Belated WorldCon [sun, 31 aug]

[handslive]

Kill me. I didn't type any of this up yesterday. :-)

Sunday morning, 10am, was a small panel with just China Miéville and Kim Stanley Robinson. That was fun. They talked about various things they were doing. They talked about historical research that Kim had done for Years of Rice and Salt and about the portrayal of Muslims and Buddhists in the book. It was a fun panel.

Then we went to a Neil Gaiman reading. He read a short, cute little story intended for kids. And then he read a really excellent story that will be published in an anthology coming out at the end of September called Shadows Over Baker Street. I'm definitely going to want to pick that one up. We also went over the scheduled time for the panel, which may not have endeared Neil Gaiman to anyone following the panel. Oh, well.

Then we grabbed some quick lunch again, I think. (I'm starting to get fuzzy on details here.)

At 1pm we went to a quick presentation on Quantum Dots and Programmable Matter put on by Wil McCarthy. He has a couple of fiction books out related to this field and one non-fiction book. I've been thinking of buying Collapsium after seeing something on Slashdot about this guy. The presentation was excellent if a little over the top in some respects. But it looks like an exciting field to be doing research into.

Then, Design of non-Humans in Fantasy. This panel was split between people who've taken highly intelligent and innovative approaches (China Miéville from a more 'theatre of grotesque' standpoint, but there was also a biologist on the panel who has designed fantastic creatures for fiction work she's done) and those people who are basically just doing the "Elves & Dwarves" D&D package deal (actually I think it might have been Magic the Slathering, but anyway). Unfortunately, these camps are completely opposed and I think the guys on the D&D side were feeling a little outclassed by China who is a better and more forceful speaker. Towards the end China was just sitting with his head in his hands.

I actually kind of wished that Guy Kay had been on the panel since he's done the innovative side, I think, but has also treated with D&D style elves and dwarves. One interesting point that came up (and again it would have been interesting to have Guy there) was to what extent the D&D look at things supports racist and classist philosophies in fantasy fiction. After all, if Elves are the top of the food chain (or Man is, or whatever), then it stands to reason that other classes are inferior. And Orcs are always evil and to be hated and killed.

This really makes me think about some of the reading I've done where authors have taken the "elves as wood folk and dwarves as mountain folk" point of view and turned it into something more alien (or perhaps fey would be better). In particular, I think of Michael Scott Rohan's Winter of the World series.

We then waited in the same room for the Dying is Easy, Comedy is Hard panel. This panel had Terry Pratchett, Connie Willis, Esther Friesner, and Mike Resnik. Oh, man. Favourite moments:

• Connie Willis tells about her bout with food poisoning during the Con and how she should have found an author she didn't like to throw up on. Prompted from the audience, she admits she would have looked for David Brin.
• Connie Willis getting nauseous subsequently and asking if Mr. Brin is in the audience.
• Esther Friesner's fresh corpse story.
• Connie Willis' Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast story (complete with smartalec daughter).

And Esther says they've managed to convince the author of the LoTR Secret Diaries to write something for the next Chicks in Chain Mail anthology. (Yes!)

I think we had supper in here somewhere.

Then there was Tall Technical Tales. Strangely, the panel members (except Eric Raymond) did not show. So, purplecthulhu and Eric and someone else from the audience they both know got up and ran the panel. We got some excellent stories. And at the end of the panel (more or less) learned that it had been moved next door, so we'd been running two identical panels instead of one. And we shared some more hilarious stories in the lobby of the Convention Centre afterwards.

At 9pm, I headed downstairs for the Iron Poet panel. They had three Iron Poets: Heroic Couplet, Sonnet, and Limerick. The judges put up plastic sheets for the Iron Poets to write on and provided them with markers. Pads of paper and pens were distributed to anyone in the audience who wanted to participate. Finally, a secret ingredient was provided by the host.

The idea was that each Iron Poet would produce a poem while receiving colour commentary from the judges and the host. The audience members could write a poem in any category. The time limit was 20 minutes. I struggled away on a sonnet and this turned out to be the most popular category. There was actually quite a sizeable audience (I think almost 20 people).

At the end of 20 minutes, each Iron Poet read his poem and then anyone competing in the same category was invited to get up and read as well. The Iron Poets won in each category. The next day I learned that Joe Haldeman (Iron Poet Sonnet) used to get drunk in college and compete with his roommates at writing sonnets or other forms of poetry while on a time limit. So, I was clearly outclassed (not that I'd held much hope in any case).

Finally, there was a Poetry Slam at 11pm. I came expecting just to be in the audience. Poetry Slams are normally head-to-head style competitions between poets who bring a selection of works and have to do each reading in a set time limit one after the other (or back and forth). Judges assign points and someone is declared the winner at the end.

In this case, since they didn't have any poets with prepared material, the moderator asked questions around the table (we were all seated around a table; there were only 9 or 10 of us) to get specific phrases or ideas that had to be in the poem. Then we were asked to write something in 30 minutes that was at least 30 lines long in any form. There was some really good stuff.

While we were all goofing around before the panel started, we got talking about morning cartoon shows that we'd seen that no one else had seen. I mentioned Bat Fink and got some blank looks (so you B5 folks aren't unique in that regard). Then I mentioned the B5 episode with the line 'You cannot harm me!', and got back from someone at the table 'My wings are like a shield of steel!' So, us Bat Fink aficionados aren't alone either. Ha!