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5:30 PM: Re-telling old stories: The new fairy tales. Adam Stemple, Lisa Spangenberg (medievalist, et alia), Shanna Swendson (m) (Enchanted Ink series), Valerie Frankel
This one was a lot of fun, though I'm not sure my notes are coherent. Adam said something about James Kirk, and Lisa said that there were two different manuscript versions, and something about typos and lapses into Middle English, if I'm reading my own handwriting correctly.
Fairy tales vs tales about fairies, and just what are fairies anyway? Fortunately, these questions were merely raised, not allowed to take over the panel.
Shanna: How do fairy tales affect your work? How do you approach them and use them?
Adam: In a variety of ways. He's done urban fantasy and YA. He's done research into 17th century samurai masters. Our myths inform culture more than we think. Little Red Riding Hood, The Boy Who Cried Wolf -- We all know these.
As Jane Yolen has been called a Tool of Satan, and as Adam Stemple is her son, he is the Spawn of the Tool of Satan.
In Pay the Piper, by Adam and Jane, as Adam is a musician, he made the bad guy a promoter. The promoter sets the whole plot in motion, and then disappears from the story. In Troll Bridge, some people don't believe he took the 90 pound sculpted heads of butter from life.
Valerie fractures fairy tales. The suitor has to identify "the youngest and most beautiful of identical princesses"? This deserves to be fractured.
Lisa: Medieval texts, modern retellings. We use faerie and fairy tales to talk about things we're not comfortable with. Scholars call it a kald.
[Not sure I have the spelling correct. This dovetails with what I've heard once, about how the fair folk are called "the gentry" because, in many ways, they resemble the aristocracy, whose whims are unknowable and who are most perilous. But, it's not safe to criticize these, so we invent another group of powerful whimsical people.]
Shanna: Fracturing a fairy tale. What sounds like a great idea in a fairy tale until one looks at the implications. Would a fairy godmother really know what kind of man a modern woman should wed? To talk of uncomfortable things: Humor is used this way, too. Fractured fairy tales combine the two.
Valerie: And it's interesting to see how the Grimm Brothers get cleaned up. Incest and parental abandonment are changed, but not violence.
[And, Josh tells me, in stories where the pigs don't kill the big bad wolf, because the violence is cleaned up, kids are scared, because that means the wolf is still out there.]
Adam: Interesting to see what gets cleaned up. E.g., Gilgamesh makes no sense.
Lisa: You're supposed to drink beer when reading it.
Shanna: If the kids will starve anyway, there is a logic to the abandonment.
Valerie: And the step family, competing for resources. 13 year old girls marrying men who had two previous wives.
Adam: Jane Yolen on Rumplestilskin as Jew -- the funny looking man who can make gold and who wants to steal the baby. Chilling.
Shanna: The youngest son triumphs. Inheritance laws leave him to fend for himself, often having no choice but to go into the military or priesthood. He must survive on his wits.
"If I just do the right thing, I will end up better than my older brothers." Likes the story of an ordinary person triumphing though cleverness, wit, kindness. This person may be given magical items, but does not have magical powers.
Valerie: The heroine's journey, and how it differs from the hero's. There are lots of clever trickster girls.
[And this is probably a good time to note the anthology Coyote Road, about tricksters, male and female.]
Shanna: Themes you're tired of?
Valerie: Frog prince. Trying on the shoe. Too many books and movies grab hold of not necessarily the written word, as opposed to the Disney movie. Way too much Cinderella. Even too much Chinese Cinderella! Mercedes Lackey's Cinderella is betrothed to a 6 year old boy, so her fairy godmother suggests she come away and become a fairy godmother herself. It must be interesting.
Shanna: One thing about the Cinderella retellings drives her nuts. Read collected Grimm. We use her as a rags to riches heroine, but she is from the middle or upper middle class. The story is one of restoration, restoring her to her proper rank. She is, after all, from a family that it is not unthinkable for a prince to chose a bride from. There are rags to riches stories, but this is not one of them.
Adam: And Princess Diana was hardly a commoner!
Shanna: It's not like a servant girl marrying the prince. Such stories exist, about clever girls who do get the prince.
Lisa: She loves the Tam Lin retellings, but wishes they'd stop already. Even the good ones -- there are simply too many. There is almost nothing from Cornwall or Brittany or the Mabinogion.
[I am not sure what "almost nothing" means, and if she's missing some good stuff from these areas.]
Adam: Sick of all things Disney. Favorite scene in Enchanted is the singing rodents. He liked when the bird ate the roach. He likes when things get eaten.
Lisa: So, Shrek works for you?
Adam: Yes.
Audience: Pan's Labyrinth?
Adam: Absolutely beautiful. You as audience member have to believe it's real to have hope in the real world -- to survive the emotional trauma of the film.
[del Toro has gone on record saying that it is real.]
Shanna: Pan's Labyrinth is an example of using themes well, rather than using specific tales.
Adam: Campbell and Jung: The most important parts. [something illegible in my notes here] Adam confused some names here, and said not to listen to what he said. He added that he confused Richard Burton, who discovered the Nile, with Richard Burton, the actor. [So do I!] And there's a third Richard Burton, a 17th century guy.
Bollywood film about a woman whose husband leaves and a spirit impersonates him, but tells her that he has done so, so she has a spirit lover.
Lisa: Miyazaki is even more inteesting if you know the Japanese tales that he warps.
Shanna: Even Grimm is mined for the same few tales. More popular because of Disney? The Victorians?
Lisa: They collected the tales in the field. UCLA is putting the field notes on line. They're in German, but it's High School German. They liked the ones where people get things chopped off.
Adam: And edited for [illegible]
Lisa: They wanted to do pfennig broadsheets, but not profitable enough. So, they turned to books.
Valerie: Tired of Disney archetypes: Singing mice, red cloth
Me: The princess's marriage in the JLA episode, where it's clear to adults that it's been consumated.
Somoene on the panel: Like Kirk pulling on his boots.
[In Wink of an Eye.]
Shanna: Into the Woods.
Me: That one irritated me because the woman who sleeps with the prince gets killed. It's like she's being punished for infidelity, but he gets away scott free.
Lisa: An Irish man burned his wife alive because he believed that she was a changeling.
Adam: Retold Brewery in an Eggshell Tale: "A Piece of Flesh", after Martin Luther on faeries -- just a piece of flesh. Must be put to death. Hurt the changeling so that its parents will come and bring back your own child.
Lisa: Autistic signs.
[I.E., nope, that's not my child. My child would never act like that. It's a changeling. Also note The Stolen Child novel, albeit I did not care for it.]
Audience: In Bad Ass Fairies II, there's a story that presupposes that all autistic children are really fairies.
Shanna: An explanation of everything, including crib death. That's not my child. That's a changeling.
Valerie: So, your child is elsewhere, and alive.
Adam: One defense is supposed to be hanging a pair of scissors over the crib. Wrote a story where a character is advised to do this, and he says, "And this is supposed to make the kid safer?"
Shanna: The origin of the crib mobile?
Lisa: [Something hard to read about how parents wouldn't hurt the kid if the kid something I can't read]
Culwoch and Olwen. The 7 oldest animals perform tasks for no pay.
Shanna: Talking animals. Asked to help.
Audience: Falada, the horse head nailed to the door.
Lisa: Pooka. Real Macbeth turned into a story. [Not sure I read my notes correctly here. Something about something turning the Pooka into something in the tales.]
Shanna: And Emma Bull turned him into Prince (the musician)
Lisa: And Elizabeth Bear's trilogy.
[Not sure how many books, but the Pooka is certainly in the first one.]
Adam: Strip out human morality. The Seelie are just as bad. Their rules are not our rules. It's like folks in another country saying, "You can't do this to me! I have rights! I'm an American!" Not here, you don't.
Lisa: Orfeo: Word is bond.
Adam: One of his mother's favorite tales is the one about the man in search of Truth. He finds her, an old hag, and he studies with her. As he is ready to leave, she asks of him, "When you speak of me, tell them I am beautiful."
Valerie: Favorite tales of all time?
Adam: You start. You have a list.
Valerie: Orson Scott Card's Enchanted. It's a Sleeping Beauty retelling. Ellen Kushner's Thomas the Rhymer, which won a World Fantasy Award. Grendel, by John Updike. C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces, a retelling of Cupid and Psyche.
Lisa: And his publisher wanted him to change the ending!
Adam: For Pay the Piper, the original editor wanted them to take out all instances and mention of child abduction. Then, Scholastic had layoffs, including this editor, because J. K. Rowling was late with her manuscript. So, we sold ours to Tor.
Lisa: Hard to pick. Emma Bull's War for the Oaks.
Adam: Along with de Lint's Moonheart, one of the seminal fantasies.
[I agree, but the context is important -- we're talking modern, and if not urban in de Lint's case, that flavor.]
Lisa: It's a Tam Lin retelling, but -- Pamela Dean's Tam Lin. New version collected in Ireland 4 years ago, so if you must use the tale, use this version. "At the Bottom of the Garden", by Jo Walton. On her website. Subversive.
Shanna: That is also the title of a book on Faery lore.
Valerie: Website with Cinderella variations [something illegible]
Lisa: tamlin.org
Adam: John Crowley's Little Big. [Something about feeling smart enough to read him?] One [illegible] every 6 or 7 years. The father who hunts because that's what a man does. Yet, he can hear and speak to the animals. But, he hunts them, because that's what one does.
And Bull's War for the Oaks.
de Lint taught me that you can kill off the main character whenever you damned well feel like it.
[Trying to remember when de Lint does that.]
Shanna: And he mingles Celtic with Native American tales.
Adam: Singer of Souls mostly takes place in Edinburgh. The sequel is about half in Edinburgh and half in New England. This means he can use any myth. Immigration country -- Germans, Native Americans. Late 1800s:: Mercy, Consumption vampire. Her body was dug up, and they cut out and burned her heart. Last of the vampires. Mercy Brown. Vampires was the only explanation for consumption they had.
Shanna: Spoofing takes. Pratchett's Witches Abroad. Pied Piper in Maurice and his Amazing Trained Rodents. Gaiman's Neverwhere. On the second read through, she realized that London Below was Faerie.
Adam: Folks often don't realize what a brilliant researcher he is. He had a non-fiction background and it comes through. 90% of the iceberg is unseen. Gaiman doesn't feel that he has to show the reader all of his work.
Shanna: As opposed to those who feel that they have to tell us every detail of their research. But, the more you know, the deeper it is.
Adam: This is also true of Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter. Layering in thematic things without interfering with the reading of the story.
Hell Anthology, "Burning Down the House". Working in allegory without the story needing the allegory.
Me: The rabbits must be rabbits first.
Audience:
Holly Black
Robing McKinley: Door in the Hedge, Beauty, Rose Daughter, Knot in the Crown (hard to come by, that last?)
Peter S. Beagle: The Last Unicorn
Angela Carter: Company of Wolves, The Bloody Chamber
Lisa: Elizabeth Bear's Dust
Adam: She is bloody clever, too.
Audience: Steel Helix, by Ann Zeddis. Doctor telling clones fairy tales, et alia.
[Me: Orphan's Tales. The robot Hour learning all about the world through a single story.]
Adam: Was this already done, and if so where? Time travel: Assassination doesn't work. You have to change the stories.
Audience: Amy's Eyes. Delia Sherman: Through a Brazen Mirror. The Porcelain Dove.
[I have issues with the first. I need to try reading the second again.]
Adam: Robert Holdstock's Mythaog Wood.
Lisa: Delia Sherman's Changeling
Me: Valente's Orphan's Tales.
Audience: Darkangel trilogy, set on the moon. Darkangel, Gathering of Gargoyles, Pearl of the Soul of the World.
Ella Enchanted, et alia. Author also did shorter fairy tales. Twisted, but with morals. It takes 15 minutes to read one, and that can inspire an hour long class discussion.
Shanna: Beastly. From the Beast's point of view. Alex Flinn. Set in Manhattan. A boy plays a trick on the wrong goth girl. Online dating. My Space. And magic mirrors to see who it really was. "Cop. 40-year-old. Cop. 8-year-old." Chat group for transformed folks.
[Dusssie, by Nancy Springer]
Audience: Retelling of Rapunzel. Step mother = Agent Mom [?]
Tanith Lee. Her Pied Piper retelling ends "And the sad part was that he had been a god of love." So obvious a name, like the water we breath, we'd not mentioned her till now.
One Thousand One
Dresden Files
Ursula K. LeGuin's Buffalo Gals
Adam: Vladimir Propp's catalog.
Lisa: Was Propp on drugs or what? He says that all the stories are the same story. Read Stith Thompson instead.
And we collected handouts and cards with website info.
After the panel, I met Josh, who had just finished a rehearsal as part of Susan di Guardiola's masquerade entry. We contacted Brian and Alia, and met them and their kids at Chopsticks and Sushi. The restaurant was again out of lamb, as convention goers, probably from all three conventions (tractors, statistic, and us), had descended on them. We got the chef's special sushi-sashimi combination, and a couple of rolls and pieces. The variety was not huge, but the quality was good and the staff was patient.
After dinner, I know Josh and I did some party crawling. One of the rooms, either the Con Suite or the Vail, had a Happy Birthday to One and All party. We missed the cake, but I snagged some hot wings.
After the party, we went to the filk, which by now had moved up two levels, and so was where our phones and laptops could get signal. This is not essential for filks, but it is often useful. At one point, Kathy Mar asked all who wanted to perform but who had not yet done so to raise their hands, and she made sure each of us had a chance to sing. I think one woman sang Robert Chambers's song from the King in Yellow sequence, and I took out my mini-Cthulhu in Black plushie and had him dance to it. I then did the same thing when Josh sang his "Mythos Babies" as a follower, to the bemusement of Joseph Abbot, who snapped a picture of it.
Then, Josh and I did S. J. Tucker's "Sorrow's Song", having previously rehearsed the second half of it to make sure that I could hold my final note through Josh's final verse, without passing out in the Denver air. It was a good performance, even if I do say so myself, with us doing an unplanned switchoff on one verse. It worked really well. After that, I felt I'd earned my Mile High filk ribbon.
Joey Shoji and Kathleen Sloan did "Starship and Haiku", and I think Anne Prather did "White Water". At one point, there was a filk of "Parents are People" from Free To Be You and Me. The two singers were across the room from each other, and I was startled when the second part began, although I shouldn't have been. It was very smooth. The two parts were about Wizards and Muggles, both of whom are People.
The first line was, "Wizards are people / People with talents". But, I heard, "Lizards are people / People with talons." I informed Chris Murray, who plays a serpentboy in my Strange School play-by-email, that this was all his fault. He was happy to take credit for it.
Josh and I got sufficient sleep after the filking to meet Paul Estin for breakfast. We went to The Delectable Egg, which was lovely. There was a short line when we arrived, but within a couple of minutes, everyone was seated. I liked the eggs benedict, but decicded that I really need to be in the right mood for biscuits and gravy.
Josh and I made about half of the first panel I'd marked to attend. I dozed during much of it, which is a pity. What I was awake for was quite good.
10 AM: The Use of Horses in Fantasy and SF: Doing it Right with Beth Meachem, Karen Miller, PC Hodgell (m), and Tanya Huff
Parts I was awake for:
There was some talk about how well stallions got along on a battle field. One of the panelists said that trained stallions could probably get along just fine in the same army on the battle field -- unless someone loosed a mare on the field.
To tell if a mare is in heat, bring a male horse. I think it can be either a stallion or a gelding. If the mare is in heat, she'll present her hindquarters to the other horse,
Bareback riding is hard on both the rider and the horse.
If you are writing a story in which horses are at all important, give some thought to horse infrastructure. You don't have to put all of this detail in the story, but one shouldn't wonder how all of these horses are fed and otherwise supported.
Horses can indeed drop dead under a rider. When someone asked about this, one of the panelists told a story about a horse competition where one horse did just fine until the final presentation, and then dropped dead.
Horses will give you what they think you are asking for. They will try and try to give it to you until they die trying.
For all that authors should remember not to write of horses as if they were motorcycles, some people do treat horses like motorcycles. One panelist told of how a specific guy (she named no names, and I doubt I'd recognize the name anyway) would buy a horse for looks and speed. All he wanted was to look good on the horse and use it for hunting. He would work the horse until it died, and then buy another horse.
When the panel ended, I picked up a handout that had some statistics for how fast and far one could go in a day on foot, on horse, changing horses regularly, and so on. Then, Josh headed off while I met Paul at an 11:30 panel.
11:30: Looking Ahead -- What to Read and Watch Before You Nominate for the 2009 Hugos
Must be published in 2008
This and the 20 Essential Works of SF from the Last 20 Years were the expensive panels to attend, as the dealers' room was still open.
David Hartwell, Vincent Doherty, Laurie Mann, Daniel Kimmel (Boston
based film critic. "I'll have what she's having", SF reviews, Rotten
Tomatoes)
David Hartwell: Little Brother X, Cory Doctorow
Vincent Doherty: House of Suns, Alastair Reynolds
Laurie Mann: The Road (movie)
Daniel Kimmel: Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, Best Dramatic
Presentation, Short Form
DH: Generally agrees with Charles Brown's advance list for Locus.
City at the End of Time, Greg Bear, Del Rey
Incandescence, Greg Egan
January Dancer, Michael Flynn (forthcoming) (Cordwainer Smith meets Doc Smith) Tor Books
Quiet War, Paul McAuley
The Night Sessions, Ken MacLeod
Pirate Suns, Karl Schroeder
Saturn's Children, Charles Stross
Anathem, Neal Stephenson
(Not all out yet)
Fantasy:
Shadow Year, Jeffrey Ford
*Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Hidden World, Paul Park
Dragons of Babel, Michael Swanwick
The Alchemy of Stone, Ekaterina Sedia
The Evil Guest, Gene Wolfe
The Red ***?, Robert Reddick
Not read, recommendations:
Pandemonium, Daryl Gregory. Recommends on basis of Brain Function short stories
on var / Egan and Watts
VD: Agrees, especially with the Egan. More accessible than usual.
Saturn's Children is a fun read, homage to Heinlein and Asimov.
DK: Books on list to get to. Stephenson.
Jeffrey Carver: 10 year overdue book. Last book of the Chaos series.
LM: NESFA keeps recommended reading list.
Audience:
Dreamer of the Day, Mary Doria Russell
Ha'penny, Jo Walton
Sky Mongoose, Tobias Bucknell(*cksp?)
Graveyard Folk, Neil Gaiman. He also has another, a long one, c. 800 pgs. [Unless I am somehow mistaking this for Neal Stephenson's Anathem]
Zoe ***?, John Scalzi
DH: Recommendations from other people:
Steel Remains, Richard Morgan
Matter, Iain Banks. Clute recommends.
Shadowbridge, Greg Frost
YA:
Little Brother X, Cory Doctorow
Graveyard Folk, Neil Gaiman
Tender Morsels, Margo Langan
Flora's Dare: Ysabeau worked 2nd, latter than 1st [my notes are illegible here]
DK: Rowling's collection due out by the end of the year.
VD: Banks, Culture novel
LM: Short fiction?
DK:
Michael Burnstein is coming out with his first collection of short fiction.
[Me: Yay!] Due out in November.
VD: Lots of anthologies with strong fiction
Galactic Empires
Solaris Book of New SF, volume 2
The Starry Rift
One Million A.D.
DH: This is my particular area of expertise. This year was a great year for the magazines.
Asimov's
Fantasy & Science Fiction
Analog
No bad issues this year!
Over the last 5 years, concentrated goodness in concentrated anthologies.
Lots of good things published online (though the overall percentage of online goodness is small because there is so much published online).
Strange Horizons online has a higher average of good stories. Also excellent review columns.
Neil Harrison. Britain views with skepticism all USA sf.
Anthologies:
Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy
Galatic Empires, Gordon Dozois, SF Book Club
Solaris Book of New Science Fiction
The Starry Rift
Eclipse 2 (same ed as The Starry Rift)
And would add:
Sidewise in Crime, ed. Lou Anders, Pyr
Fast Forward 2. Not out yet, but Fast Forward 1 was 1 of 2 or 3 best anthologies last year.
DH: Individual works: I neglected to bring my database of 300 stories I liked.
Pump 6 and Other Stories, Paolo Bagigalupi. Harlan Ellisonesque, downbeat.
"Pump 6": A sewer pump breaks down. Makes "The Marching Morons" look happy.
Adventures of Langdon St. Ives
Keeper of Dreams, Orson Scott Card
???, Ford
Drowned Life
Bound Plan Boun (?*), John Kessel
Nano Comes to Clifford Falls, Nancy Kress
***?, Kelly Link
[something illeg]
Crazy Love, Costie Watt(*?)
Worlds of Jack Williamson, reprint
LM:
"Man in the Mirror", Geoff Landis
"House Left Empty", Robert Reed
DH:
"Reunion"
11 best stories of the last 20 years, Robert Reed and Steve Baxter
DH and VD agree that Robert Reed's novels are also good.
VD:
"Crystal Nights", Greg Egan
Audience: The New Weird
VD: Steampunk anthology
DH: Extraordinary Engines, steampunk
Audience: "A Salad for Two", Robert Green
DH: "Reunion": Man who dies, in locket around wife's neck, with his personality. Wife loved him dearly, but a few months later, tired of this. Only other being he loved was his dog, who can't talk. Winds up around the dog's neck.
Audience: "Memory Dogs", Kathleen Ann Goonan
LM: 2 Best Editor awards. Short form, generally magazines. Long form.
DH: Old fashioned guy. Editors can tell when things have been edited. Most readers cannot. Sometimes, the editor and the writer working together can't quite make it work. We react according to how they edit, not what they acquire. Readers by what they like, what editors acquire. Good job, better than average:
Gordon van Gelder
Sheila Williams
Stan Schmidt
Interzone works with [something illegible] too.
Anthologies: Gordon Dozois didn't stop being a good editor when he left Analog. Not just acquiring good anthology stories.
Reprint anthologies of high qualities are just as hard to do and show just as much skill as new material.
E.g., The New Weird. Really good. Shows Jeff Vandermeer is a good editor.
Jonathan Strahan too.
Ellen Datlow, Vander, Hartwell: Year's Best Anthologies are much harder than you would think. Takes much time, and much taking what's going on in the field into account.
LM: It can't be a thousand pages long.
DH: It can't be a thousand pages long. That would be the easy way out.
VD: Good year.
DK: His opinion is that of a writer, has a great deal of respect for a young woman who does something for books for Ben Yallow(*?). She didn't impose her view, but made him express his view.
LM: Jane Frank: Paint of Pixel
SF art, Worlds of Wonder
Ctein, a book on digital art
DK: The Pixar Story. To be read.
VD: Moving away from non-fiction. Farah Mendelsohn's What Is It We Do When We Read SF?
Companion to Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. Author won Hugo with Mendelsohn in 2005(*?)
Autobiography of J. G. Ballard. Miracles of life, Shanghai(*?)
DH: Biography of Anne McCaffrey, by her son.
Biography of H. Beam Piper. Some things wrong with it, but informative.
Biography of Anthony Boucher, from point of view of someone who saw him as mystery writer, with a sort of "oh, and he did some sf, too".
Audience: Maps and Legends, Michael Chabon. Non-sf essays. Triple layer cover.
DH: Spectrum is the 2000 pound gorilla here. Comes out every year.
Compendium of year's best art. Always good.
Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
DK: Ignore "Long form'. I have problems with the categorization.
Cloverfield. Low budget. It's The Beast from 20 Fathoms as seen from the point of view of the people screaming in the background, with the monster and scientists only occasionally crossing their path.
Teeth. Low budget. A girl who discovers she has a vagina dentata. It's an empowering experience.
Iron Man
The Dark Knight. Wrote a Batman essay when Batman Begins came out, saying it was the best Batman movie, and this is a worthy successor.
Wall-E. Pixar only made one bad movie, Cars, and it made a lot of money anyway.
Hellboy 2. Del Toro is one of Us. Mimic (movie). Loves and knows the genre. Adapted a Donald Wolheim story, and explained why he had make the changes to it that he made.
Ghost Town. About a dentist who hates people. Then, he can see all the dead people, and they find this out and all want favors, e.g., pass on message to my sister, tell my wife not to marry that guy. And he wants nothing to do with this. He's a modern W. C. Fields.
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Trailer's out.
The Day the Earth Stood Still. Remake that probably doesn't need to be made. Then again, the 1979 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers was good.
LM: It looks good, but it has Keanu Reaves.
DK:
The Spirit
Twilight
The Road
True Blood. Fall HBO. Source of Charlene Harris. Alan Ball, who did Six Feet Under, did it.
LM:
Time Traveller's Wife
[I've a chip on my shoulder against this book. I think it's highly overrated.]
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Source F. Scott Fitzgerald. With Brad Pitt and Kate Blanchett. He ages backwards as she ages forwards. Likely to be either quite good or awful.
VD: Narnia movie not bad.
Direct to DVD: Stargate and Futurama movies
Beast with a Billion Backs
Color of Magic. Includes The Light Fantastic. Based on Terry Pratchett's first two novels.
Clone Wars. Star Wars animated.
Tale of Desperaux
In production: A Spell for Chameleon (Piers Anthony), Pattern Recognition (William Gibson)
Bender's Game. Out in November.
DH: Haven't even seen 1 movie this year. Looking forward to The Road, thoughtful post-apocalyptic movie.
Audience:
Kung Fu Panda
City of Ember, based on YA novel
Spiderwick
The Fall. Guy falls off a horse. Wife leaves him. Embedded fantasy pieces.
DK agrees that The Fall is definitely worth seeing. Visually stunning, defies classification.
LM: Thank you for not mentioning Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.
Me: The Mummy.
[She wasn't impressed. Also, Terrence Chua snickers at the various Chinese accents in that one.]
Short?
LM:
Doctor Who
Torchwood
DK: Dr. Horrible. Free for a week. Likely to come out on DVD.
VD:
Doctor Who: Double episode. Silence in the Library /
Torchwood
Doctor Who season finale Journey's End. "Not to give too much away -- for most of you, the Earth will move." Last regular season for 2 years, so brought back every character from the last 5 years. Will be 4 specials instead, so wanted to wrap up loose ends. But, bringing them all back a bit of a problem.
Torchwood: The Drip and Lost. Better episode than last time.
Heroes not so hot.
Battlestar Galactica. Arc very interesting and no idea what they're going to do next. This is a good place for a season to be.
Presto: From Wall-E
Audience: Pushing Daisies
DH: I cancelled cable 6 years ago.
Audience:
The Middle Man
Avatar. Start at the beginning or get a teenager to explain it as you go.
Chuck
DH: Various other work
Fluent in Fantasy. For librarians to help them recommend stuff, e.g., to kids who want stuff like Harry Potter.
[Paul Estin: Ah, a cheat for librarians.]
LM: Campbell?
DH: I don't know who's actually new, now that internet publication counts. I have to look it up on the Campbell web site to see who's eligible.
LM: And fan awards.
DH: Fanzines. Reads Trap Door. Pure old mimeo fanzine, thought offset.
LM: Bardo
DK: Writes for The Internet Review of Science Fiction. Currently, no advertising, no fee. But, their checks clear.
DH: Opposes nomination of John Scalzi as a fan writer.
LM:
Jo Walton. Fan writer: her blog
Mary Ann Johansen. But gets paid for some of that.
David Langford. Professional writer.
DK: Mark and Evelyn Leeper. Every week. 1500th issue.
DH: Write in clear journalistic prose.
Kind of a theological point. David Langford has a kind of fan persona he writes from. I don't perceive that in John Scalzi.
[And there are people who took serious umbrage on his stance on Scalzi. I am not sure whether or not I agree with David here -- this is not one of the categories I consider myself at all qualified to comment on -- but when he says that this is "a theological point", I know that he is well aware that he's biased and that he is underlining the point that this is his opinion, not based on some objective scale. He also talked to John Scalzi right after the panel ended, telling Scalzi what he'd said, and, as far as I know, there were no hard feelings on either side.]
I decided to skip Lois McMaster Bujold's Guest of Honor speech, so I'm really glad it's online and that I can read it at some point. Josh made the second half of it. He confirmed that her next book is not going to be about Ivan. She wondered why she was getting so many requests for an Ivann book, and Josh explained this to her after the speech.
Josh pointed out that, at the end of A Civil Campaign, Ivan has caught Gregor's attention by doing good. "The reward of a job well done is another job." Or, as another fan put it when we discussed this, she's pulled the pin on that grenade, and it has to explode now. Lois may or may not ever write an Ivan book, but she said, "I guess I made this problem for myself." So, now she knows why we all want the Ivan book.
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In re Rumplestiltskin: I've wondered if Snape is based in anti-Semitic stereotypes: dark-haired, sallow, very intelligent, not trustworthy (for most of the story). And if it matters, since the stereotype has been cut loose from Jews.
That's A Knot in the Grain by McKinley.
I recommend Bujold's speech.
From: (Anonymous)
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Sorry to be a horrible nitpick, but a couple of corrections:
The title of the story about the man who's personality is in locket around wife's neck after he dies is "Rebecca's Locket" by S. L. Gilbow, from the May F&SF.
I'd guess that the story the audience member mentioned, "A Salad for Two" by Robert Green, is actually "Salad For Two" by Robert Reed, from the September F&SF.
Frank Dreier
From: (Anonymous)
Correction
The editor whose name I couldn't remember is Leah Wilson.
Dan Kimmel
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Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography
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Re: Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography
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Re: Correction
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Re: Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography
On the upside, wow, potential Hugo nominee? I'm humbled.
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Re: Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography
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Re: Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography
It was published in 2008. I don't count on it, but it's great to be considered.