Posted by Sari
This is my Worldcon report.
1. The meeting between Europeans and Native Americans is the closest we have to first contact.
2. If there is sex in a story, the story automatically becomes about sex. Sex takes over. Thus a panel about asexuality in SF became a panel about sex.
3. Adverbs
4. We all know cities are palimpsests. But there are examples of cities that are not: Brasil, the hidden, secret cities of Soviet Union. How about spinning them into something fantastic?
5. There is a certain interesting dichotomy between the endings of Buffy and Angel: Buffy achieves thematic closure by returning to the original idea of a blonde in the alley kicking monster’s ass by the montage where women everywere are empowered by Willow’s magic. Angel has an open ending, both thematically and narratively.
6. Man to man kissing on Dr. Who! Way to go!
7. I want to read some Laura Ann Gillman
8. Fannish space is safe. It allows self- expression in ways which in mundane space would be read totally differently. Thus it is a space where it is possible to experiment, to be outrageous, sexy or plain weird. Conflicts and problems arise when the values of the mundane space is brought to the fannish space.
9. “Trollope does not understand dragons?”
10. Why fandom gets so riled when our writers are represented like they were mainstream authors: because we are not just readers, we are fans. We are like supporters of a League One football team whose best players have been bought to Chelsea, and the journalists are raving about what good job Chelsea is doing nurturing and developing talent.
11 Clarke felt it necessary to have Strange save a spy of Wellington because he needed him later. She tweaked history as little as possible, even when it was trivial. Stephenson created his own CABAL which had very different interests and power relationship from the original ministers. A large tweak with no apparent reason.
12. The birth of modern fantastic in the threnches of First World War.
Wrt point 11:
Stephenson's tweak is as far as I can tell the only grounds that people have for calling the Baroque Cycle Alternative History. I don't see what the prejudice is against Historical fiction, unless perhaps it is because Historical fiction is all about ginat purple squids in codpieces.
Posted by: Fionna | August 24, 2005 at 15:58
Yes, that and Qwhlm or how ever the unpronouncable island is written. I actually find it really interesting that he chose to change the persons and aims in the Restoration regime. On the face of it seems a somewhat quixotic thing to do with little payback.
And yes, there is an essay in trying to figure out the very uneasy relationship between fantasy, alternative history and straight historicals.
On the other hand, I am really fascinated about how Daniel sees himself brokering a sort of compromise, a new world system which does not answer all the questions: he still came back from the dead. So I am thinking that the heavy isotope gold, the alchemy that works and the more pro-puritan English government somehow all represent that part of the system Isaac and Daniel did not manage to explain, that in religion and "magic" there are still stuff we don't understand.
Posted by: Sari | August 25, 2005 at 15:41