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So, we went to Boskone.
Friday
We were on the road by noon, and at the convention by about 6 pm, with a stop for food at a diner called Athena II. The waitress was nice, though she did make the mistake of saying, "On your knees!" when Kaz, with a plaintive expression, held out his coffee cup for a refill. He olbiged, following her a few steps.
We checked in with no problem, switching to a room with a king, since we did not have anyone else sharing, and getting extended checkout time, till 4 pm. Then, we registered for the convention, and I saw that the dealers' room had nice Friday hours, 5 pm - 8 pm. The art show theoretically opened around 8pm, I think, but in practice, opened around 10 pm, with astonishing snacks.
Kaz parked the car in a lot on 391 Congress Street, listed by the con website as having a $9 daily rate. This turned out to mean "$9 for 12 hours, but $24 for 24 hours". If we'd known that, we would have parked in the hotel's lot for three bucks more. But, the only place this information was printed was on the sign in the lot visible only when driving one's car out of the lot. Kaz only learned this on Sunday, whereupon he asked for the appropriate information to the Better Business Bureau. The woman working the booth said that the information and the BBB's number was printed on the back of his receipt, because this lot got that kind of reaction all the time. This probably means that the BBB won't do anything, but one can hope. At the very least, we want to let folks know about this.
The convention itself was good. David Weber was the guest of honor, which, I understand, had something to do with the Death to Peeps Fun Fest in the con suite. Marshmellow peeps were drowned, beheaded, deep fried, electrocuted, and otherwise subjected to horrible fates. Some were even shaped like Cthulhu.
The con suite, art show, and dealers' room are all in the same huge space, and one can see from one end to the other. This is neat. It also means I actually remember to visit the art show at least once during the convention.
First, though, we went to the dealers' room, where NESFA was having a sale on "damaged" books. The definition of "damaged" was very broad, so we purchased the Zenna Henderson collection of The People stories and Anthony Boucher's collection, neither of which looked seriously damaged to us. Well, the Henderson book was a little dinged, I guess. And the Boucher had one signature sewn a bit unevenly.
At 8 pm, we went to the concert of the Funny Things, aka Merav Hoffman and Batya Wittenberg. After that, Josh went to the memorial filking circle for Greg McMullan, while I went to the panel on writing erotica. I've had a request to transcribe my notes, which will put my ability to read my own handwriting to the test, but, in summary:
The panelists were Darlene Marshall (moderating), Beth Bernobich, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and Cecilia Tan. They and we will all be quite grateful if we never hear phrases about anyone's "throbbing manhood" or about breasts being like any sort of melons.
Cecelia does not want to see a story about two vampires meeting in a bar. Or about a vampire meeting someone else in a bar. In fact, ditch the bar. She also doesn't want alien abductions or treaties between humans and aliens that have to be sealed with sex. As she said, Babylon 5 made fun of this precisely because it was a tired cliche.
Porn for women can include, "Let me do the dishes for you."
It may be a gender bias, but all pretty much agreed that in erotica, as opposed to porn, the sex scenes are necessary to the plot, and reveal character. In other words, it would damage the story if the sex were left behind closed doors.
Sex scenes are like any other action scene. They require specific language, much as a swordfight scene does. Blocking is important to both. So is a certain amount of description -- if the audience expects a climactic sword fight, saying, "So, he drew his sword and killed the other guy" is a let down.
If you write a sex scene, you will be bored by it when you read it for the fifteenth time, like, say, in galley proofs. But, if you're not turned on by it the first time you write it, you're not doing it right.
Odds are that no sex scene, however good, will appeal to everyone on the planet.
Pulling off androgyny or a hermaphrodite is tricky.
There's an interesting offspring of romance for the Christian market, where a man, a woman, and God all have to have a prominent role in the story, and this is very tricky to write well, and not just because one is barred from having actual sex. That said, a good example of this is Redeeming Love, by Francine Rivers.
Jacqueline Carey has little actual sex in the first Kushiel trilogy, but there is a lot of build up to the sex scenes that are there. All of the sex scenes are important to the plot, and the, ah, foreplay of the build up is important.
Other book recommendations: Leather Daddy and the Femme by Carol Queen, and The Joy of Writing Sex by Elizabeth Benedict.
After the panel, I asked Teresa about Mike Ford's works. She looked at my printout of the questions from my blog, and wrote down what answers she could remember, and referred me to Elise. Then, I went to the con suite, where the really impressive snacks were being served -- lots of chocolates, cakes, and sweets. I let Josh know about these, and he joined me. Then, the band started to play.
The band was The Sonic Explosion. This is the same band from last year, where we danced to their rendition of the Darth Vader theme music. I forget all of the stuff we danced to -- at least two swingy numbers, including the Cantina music, and something Greek, with 9 beats. We like the band. The band likes us. The band can outplay us. Josh explained that the musicians generally can outlast the dancers. Fortunately, there was gatorade in the con suite.
We still had enough energy to drop by the parties, as they were on the same floor as our room, and to go filking. We lasted as long as the filk did. Josh would have gone gaming after that, but the game room was closed. I found a black shawl / wrap / throw that someone had left behind. The general consensus was that I should take it, but rather than bring it to the lost and found, bring it to the filk on Saturday.
Saturday
I was up in time to do a bit of browsing in the dealers' room and art show, and to grab an egg and a croissant at the con suite.
Then, I went to A Universally Acknowledged Truth, a panel on Jane Austen. Amusingly, 75% of the panelists from the erotica panel were on this one. Again, in summary:
The panelists were Darlene Marshall, Beth Bernovich, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Esther Freisner, and Beth Meacham (moderating).
Jane Austen is a writer's writer, who, at thirteen, crafted the amazing sentence "We fainted alternately on the sofa." Too many people are force fed her in high school, and so learn to despise her. The movie Clueless is actually really useful in making Austen accessible. I was comparatively lucky, having not been made to read Pride and Prejudice in high school (and I still need to read it), but rather, reading Emma in the college lit class I took voluntarily. The following year, I was in an honors lit class in college, where Castle of Otranto and Northanger Abbey were both on the carefully crafted reading list.
A discussion on these works had the panelists suggesting The Otranto Witch Project or The House of Usher Witch Project.
Austen is often praised for her world building, though Beth Meachum noted that she wasn't creating a world so much as recording it carefully. She's very good at explaining, even though she's writing for her own age. It's a view of a society at war, but where the war plays a very small part in the novels.
Austen is buried in Winchester Cathedral. There is no mention on the stone on the floor that she is an author, because her family was ashamed of that. But, the American Jane Austen Society put up an inscription on the wall beside it, trumpeting this to the world.
Austen would probably not have been as popular if the Prince of Wales hadn't said he enjoyed her work. This was kind of like Ronald Reagan saying he liked The Hunt for Red October. Clancy's stock went through the roof.
Esther: Oh my God, the Prince of Wales is Oprah!
Darlene: Except with more spending money.
Greer Gilman: And weight problems.
There was discussion about who read at that time, and what it meant to have the leisure to read. Many people in America did not want women reading, because they didn't want a class of women who did nothing but read novels. There was also some fear that servants would read them, as servants in America were more likely to be literate. And, if they read novels, they might slack off or get ideas above their station.
Roberta Rogow mentioned something -- I think my notes say "Story Paper" -- that Louisa May Alcott wrote for. This was literature for women in America, and it was cheap. Fred Lerner said that periodicals qualified for a cheaper postal rate.
Teresa: Distribution always matters.
Fred explained the whole network here -- the new technology that made cheaper paper, canals and railways.
Rudyard Kipling, himself an influence on many sf authors, was a fan of Jane Austen and wrote a story called "The Janeites", which I really must look up. I need to read more Kipling, as well as more Austen.
Henry James is, in a way, Austen's literary child.
Darlene: If you think science fiction is low on the food chain, look at historical romance. We really are the pondscum of authors. "When will you write a real novel?
Literature that is popular among women historically has been denigrated, put down, and sermonized against. It "gives women unrealistic expectations".
Esther, I think, cited, in disgust, the Valentine's Day commercials, clearly raising so much more realistic expectations. That's sarcasm there.
She said she felt sorry for the poor guys watching these, with the men in commericals reserving entire movie theaters, inviting everyone their wives ever knew -- the sort of thing that your average guy really can't afford.
And, of course, when a man writes the same sort of book that women are criticized for writing, well, that's Literature, with a proper roll of the "r"s. Bridges of Madison County may have been greeted with contempt, but it was turned into a movie, and, as Esther said, "Someone is paying an awful lot of money for this contempt."
On the other hand, men writing in the romance field do need to use a woman's name, just as women used to have to use a man's name, or initials, when writing sf.
Greer: Like J. R. R. Tolkien.
There is an erotica house reissue of Jane Austen fan fiction porn, illustrated. The characters from Pride and Prejudice (I think) go off to Venice and have adventures. There are also mystery novels with the characters, and with "weird woo-woo elements".
There are also gay regency novels, written in something the panelists called "high lavender style". Teresa said that someone should get folks to annotate these before everyone who can is dead.
There was some discussion of whether society's roles have out-evolved Austen. Teresa said that societal roles are not evolving nearly fast enough.
There was also discussion of a movie called Bride and Prejudice. Apparently, the opening number is a song about money, and was originally translated as such, but when Teresa saw it, the dubbing had been changed so that it was about marriage.
There are two versions of the movie version of Pride and Prejudice that stars Keira Knightley. The UK version ends with the two leads agreeing to marry, as, I understand, the book did. The USA version adds a scene that shows them on their honeymoon, apparently on the grounds that USAns need that to be convinced that the couple really will wed.
Then again, one of Esther's daughters came back from the movie version of Romeo and Juliet with Leonardi di Caprio, saying that a friend with whom she had seen it had said, "This is great! I hope it has a happy ending!"
After the panel, I went to Seanan McGuire's concert. I was running a bit late, so I'm grateful to the Sound Check That Would Not Die, as it allowed me to get there in time. Josh and I danced to a lot of the songs. Seanan talked about her new album, and about how her song about the Black Death is the second most popular song with kids. The most popular is "Evil Laugh", which caused an Incident when one youngster organized her friends to perform it for her class.
After the concert, I asked if anyone knew whose shawl I had. No one did, though Peter Ellis suggested checking with Maya. It was hers, and I was able to return it a couple of hours later.
At 1 pm, I went to Bringing Elfland to Poughkeepsie, with S. C. Butler (moderating), Jane Yolen, Wen Spencer, and Paul Park. Paul hadn't actually read Le Guin's essay, but summarized it well anyway.
The panelists thought that the essay might be a bit dated. I thought that what they were saying was basically what Le Guin was saying: Be mindful of your language because the wrong words can kill a story, while the right ones make the difference between a good story and a great one. S. C. Butler explained that what they thought was dated was Le Guin's idea that Elfland and Poughkeepsie can't meet.
Again, I'm not sure there's a contradiction. Le Guin was talking about the high fantasy of her day, and I very much doubt she would have objected to, say, Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter if it had existed when she wrote the essay.
Jane said that the high rise city is the modern substitute for the dark forest.
Wen said that the humans in the Borderlands books didn't read as human to her, since humans don't avoid dangerous places. They send in probes and robots to the bottom of the sea and other dangerous places.
They also noted that we can now have anti-heroes and more complicated characters than in the fantasy Le Guin was discussing. I think that's potentially missing a point about goodness that Harold Feld likes to make, but the panel wasn't about good and evil. I was going to say that there are kinds of psychological character studies we wouldn't have seen in fiction from as recent as the late 19th or early 20th century, but I don't think even that is true. The rhetoric might have been different, but people didn't suddenly wake up a few decades ago and realize how complicated humans are.
Books mentioned included Wen's Tinker, which I have, and its sequel, set, I think, a couple of decades later, Paul's books set in a sort of alternate 1890s (I have the first two, I think), Jane's various books set in Scotland, S. C. Butler's Reiffen's Choice and Queen Ferris, Megan Lindholm's Wizard of the Pigeons, Emma Bull's Bone Dance, George R. R. Martin's books, Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, E. R. Eddison's books, and Lovecraft, who occasionally wrote as if imitating himself. The movie A Knight's Tale was mentioned as well.
Two authors who might have been mentioned, but weren't, are John M. Ford, who did magic with language, and Carla Speed McNeil, who does excellent world building with the Finder graphic novels, dropping one into the middle of the world, much as, I gather, A Clockwork Orange does.
In my arrogant opinion, Connecticut Yankee is a good example of mixing Elfland and Poughkeepsie, but one does need to bear in mind that the narrator is two people fused together -- Hank Morgan, who isn't a very nice person, and Mark Twain, who is making sharp social comments that Morgan just wouldn't see.
At 3 pm, I went to The Glamor of Elfland, with Judith Berman, Jane Jewell, Jane Yolen, and Lawrence Watt Evans. The discussion was about elves as Nazi ubermenschen, or homo superior, Aaron suggested that the Vulcans were elves, with the Romulans as the Unseelie. On the way back home, I thought that perhaps the people of Liaden were the elves.
There's no consistency to how elves are portrayed in literature, but they're often either just so much cooler than we are, or they do their best to project the illusion that they're so much better than we are, as in Kij Johnson's The Fox Wife or the tale of the human woman who was a midwife to the faeries, seeing them as grand lords and ladies in a marvelous palace, until she got some magical ointment in her eye. Then, she saw them as they were: shrivelled, bedraggled creatures huddling under the roots of a tree. Lawrence thought that Terry Prachett got it right in Lords and Ladies, where the elves are parasites who convince everyone that they deserve all manner of good things.
He also asked about a revolution in elfland, citing Steven Brust's Vlad cycle, and noting that when the Teckla come out on top, there's a republic, but it never lasts. I mentioned Pamela Dean's Steel Rose.
Lawrence said that elves are amoral. They don't have the same good-evil scale we do. They have rules, but their rules are not our rules.
Elves are the Other. They are not dissimilar to vampires, who were originally walking corpses with fetid breath, not sexy romantic heroes.
Teresa noted that in early works, whether print or film, the monster is often the only one free to act. We tend to sympathize with the person we're following, and no one else is doing anything.
In theory, Tolkien's orcs, who are corrupted elves, are redeemable, but as we don't see any orc being redeemed, this doesn't signify much. Somehow, monarchy has a glamor all its own.
Authority persists in the family. All kids want to be kings and queens -- well, princes and princesses, where they have authority, but no responsibility.
The desire for stability gives fantasy works kingdoms that have stood unchanged for ten thousand years.
Other works mentioned include: Machen's works, Lovecraft's, Wells' with the Eloi and the Morlocks, Serrated Edge, Pan's Labyrinth. Holly Black's works, "Except the Queen" by Jane Yolen and Midori Snyder (I think they're expanding it), Stardust, and the Borderlands books. Teresa said one of the things she loves about those is that the elves are susceptible to human glamor, such as the glamor of old movies.
Lawrence said to be aware that if you use the word "elf", there's a lot of baggage attached to it.
After this panel, I took a nap, then made the panel on Bruce Coville, the Special Guest. He has written many, many YA novels, and I have read none of his work. The panelists were Sarah Beth Durst, Tamora Pierce, Mary Ellen Wessels, and Jane Yolen. MEW was asked to speak into the microphone, and this lead to the discovery that each panelist had her own microphone. This, in turn, led to an impromptu doo-wop number.
I heard a bunch of stories about Bruce, jotted down several titles, and went to the dealers' room and bought a few books.
Bruce: So, you have a stack for me to sign?
Me: Um... it seems so.
Bruce: Who do you want me to sign them to?
Me: Lisa.
Bruce: Anyone else?
Me: Um, sure, Josh. I'll let him read them.
Bruce: How old is he?
Me: Oh, um, a couple of years younger than I am.
Perfectly logical question, really. I was a bit out of it.
I found Josh in the Game Room, talking to Christopher (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ckd), so we all went to dinner in Chinatown. We ate at Imperial Palace, which seves dim sum until 9 pm. It was very good dim sum.
When we got back, Josh and I dropped off our coats and party crawled. I was able to ask Jim Macdonald my safety question:
So, Josh and I flew to Columbus last year, for Origins, and got into a cab. The driver started driving at once, and we were on the highway by the time I realized the my seatbelt didn't work. Regardless of whether I'd be a wuss or sensible enough to leave the cab under other circumstances, getting out in the middle of a highway was not an option. What do I do to up my odds of survival?
Answer: Hope that nothing happens this time.
This was, in fact, what I did. Fortune smiled on us.
I was also able to ask Elise my questions about The Last Hot Time and Growing Up Weightless. She was able to answer the important stuff, and the rest -- well, yeah, I'd like to know, but it isn't really important. And, as someone pointed out to me, if no one I've been asking knows the answers, I'm probably not being dimwitted.
Then, we got down to the filking. Seanan sang a remarkable song that turned out to be a prequel to another song. Batya sang one of the two songs she wrote about Stephen King's Dark Tower series and her song about some guy named Gabriel from some series called Heroes. (Okay, I've heard of the series.) The songs were serious. Her accounting of the dialogue between her and her brain, which was determined that she should write the Gabriel song, was not.
I'd already done "Kingdom of the Mice" on Friday, so I decided to risk first "Taglio" and then "Sorrow's Song". Merav said I did a good job, and Josh confirmed that, not only was I on key, I kept other people on some key or other, and, as importantly, on tune for "Taglio". He, Ben Newman, BDen, and I did "Falling Free", and I was able to remove my hand from my ear for several notes at a time without falling off my part.
We got to bed around 4 am.
Sunday
The plan I had was to wake up in time for a 10 am panel. I decided that I could miss it, and I'd make the noon thing.
We woke up at 12:15. Josh made the second half of the Lady Mondegreen children's concert. I made the second half of What You Should Be Reading: Young Turks Division with Gregory Feeley, David Hartwell (moderating), Fred Lerner, and Farah Mendelsohn.
Summary: Look online. Read short fiction. Lots of short fiction is available online for free. The limiting factor is how much free time you have.
I took down a bunch of names, some of whom will only be available via something like Amazon. I learned that we do not share a book market with Australia and that Garth Nix also writes adult fiction.
At 1 pm, Josh and I packed, as I figured I needed that more than to make the Flashman panel. At 2 pm, I went to Immortal Longings: Chasing Literary Fame That Lasts with Bruce Coville, Bob Devney (moderating), David Hartwell, Elise Matthesen, and Farah Mendelsohn.
Bob explained that the question was, "After we're dead, what?" and that the only impermissible answer was "Who cares?"
Farah said, "I'm a critic, so I get to decide."
Guesses / hopes included: Joanna Russ, Mike Ford, Neil Gaiman, Tamora Pierce, and Avram Davidson.
Dying is not recommended! Empirical testing -- literarlly measuring shelf space in bookstores during the 1980s -- revealed that there may be a slight increase in sales right after one's death, but then, sales gradually diminish. Rarely, the trend reverses.
Scholastic learned to sell directly to children. A lot of literary journals don't review paperbacks, including Horn, which considers itself an authority on children's fiction.
If your work goes direct to dvd, it's much more likely to be a closer adaptation of your book than if your work is made into a movie.
A small sample size indicates that the trues a movie is to its book, the better it does. The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies did very well, whereas The Golden Compass and the movie version of The Dark is Rising did not.
A lot of other things were discussed there, but it's now almost 2 am.
After the panel ended, Josh and I brought our luggage down to the dead dog filk. Batya did her second Dark Tower filk, and when I asked if it were worth reading all the verbiage, she suggested I start with volume 2, and then go back to volume 1. I may well do this. It has worked when I inadvertantly did it for certain manga series, such as Cantarella and Sanctuary.
Kaz got us on the road by about a quarter to 5 pm. We ate at the same diner. Josh and I were home by 10 pm, Beth somewhat earlier, Kaz presumably not too much later.
Edit: The Chinese restaurant is Empire Garden. Imperial Palace is a card in Feng Shui.
Also, I forgot an amusing incident at the Saturday night filk: Jordan recited a piece about hyenas on a college campus, the upshot of which was that they were trapped in some room in some building on campus.
Someone: So, are the hyenas undergraduates or graduates?
Me: Who cares, as long as they pay their tuition?
They said I won.
Me: Won what??
Josh: You won the filk!
Friday
We were on the road by noon, and at the convention by about 6 pm, with a stop for food at a diner called Athena II. The waitress was nice, though she did make the mistake of saying, "On your knees!" when Kaz, with a plaintive expression, held out his coffee cup for a refill. He olbiged, following her a few steps.
We checked in with no problem, switching to a room with a king, since we did not have anyone else sharing, and getting extended checkout time, till 4 pm. Then, we registered for the convention, and I saw that the dealers' room had nice Friday hours, 5 pm - 8 pm. The art show theoretically opened around 8pm, I think, but in practice, opened around 10 pm, with astonishing snacks.
Kaz parked the car in a lot on 391 Congress Street, listed by the con website as having a $9 daily rate. This turned out to mean "$9 for 12 hours, but $24 for 24 hours". If we'd known that, we would have parked in the hotel's lot for three bucks more. But, the only place this information was printed was on the sign in the lot visible only when driving one's car out of the lot. Kaz only learned this on Sunday, whereupon he asked for the appropriate information to the Better Business Bureau. The woman working the booth said that the information and the BBB's number was printed on the back of his receipt, because this lot got that kind of reaction all the time. This probably means that the BBB won't do anything, but one can hope. At the very least, we want to let folks know about this.
The convention itself was good. David Weber was the guest of honor, which, I understand, had something to do with the Death to Peeps Fun Fest in the con suite. Marshmellow peeps were drowned, beheaded, deep fried, electrocuted, and otherwise subjected to horrible fates. Some were even shaped like Cthulhu.
The con suite, art show, and dealers' room are all in the same huge space, and one can see from one end to the other. This is neat. It also means I actually remember to visit the art show at least once during the convention.
First, though, we went to the dealers' room, where NESFA was having a sale on "damaged" books. The definition of "damaged" was very broad, so we purchased the Zenna Henderson collection of The People stories and Anthony Boucher's collection, neither of which looked seriously damaged to us. Well, the Henderson book was a little dinged, I guess. And the Boucher had one signature sewn a bit unevenly.
At 8 pm, we went to the concert of the Funny Things, aka Merav Hoffman and Batya Wittenberg. After that, Josh went to the memorial filking circle for Greg McMullan, while I went to the panel on writing erotica. I've had a request to transcribe my notes, which will put my ability to read my own handwriting to the test, but, in summary:
The panelists were Darlene Marshall (moderating), Beth Bernobich, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and Cecilia Tan. They and we will all be quite grateful if we never hear phrases about anyone's "throbbing manhood" or about breasts being like any sort of melons.
Cecelia does not want to see a story about two vampires meeting in a bar. Or about a vampire meeting someone else in a bar. In fact, ditch the bar. She also doesn't want alien abductions or treaties between humans and aliens that have to be sealed with sex. As she said, Babylon 5 made fun of this precisely because it was a tired cliche.
Porn for women can include, "Let me do the dishes for you."
It may be a gender bias, but all pretty much agreed that in erotica, as opposed to porn, the sex scenes are necessary to the plot, and reveal character. In other words, it would damage the story if the sex were left behind closed doors.
Sex scenes are like any other action scene. They require specific language, much as a swordfight scene does. Blocking is important to both. So is a certain amount of description -- if the audience expects a climactic sword fight, saying, "So, he drew his sword and killed the other guy" is a let down.
If you write a sex scene, you will be bored by it when you read it for the fifteenth time, like, say, in galley proofs. But, if you're not turned on by it the first time you write it, you're not doing it right.
Odds are that no sex scene, however good, will appeal to everyone on the planet.
Pulling off androgyny or a hermaphrodite is tricky.
There's an interesting offspring of romance for the Christian market, where a man, a woman, and God all have to have a prominent role in the story, and this is very tricky to write well, and not just because one is barred from having actual sex. That said, a good example of this is Redeeming Love, by Francine Rivers.
Jacqueline Carey has little actual sex in the first Kushiel trilogy, but there is a lot of build up to the sex scenes that are there. All of the sex scenes are important to the plot, and the, ah, foreplay of the build up is important.
Other book recommendations: Leather Daddy and the Femme by Carol Queen, and The Joy of Writing Sex by Elizabeth Benedict.
After the panel, I asked Teresa about Mike Ford's works. She looked at my printout of the questions from my blog, and wrote down what answers she could remember, and referred me to Elise. Then, I went to the con suite, where the really impressive snacks were being served -- lots of chocolates, cakes, and sweets. I let Josh know about these, and he joined me. Then, the band started to play.
The band was The Sonic Explosion. This is the same band from last year, where we danced to their rendition of the Darth Vader theme music. I forget all of the stuff we danced to -- at least two swingy numbers, including the Cantina music, and something Greek, with 9 beats. We like the band. The band likes us. The band can outplay us. Josh explained that the musicians generally can outlast the dancers. Fortunately, there was gatorade in the con suite.
We still had enough energy to drop by the parties, as they were on the same floor as our room, and to go filking. We lasted as long as the filk did. Josh would have gone gaming after that, but the game room was closed. I found a black shawl / wrap / throw that someone had left behind. The general consensus was that I should take it, but rather than bring it to the lost and found, bring it to the filk on Saturday.
Saturday
I was up in time to do a bit of browsing in the dealers' room and art show, and to grab an egg and a croissant at the con suite.
Then, I went to A Universally Acknowledged Truth, a panel on Jane Austen. Amusingly, 75% of the panelists from the erotica panel were on this one. Again, in summary:
The panelists were Darlene Marshall, Beth Bernovich, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Esther Freisner, and Beth Meacham (moderating).
Jane Austen is a writer's writer, who, at thirteen, crafted the amazing sentence "We fainted alternately on the sofa." Too many people are force fed her in high school, and so learn to despise her. The movie Clueless is actually really useful in making Austen accessible. I was comparatively lucky, having not been made to read Pride and Prejudice in high school (and I still need to read it), but rather, reading Emma in the college lit class I took voluntarily. The following year, I was in an honors lit class in college, where Castle of Otranto and Northanger Abbey were both on the carefully crafted reading list.
A discussion on these works had the panelists suggesting The Otranto Witch Project or The House of Usher Witch Project.
Austen is often praised for her world building, though Beth Meachum noted that she wasn't creating a world so much as recording it carefully. She's very good at explaining, even though she's writing for her own age. It's a view of a society at war, but where the war plays a very small part in the novels.
Austen is buried in Winchester Cathedral. There is no mention on the stone on the floor that she is an author, because her family was ashamed of that. But, the American Jane Austen Society put up an inscription on the wall beside it, trumpeting this to the world.
Austen would probably not have been as popular if the Prince of Wales hadn't said he enjoyed her work. This was kind of like Ronald Reagan saying he liked The Hunt for Red October. Clancy's stock went through the roof.
Esther: Oh my God, the Prince of Wales is Oprah!
Darlene: Except with more spending money.
Greer Gilman: And weight problems.
There was discussion about who read at that time, and what it meant to have the leisure to read. Many people in America did not want women reading, because they didn't want a class of women who did nothing but read novels. There was also some fear that servants would read them, as servants in America were more likely to be literate. And, if they read novels, they might slack off or get ideas above their station.
Roberta Rogow mentioned something -- I think my notes say "Story Paper" -- that Louisa May Alcott wrote for. This was literature for women in America, and it was cheap. Fred Lerner said that periodicals qualified for a cheaper postal rate.
Teresa: Distribution always matters.
Fred explained the whole network here -- the new technology that made cheaper paper, canals and railways.
Rudyard Kipling, himself an influence on many sf authors, was a fan of Jane Austen and wrote a story called "The Janeites", which I really must look up. I need to read more Kipling, as well as more Austen.
Henry James is, in a way, Austen's literary child.
Darlene: If you think science fiction is low on the food chain, look at historical romance. We really are the pondscum of authors. "When will you write a real novel?
Literature that is popular among women historically has been denigrated, put down, and sermonized against. It "gives women unrealistic expectations".
Esther, I think, cited, in disgust, the Valentine's Day commercials, clearly raising so much more realistic expectations. That's sarcasm there.
She said she felt sorry for the poor guys watching these, with the men in commericals reserving entire movie theaters, inviting everyone their wives ever knew -- the sort of thing that your average guy really can't afford.
And, of course, when a man writes the same sort of book that women are criticized for writing, well, that's Literature, with a proper roll of the "r"s. Bridges of Madison County may have been greeted with contempt, but it was turned into a movie, and, as Esther said, "Someone is paying an awful lot of money for this contempt."
On the other hand, men writing in the romance field do need to use a woman's name, just as women used to have to use a man's name, or initials, when writing sf.
Greer: Like J. R. R. Tolkien.
There is an erotica house reissue of Jane Austen fan fiction porn, illustrated. The characters from Pride and Prejudice (I think) go off to Venice and have adventures. There are also mystery novels with the characters, and with "weird woo-woo elements".
There are also gay regency novels, written in something the panelists called "high lavender style". Teresa said that someone should get folks to annotate these before everyone who can is dead.
There was some discussion of whether society's roles have out-evolved Austen. Teresa said that societal roles are not evolving nearly fast enough.
There was also discussion of a movie called Bride and Prejudice. Apparently, the opening number is a song about money, and was originally translated as such, but when Teresa saw it, the dubbing had been changed so that it was about marriage.
There are two versions of the movie version of Pride and Prejudice that stars Keira Knightley. The UK version ends with the two leads agreeing to marry, as, I understand, the book did. The USA version adds a scene that shows them on their honeymoon, apparently on the grounds that USAns need that to be convinced that the couple really will wed.
Then again, one of Esther's daughters came back from the movie version of Romeo and Juliet with Leonardi di Caprio, saying that a friend with whom she had seen it had said, "This is great! I hope it has a happy ending!"
After the panel, I went to Seanan McGuire's concert. I was running a bit late, so I'm grateful to the Sound Check That Would Not Die, as it allowed me to get there in time. Josh and I danced to a lot of the songs. Seanan talked about her new album, and about how her song about the Black Death is the second most popular song with kids. The most popular is "Evil Laugh", which caused an Incident when one youngster organized her friends to perform it for her class.
After the concert, I asked if anyone knew whose shawl I had. No one did, though Peter Ellis suggested checking with Maya. It was hers, and I was able to return it a couple of hours later.
At 1 pm, I went to Bringing Elfland to Poughkeepsie, with S. C. Butler (moderating), Jane Yolen, Wen Spencer, and Paul Park. Paul hadn't actually read Le Guin's essay, but summarized it well anyway.
The panelists thought that the essay might be a bit dated. I thought that what they were saying was basically what Le Guin was saying: Be mindful of your language because the wrong words can kill a story, while the right ones make the difference between a good story and a great one. S. C. Butler explained that what they thought was dated was Le Guin's idea that Elfland and Poughkeepsie can't meet.
Again, I'm not sure there's a contradiction. Le Guin was talking about the high fantasy of her day, and I very much doubt she would have objected to, say, Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter if it had existed when she wrote the essay.
Jane said that the high rise city is the modern substitute for the dark forest.
Wen said that the humans in the Borderlands books didn't read as human to her, since humans don't avoid dangerous places. They send in probes and robots to the bottom of the sea and other dangerous places.
They also noted that we can now have anti-heroes and more complicated characters than in the fantasy Le Guin was discussing. I think that's potentially missing a point about goodness that Harold Feld likes to make, but the panel wasn't about good and evil. I was going to say that there are kinds of psychological character studies we wouldn't have seen in fiction from as recent as the late 19th or early 20th century, but I don't think even that is true. The rhetoric might have been different, but people didn't suddenly wake up a few decades ago and realize how complicated humans are.
Books mentioned included Wen's Tinker, which I have, and its sequel, set, I think, a couple of decades later, Paul's books set in a sort of alternate 1890s (I have the first two, I think), Jane's various books set in Scotland, S. C. Butler's Reiffen's Choice and Queen Ferris, Megan Lindholm's Wizard of the Pigeons, Emma Bull's Bone Dance, George R. R. Martin's books, Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, E. R. Eddison's books, and Lovecraft, who occasionally wrote as if imitating himself. The movie A Knight's Tale was mentioned as well.
Two authors who might have been mentioned, but weren't, are John M. Ford, who did magic with language, and Carla Speed McNeil, who does excellent world building with the Finder graphic novels, dropping one into the middle of the world, much as, I gather, A Clockwork Orange does.
In my arrogant opinion, Connecticut Yankee is a good example of mixing Elfland and Poughkeepsie, but one does need to bear in mind that the narrator is two people fused together -- Hank Morgan, who isn't a very nice person, and Mark Twain, who is making sharp social comments that Morgan just wouldn't see.
At 3 pm, I went to The Glamor of Elfland, with Judith Berman, Jane Jewell, Jane Yolen, and Lawrence Watt Evans. The discussion was about elves as Nazi ubermenschen, or homo superior, Aaron suggested that the Vulcans were elves, with the Romulans as the Unseelie. On the way back home, I thought that perhaps the people of Liaden were the elves.
There's no consistency to how elves are portrayed in literature, but they're often either just so much cooler than we are, or they do their best to project the illusion that they're so much better than we are, as in Kij Johnson's The Fox Wife or the tale of the human woman who was a midwife to the faeries, seeing them as grand lords and ladies in a marvelous palace, until she got some magical ointment in her eye. Then, she saw them as they were: shrivelled, bedraggled creatures huddling under the roots of a tree. Lawrence thought that Terry Prachett got it right in Lords and Ladies, where the elves are parasites who convince everyone that they deserve all manner of good things.
He also asked about a revolution in elfland, citing Steven Brust's Vlad cycle, and noting that when the Teckla come out on top, there's a republic, but it never lasts. I mentioned Pamela Dean's Steel Rose.
Lawrence said that elves are amoral. They don't have the same good-evil scale we do. They have rules, but their rules are not our rules.
Elves are the Other. They are not dissimilar to vampires, who were originally walking corpses with fetid breath, not sexy romantic heroes.
Teresa noted that in early works, whether print or film, the monster is often the only one free to act. We tend to sympathize with the person we're following, and no one else is doing anything.
In theory, Tolkien's orcs, who are corrupted elves, are redeemable, but as we don't see any orc being redeemed, this doesn't signify much. Somehow, monarchy has a glamor all its own.
Authority persists in the family. All kids want to be kings and queens -- well, princes and princesses, where they have authority, but no responsibility.
The desire for stability gives fantasy works kingdoms that have stood unchanged for ten thousand years.
Other works mentioned include: Machen's works, Lovecraft's, Wells' with the Eloi and the Morlocks, Serrated Edge, Pan's Labyrinth. Holly Black's works, "Except the Queen" by Jane Yolen and Midori Snyder (I think they're expanding it), Stardust, and the Borderlands books. Teresa said one of the things she loves about those is that the elves are susceptible to human glamor, such as the glamor of old movies.
Lawrence said to be aware that if you use the word "elf", there's a lot of baggage attached to it.
After this panel, I took a nap, then made the panel on Bruce Coville, the Special Guest. He has written many, many YA novels, and I have read none of his work. The panelists were Sarah Beth Durst, Tamora Pierce, Mary Ellen Wessels, and Jane Yolen. MEW was asked to speak into the microphone, and this lead to the discovery that each panelist had her own microphone. This, in turn, led to an impromptu doo-wop number.
I heard a bunch of stories about Bruce, jotted down several titles, and went to the dealers' room and bought a few books.
Bruce: So, you have a stack for me to sign?
Me: Um... it seems so.
Bruce: Who do you want me to sign them to?
Me: Lisa.
Bruce: Anyone else?
Me: Um, sure, Josh. I'll let him read them.
Bruce: How old is he?
Me: Oh, um, a couple of years younger than I am.
Perfectly logical question, really. I was a bit out of it.
I found Josh in the Game Room, talking to Christopher (
ckd), so we all went to dinner in Chinatown. We ate at Imperial Palace, which seves dim sum until 9 pm. It was very good dim sum.When we got back, Josh and I dropped off our coats and party crawled. I was able to ask Jim Macdonald my safety question:
So, Josh and I flew to Columbus last year, for Origins, and got into a cab. The driver started driving at once, and we were on the highway by the time I realized the my seatbelt didn't work. Regardless of whether I'd be a wuss or sensible enough to leave the cab under other circumstances, getting out in the middle of a highway was not an option. What do I do to up my odds of survival?
Answer: Hope that nothing happens this time.
This was, in fact, what I did. Fortune smiled on us.
I was also able to ask Elise my questions about The Last Hot Time and Growing Up Weightless. She was able to answer the important stuff, and the rest -- well, yeah, I'd like to know, but it isn't really important. And, as someone pointed out to me, if no one I've been asking knows the answers, I'm probably not being dimwitted.
Then, we got down to the filking. Seanan sang a remarkable song that turned out to be a prequel to another song. Batya sang one of the two songs she wrote about Stephen King's Dark Tower series and her song about some guy named Gabriel from some series called Heroes. (Okay, I've heard of the series.) The songs were serious. Her accounting of the dialogue between her and her brain, which was determined that she should write the Gabriel song, was not.
I'd already done "Kingdom of the Mice" on Friday, so I decided to risk first "Taglio" and then "Sorrow's Song". Merav said I did a good job, and Josh confirmed that, not only was I on key, I kept other people on some key or other, and, as importantly, on tune for "Taglio". He, Ben Newman, BDen, and I did "Falling Free", and I was able to remove my hand from my ear for several notes at a time without falling off my part.
We got to bed around 4 am.
Sunday
The plan I had was to wake up in time for a 10 am panel. I decided that I could miss it, and I'd make the noon thing.
We woke up at 12:15. Josh made the second half of the Lady Mondegreen children's concert. I made the second half of What You Should Be Reading: Young Turks Division with Gregory Feeley, David Hartwell (moderating), Fred Lerner, and Farah Mendelsohn.
Summary: Look online. Read short fiction. Lots of short fiction is available online for free. The limiting factor is how much free time you have.
I took down a bunch of names, some of whom will only be available via something like Amazon. I learned that we do not share a book market with Australia and that Garth Nix also writes adult fiction.
At 1 pm, Josh and I packed, as I figured I needed that more than to make the Flashman panel. At 2 pm, I went to Immortal Longings: Chasing Literary Fame That Lasts with Bruce Coville, Bob Devney (moderating), David Hartwell, Elise Matthesen, and Farah Mendelsohn.
Bob explained that the question was, "After we're dead, what?" and that the only impermissible answer was "Who cares?"
Farah said, "I'm a critic, so I get to decide."
Guesses / hopes included: Joanna Russ, Mike Ford, Neil Gaiman, Tamora Pierce, and Avram Davidson.
Dying is not recommended! Empirical testing -- literarlly measuring shelf space in bookstores during the 1980s -- revealed that there may be a slight increase in sales right after one's death, but then, sales gradually diminish. Rarely, the trend reverses.
Scholastic learned to sell directly to children. A lot of literary journals don't review paperbacks, including Horn, which considers itself an authority on children's fiction.
If your work goes direct to dvd, it's much more likely to be a closer adaptation of your book than if your work is made into a movie.
A small sample size indicates that the trues a movie is to its book, the better it does. The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies did very well, whereas The Golden Compass and the movie version of The Dark is Rising did not.
A lot of other things were discussed there, but it's now almost 2 am.
After the panel ended, Josh and I brought our luggage down to the dead dog filk. Batya did her second Dark Tower filk, and when I asked if it were worth reading all the verbiage, she suggested I start with volume 2, and then go back to volume 1. I may well do this. It has worked when I inadvertantly did it for certain manga series, such as Cantarella and Sanctuary.
Kaz got us on the road by about a quarter to 5 pm. We ate at the same diner. Josh and I were home by 10 pm, Beth somewhat earlier, Kaz presumably not too much later.
Edit: The Chinese restaurant is Empire Garden. Imperial Palace is a card in Feng Shui.
Also, I forgot an amusing incident at the Saturday night filk: Jordan recited a piece about hyenas on a college campus, the upshot of which was that they were trapped in some room in some building on campus.
Someone: So, are the hyenas undergraduates or graduates?
Me: Who cares, as long as they pay their tuition?
They said I won.
Me: Won what??
Josh: You won the filk!
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