourselves we don't like -- first of the new Star Wars movies was a compendium of racial stereotypes of races that don't exist!
• strategy: write from the PoV of a visitor to the culture
• Henry James -- a woman on a train passes an army barracks at high speed -- should then be able to write a story about it -- we don't believe that any more
• we carry our own culture with us -- can't write about another culture without respecting it, else will get it badly wrong
• every British novelist seems to have a colonial or post-colonial novel in them
• what do we mean by culture? -- are different genders different cultures? -- historical, future cultures?
• SF always has to tell two stories -- individual, and the culture
• we are immensly arrogant about our own past, and disrespect the inhabitants -- in particular, individuals in a culture must not be made to bear the entire weight of that culture
• when using a historical character, eg Blake, what is your responsibility?
• none at all -- it's not the real Blake, it's your Blake -- reading about the past, we're reading a translation, looking at it with different eyes
• I always get flk for taking on male voices -- "how can you write as a man" -- but that's what we're doing in SF all the time!
• when I read a Victorian novel, it's as alien as a foreign planet
• we're inventing these cultures to understand our own
• it's fun to make up cultures -- Ken MacLeod used current stuff, but it wasn't specific enough for his needs, so he made changes and it became specific enough -- can be specific if you are making it up -- can't get it wrong!
• that's one of the joys of the Ashraf Bey books -- obvious Islamic culture, but with 100 years of different history -- I'm setting a book in real Japan, it's much more complicated
• students v naive about translation -- in SF, do it all the time, even from the future to modern English -- can do a Riddley Walker, but alienates many readers
• it also screws up your reading!
• historical novels that work best don't faithfully create Victorian English, but a pastiche
• can make it modern, or totally faithful
• Susannah Clarke's book -- film version -- American filmmakers are trying to modernise the women, make feisty -- sorry, these are Regency women, intelligent, but just not like that

• our nation is essentially a patchwork of cultures
• yes -- Star Trek idea of all one people on a planet is incredibly irritating
• need layers in architecture, language, subcultures
• we're all products of several overlapping cultures
• everything affects everything in a culture -- science, economics, politics, religion
• get a lot in fantasy -- all eat stew, all medieval -- Robin Hobb does take this into account
• I never do aliens -- I just can't imagine that we could imagine an alien culture
• "If a lion could talk we would not understand him" -- Wittgenstein -- we can't even understand one another
• there are various words in Korean that get translated as "soul", "hell" -- but have nothing to do with these ideas -- need to read a lot to get a feeling -- if we contact aliens, 2nd or 3rd gen humans may begin to communicate

• how would you approach an alien culture v a near-future human culture -- what would be your basis?
• biological for starters
• inventing the culture is not the goal -- a tool, a metaphor you are using for the story
• I've never tried -- posthuman is easier, pushing ourselves forward -- in Ken's new book, alien culture, reminds me of 19th century Russian literature, all sitting around in universities worrying about the meaning of things!
• probably have as much in common as with goldfish in a tank
• not every society is as multicultural as British society -- need to see/create the norms of the culture
• I've tried! -- probably failed miserably

• to write a story, the aliens have to be sufficiently like us to make a story of interest to us -- Orson Scott Card has four levels of alienness -- all aliens in Enders Game are labelled "truly unknowable" are in fact "alien but can have a dialogue"
• we haven't been calling each other on having human aliens -- we are cheating
• the Internet makes global tribes possible -- still have different cultures inside the big one
• within 50 years, China will be dominant -- after that, no idea -- if we go off planet, we'll splinter again
• genetic augmentation race -- impending death of oil culture -- China is basing itself on an oil culture -- which of these different factors -- global warming, oil, computers, genetics -- will "win"?

• apocryphal story -- found an uncontacted tribe, appeared to have no empathy -- burning women in a fire -- is that kind of behaviour alien, or human?
• because they're human, I regard it as pathological -- I'm coming from my own culture, but I'm not a Relativist
• human beings without empathy is a construct of the observers -- a story being told

• foreign as other -- SF has advantage over mainstream -- asks questions -- how it became that way -- not so easy to do in mainstream, where it's normally about experiencing another culture
• Will Self, Great Apes -- how much our culture is biology

Panel • Staging the Fantastic

Brian Froud, Mat Irvine, Judi Hodgkin, Andrew Wilson

What are the challenges of depicting the fantastic on stage and screen?

• BF: it's good working with lots of people -- Dark Crystal was ~ 360 people over 5 years eventually -- good once I'd learned how to communicate my vision to others, and not get in their way
• MI: Blakes 7 -- designed and made things for 4 seasons over 5 years
  • Kubrick's 2001 took 3 years -- no-one can do that today -- money rules
  • Quick -- Good -- Cheap -- you can have any two
  • we work in a communication industry, but we're the worst at communicating
  • cutting ratios -- some movies are 100:1, BBC allows ~ 5:1, 3:1 is pretty good
• AW: I'm involved in fringe plays -- no money! -- use the demands of the budget -- minimalist -- one play was set on a moving bus: hiring the bus was cheaper than a fringe venue!
• we had high budgets on Dark Crystal, which I objected to -- "we could make 4 or 5 films for that!" -- I love restrictions, they are very creative
• JH: I have a performing arts background, then IT project management -- there are budget constraints there -- once you know how much, what are the challenges then?
• yes, you can have too much money! BBC constraints get the adrenaline going, especially working live -- which is also cheap, you don't have to edit it
  • turns into a management job -- Edge of Darkness was a management job, 4 assistants and 2 contractors, liaising with set designer, costume designer, director
• staging film/theatre is collaborative -- need to be prepared to collaborate at all levels -- have to guide and also listen
• BF: my wife made Yoda -- dummy run for Dark Crystal -- started from cheap practical things making a puppet -- mouth moved by hand, walking stick instead of arm wires -- very simple things that drove his character -- technology takes over and fails as a character in CGI
• look at Kermit! he didn't even look like a frog! yet you still believe in him
• you know it's a puppet but it becomes a character -- don't believe the CGI
• original Star Wars -- everything was rough: dirt, smoke, nothing perfect, added something -- latest Star Wars, perfect, and I didn't believe in it -- direct on a computer
• LoTR -- some models, some computer work, but in such a way that it's still loose and vibrant
  • he's doing it right, with a new tool
• the new Dr Who is using a lot of new tech CGI -- opening scene [of New Earth] could never have done that in the past -- but there were too many craft flying overhead, overdone -- it didn't advance the story -- distracting

• people approach it as an engineering, not an artistic, problem?
• no reason why CGI Yoda couldn't have been as good as puppet Yoda -- is it because the character wasn't written as well?
• both -- I don't understand why George [Lucas] who now has all the money he has, shouldn't have paid experts to do it, but he wrote it himself -- dialogue is a disaster
• if the script were better, would have forgiven a less-good Yoda
• in transition -- as soon as we get CGI that really works, we will accept the way it is presented -- currently assume you can do everything -- still need a proper vision
• it's a new toy
• if you see someone in dressing room in makeup, it's grotesque, it can't work! -- then get on to stage, washing out, distance -- it works, audience fills in
• lots of bad movies from good scripts, no good movies from bad scripts
• editing is crucial

Masquerade

• Best Dance Routine • Easter Bunny Parade
• Doctor's assistant Rose • Michelle
• Best Joke and Nice Wings • Lucy Angel and the Holy Spirit
• Best Child Entry • The Snake Sisterhood

• Red Dragon / White Pegasus cross
• Environmental Award, Best Use of Potpourri • Woodland Spirit • Gillian James
• Imagery Award • Snow Queen's Apprentice • Guilia De Cesare
• Flying Spaghetti Monster, complete with His Noodly Appendage, and Pirate followers
• Best Newcomers • Sally Scissorhands • Sal Nicholson and Aandi Inston
• Millinery Manoeuvres [or, the Easter Bonnet Brigade?]
• Special Judges Choice • Lady Arwen after Hobbit Mushrooms • Sabine Furlong
• Best Presentation • Dragonschlocky • SMS, Eira, Mark Slater
• Best in Show • Instrument of War • Andrew Patterson

Mat Irvine • Space as it should have been

A talk copiously illustrated with slides and models

Sarita Robinson • Victim or Survivor?

Human responses to alien invasion

• Disaster Psychology -- the study of the effects of disasters on individuals and groups
  • v little empirical evidence -- ethical problems of experiments -- anecdotal
• psychodynamic model stages:
  • pre-impact: before the alien invasion / pandemic / quake -- but know we are about to be attacked
  • impact: the spaceships are firing!
  • recoil: after the people have got used to the idea, but before doing anything -- critical stage to increase chances of survival
  • rescue: external or self -- removed from even
  • post-rescue: but still being affected

• Pre-impact -- become aware of threat
  • experiments in the 1950s -- more relaxed ethics!
  • Hudsen
    • pretended a surprise A bomb attack -- blinding lights and explosions -- result: total failure to react! -- when exposed to something v new, people do nothing -- eg fire alarms -- don't know what else to do
  • War of the Worlds -- Orson Welles -- [1938] convinced 1000s of people that the US was being invaded by Martians -- even though they said it was a dramatisation -- some did respond as if it were a real invasion -- used to inform civil / military planning
  • skills degrade under stress
    • seems to be an impairment of cognitive function
    • worry, get anxious, lots of new things going on -- reduced ability to comprehend that an emergency is taking place -- reduced planning/executive ability
  • increased chances if young, fit, healthy -- prepared, arrangements in place -- have past experience, training
  • reduced chances if old, disabled, v young -- denial -- lack experience

• Impact -- mother ship fires -- threat actually begins
  • cognitive dysfunction / paralysis
    • 10-25% act in an effective manner
    • 65-80% act in stunned bewildered manner
    • 10-15% disoriented, confused, crying, paralysed, hysterical
      • hinder others escaping -- freeze, block escape route
      • failure of declarative memory -- eg, name / address
      • inappropriate behaviour -- eg, shutting down computer before exiting -- can't generate new behaviours, so just go through old behaviours
  • after missile attacks: 22% injuries due to attack, 78% as a result of inappropriate behaviour
  • survival depends on luck, plan of action, no denial

• Recoil -- living on a spaceship after the rest of the crew has died!
  • after the initial danger has passed, but have not yet been rescued -- need to survive until rescued, in hours, days, months
  • withdrawl from commonly used drugs -- nicotine, caffeine -- working memory is affected
  • reduction in blood glucose
  • extreme heat / cold / dehydration -- need survival equipment
  • will to survive -- anecdotal reports of people just giving up -- people with young children, close friendships, tend to do better, motivated

• Rescue -- help arrives, or self rescue
  • disasters have consequences for rescuers too, entering their own impact stage
  • some give up too soon, believing they are safe

• Post-rescue -- learning to live in a post-disaster environment -- readaptation
  • environment in which you live has changed forever -- or effects of experiences back in old environment
  • 8-20% develop PTSD

• Manchester aircraft fire in 1970s, 10% survivors -- now admitting to trampling others -- massive survivor guilt
  • exercises on escaping from aircraft -- first 10 out get £20 -- everyone for themselves! trampling, as if fighting for life -- v inappropriate behaviours
• Battle of Britain pilots -- 80% chance of not making it through 1st mission -- chances of further survival very much better
• told not to pick up coat when evacuations -- but may need it to survive later
• if you are working with v sensitive data and there's a fire alarm, if you don't shut down your computer, when you come back, you're sacked!
• are there ways to tell if you are prone to cognitive paralysis without being in a situation?
  • yes, but it's not pleasant -- there are personality traits that help/hinder -- current research -- ask again in 5 years time

Panel • Does anyone watch Broadcast TV any more?

Paul Cockburn, John Toon, Morgan Gallagher, Judith Proctor, Niall Harrison

Between downloading episodes and buying DVD compilation, does anyone actually watch the original broadcast of SF series any more? How might this change the culture of mutual appreciation of a show?

• we all got together on Saturday to watch Dr Who!
• Maslow's hierarchy of needs: food, clothing, shelter at the bottom, socialisation is quite high up
• TV acts as a glue that binds us together, common point of reference, eg chatting over photocopier, chatting about soaps
• same set of experiences -- academia is looking at satellite influences -- how can we have that glue
• as fandom, we form our own social cliques around particular areas -- will that continue, or will broadcast die
• it's already changing -- watching downloads -- will see smaller and smaller social groups -- eg DVD releases of older shows
• the recent repeats of Dr Who are getting 7-8m viewers
• going to become increasingly niche/marginal -- friends who wait for a new season of 24, then watch it in 24 hours!
• limited by the speed at which we can make programmes
• if broadcast declines, there will be no money, no more made
• I like West Wing so much, I stopped watching on Channel 4 and bought the DVDs to watch without the adverts
• the amount of money from sales is not enough to compete with income from broadcast audiences

• Firefly made so much from DVD sales, they thought it worth making a movie
• but Serenity didn't have enough bums on seats to make more movies
• DVD sales of Serenity are through the roof -- can't just look at broadcast figures

• if 10% of West Wing viewers paid $20 per season, that's about twice as much revenue as advertising -- it could be pay per view
• but you've got to see it in the first place
• give the first episode away free
• that's not enough to know you like it

• [asks of the audience] who tapes programmes and fast forwards through the adverts? [most hands go up]
• what people in this room do is not representative of mass audience!
• subscription-only series with no adverts -- also targetted advertising downloads
• daily soaps will keep getting made and broadcast, but other kinds of shows can be financed by different models
• VCR is ubiquitous, and everybody time-shifts
• but that's mass audience picking up broadcast, even if time-shifting
• we will see fan groups self funding, until they reach broadcast quality
• I wouldn't shell out $20 for a show I'd never seen -- but I would for one by Joss Whedon -- like I'd buy a hardback by a known author

• I can get social interaction online from downloads
• the Internet and downloads are the new broadcast - simultaneous downloads
• cinema -- the group experience is a large part of the experience
• currently can't sell DVD during cinema release -- trying to change that because people aren't going to the cinema anyway -- enhances later social discussion audience
• like bookclub groups -- watching same stuff, individually
• and status: I've seen next week's episode, on satellite!

• I watched Dr Who at 7:15 because that's when it was on -- get to see it first -- elsewhere in the world, would download
• time-shifting -- no spoilers please! -- half of us are a season ahead of everybody else
• how is this different from the social experience of books? cons exist as a social space for talking about books read at different times -- there may be a change of experience in media fandom, when can't assume all watched at the same social moment
• like watching Babylon 5 in Britain, months behind the US -- I watched season 3 on tapes from the US -- so unsatisfying -- so for Buffy I made a different choice, watched one a week, got the tension of wondering/talking -- that's part of my pleasure
• with Angel, half are watching downloads, half Sky, a few on BBC -- downloaders agreed not to talk about episodes until aired on Sky
• the pleasure of watching v discussing -- if you've missed the first 7 seasons of Stargate, how do you catch up? -- I watched a season a week -- very enjoyable, without the taking apart
• also have the pleasure of writing your own versions -- absolutely a social activity
• fanfic as a form of analysis of the text, exploring what's going on

• with downloads and immediate reaction of fans -- might that have an impact on the evolving storyline?
• do tend to need creative vision
• new series of Dr Who is by fans! but they are writers anyway
• 90% of fanfic is dross, but a small percentage is better than professional stuff
• how many have read Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners? response to watching season 7 Buffy, about being a fan, the community created by the story -- fictional series that appears at random on TV -- when you find an episode, you phone your friends and watch it
• Pattern Recognition -- form a community around film fragments

• the broadcast medium is changing because of the alternatives on offer -- more live TV, reality TV, soaps
• it's always tempting to think the future of the medium is what's happening now

• it's not $20 -- it's £50 for Farscape boxed sets, £70 for a season of Enterprise
• premium prices because of fans -- needs a distribution channel
• people time-shifting are a target of advertises, because the people who buy these gadgets are the ones with the money
• there has been a dramatic change in the tech for downloads -- I can now download faster than real time, and can watch them on TV screen
• advertising in Buffy was students, etc -- demographic was no TiVo buyers
• using tech to resurrect old shows, no-one is making a profit -- old film, radio archives -- recreating an audience that never existed!
• the lawyers will make a profit!

Panel • Does your towel know where you are?

Mike Scott, Doug Spencer, Lillian Edwards, Dave Clements

RFID chips to track our shopping, and wireless video cameras in every mobile phone: what happens when global communication becomes global surveillance?

• I'm a card-carrying member of NO2ID -- I hope you are -- if not, we know where you live...
• a member of NO2ID pledges opposing ID cards, the vast DB architecture behind them, the nationalisation of identity
  • refusal pledge -- won't take up ID card, no matter what -- includes Simon Hughes
  • or oppose up to a certain level of civil disobedience, short of breaking the law
• Belgium is very liberal -- we've had ID cards for years -- what's the problem?
• ID cards aren't the problem -- Germans carry a piece of card -- fairly painless -- what is unreasonable is the vast DB tracking literally every time the card is used -- doctor, bank account, benefits office, ...
  • government will ameliorate card cost by encouraging commercial organisations to piggyback
  • US SSN -- marvellous tool for identity theft
• if someone fakes a card, uses it to rip off a bank, the government won't be liable -- if there is a mistake in your entry, and you don't tell the government, 2 years in jail
  • but there's always an error rate!
  • false positives, false negatives ...
• ordinary people want it -- they're fed up with phishing, ID theft, etc
  • the more people learn about the ID card system proposed, the more they dislike it
  • then they learn they have to pay!
  • object to going to biometrics centre, updating info, etc
  • most people like convenience
• this is not an identity card, it is an identification card -- calling it an identity card is making a philosophical statement about identity
  • it is an authentication card
• the largest part of the ID DB is the audit trail
• when your computer uses a key for ID, it can be revoked -- can't revoke a fingerprint -- if I'm forged, I can't revoke myself
  • there's an even better argument against biometrics -- 1 in 10,000 failure rate -- if 1 in 1,000,000 is a terrorist, that gives 100 false positives per terrorist -- useless!

• SatNav providers -- your location is becoming a commodity
• my mobile network knows where my handset is, as does my ISP -- my bank knows where my Switchcard was last used -- Google knows all the search terms I've used
• they don't know where you are, only where your phone is -- Lillian has been in that Indian restaurant for days! [she left her phone there...]
• Oyster cards -- display everywhere you've been, without even a password!
• RFID chips -- the microwave is your friend
• ordinary Oyster cards are attached to your name and address -- but pay as you go Oysters have a legal right to give to friends -- gives plausible deniability
  • if there comes a point where government/population wants ubiquitous surveillance, lending an Oyster card to a friend will become an act of terrorism

• there are also good points -- tracing abductees, etc
• conflict of values -- privacy / security / convenience
• people take the PoV that inconvenience is worth it to make a political statement
• tracking the card, linked to CCTV, can get your photo -- each individual piece is fine, convenient -- it's the combination that's the problem -- we need firewalls

• [the debate raged: we had to leave at this point to catch out train home...]