Belated notes on WorldCon
Highlights -
Met lots of fun people - elorie, _starlady_ and Kevin H.
We had a orgy of KaffeeKatches - especially cool ones were with Lawrence Watt-Evans, Charlaine Harris and Elizabeth Moon.
WEDS
Saw the LOTR at the Boston Museum of Science. Really liked looking at the costumes and weaponry.
THURS
Alien Culture No No’s
Had some good reminders to me about being careful about monocultures.
- should not have culture that there is nothing to relate to
- avoid mono culture / just archetype. Even worse archetype vs. archetype
- rec reading - White Queen, Mote in God’s eye (Niven), 1st Contact / Geology (Tony Daniel)
Magic Systems
Provided lots of food for thought about how to incorporate magic usages. I had a story in mind to write about a woman who discovers she is a female sorcerer. Now I realize the I hadn’t put the least bit of thought of how the magic in her world work. Guess I got a bit of work to do for that one ;)
- power inside/outside person
- cost of magic, sacrifice of self or others
- chaotic nature / human error
- rules / conditions / limits
- magic as part of landscape
- cool alternative - diff gods give different magic to followers, power gives conflict to user
Elven Characters
Terry Pratchett makes me laugh. Despite his fandom regarding him as the “Elvis” of books, he proclaimed Neil Gaiman is the essence of cool. He and Simon R. Green shared a number of funny “Neil Gaiman is cool” stories.
- fun paraphrased quotes - “think of elves as cats”, “Orlando Bloom - Elf of the Year”, “A modern day LOTR would have a PC ‘good’ orc”, Terry Pratchett. “Elf hotties”, other female panelist
- Classic - sinister, shadowy
- weird truths - internet site about people who think they are elves
- urban elves
- parallel - elves abducting babies - aliens abduction people
- rec reading - A field guide for fairies, maze maker
Elven Glamor
Sat in on this to hear more Pratchett funnies. Not much was really discussed on this topic
- equiv of ‘Cool’ - not be bought, at ease w/ self.
- villains can have dark glamour
- cats are cool
Slipstream
Panelists had different definitions of this.
- Fiction that questions reality, magical realism,
- not just something that is two genres
- be wary of deliberately ambiguous vs muddled
- rec reading - fat white vampire, little big (Crowley)
7 Deadly Sins in SF
It’s amazing how some of the fans got off on a tangent and beat it to death. Scott W had an example where he used wheat and some folks could not get off of how they disagreed, blah, blah. Retch finally spoke up getting the subject back to general concepts, rather than picking to death a specific example (many of the audience agreed, yay).
- no lanquage gap - part of wonder is difference in language
- nazis in space
- mono culture
- Fantasy - good looks = good person
- Time base line build in
- Not economically grounded
- Good ex of establishing an alien culture - Dune, spitting on table was a sign of respect.
- rec reading - dazzle of day, rosymary (Kirstein), ester friezner, and chaos died
FRIDAY
KaffeeKlatch - Glen Cook
Had a silly experience the day before - I went to the dealer’s room to buy a book for him sign it at the klatch; I ended up getting a 2 book series from the Black Company. The lady taking my money overheard me talking to Retch about getting Glen’s autograph. She turned around and asked Glen, who happened to be in the book dealer, to sign the books. I got confused, because I wanted him to sign them after the KaffeeKlatch and told him so. So he signed one and said he can sign the other one after the KaffeeKlatch.
Anyways, he was a fun, easygoing person to klatch with and hear about his writing (Unfortunately, this was very early for me, so I just sort of absorbed his ambience in a semi-coma).
KaffeeKlatch - Charles Stross
In contrast with Glen, this was a high energy klatch, with lots of stuff being tossed. I was still in my morning coma, but he was really interesting to listen to.
Reading - Charles Stross
Very enjoyable. The short story he read as that of a child’s perspective and he had the perfect voice and intonations for it.
Reading - Elizabeth Moon
Aside being a very fun excerpt from her next novel, I was fascinated by how she was able to evoke a very good visual setting w/ a minimum of words
The New Recycling Universe
The speaker was great - he’s the tech writer from Analog. Did a marvelous job of explaining the subject. However, the room was too well air-conditioned and I got very cold and sad. I skipped the next session in the same room, because I needed to warm up.
KaffeeKlatch - S.M. Stirling
Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, I can not remember what he looked like. But I did write down his advice to writers - delete the games off your computer.
Drunk on Tech
- gadgets driven by marketing
- all devices will become one device
- killer app - effective spam filter
- rec reading - emotional design, computergeek.com
- in some state, queen bees are a legal entity
Technobabble
Pretty good - will probably use the idea of retro names in some of my scifi.
- have some consistency, but actual language does have some inconsistencies
- retro names can imply other tech, i.e. ground cars, snail mail
- dated - radio sled
- be wary that some current terms may don’t take - abscam
Art show
Neat stuff to look at. Makes me what to try doing some stuff. Would love to do some sci fi crochet blanket - thinking up unworldly patterns out of unusually materials would be fun for me. Sigh, I need to retire to get to some of the these art project a try.
Retro Hugos
Lots of fun to hear about interviews about what the old stuff was.
Party Scene
We checked out some parties, but my poor body was tired, hungry and cold. We went home early, and I immediate snuck under the bed covers to try to restore my body warmth. Yay, warm at last.
SATURDAY
Warrior Women
We were late for this, but here’s the crumbs I got
- Warrior - disciplinary system internal, vs soldier - external
- Turning point - when will violence happen
- Warrior - mission, way of life, ethics, possibility of violence, physical toughness
- rec reading - three came home
Paranormal Romance
- Romance = women deserve to be emotionally fulfilled
- Paranormal - problems are paranormal / scifi, but same emotional problems
- Romance requirements - happy ending, fairly monogamous ending
- Sources - rwaonline.org - contests final entries are judged publishers
- Sfrom newsletter - sapphire awards
If Rome
- Stability, unifying, roadbuilders -> well connected -> easy to spread word
- Cliché - so much the same as old Rome
- rec reading - dragon waiting, child of the eagle
Tough Love for starting writer
The panel made the interesting point that being published would not necessarily make you happy.
- Most common: Write a lot -> not get published -> die
- Too much exposition
- When people nit-pick a section of your writing - could be that they are just bored
- Fanfic can show good writing
Post Capitalism
- possibilities - gift, prestige,
- a small edge can lead to a big advantage
- post scarcity society, when everybody has enough
- post labor society, post meaning
When we were walking out of this session, retch saw mearls and started talking to him. While we were talking about Exallted, a wandering fan, elorie jumped in. Turns out she is a gamer, too. We had lots of fun talking about gaming and writing. She told me about her RIMANEMO experience, which sounded really fun to do. We went to do the voting. Met up with her roommate Mary. Had a yummy dinner at the Chile Duck, and then went to the Hugos together.
Party Scene
Elorie invited us along to Benji’s Graduation party and we also got to hear lots of a capella singing. We were pretty wrecked so we called it a night early.
MON
Truly Alien Societies
Stan Schmidt was fun to listen to.
- cool paraphrased quotes - “…story about cannabilism… don’t worry, its in handled tastefully”, Stan Schmidt
- Come from - avoid harm, social survival, depends on physiology, reproduction, lifespan
- Rules have limits of not being universal
- Time lag - solutions for yesterday’s problems
- Alien - could have similar conflicts
JumpStarts
Got lots in ideas and inspiration from this session ;)
- type stream of consciousness - even it is about what you want to write
- Drafts - 1) down draft / trashcan 2) updraft 3) dental draft, do polishing here
- Muse - boys in basement, personify
- “Leap and the net will appear”
- Setting Goal - measureable, timeline, yummy, role mode
- Write to music that matches what you are writing
- Repetitive physical exercise can loosen imagination
- Nanorimo.com
- Block - can be something is wrong w/ your plot. Write you are afraid of, talk w/ characters
- Don’t wait to write until you think an idea is good enough
- Should have 5-10 manuscripts in circulation - looks good to publisher that you do more than one novel
- Hours - Pros do NOT wait until the “best hours”, write when you can
- Write setup - make sure comfortable
Mystery
Was late, but here’s what what I got out of it
- body on first page
- clues visible - invisible, in background, in as few words as possible
- strip tease w/ a fan, concealment, distraction
- don’t tell the whole truth, or tell it in a distorted way as not be recognizable
- plotting 1 - big overview
- plotting 2 - 3-5 page treatment
- Genius is in the rewrite
ChickPunk
- traits - subversive, independent, adaptive, skilled, positive attitude
- simple wants - free, happy, survive
- rec reading - the scar
Hitting the wall
- general obstacles - ex. Airplanes are have gone much faster in the last 30 years, economic, environmental
- natural / computative
- chosen
- maze, complexity
- resource, time
How do you know you are dead
cool paraphrased quotes - “…undead getting exploited… will get Unions for Dead… hence the term ‘working stiff’”, Terry Pratchett. “I want a proper coffin, one where I can get out and shamble”, :…when shopping for coffin, salesman mentioned many pick one to match home furniture… I have slat furniture, I would be oozing out of the slots”, Connie Willis. “… was in show, wanted to come out of coffin. First revelvation was it was comfy. As lid was closing, smelt formadedye fumes. Part of me was saying ‘cool’, but a tiny voice inside was going ‘let me out, let me out’”, “good part about writing about the afterlife is no one can really contradict you”, N.G.
party hopping
- Suited up elorie.This was easily a two hand maiden task, so luckily retch was there. _starlady_ in her fairy dress of gold was our party beacon of light. Our night’s wandering reminded me of a Burning Man night where we kept following our party leader (who was carrying a blue l-wire staff) though a dust storm.
- Talked to Kevin.
Met lots of fun people - elorie, _starlady_ and Kevin H.
We had a orgy of KaffeeKatches - especially cool ones were with Lawrence Watt-Evans, Charlaine Harris and Elizabeth Moon.
WEDS
Saw the LOTR at the Boston Museum of Science. Really liked looking at the costumes and weaponry.
THURS
Alien Culture No No’s
Had some good reminders to me about being careful about monocultures.
- should not have culture that there is nothing to relate to
- avoid mono culture / just archetype. Even worse archetype vs. archetype
- rec reading - White Queen, Mote in God’s eye (Niven), 1st Contact / Geology (Tony Daniel)
Magic Systems
Provided lots of food for thought about how to incorporate magic usages. I had a story in mind to write about a woman who discovers she is a female sorcerer. Now I realize the I hadn’t put the least bit of thought of how the magic in her world work. Guess I got a bit of work to do for that one ;)
- power inside/outside person
- cost of magic, sacrifice of self or others
- chaotic nature / human error
- rules / conditions / limits
- magic as part of landscape
- cool alternative - diff gods give different magic to followers, power gives conflict to user
Elven Characters
Terry Pratchett makes me laugh. Despite his fandom regarding him as the “Elvis” of books, he proclaimed Neil Gaiman is the essence of cool. He and Simon R. Green shared a number of funny “Neil Gaiman is cool” stories.
- fun paraphrased quotes - “think of elves as cats”, “Orlando Bloom - Elf of the Year”, “A modern day LOTR would have a PC ‘good’ orc”, Terry Pratchett. “Elf hotties”, other female panelist
- Classic - sinister, shadowy
- weird truths - internet site about people who think they are elves
- urban elves
- parallel - elves abducting babies - aliens abduction people
- rec reading - A field guide for fairies, maze maker
Elven Glamor
Sat in on this to hear more Pratchett funnies. Not much was really discussed on this topic
- equiv of ‘Cool’ - not be bought, at ease w/ self.
- villains can have dark glamour
- cats are cool
Slipstream
Panelists had different definitions of this.
- Fiction that questions reality, magical realism,
- not just something that is two genres
- be wary of deliberately ambiguous vs muddled
- rec reading - fat white vampire, little big (Crowley)
7 Deadly Sins in SF
It’s amazing how some of the fans got off on a tangent and beat it to death. Scott W had an example where he used wheat and some folks could not get off of how they disagreed, blah, blah. Retch finally spoke up getting the subject back to general concepts, rather than picking to death a specific example (many of the audience agreed, yay).
- no lanquage gap - part of wonder is difference in language
- nazis in space
- mono culture
- Fantasy - good looks = good person
- Time base line build in
- Not economically grounded
- Good ex of establishing an alien culture - Dune, spitting on table was a sign of respect.
- rec reading - dazzle of day, rosymary (Kirstein), ester friezner, and chaos died
FRIDAY
KaffeeKlatch - Glen Cook
Had a silly experience the day before - I went to the dealer’s room to buy a book for him sign it at the klatch; I ended up getting a 2 book series from the Black Company. The lady taking my money overheard me talking to Retch about getting Glen’s autograph. She turned around and asked Glen, who happened to be in the book dealer, to sign the books. I got confused, because I wanted him to sign them after the KaffeeKlatch and told him so. So he signed one and said he can sign the other one after the KaffeeKlatch.
Anyways, he was a fun, easygoing person to klatch with and hear about his writing (Unfortunately, this was very early for me, so I just sort of absorbed his ambience in a semi-coma).
KaffeeKlatch - Charles Stross
In contrast with Glen, this was a high energy klatch, with lots of stuff being tossed. I was still in my morning coma, but he was really interesting to listen to.
Reading - Charles Stross
Very enjoyable. The short story he read as that of a child’s perspective and he had the perfect voice and intonations for it.
Reading - Elizabeth Moon
Aside being a very fun excerpt from her next novel, I was fascinated by how she was able to evoke a very good visual setting w/ a minimum of words
The New Recycling Universe
The speaker was great - he’s the tech writer from Analog. Did a marvelous job of explaining the subject. However, the room was too well air-conditioned and I got very cold and sad. I skipped the next session in the same room, because I needed to warm up.
KaffeeKlatch - S.M. Stirling
Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, I can not remember what he looked like. But I did write down his advice to writers - delete the games off your computer.
Drunk on Tech
- gadgets driven by marketing
- all devices will become one device
- killer app - effective spam filter
- rec reading - emotional design, computergeek.com
- in some state, queen bees are a legal entity
Technobabble
Pretty good - will probably use the idea of retro names in some of my scifi.
- have some consistency, but actual language does have some inconsistencies
- retro names can imply other tech, i.e. ground cars, snail mail
- dated - radio sled
- be wary that some current terms may don’t take - abscam
Art show
Neat stuff to look at. Makes me what to try doing some stuff. Would love to do some sci fi crochet blanket - thinking up unworldly patterns out of unusually materials would be fun for me. Sigh, I need to retire to get to some of the these art project a try.
Retro Hugos
Lots of fun to hear about interviews about what the old stuff was.
Party Scene
We checked out some parties, but my poor body was tired, hungry and cold. We went home early, and I immediate snuck under the bed covers to try to restore my body warmth. Yay, warm at last.
SATURDAY
Warrior Women
We were late for this, but here’s the crumbs I got
- Warrior - disciplinary system internal, vs soldier - external
- Turning point - when will violence happen
- Warrior - mission, way of life, ethics, possibility of violence, physical toughness
- rec reading - three came home
Paranormal Romance
- Romance = women deserve to be emotionally fulfilled
- Paranormal - problems are paranormal / scifi, but same emotional problems
- Romance requirements - happy ending, fairly monogamous ending
- Sources - rwaonline.org - contests final entries are judged publishers
- Sfrom newsletter - sapphire awards
If Rome
- Stability, unifying, roadbuilders -> well connected -> easy to spread word
- Cliché - so much the same as old Rome
- rec reading - dragon waiting, child of the eagle
Tough Love for starting writer
The panel made the interesting point that being published would not necessarily make you happy.
- Most common: Write a lot -> not get published -> die
- Too much exposition
- When people nit-pick a section of your writing - could be that they are just bored
- Fanfic can show good writing
Post Capitalism
- possibilities - gift, prestige,
- a small edge can lead to a big advantage
- post scarcity society, when everybody has enough
- post labor society, post meaning
When we were walking out of this session, retch saw mearls and started talking to him. While we were talking about Exallted, a wandering fan, elorie jumped in. Turns out she is a gamer, too. We had lots of fun talking about gaming and writing. She told me about her RIMANEMO experience, which sounded really fun to do. We went to do the voting. Met up with her roommate Mary. Had a yummy dinner at the Chile Duck, and then went to the Hugos together.
Party Scene
Elorie invited us along to Benji’s Graduation party and we also got to hear lots of a capella singing. We were pretty wrecked so we called it a night early.
MON
Truly Alien Societies
Stan Schmidt was fun to listen to.
- cool paraphrased quotes - “…story about cannabilism… don’t worry, its in handled tastefully”, Stan Schmidt
- Come from - avoid harm, social survival, depends on physiology, reproduction, lifespan
- Rules have limits of not being universal
- Time lag - solutions for yesterday’s problems
- Alien - could have similar conflicts
JumpStarts
Got lots in ideas and inspiration from this session ;)
- type stream of consciousness - even it is about what you want to write
- Drafts - 1) down draft / trashcan 2) updraft 3) dental draft, do polishing here
- Muse - boys in basement, personify
- “Leap and the net will appear”
- Setting Goal - measureable, timeline, yummy, role mode
- Write to music that matches what you are writing
- Repetitive physical exercise can loosen imagination
- Nanorimo.com
- Block - can be something is wrong w/ your plot. Write you are afraid of, talk w/ characters
- Don’t wait to write until you think an idea is good enough
- Should have 5-10 manuscripts in circulation - looks good to publisher that you do more than one novel
- Hours - Pros do NOT wait until the “best hours”, write when you can
- Write setup - make sure comfortable
Mystery
Was late, but here’s what what I got out of it
- body on first page
- clues visible - invisible, in background, in as few words as possible
- strip tease w/ a fan, concealment, distraction
- don’t tell the whole truth, or tell it in a distorted way as not be recognizable
- plotting 1 - big overview
- plotting 2 - 3-5 page treatment
- Genius is in the rewrite
ChickPunk
- traits - subversive, independent, adaptive, skilled, positive attitude
- simple wants - free, happy, survive
- rec reading - the scar
Hitting the wall
- general obstacles - ex. Airplanes are have gone much faster in the last 30 years, economic, environmental
- natural / computative
- chosen
- maze, complexity
- resource, time
How do you know you are dead
cool paraphrased quotes - “…undead getting exploited… will get Unions for Dead… hence the term ‘working stiff’”, Terry Pratchett. “I want a proper coffin, one where I can get out and shamble”, :…when shopping for coffin, salesman mentioned many pick one to match home furniture… I have slat furniture, I would be oozing out of the slots”, Connie Willis. “… was in show, wanted to come out of coffin. First revelvation was it was comfy. As lid was closing, smelt formadedye fumes. Part of me was saying ‘cool’, but a tiny voice inside was going ‘let me out, let me out’”, “good part about writing about the afterlife is no one can really contradict you”, N.G.
party hopping
- Suited up elorie.This was easily a two hand maiden task, so luckily retch was there. _starlady_ in her fairy dress of gold was our party beacon of light. Our night’s wandering reminded me of a Burning Man night where we kept following our party leader (who was carrying a blue l-wire staff) though a dust storm.
- Talked to Kevin.