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Readercon report
Before I say anything else I have to mention: Trader Joe's dark chocolate-covered pomegranate seeds.
Thursday
Writing Realistic Speech (I Weaving You My Story, OUI?) - Gilman, Hopkinson, Menon and Meynard
Very interesting panel on the use of language and dialect in fiction, the good and the bad. Tips: you don't really know a language/culture/dialect until you can talk about food and sex--not to mention curse--in it. Also, listen for the music in the language.
I asked a question about whether the use of audiobooks and podcasts has improved the situation, since this allows listeners to hear the language, and Nalo Hopkinson replied that it is still very mixed, since voice actors with no experience of the culture may be chosen, while actors with that experience (or in her case, the author herself) are passed over to perform the audiobooks. This made me very aware of how i should be reviewing audiobooks more critically.
Note: I would be very interested in making contact with the audience member who spoke as an audiobook reviewer.
Friday
Noon-3p.m.
"Midsummer Night's Riot, uh Dream"
A cold reading of the play performed by various authors who occasionally changed roles on the hour. Highly entertaining, I'm looking forward to whatever play is chosen for next year.
3 pm.
I delivered my talk "What Good Writers Still Get Wrong about Blind People"
Posted to my LJ and also on DreamWidth, where I am also Kestrell
Part 1
http://kestrell.livejournal.com/593188.html
Part 2
http://kestrell.livejournal.com/593549.html
Part 3
http://kestrell.livejournal.com/593697.html
Note: I would be interested in making contact with the audience member who spoke as a ZoomText user.
5 pm.
Axes of Identity in Speculative Fiction - Andrea Hairston, Victoria Janssen,
N. K. Jemisin
http://nkjemisin.com/
Vandana Singh, Verlager
I really wish this panel had been recorded--it was a tremendously lively conversation. Tip to writers: you do not have to have an identity to write about it; you may make mistakes but as one panelist said, "It's called rehearsal."
Also, I want to go find and read all of the panelists' books, especially Singh's upcoming novel about a green alien who experiences physics as her sensorium--check out their bibliographies at
http://readercon.org/guests.htm
Many of these books are already or will be published through Aqueduct Press, which also published the best little book on diversity in writing,
_Writing the Other_ by Cynthia Ward and Nisi Shawl.
Sadly, I missed Liz Hand's reading from her upcoming novel "Available Dark," a sequel to "generation Loss."
Saturday
10 a.m.
The Year in Novels - Datlow, Fox (L), Lipkin, Sleight, Wolfe
The first part of the discussion spent a lot of time on
the Hugo nominations list for best novel
http://www.thehugoawards.org/2010/04/2010-hugo-award-nominees-details/
with many recommending The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade), but also Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor), The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK), and Palimpsest, Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra), with mixed reviews of Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor), and no one having read Wake, Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Penguin; Gollancz; Analog). (Someone at my talk on blind characters in speculative fiction asked me if I had read this last one and I replied "Yes.")
Something to anticipate: the Ellen Datlow anthology _The Wonderful Future That Never Was: Flying Cars, Mail Delivery by Parachute, and Other Predictions from the Past_ (Popular Mechanics Magazine) intro by Gregory Benford (Hardcover - Oct 5, 2010).
I wish I had the recommendations made by the panelists, but unfortunately my digital recorder didn't really pick up the voices in this larger room.
1 pm.
The Meat & the Motion: The Body & Physicality in Spec Fic
Andreadis, Bear (L), Charlton, Menon, Verlager
Another panel for which I wish I had the list of books various folks recommended; I have one note "Radiant Consciousness," which I interpret to indicate this book
Radiant Cool: A Novel Theory of Consciousness by Dan Lloyd, which is a cognitive theory mystery.
6 The Closet Door Dilated
S. Berman (L), Dube, Lewitt, Stross,
Another panel for which I wish I had a list of all the recommendations, but what I do have is a film "Zerophilia," plus anything by Tanith Lee and Stross recommended John Varley's _The Ophiuchi Hotline_.
One high point of the panel: Sherrianne Lewitt demonstrating how to write the story in a minute-long pantomime which involved twitching, banging head on table, banging head on keyboard, stabbing eyes, more banging head, and for the ending, throwing herself bodily onto the floor, followed up with thrashing more banging of head on floor. The frantic waving and arabesquing of her long dreads just made it that much better.
Random recommendation overheard during the con: Sita Sings the Blues
http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/
which is an independent film with music that is sort of blues meets Baliwood.
Thursday
Writing Realistic Speech (I Weaving You My Story, OUI?) - Gilman, Hopkinson, Menon and Meynard
Very interesting panel on the use of language and dialect in fiction, the good and the bad. Tips: you don't really know a language/culture/dialect until you can talk about food and sex--not to mention curse--in it. Also, listen for the music in the language.
I asked a question about whether the use of audiobooks and podcasts has improved the situation, since this allows listeners to hear the language, and Nalo Hopkinson replied that it is still very mixed, since voice actors with no experience of the culture may be chosen, while actors with that experience (or in her case, the author herself) are passed over to perform the audiobooks. This made me very aware of how i should be reviewing audiobooks more critically.
Note: I would be very interested in making contact with the audience member who spoke as an audiobook reviewer.
Friday
Noon-3p.m.
"Midsummer Night's Riot, uh Dream"
A cold reading of the play performed by various authors who occasionally changed roles on the hour. Highly entertaining, I'm looking forward to whatever play is chosen for next year.
3 pm.
I delivered my talk "What Good Writers Still Get Wrong about Blind People"
Posted to my LJ and also on DreamWidth, where I am also Kestrell
Part 1
http://kestrell.livejournal.com/593188.html
Part 2
http://kestrell.livejournal.com/593549.html
Part 3
http://kestrell.livejournal.com/593697.html
Note: I would be interested in making contact with the audience member who spoke as a ZoomText user.
5 pm.
Axes of Identity in Speculative Fiction - Andrea Hairston, Victoria Janssen,
N. K. Jemisin
http://nkjemisin.com/
Vandana Singh, Verlager
I really wish this panel had been recorded--it was a tremendously lively conversation. Tip to writers: you do not have to have an identity to write about it; you may make mistakes but as one panelist said, "It's called rehearsal."
Also, I want to go find and read all of the panelists' books, especially Singh's upcoming novel about a green alien who experiences physics as her sensorium--check out their bibliographies at
http://readercon.org/guests.htm
Many of these books are already or will be published through Aqueduct Press, which also published the best little book on diversity in writing,
_Writing the Other_ by Cynthia Ward and Nisi Shawl.
Sadly, I missed Liz Hand's reading from her upcoming novel "Available Dark," a sequel to "generation Loss."
Saturday
10 a.m.
The Year in Novels - Datlow, Fox (L), Lipkin, Sleight, Wolfe
The first part of the discussion spent a lot of time on
the Hugo nominations list for best novel
http://www.thehugoawards.org/2010/04/2010-hugo-award-nominees-details/
with many recommending The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade), but also Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor), The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK), and Palimpsest, Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra), with mixed reviews of Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor), and no one having read Wake, Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Penguin; Gollancz; Analog). (Someone at my talk on blind characters in speculative fiction asked me if I had read this last one and I replied "Yes.")
Something to anticipate: the Ellen Datlow anthology _The Wonderful Future That Never Was: Flying Cars, Mail Delivery by Parachute, and Other Predictions from the Past_ (Popular Mechanics Magazine) intro by Gregory Benford (Hardcover - Oct 5, 2010).
I wish I had the recommendations made by the panelists, but unfortunately my digital recorder didn't really pick up the voices in this larger room.
1 pm.
The Meat & the Motion: The Body & Physicality in Spec Fic
Andreadis, Bear (L), Charlton, Menon, Verlager
Another panel for which I wish I had the list of books various folks recommended; I have one note "Radiant Consciousness," which I interpret to indicate this book
Radiant Cool: A Novel Theory of Consciousness by Dan Lloyd, which is a cognitive theory mystery.
6 The Closet Door Dilated
S. Berman (L), Dube, Lewitt, Stross,
Another panel for which I wish I had a list of all the recommendations, but what I do have is a film "Zerophilia," plus anything by Tanith Lee and Stross recommended John Varley's _The Ophiuchi Hotline_.
One high point of the panel: Sherrianne Lewitt demonstrating how to write the story in a minute-long pantomime which involved twitching, banging head on table, banging head on keyboard, stabbing eyes, more banging head, and for the ending, throwing herself bodily onto the floor, followed up with thrashing more banging of head on floor. The frantic waving and arabesquing of her long dreads just made it that much better.
Random recommendation overheard during the con: Sita Sings the Blues
http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/
which is an independent film with music that is sort of blues meets Baliwood.