home > SF > cons > Concourse: Eastercon 2004

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

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

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

Programme highlights

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

Academie Glorianna -- Weapons display

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

Sue Mason -- GoH interview

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

Panel -- Alternative Histories

John Dallman, Simon Bradshaw, Harry Harrison , Edward James

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

Francis Spufford -- George Hay Memorial Lecture

The Fall and Rise of the British Boffin

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

Panel -- Classic SF

Edward James, Chris Priest, John Clute, Peter Nicholls

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

Mitchell Burnside Clapp -- GoH talk

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

Panel -- Not the Clarke Awards

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

A discussion of this year's Arthur C Clarke shortlist

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clute & Nicholls -- 10 years of the SF Encyclopedia

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

Chris Priest -- GoH talk

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

various -- filk

several filk concerts over the weekend

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

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

Philip Pullman, Gerry Webb, Danny Flynn

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

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

Panel -- Holistic Hitchhiking

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

Douglas Adams , his life and works

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

Panel -- Modern SF

Chris Priest, Cheryl Morgan, John Clute

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

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

Developmental Biology 101

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

Panel -- Retelling the Fairy Story

Farah Mendlesohn, Philip Pullman, John Clute, Peter Nicholls

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

Panel -- Computers in SF

Charlie Stross, Bridget Wilkinson, Andrew Adams, John Dallman

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

Christina Hansen -- Farscape

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

Masquerade

Not originally timetabled, but run by popular demand

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

David Wake et al -- Tartan Restrung

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

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

Panel -- Modern Fantasy

Ian MacLeod, Cheryl Morgan, John Clute

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