kate_nepveu: sleeping cat carved in brown wood (Default)

I love this topic so much that I'm writing up my notes immediately after, even though I should be sleeping.

Description:

Reportedly, The Forever War was written as a response to Starship Troopers. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora is a fairly brutal update to his own work on space exploration as exemplified in his Martian Trilogy. Both within an author's works and between authors, panelists will introduce and discuss works of literature that should be read in tandem with other works.

Chad Childers, Kate Nepveu (m), Meredith Schwartz, Morgan Crooks

I became moderator of this panel late in the game and I told the panel that this was possibly a good thing, because I have so many thoughts on this topic and I try to restrain myself from flat-out making speeches when I'm moderating. I'm not sure I was entirely successful in this regard, however...

All comments are paraphrased; if I've gotten anything wrong in reconstructing conversation from memory and my sketchy notes, please do correct me.

panel notes

I introduced myself by referring to my very, very old website The Paired Reading Page—last updated in 2000!—which was amusing for a number of reasons, including the realization that I and my friends had always been all-in on The Fortunate Fall, which was suggested as a pair with no less than five different novels! None of which were Moby-Dick, which may have been because I had yet to read it and become feral over how good it is, but more likely was because it is explicitly named in the text and therefore is obvious.

Which was my springboard into the different levels of explicitness that a book is in conversation: it's referred to in the text; the author says so, in afterwords or interviews or whatnot; the author doesn't say so, but from context we can be more or less sure that they had encountered the earlier work; and we have no idea what the author intended, but the book is nevertheless talking about the same things as the earlier work. I asked the panel about their experiences with these different levels and how it affected their reading.

Morgan brought up His Dark Materials versus Narnia (me: and it is versus) as one with stated authorial intent outside the text, the knowledge of which did affect his reaction to the text. This got panel reactions that ran the gamut: Chad thought that HDM being a critique of Narnia didn't seem to matter to the experience of reading HDM, whereas Meredith could tell that HDM was in conversation with something but didn't know what specifically (which wasn't a problem, but did result in her feeling that the author was more present in the work as constructing an argument).

In a similar vein, we talked about Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog, which explicitly references Three Men in a Boat but doesn't depend on it. Chad loved discovering Jerome's work as a result; Meredith didn't like Three Men but appreciated that Willis had loved something in it that she hadn't seen.

From there, we talked about how much one needed to know about the prior work. I have a note that indicates, less when it's a homage, more when it's debate-y. I suggested that if one must have read the prior work for the later work to make sense, then it is fanfic (value-neutral). Chad noted that this is a change, because there used to be a time when authors could rely on readers having a certain shared knowledge base; he mentioned Edgar Allen Poe stories as having lots of explicit references to other works.

Later on, Morgan mentioned "response literature" (a term impossible to search for, btw) as a category he'd heard that included Wicked in regard to The Wizard of Oz, which had been raised by an audience member. (The same audience member cited The Mists of Avalon, and I suggested that Arthuriana is maybe always in conversation with itself?) Meredith noted that two particularly popular versions of response literature recently-ish are telling the story from the POV of the villain or minor/neglected characters, e.g. Longbourn, which is Pride and Prejudice from the servants' perspective.

At some point, Morgan brought up books that fail to be in dialogue with existing works, which I interpreted as barging in without any genre knowledge and assuming that these ideas are brand new. He suggested that books should, ideally, respect their predecessors. I said, respect or acknowledge? He noted that he wasn't suggesting ignoring past works' flaws, because engaging with a work in a critical way can be a sign of respect.

I had a comment, possibly here, about how realizing that books are in conversation can tell you something about the later book—expected, fine, good—or the earlier book—my favorite, getting to see that in a different light.

Chad in particular talked about the fun of recognition and revelation: hey I know that reference, oh that's where this is going (deeply paraphrased). An audience member mentioned Greer Gilman's stories in which Ben Jonson is a detective, I think for some of the same fun.

We talked about authors in dialogue with their own works. Meredith suggested Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, because the swerve in its emotional tone lands hardest against the background of the other Guards books. Later, we talked about authors disagreeing with their past works. Morgan mentioned KSR's Aurora (as in the panel description) which takes the position that no, we absolutely should not send out generation ships to colonize other solar systems, which had been the happy ending of his Mars trilogy. An audience member mentioned Orson Scott Card's Bean books, which are (unfortunately, in the audience member's view) disagreeing with his Ender series.

Later on, an audience member mentioned American superhero comics, in which new writers are constantly disagreeing with prior writers of the same character. Other panelists pointed to shared worlds as other situations where that arises, such as Bordertown, in which a twenty-years-later anthology had a number of authors, including some of the original ones, implicitly critiquing the whiteness of the original works.

(Also regarding Night Watch specifically, I mentioned my experience of rereading it after reading Les Miserables (mostly not good). And regarding Pratchett generally, Chad mentioned his extensive references to, e.g., Shakespeare, Hollywood Golden Age movie history, and asked if one could enjoy those without that knowledge. I said yes, because I had, but also it does show one of the pitfalls: I don't care very much about A Midsummer Night's Dream and so Lords and Ladies works less well for me than other Witches books.)

An audience member pointed out that we'd been talking often about genre books in dialogue with non-genre books, and asked about how genre authors approach those conversations knowing that their readers are more likely to be unfamiliar with non-genre books. Meredith referred to Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw, which literalizes the social conventions of Trollope novels by making the characters all dragons. Even not having read Trollope, it's still clear that the book is talking about societal definitions of womanhood etc., so one needn't be familiar with the inspiration to understand the story. (However, knowing that Walton had respected (in Morgan's terms) Trollope enough to write the novel gave Meredith a little handholding into the genre of Victorian literature. Unfortunately she read seven Trollope novels and threw six of them against the wall—but she did finish all of them! (I failed to ask which the seventh was, I'm sorry; if you're reading this, Meredith, Jo would like to know whether it was Phineas Finn.))

Somewhere in this vicinity, Morgan had mentioned the fun of SFF taking non-genre scenes etc. and giving non-rational/real-world explanations for them, like Tolkien taking the marching woods in Macbeth and making them actually march. Someone, possibly still Morgan, mentioned Steven L. Peck's novel A Short Stay in Hell, which took Jorge Luis Borges' "The Library of Babel" and turns it into a horror story: the main character has to find and read the story of his life in an infinite library to order to be able to leave.

Morgan mentioned John Shirley's collection Really, Really, Really, Really, Weird Stories as something he enjoyed but saw different angles on when he read more cyberpunk and realized how much it was in conversation with the other works in that subgenre. Another thing mentioned as in conversation with a genre as a whole was Ursula K. LeGuin's The Word for World Is Forest, which felt to an audience member very much a reaction to colonialism in SFF. And I have a note about the Lovecraftian mythos, which I believe was mentioned as something that is constantly in dialogue with itself and also very frequently critiquing its foundational texts.

We mentioned satire and pastiche; I suggested that satire usually needs to be read in context with the earlier work, whereas pastiche can often be enjoyed without that context. Meredith cited Catherynne Valente's The Refrigerator Monologues, which mashed up two things she didn't like—The Vagina Monologues and women in refrigerators—into something she did.

Meredith closed by pointing out that the conversation never ends: one can't read every inspiration and reference, and that's not just okay, that's good, because it means the conversation continues moving forward.

I did get to shout out The Locked Tomb series at the very last minute, but I did not get to make another Emily Tesh reference by noting that someone had compared Some Desperate Glory to Ender's Game, which hadn't occurred to me at the time, but which I thought was a fruitful comparison now that I'd seen it. (In my first panel, which I have not yet written up, I managed to refer to Tesh three times, which I was not expecting when I went into it.)

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Last one, holy shit!

The Works of Rebecca Roanhorse

GOH Rebecca Roanhorse won a Hugo and Nebula for her first published story, "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™" (2017), and was recognized with the 2018 Astounding Award for Best New Writer. She has been a force in the genre world ever since (perhaps literally, as evidenced by her Star Wars novel, Resistance Reborn). Her Sixth World series (Trail of Lightning, 2018; Storm of Locusts, 2019) featured a post-climate disaster future America with a now-sovereign nation of Dinétah (Navajo), haunted by monsters. In the Between Earth and Sky series (Black Sun, 2020; Fevered Star, 2022; Mirrored Heavens, 2024), she offers a fantasy re-imagination of the pre-colonial Americas and Pacific Islands. Please join us in exploring the richness of her works.

Kate Nepveu (moderator), Noah Beit-Aharon

a few notes, more than I realized honestly

Because it was just the two of us, we asked the audience what they'd like us to do. They requested a bit of a tour of Roanhorse's works. So I started with a summary of the premise of the Between Earth and Sky series, stressing the fun worldbuilding, the complex characters, and the way that they treat religion. Noah particularly liked Roanhorse's playful approach to myths and legends (in both this and Trail of Lightning) and the characters' varying reactions to gods, the idea of gods trying to return and fight things out, etc. I noted that Roanhorse is very committed to letting her characters have understandable yet self-interested motives, make bad decisions under pressure, and the like.

Noah was only halfway through Black Sun and someone asked him to guess how it was going to end. He offered up some intermediate-stage guesses but for the sake of his reader brain, declined to try to predict the ending because that wouldn't be as fun.

We also had a fun digression into the extreme weirdness of a total solar eclipse, since a number of us had recently experienced one; that's what the black sun of the title is, and that gave a nice layer of resonance to me upon reading.

An audience member talked about Race to the Sun, a middle-grade book for the Rick Riordan Presents line. They said that it definitely seemed to have a different understanding of monsters than they were used to, and also treated the stories it was engaging with as part of a living tradition. Noah, who'd also read it (I hadn't), mentioned that in the middle grade category, it's a little more normal to have scenes shift dramatically, in a way that doesn't have much parallel in adult media except, perhaps, Star Wars.

Which was my cue to sum up Resistance Reborn, a Star Wars novel! This was about handling practicalities and building community after The Last Jedi, with a convincing range of reactions to "hey, why don't you leave your currently-safe life and get involved in a staggeringly dangerous resistance movement!" Plus an original character who was an awful boss and the nicely judged ways that his two employees faced that awfulness as part of trying to live in an oppressive system.

Someone asked about her short fiction, so I summed up four or five stories—including "Falling Bodies," which is free if you have Amazon Prime or Kindle Unlimited. They tended to be a little more directly one-to-one with things like cultural appropriation, an oppressor adopting a child from an oppressed group and raising them as an experiment, etc. Also: dark.

As for Trail of Lightning, which we'd both read, we agreed that Roanhorse was spot-on when she compare it to Laurell K. Hamilton in her interview: it's very much that kind of story, first-person hardboiled female investigator-type with deep angst, but it's unapologetic about using Navajo language (Diné bizaad) words without explanation, glossary, etc.: this is what's happening here, deal with it. Noah also really liked the section with Maggie looking at records, which felt unusual to him.

And then I drove home! And now I'm done and am going to stretch my wrists.

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My second-to-last panel and, therefore, report!

Book Club: The Locked Tomb Series by Tamsyn Muir

Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb series is dense with allusion, mystery, heartbreak, ever-more-unreliable narrators, and terrible jokes. Let's share our favorite characters and moments, point out telling details we were excited to discover, and speculate wildly about what might happen in Alecto the Ninth.

Benjamin Rosenbaum, Gillian Daniels (moderator), Graham Sleight, Kate Nepveu, Yves Meynard

A panel I wasn't moderating! (Partly because I was a last-minute addition to it.) I wasn't able to reread beforehand, but I did start listening to the audiobooks as a bit of a substitute. (After the drive home, I'm two chapters from the end of Gideon. Moira Quirk is as good as everyone says, though I'm glad I have the text fairly firmly in my head already, because as good as her voices are, I still prefer the ones in my head.)

I made extensive notes ahead of time, which I posted pictures of to various social media. I did my best to be restrained on the panel, however, so I only (only!) got out maybe half of that. And I took pretty detailed notes ... until my pen ran out of ink, which seems thematic somehow (as did the broken clock that Readercon gives every panel room to track the time).

This is full of spoilers.

Discussion with SPOILERS for all of the Locked Tomb books and short stories

Readercon has been using name tents made of white-board material (which are very handy because you never forget them, which is a decent tradeoff for the occasional person whose handwriting is illegible). Someone had put a House affiliation on theirs, so Gillian started by asking us all to introduce ourselves with names, what we did, and what House etc. we would be.

I know Ben was Hot Sauce's gang; me, I go back and forth between Fifth House (mom-coded) and Sixth (which seems most appellate-lawyer-like?), but really I'm a random background extra on Nona's planet; and Gillian was likewise the latter, or alternatively a skeleton servant from Canaan House. I can't remember what Graham and Yves were: I think Sixth and BoE, but I'm not sure who was which.

Gillian then asked us how we recommended these books to people. I said I talked about the increasingly unreliable narrators—culminating, in a phrase borrowed from Tumblr, in someone who is literally only six months old on all levels but the physical—and the incredible density of the works.

Ben talks about the way it plays with genre. He'd made a Twitter thread back in the day about the first sentence of Gideon, which I'll simply refer you all to the Wayback Machine version of for the sake of my hands. The bravado of the writing carries you through the apparent incongruities—until the third book reveals the reason for them!

Graham agrees about the register shifts. His pitch is that the series seems likely to be a hundreds-of-thousands-of-words, multi-volume argument for why Pluto is a planet.

Yves talks about the originality, though he notes that as possibly the oldest person on the panel, he may be missing some things about the books.

Gillian asked about our favorite characters.

I said what I'd been telling people all weekend about listening to the Gideon audiobook: when you can't rush through the early Ninth stuff, it's just so crushingly obvious how much Gideon needs to be able to give her affection to someone who returns and shows it! Saddest girl in the whole world even then!!!! I just want her to have that healthy mutually affectionate relationship and I'm 99% sure she's not going to get it. So even though I'm sure I'll have that reaction when I get to Harrow and Nona (indeed, I was wearing my "tell your dog i said hi" T-shirt in honor of Nona), it had to be my girl Gideon, first and forever.

Yves: Palamedes. The first time through, he wasn't sure whether he was secretly a bastard, but on reread, he was sure.

Ben: Palamedes is a mensch. His favorite is now Nona; Gideon and Harrow are so emotionally cramped and burn so hot, with their interlocking traumas; then Nona is so emotionally expressive (raised by three loving parents!), in a heartbreaking respite.

Graham: his favorite, though not for aspirational reasons!, is John, and/because of the whole structure behind him and the question he poses of whether there's a way out of this cycle.

Gillian said that her favorite reveal in Harrow, the faux school story, is that Harrow is learning to deconstruct living planets, no big deal. (I'm sorry, if Gillian said a favorite character, I didn't write it down!)

Ben followed up by saying that Gideon is a queer Warhammer 40k campaign (apparently? this is outside my area of expertise), and John is such an elegant way of bringing home all that tropey stuff.

As for the memes, I references this Tumblr theory about why they exist beyond just "John remembers them."

Ben went back to the "dirty magazines" part of the first line of the series, noting that this is the modern world peeking through the Gormenghast bullshit that John came up with; John couldn't come up with everything (me: but he could come up with feudalism and indentured servants!), so then the stuff he didn't specify gets filled in by people being people.

Yves: the Empire conquers planets [*], there must be some influence from those societies

Gillian: are dirty magazines the carcinization of porn?

Graham: sees the series as a savage political critique of Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, specifically the unexamined costs of Severian bringing the New Sun, as seen from the outside. also of the lack of agency that women in those books have. unfortunately the amount of information need to get out to make this case, does mean that he's slightly less fond of Nona

I picked up on this about texts that the series is in conversation with, and Ben's mention of Nona with an emotionally healthy family life, to give a little speech. Family and reproduction in the Empire is death, theft, and trickery. The only good parents in the novels are parent figures: Abigail and Magnus are infertile. Then outside the Empire: there's babies all over! Nona has an incredibly loving and patient family! Pal's mom gets to leave the short story and come into the novel proper! And this is part and parcel of the violence of empire, which extends all the way down to the family relationship.

Because another major text the series is in conversation with (credit this observation originally to several people on Tumblr), is Lolita. Poe's "Annabel Lee" is woven through Lolita. John renames Alecto to "Annabel Lee," puts her in a doll's body, and calls the Lyctors their children (who he also renames, whose memories he wipes, and two of whom, U— and T—, he literally puppets). He says he'd want Harrow to be his daughter but gaslights her throughout the book (he knows from Chapter 2 of Harrow that she edited her memories because he's touching her when he says "Gideon" and she passes out). He replaces Alecto with Harrow in the heart he draws in the sand. It's the same violence all the way down, mental sexual physical, for domination and control.

Gillian pointed out that this is literally what necromancy is, after all: using other people's bodies as objects.

This is where my pen ran out of ink, so based on the keywords I put into my phone's notes:

Someone, possibly Graham? saying that the great thing about Ortus getting his vindication in Harrow is that it's a defense of tedious people. Very rarely does the thing that makes someone tedious turn out to also be the thing that makes them win.

Graham recommends The Locked Tomb Podcast.

Someone notes that all the references are on the same level, which I think meant, the Bible and Homer and Homestuck and Gene Wolfe and Lolita and memes, they're all treated on equal footing.

Graham closed the panel by putting a very light bet on what the structure of Alecto might be: since it seemed like John was getting tired of being Emperor and his "children" were fighting over being in charge, might it end up being ... Succession?

And that was the end of the panel. Please feel free to continue the conversation in comments!

[*] Speaking of conquered planets. I no longer remember if this is from a text to someone or what, but I have this in my notes to myself for a Nona discussion post that I never made ... until now.

I mean, based on Harrow's experience of flipping planets, and the description of travel away from Earth in Nona, I thought for a while that there were no planets that hadn't been initially colonized by the Houses--flipped, settled, left on their own, then hundreds of years later resettled when the planet goes uninhabitable; I thought that timeframe would explain the feeling of disconnect from the Houses.

And then I looked and saw that sermon guy talking about people born on thalergic planets and Judith reporting that Corona "said what would be most economically productive was intermingling with these people, allowing immigration and absorption into the Nine Houses; that shepherd planets got more costly the further the Houses extended themselves".

So: definitely wrong! There are humans out there who weren't ever connected to the Houses!

Where the fuck did they come from?! Could the FTL fleet have resulted in that big a population? If they are descendants of that fleet, why is John still looking?

I don't understand.

I have a great big question mark over the River, the zombies, what Ianthe wants, etc. etc., in Nona, but if you have thoughts, feel free!

Oh, and here's my Tumblr tag for The Locked Tomb; as I said on the panel, Tumblr is full of amazing analysis of these books, and I paged so far back in prep for the panel yet barely got to the release of Nona before I had to stop for lack of time.

Edit: gah, I forgot to say that I mentioned this important New Zealand context!

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After the GoH interviews, I had a lovely evening talking with people about books. My usual practice is to only look at the news once a day, in the morning (and often not at all on weekends), and the same for the social media sites that don't let me fully silo off political news. So I had a bit of a weird morning Sunday morning!

Nevertheless I got my notes together for my panels later in the day, packed, and went to this panel, which I'd promised [personal profile] forestofglory notes on.

Defining and Appreciating Cozy SFF

At the blog Lady Business, forestofglory argues that cozy SFF "generally has small stakes," "focuses on community-building," and "honors the importance of domestic labor and other undervalued jobs." She also argues that its main failure mode is "insularity": failing to ground a story by situating it within a larger context, or failing to recognize the implications of its background worldbuilding. Panelists will explore how this framework illuminates cozy SFF's appeal, scope, and relationships to other subgenres.

Caitlin Rozakis, John Wiswell, Natalie Luhrs, Steven Popkes, Victoria Janssen (moderator)

panel notes

Victoria: will mostly focus on some newer things that readers have decided are cozy SFF, because figured most of you are here for recommendations

audience: yes

Steven: vast majority of own work is cozy SF but don't like word cozy

Victoria: call own recent works cozy space opera, starts with end of war and escape to utopia, get assigned to therapists, that kind of thing

Natalie: headed up RT Book Reviews SF section for several years

Caitlin: debut novel Dreadful came out little over month ago, fantasy farce; not originally conceived of as cozy, getting slotted into, having interesting feels about

John: also debut novel in same timeframe, Someone You Can Build a Nest In. chapter 1, flesh eating monster eats man to death, everyone calls it cozy (monster finds girlfriend, tries not to blow it)

Natalie: trust you not to do anything really terrible, like kill dog

John: her pet is a bear

Caitlin: and nothing bad happens to

Victoria: what makes cozy? small stakes, not always true; community building, ditto; domestic labor & unvalued jobs, my favorite aspect but also ditto

Caitlin: impression under is that coming out of cozy mystery, in which people totally die but it's secondary

Natalie: but in a really non-threatening way

Caitlin: first victim, head first into industrial ice cream maker; three more people choke on sprinkles; at the end, there's recipes

Victoria: actually think cozy mystery is about justice therefore restoration of status quo, but cozy SFF is often about upending of status quo

(edit) Natalie: posit that cozy is more vibe than genre

panel: yes

John: think where diverge from mystery is that mystery has had time to calcify into conventions, maybe in 10-15 years speculative fiction will. think one wonderful thing about being in a vibes space is what get into in panel description, different kinds of points of stories can be centered, e.g. not violence as center or what principally defines characters. one of reasons that Legends & Lattes blew up, desire to have quieter life and see how it works

Caitlin: vibes include sense of safety not for just characters but for reader, not going to be deeply upsetting. tone will be such that will not be gut-punched. hence popularity given stress of current times

(me: see the reader contract inherent in the romance genre)

Victoria: asks Steven why works are called cozy

Steven: don't like cozy because implies comfort to reader, like idea of small stakes character-level. don't know ever called cozy but meets definition, violence is not endgame. Smilodon Country main character is attempting to find different way after growing up in violent gang, doesn't know what that looks like. don't find that comforting but thrust is to move away and redeem self in one's own eyes. maybe missing something about definition, preselects works like to read against being comforted

Victoria: making better life, hope at end of tunnel, are books I find cozy

Natalie: or changing stressful circumstance in your life, doesn't have to be violence.

John: if don't like cozy, can always call moist sf

someone: moist horror

Caitlin: there is also rain of viscera in mine! but tone really sets a lot, played for laughs

John: character sensibility has huge thing to with coziness, also horror (ho-hum, another day at slaughterhouse)

Caitlin: just finished Liberty's Daughter, Naomi Kritzer, not cozy, excellent. at one point reality TV producer asks, what's the difference between tragedy and comedy? someone says: what happens to me versus what happens to you. producer: no, it's what music you play over it.

Caitlin con't: cozy has focus on simplicity, old-timey small business

John: Naomi Kritzer is great recommendation for short stories; "Year without Sunshine" almost cozy apocalypse

Natalie: also makes lists of annual gifts for people you don't like

Natalie con't: wanted to bring up Becky Chambers, Monk and Robot series, incredibly deep worldbuilding, people are living in sustainable way, recycling, bartering between little towns; tea monk meets robot who noped out of humans; very gentle, slow, thoughtful, kind

Caitlin: doesn't mean not challenging or have profound things to say

Natalie: monk trying to figure out what want in life, but very meditative. beautiful

Victoria: recommendations time!

Natalie: Katharine Addison, Goblin Emperor and two other books in that world, though content note, second contains disabling event

Caitlin: Goblin Emperor interesting because like a lot of cozy works, take a different direction that used to

John: Delicious in Dungeon, anime and manga (I got to tell him that the manga was complete)

Steven: Heavenly Delusion anime on Max; stays with feeling of comfort, progressively weirder

Caitlin: Olivia Atwater, Small Miracles, basically Good Omens fanfic with serial numbers lightly filed off; also Half a Soul, Regency fairy thing

Victoria: Victoria Goddard, Hands of the Emperor, extremely immersive

Caitlin: Can't Spell Treason Without Tea, Legends & Lattes, how much is coming out of coffee shop AU?

Victoria: Celia Lake, historical romance with magic; lot of good disability representation and also lots of different kinds of representation

Caitlin: think sense of inclusivity is starting become one of the tropes

Victoria: "even I am safe"

John: like to see that we belong in an uncontested way, at least some of the time

John con't: one of fave developments is seeing commercial writers responding to fanfic because many have read and part of community: Isaac Feldman's Dead Collections, trans vampire nerd is fanfic reader, meets woman who is fanfic writer

Caitlin: TJ Klune's Lightning-Struck Heart, older one, can't honestly say good (edit:) but is FABULOUS, just bonkers. House in the Cerulean Sea now has a sequel, which is better but less cracky (though situation is compared to residential schools, so be aware)

Victoria: Sarah Beth Durst, The Spellshop, just came out: author says wanted to be like a warm hug

Victoria con't: forthcoming August, Full Moon Coffee House, Mai Mochizuki; is coffeehouse story but very philosophical; sequential characters with problems where servers, who are talking cats, help; each turn out to be connected; a bit static feeling but in a good way

Steven: kind of like Miyazaki movie waiting to happen

John: it's okay if it's not everybody's cup of tea!

everyone groans

Caitlin: mentioned domesticity, but also fantasy of simplicity of small business (discussion about ways in which that is a fantasy elided for sake of my hands)

question: what kind of cozy new trope would you like to see that isn't there yet

Natalie: disability representation for rare diseases, as survivor of one, changed but still alive

Caitlin: Courtney Smyth, The Undetectables, should read, lot of plot about person who doesn't have spoons to do the magic most days

Natalie: also fat rep

John: me! I'm the fat rep

John con't: not nearly veterans affairs in these stories, care for characters after big events

Natalie: oh okay with VA and not building permits (going back to small business discussion)

question: cozy + cosmic horror?

people point at John

question: large v small stakes, but small stakes can also make sob uncontrollably: if they do, still count as cozy?

Caitlin: would say no, good valid important but not cozy

John: when have cozy as a vibe, some will sob and some not; sometimes there's catharsis and crying out of affirming and reassurance, which can be cozy

question: overused trope yet?

(edit) someone: cat-themed may be getting a bit much

Caitlin: also coffeeshop AUs. definitely failure modes as mentioned, not wrestling with implications, drifting too far into tradwife aesthetic

back to recommendations:

Natalie: Murderbot comforting and almost cozy

Victoria: also because enslaved person who becomes free and what that means and how to live

Natalie: T. Kingfisher romances (which are also cozy horror)

And that's all.

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The second of two Guest of Honor interviews, here Amal El-Mohtar by Max Gladstone, which was also very lively and informative!

notes

M: here we are where we met, 10 years ago; 10 years is the Guest of Honor panel anniversary

A: wanted to tell story of how met, with your commentary. was on program committee, writing up panel descriptions based on submissions, one panel most excited to see discussed, difference between magic and tech in SFF. particularly proud of that description. was aware of your books, hadn't read yet.

M: very fun panel, got to tell Lev Grossman that the magic was in him all along

A: not sure saw that, but was in audience vibrating with frustration because I wanted to be having the conversation with you, you were hitting all points was hoping would be raised (no shade to anyone on panel, who I don't remember). literally got up and left within like 5 minutes. walked out there and immediately bumped into your spouse who said, I'm spouse of Max; me: funny you should say, I just didn't meet your husband. later met properly at room party: told you, I had to leave because I really wanted to talk to you, I feel like if we sat down and talked together we could solve the world's problems, but I want to read your books and therefore we cannot be friends. was book reviewer at time and could not review friends' books.

M: your editor was literally in the room. distinct memory of one of first things you saying was "We cannot be friends"

A: smash-cut to one year later you came to my wedding. actually we met again at Worldcon in London, just hung out the whole time. then I wrote letter saying, hello, I would like to be friends.

M: kept a little on downlow by writing physical letters by hand. felt a little cool for me, because it was peak Twitter, meaning both constantly in cocktail conversation but also constantly being monitored, workplace where required to say witty things; also felt risky, didn't keep copies, letters were just gone, braving Canadian border

A: there are bears. but literally we used to talk about the letter beasts

M: which feel like large bird

A: was thinking clawed toothy beast. next time at Readercon you handed me letter in person, "delivered by skullduggery"

M: this is pretty much as I remember

A: and then we wrote This Is How You Lose the Time War. which really came out of that we had been writing letters: weird timey-wimey nature of letters, risk of, had to kind of invent person writing to

M: also way any new friendship involves mutual infiltration of pasts, something touched in your short fiction, Madeleine

A: written for Queers Destroy SF, first time travel story. in past, had lot of anxiety about being science-y enough to write SF. lot of stuff in Time War, science or math, anxiety about not knowing enough about. have dear memory of you explaining redshifts through photos texted to me

M: had said something dismissive of your ability to get on top of science of it, struck me as utterly untrue

A: not that think not smart enough, lacuna of knowledge, didn't take physics in high school; when in SF milieu, lot of people, none of whom are present, very glad to tell people when are wrong. Madeline, not first SF story, that was for Women Destroying SF, but first time travel. like to think of time travel as embodied experience because that's what we do, when you remember something, what is happening in your body is really interesting to me. feel like have mode of writing stories sometimes where the basic building block is, there are two women, and they talk to each other. and then they are friends and/or lovers. sometimes look at work with eye as critic and wonder, should I write something else. especially as have collection coming out probably 2026

M: such collection must be strange, short fiction is always entering into conversation, so a number of stories from same author on same themes, can be contribution to conversation. little strange to take your part of conversation and put between two boards

A: remember reading N.K. Jemisin's short fiction collection, thinking that this is 15 years of the Internet (positive). From info from the author about each story, felt like could locate each within conversation being had about craft or short fiction. part of value of collection like a time capsule

M: fresco-ish. painting on fresh plaster and then it sets, have to work very quickly then it can be very durable, responding to wet conditions

A: (re: "responding to wet conditions") I really think that's—

M: —title of our what? later on "interview after dark"

A: going back to Jemisin collection: time capsule, was in chronological order, see development of her craft, currents of conversation. also love a collection that's like a concept album or mix tape, different arcs or throughlines. Christopher Rose said, when contemplating collection, should have coherent aesthetic argument

M: something that struck me about collection with one story as title, reinforce tendency to look for underlying fractal seed in work: all of these stories are about the Bloody Chamber

A: going back to part of conversation between two boards: need to write maybe three-ish more stories from now, to be included in forthcoming collection. process includes a lot of looking back and thinking about act of curation, what is the coherent aesthetic argument of my career so far? probably it is, women talking to each other.

M: do you feel the urge to write against earlier work?

A: more like complementary to, fill in gaps. really fallow period during pandemic, teaching remotely, didn't write for like 4 years other than ephemera. last story had written was for Mythic Dream anthology, until "John Hollowback and the Witch" last year, two years ago? as was writing that, realized hadn't written a man as protagonist ... since literally first published story in 2006, "The Crow's Caw." wouldn't write against that, but recognizing influences and currents in that, are so much less interested in those now.

M: was going to quibble about protagonist, more antagonist

A: just a tagonist. once quit teaching, wrote a lot more. Star Wars anthology story, also about a dude who also is bad. so now in place where, interrogate self a little, feel like should have the range to write man who is not bad. feel like should have at least one story in a collection. probably? no one is making me do, but.

M: treat it as formal experiment, what if men.

A: do feel embarrassed by it, weirdly, don't think I should be, but am. some of my best friends are men. I am married to one! he's really great!

M: I found this too, woke up looking back at novels, only one male protagonist, oh been going down particular road for long time without having realized it

A: do you ever feel need to write against what written before?

M: struck pretty early on in Craft Sequence, think Chip Delaney said re: Neveryon, was trying to make problem of each book the answer to the previous book. found that really insightful organizing principle for series, but even for work as a whole. so in that way often find self writing back, but not ever need to radically reinvent project.

wonders what writer version of going electric is (in music context, Bob Dylan)

A: we wanted to talk about music! you play violin, I play harp. what were you going to ask me?

M: you are singer, musician, poet: do you see all these consonant, mutually supporting?

A: yes, loved Tolkien very very early, songs are poetry on the page. read something about his life, said had went from poetry to short stories to novels. "oh, that's how you do it!"

M: something about devolution from sacred word to profane prose, which was clearly a reference to something I didn't know

A: when I was 7 and living in Lebanon, everyone I went, people hear my name and would ask how related to (name) El-Mohtar (I'm so sorry, I didn't catch his first name and Google is not helpful). would say, my grandfather; people would say, he was a very good poet. didn't say knew name because was a failed revolutionary who had been imprisoned: not because being polite, but because to be poet was to be the same thing. would extemporize poetry in prison making fun of guards, food; unbeknownst to him, person in next cell was writing down on roll of toilet paper, which gave to father many years later, we now have framed at home. I knew him as a child, lived with us in Canada, never connected him with that scroll when he was alive. so had notion of what poet was: important, truth to power. in that context, to read Hobbit, add to ferment of things: started writing poetry at 7 and making up tunes for hobbit songs to sing.

Loreena McKennitt, Canadian treasure, fell in love with, she played harp, so learned around 15-16. was also very Celtic-philic (M: many of us were)

Charles de Lint, Ottawa author, got to know when 18, 19, wonderful human being, very inspiring to get to know specifically through his playing music at pub every Thursday night. read his works after, which have a lot of music entwined; whole thing in fantasy at time, Emma Bull etc.

definitely write in way that I like to hear. often fail to do what tell students do, read out loud.

we started writing a pilot, you gave me a compliment about writing very tight lines, being good at it despite not having done it before

M: transition to screenwriting often difficult because such dense way of communicating, leave as much whitespace on page as possible and leave room for other people to work art

A: delighted that poetry was of practical use in screenplay writing

audience: in writing Time War, what was process?

A: sit across from each other in gazebo, simultaneously write a letter and situation being received in, swap laptops, be delighted, keep going

M: take walks to talk about form of letters or situations received, not plot. built book the way did so that each could contribute own voices

A: at one point process involved both lying on floor and staring at ceiling, which felt very necessary. wrote 3/5ths on 9-day retreat. few more in-person visits. finished at True Grounds in Somerville, under local artist painting of sunset over water, which she describes in book as really red and blue. posted picture on Twitter saying, no one knows what this means but it's really auspicious

audience: did you know Red & Blue were going to fall in love?

A: yes, had to decide early on whether friendship or romance

M: before started writing?

A: yes. sitting at parents drawing diagram of the Time War. we were talking about fusion, Steven Universe

M: which is an intimacy not restricted to sex metaphor, very multiphasical way

A: part of reason we decided they were women with she/her pronouns was because had decided on romantic relationship

John Wiswell from audience: favorite anime fandoms?

A: this question sounds loaded to me. I think reason John Wiswell might be asking this question because had interesting thing happen with Trigun fandom

M: oh

A: I love seeing you look confused until the last word of that

A recaps Bigolas Dickolas saga

A: favorite anime is Revolutionary Girl Utena which is important to Time War, which Max introduced me to, because I introduced him to Steven Universe

M: red coat!

A: it's all been action in the Time War

And that was the end.

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The first of the two Guest of Honor interviews, here Rebecca Roanhorse interviewed by P. Djèlí Clark, which was very lively and informative.

interview notes

P: how did you decide to become a writer?

R: did write poem in third grade that won award, very emo and very Freudian. always say that wrote first SF short story in 7th grade, assignment to talk about a planet, took science assignment and turned into short story where astronaut toured all the planets, but again reached into emo self, suicide mission into sun. B+. wrote for pleasure all throughout life, had number of careers, mostly recently lawyer, very mediocre. had 2 year old daughter and had crisis, who am I? sat by daughter's bedside 10pm-2am and wrote, just to keep self sane. joined nanowrimo group just to have someone to write with on Saturdays, finished and group members were like, have your novel published! cold queryed agent, didn't know odds (5 / 30,000 submissions year are signed); sold novel within a week

P: didn’t know wanted to be writer?

R: as Black and Native woman, didn't know was a career option. didn't see other women like her, read Dragonlance and Eddings. then as adult, N.K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor

P: think similar paths. reading these books, looking for POC in them. talk more about stuff read when younger, what got you into genre, me it was Le Guin and L'Engle

R: yes, L'Engel, Lloyd Alexander. public library, just remember taking stakes of all the fantasy could find, very escapist reader as child.

P: how much do those influence you? can look at my writing and see influence

R: Raistlin from Dragonlance, I mentioned my favorite, so emo, wants to become a god: lot of him in Serapio (from trilogy starting with Black Sun)

P: he's so emo!

R: on some level they all are, in their feels all the time

P: always notice your writing is very richly detailed, feel like did research and learned something. how do you approach big tangled problem of research for own writing?

R: love it, totally a nerd. can lose self in subject for a while, then happy to do it. Trail of Lightning/Storm of Locusts, more lived experience, urban fantasy in my mind (though publisher said, let's call it something else), living on Nation at time, looking just around

Black Sun trilogy, research over a lifetime, can't remember time when not reading about pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, its cultures, thoughts around human sacrifice ("I think it gets a bad rap" :D ), etc.

much easier to talk about cultures standing on own rather than effects of colonialism, our stories don't have to center on European conquest

don't research until I need it, reading broadly. character in book comes from sailing culture, did specific research to sailing methods etc., didn’t want to be lazy and adapt European sailing methods, but not a stickler: not historian, want to at least get flavor right, is fantasy but think makes difference to hear about food and clothing etc.

P: talking about writing cultures that weren't present in fiction or done poorly: how much of it was, let me show you that this existed and what I found? did you get any pushback "well actually" from Twitter historian geniuses?

R: included recommended reading list in Black Sun, particularly accessible books, way to offer seed that maybe grows into interest. urban fantasy was definitely me saying, hey, you know you can do urban fantasy better, watch me do it. this was dream series, Game of Thrones-ish in scope and scale set in fantasy pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, wasn’t aware of any. cultures super advanced, city planners, massive trade routes, discovered Crab Nebula before Galileo: don't talk about these! on a reclamation project

P: so you've done virtual reality, post-apocalyptic, complete secondary fantasy world, but also a Star War and Marvel (comic book adaptation for TV), what it's like doing all things? going between them? was it, restrictive, or kid in a candy store for Star War?

R: enjoy writing IP. writing for Star Wars very cool, looked around saw all indigenous influence, but no people, Certain Point of View anthology came out, was asking on Twitter, why do no indigenous authors write a Star Wars, people were like, let Rebecca write a Star Wars! at first was like, no not me, then agent calling up Lucasfilm. they actually give you lot more freedom than think you do, which is great and also terrifying. called Daniel Jose Older: what do I do? said: they know what you do, they’ve read your work, they just want you to bring your work to the Star Wars universe. so went with that. any time you're stuck, call whole group of people who live and breathe Star Wars, hey I need a ship that does this, oh here are three options, I need a tropical planet with no lifeforms, etc. but also they're like, go create your own. sometimes takes pressure off, worldbuilding is hard.

P: short story, "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™". was it the first short story by indigenous person to win Nebula and Hugo, did you figure out?

R: maybe Hugo?

P: 1st short story?

R: yeah.

P: how did that even happen?! (accusatory-joking) but also, why short story?

R: lawyer for 10 years, law school beats creativity out of you, want you to think like a lawyer, evidence-based. so many lawyers who are wonderful writers, think become starved for creativity

didn't write for pleasure during that time. sold novel in 2016, while waiting for it to come out, Apex Magazine put out call for indigenous fantasists, is why wrote it.

P: why think resonated so well?

R: think people waiting for that voice. second-person POV, wrote in third and didn't work, didn't know second was supposed to be hard and anathema. works because it's a story about appropriation, brings reader in. LeVar Burton read it, with sound effects and everything: "I made it."

P: since lawyers may be having feelings hurt, anything from law school or lawyer life that think helps you?

R: get question quite a bit, used to say no, I ran away for a reason.

1) substantive work: specialization was federal Indian law. urban fantasy talks about jurisdiction in Indian country

2) biggest thing, discipline. have all your life to write your first book, but after that are on deadline. in law, can't blow deadlines off & don't get extensions very often. was working for Legal Aid, domestic violence cases, can ruin someone's life if blow deadline. did blow most recent book deadline but generally helps.

P: terror of blank page, so getting past that is part of writing.

R: now 16 year old daughter, while raising have to get things done when can.

P: twin 5yo, anyone say just put TV on, they are LYING. had great plan on writing until children, all plans fell apart.

Nebula speech, ended with clarion call to gatekeepers, there are indigenous writers out there, who are still alive and have stories to tell. it's the question we always get, so gonna get from me: are there more out there, name a few people should check out?

R: yes, think there are. you know Stephen Graham Jones, he said before Trail of Lightning, lot of native writers were stuck on university presses, really touched that he said helped broke door down. but does not mean door will stay open.

P: don't think I could have been published before Diana Pho picked up, don't think publishing world existed. do you think your works could have before?

R: Joe Monti, editor, he was right person to pick up my book, had visited Navajo Nation before, don't know if anyone else would have. agent responses to book all called "Native American tale," why tale? it's like Laurell K. Hamilton. one agent was like, want to sign you because I can hear coyotes howling out back; what does that mean?

fear that publishing pulling back, had been publishing lots of BIPoC without support, and using lack of support to justify reducing debut writers especially. don't know if true but fear that is. one of things try to do is talk about debut authors, and blurb works that enjoy especially by queer and BIPoC writers

P: one last very serious question, be careful about how answer: Taylor Swift or Beyonce fan?

R: a little bit of both. loved Cowboy Carter album, but did go to Taylor Swift concert with teenage daughter

q: have you read Black Robe, what do you think?

R: saw movie (audience which followed book pretty closely) no opinion

q: thank you, sure you know what means to see someone like self in this genre. what role does anger play in your writing?

P: Serapio is entering the chat

R: editor was like, love that Maggie (from _Trail of Lightning) so angry; is she? I didn't realize? very Hulk thing

q: pre-Columbian research, when do you think people first came to Americas

R: oh, controversial! not an anthropologist, going to dodge that question

q: third genders, how decided to use neopronouns and chose which of existing ones

R: first, thought more true to indigenous worldview. part of general departure from binary. second, read Ann Leckie, Translation State, blown away, "this is not hard, this is the world that I want to live in" (one of Leckie's books was in her top 10 list for New York Times, as is Clark's Ring Shout, hey!)

q: how can white people get to be honest about indigenous people and history, the technology they actually had

R: think kind of answered that question for yourself. did have very advanced tech for their times, science that wasn't even considered science (managing forest fires). have obligation to educate self, reading list at back of Black Sun, no dearth of sources.

And that's all!

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A panel I was on, so usual sketchy-notes disclaimer.

The Works of Naomi Mitchison

Memorial GOH Naomi Mitchison came to SFF late in her writing career, after achieving success with her historical fiction (The Corn King and the Spring Queen; 1931). Her retelling of the Grail legend in the tone of a tabloid journalist, To the Chapel Perilous (1955), presaged much of contemporary urban fantasy with its irreverent modern twist on the old story. Mitchison's anthropological and political interests made for unique works that explored the difficulty of recording history while hurtling into the future (Memoirs of a Spacewoman, 1962), the downsides of food surpluses (Not by Bread Alone, 1983), and the ramifications of cloning (Solution Three, 1975). Join us in exploring the works of her long and storied career.

Amal El-Mohtar, Kate Nepveu (moderator), Lila Garrott, Max Gladstone, Rebecca Fraimow

This was so, so much fun, as you would expect from a lineup like that.

panel notes

Before the panel we were showing each other the back cover copy on the reprint editions of To the Chapel Perilous and Memoirs of a Spacewoman, which are really something: Chapel says twice that Tolkien didn't like it! Memoirs is all, it's not the icky kind of science fiction, honest!!! So I passed my copy of Chapel around the audience as we got started.

I started by asking the panelists which book they were most excited to talk about, and to my surprise it was To the Chapel Perilous.

I gave a little elevator pitch for the book, which ran something like: the book opens with two tabloid reporters waiting outside the Chapel Perilous, where they've seen many knights enter, many knights leave as failures, some of whom they've interviewed and taken pictures of. And then, they see like twenty or thirty knights leave, all of them with Grails. And they look at each other and say, well, heck, we can't print that: who are we going to say found The Grail? And they decide on Galahad. Again, that's chapter one.

I took fairly detailed notes about this discussion, and what I have is:

It's about the rise of fascism. It's very funny and playful. It's about trying to make sense of a world that doesn't, as is the theme of Arthurian 20th century stories.

It slides register, from very modern to just lines from Malory.

It has this sense of a keen intelligence moving throughout it, analogous to a puppeteer behind a puppet show: the point of a show is to see the puppets, but every so often you get a glimpse of the puppeteer.

Lila has a crackpot theory, which he thinks cannot be confirmed except by interviewing the principals, that its direct descendant is ... Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Which everyone immediately acclaimed, because both are deeply familiar with the various Arthuriana legends, have zero nostalgia, and are into journalism.

Mitchison is sympathetic to the characters unlike, for instance, Twain, and also refuses to collapse into satire.

Someone commented that if you took the text in the vacuum, it would be very hard to date it, it could have been published any time between when it was and today.

Which I agreed with and used as a segue to talk about Memoirs of a Spacewoman. This was published in 1962 and was very definitely feminist: the narrator has children by multiple different fathers, raises them for a year and then goes off to travel at relativistic light speeds to make first contact with aliens, saying "it's so good to get back to work!" But then she says things like, I just think women are intrinsically better at communication, and I'm like, you so badly need second-wave feminism.

Anyway, the way I've been elevator-pitching this book is, possibly the least strange thing that happens is that the narrator, Mary, has an intense communicative experience with a Martian—who communicate by touch, including on/with their sex organs—and has a virgin birth as a result.

(She also has an ecstatic Christian vision, but doesn't practice religion (I should've said about Chapel that the text is very critical of the Church and very sympathetic to pagans) and explicitly says that at one point she thought she might adopt Islam, which was very striking. One of the fathers of her children is also Black, which is great but also the way she talks about his beauty was pretty uncomfortable.)

I managed to take zero notes on our discussion of this book except that there's no military on these exploratory/first-contact missions (the only bad guys are people who want to mine for minerals). What I can recall is discussing how the book is very insistent that to communicate, Mary has to change; for instance, in order to make contact with a five-armed radially-symmetric species, she has to give up binary thinking, to the point where she can't snap-answer a yes/no question. (Also, it's not clear until about 3/4 through the book that Mary is using telepathy, which is just one example of the ways that Mitchison is truly writing genre: she just drops background info in and expects you to pick it up.)

It's also very much about motherhood; besides the virgin birth, they make contact with a species that grafts itself onto other organisms, which of course Mary volunteers for. It's not only about motherhood, though; the explorers have a serious non-interference principle, which forms the basis for a significant plot episode and a lot of contemplation. This and Chapel are both skinny books but absolutely dense, despite feeling very breezy, which is really impressive.

Possibly around here Rebecca mentioned Mitchison as a political writer and thinker, having read some of her memories, including her WWII diaries? I have in my notes "community, connection; better world, working toward, working out (the idea of)."

Then we talked about Travel Light, with Amal recapping her beautiful essay about it, which I strogly recommend. People noted that the slide from myth to history in the book is kind of like that from childhood to adulthood. I noted that the fictional country that Halla meets people from, Marob, is the subject of her much earlier giant historical novel, The Corn King and the Spring Queen, which also does the same slide (one of the main characters is comforted to know that she can return to Marob where magic works, unlike out in Sparta or Egypt).

Someone asked if Mitchison could be in conversation with/compared to/etc. Hope Mirrlees and Dorothy Dunnett, and we agreed; other authors we suggested were Dunsany and Sylvia Townsend Warner.

Lila talked briefly about two books no-one else had read; Barbarian Stories, which is a fiction collection linked by the topic of the title, people encountering people they initially think are barbarians throughout history and into the future, and The Delicate Fire, which is about the retaking of a city by displaced former slaves.

And Max mentioned "The Fourth Pig," which is a chilling retelling of The Three Little Pigs in the context of the rise of fascism (part of the collection of the same title).

To my intense vexation, the small press reprinting her works doesn't do ebooks, so there are only five of her works available in that format:

  • Travel Light (novella, fantasy)
  • The Corn King & the Spring Queen (historical)
  • The Fourth Pig (collection)
  • The Blood of the Martyrs (historical)
  • Among You Taking Notes (memoir)

But all of the books mentioned in the post appear to be available in paper.

Also, please read her Wikipedia page.

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The Tyranny of the Tale

In her New Yorker article, The Tyranny of the Tale, book critic Parul Sehgal launched a diatribe against "the doctrine of narrative supremacy", the idea that humans innately rely on stories to understand the world and so are best reached and persuaded via a good tale, rather than through data or non-narrative fact. Has storytelling truly conquered the political and marketing worlds to our detriment? How can artists defend against the "encroachment of storytelling upon art"? Should they?

Andrea Martinez Corbin (moderator), Andrea Kriz, Gregory Wilson, RB Lemberg, Will Ludwigsen

panel notes

Andrea M C: essay is fairly free-ranging, will not summarize just springboard and occasionally reference. start with difference between our definition of storytelling & hers

Will: storytelling is way of encoding experience to share with someone else.

Andrea K: in scientific research, it's more like way to present data so that people viewing can understand. "I had this hypothesis" (maybe which is maybe not the first one you had, but one that makes sense in context), "data has this impact," etc. think as way of making more understandable, how characters are coming from

RB: narrative such broad category. as linguist, learned narrative theorists, William Labov etc., narrative is events sequenced on timeline. but so broad. make sense of life through stories, approached differently by each culture and language. no one true way to do. but narrative is developmental milestone, we know, why need to read to babies and tell stories, a lot of storytelling is about teaching about world. take tale out, what are left with? one of beefs with argument

Gregory: is the problem of The Tale in all caps the root of this article. formal definition, something like, a structured communication of theme and emotion through constructed events. (I think) all kinds of questions embedded in that. magic of how reader connects to story, to which only answer is, everyone wants narrative in some form (not just prose) because allows to contextualize world. trauma specialists talk a lot about how people who best survive are those able to develop story to contextualize, this who am I, this why, this is how it affected. the problem of the tyranny of this tale doing X Y Z, presumes particular kind of story and objecting to way this story is being done

Andrea M C: all panelists presented inclusive ideas of story. is fan of experimental fiction authors, many works that would struggle to recognize as story, but enjoy. re: essay, familiar with author's writing, following for a while, willing to read generously: not talking about broad definition, talking about narrow that has overtaken some areas and become more like a rule. what type of story/rule has escaped fiction and invaded sciences, marketing, etc., as thinks that's what trying to get at, expectation

Will: works in marketing and what finds alarming a bit: idea that storytelling is structure that going to cast like a spell that will have guaranteed result, trying to crack open someone's skull and press button to make buy thing. dozens, hundreds, of books all telling how to use storytelling as executive etc., all are, follow these five steps and cast spell and activate human zombie to do bidding. as writer, I can tell how to convey experience to show that learned something ... explained to company that in most stories, the discovery is that protagonist is the problem and needs to grow, and they didn't like that.

Gregory: also conflates storytelling with lies, which reject absolutely. also with manipulation. sure authors will employ techniques to reveal things at right moment to reader, but it's for pleasure of reader (would not enjoy mystery reveal on page 1, with few exceptions). storytelling fundamentally about emotional truth, can be done through many different ways.

Andrea K: hot take? understand what author means in essay: taught in science one true way to present data, all scientists do this who are successful, but think all good scientists realize not the truth because nature cannot be described by. works in brain research, none of hypothesis can accurately describe/explain. in fiction, cannot capture whole complexity of character, novels: what on page is not truth of world and cannot be

RB: preface that come to Tyranny of Tale, in Western sense, as outsider, immigrant also neurodivergent: don't process in same way, not looking to consume same narratives, structures. true tyranny is 500 white village boys saving world, and that's society, hegemony. saw all data erased by Putin's government (I think), iterative narrative of resurrection and destruction re: queer and trans people. not story that editor of journal knows what to do with. but is happening, how to describe?

Andrea K: scientific papers can be harmful for people not familiar with reality, leads to unrealistic expectations about science, should be space for untraditional narratives (can I publish my negative data)

Gregory: agree about untraditional narratives, marginalized voices, why important to see that problem is not storytelling but stories being told. also consume stories in lots of different forms. video game Brothers: Tale of Two Sons, required to play with controller with 2 sticks, about getting medicine for sick father, being guided by ghost at one point (spoiler) that only works with that controller

Will: as writers, think, what power do I have, at mercy of editors, publishers: encourage to experiment a lot more

Andrea M C: in talking about books, often easy to fall back on criticizing in light of rules expect to be following; what can we do to be more encouraging of stories that don't follow those rules?

Will: let self be surprised, praise weirdness as much as can, be openminded to what others are enjoying.

Gregory: especially important in speculative fiction, which is fiction of what if? why would say, but not that. there are excellent examples out there so why recommends them. students should think of selves as part of criticism not separate audience. (deeply paraphrased)

Andrea K: critique group, traditionally doesn't talk to author and ask for intent, maybe should; even if author is not there, sit with what intent might be

RB: early on, response was create journal, Stone Telling; by expanding what accepting, created space for what want to see in world; ditto editing anthology Alphabet of Embers, funded out of own short fiction so wrote a lot of stories. teaches classes, asks students, where is center of storytelling for you. be aligned with that. otherwise, burnout real danger.

audience: essay in Fantasy, We Are the Mountain, inactive protagonists; stories about survival, often kind marginalized people tell about ourselves (the second time this was mentioned in these reports, wonder if it was connected to prior!)

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kate_nepveu: sleeping cat carved in brown wood (Default)

Yet another panel I attended!

Classics with Undeservedly Bad Reputations

Which classics have undeserved reputations as dry and dusty, or really hard work, or bone-crushingly depressing? How are these reputations developed and perpetuated? Are there any patterns in what works are relegated to "worthy but unread (and perhaps unreadable)"? What books make us want to grab people by the metaphorical shoulders and say, "No, forget what you think you know about this book, you really have to read it!" (and why is one of them Moby-Dick)?

Ian Muneshwar, The joey Zone, Laurence Raphael Brothers (moderator), Max Gladstone, Rebecca Fraimow

(As I believe Rebecca said to me, you must have written this one, it mentions Moby-Dick! In my defense I did tell Noah, the program chair, that he should feel free to take out that last parenthetical.)

panel notes

Laurence: classics in general and why people don't read them. rebarbative effect, why do people shy away

("rebarbative" is my word of the day now)

TjZ: are we talking about just Moby-Dick or Melville as a writer? anyway one of definitions of classics, people think they know what happens. a lot of people think been there done that, a lot of classics by older white men that are deader than me, deservedly not speaking to people who are reading now.

Rebecca: definitely a layer of distance between present day reader and anything written more than a generation or two in past. sometimes find that a pro but understand turnoff. thinking you know stories is really great point, podcast tracking different adaptations of Phantom of the Opera, every one bringing in different things

(Is this In This Labyrinth: Getting to the Heart of The Phantom Of The Opera?)

(Edit: no, it is Re:Adapted by Kris Pepper Hambrick!]

Ian: what is a classic? for purposes of panel, wiling to apply pretty broad scope, not just pre-20th century, especially when comes to specific classics. re: why don't? in addition to prior, as teaching, see students with resistance to certain books because racist etc. element, dismiss book as whole. can be very limiting way of trying to engage as reader

Max: also closes off from engaging a lot of books that are trying to attack -isms in their own ways. my instinct is that question has been begged a little bit, sitting here as a person who reads classics. but agree that myself felt resistance to reading certain books that feel like in a canon or classics of field, tended to be taught in high school or regarded as Important by high school teachers, gut level rejection of authority. but also people tend to encounter books that we call classics in a classroom setting that can lead to reductive analysis and reading at a speed of 4 pages at time over semester that drains all joy out

Rebecca: read Julius Caesar in 10th grade, hit assassination, teacher was like: we're behind, none of rest is important, so going to move on

Laurence: is there particular book that rejected then later came to embrace?

Max: missed a lot of American Literature because of way did high school. very resistant to picking up Huck Finn, Great Gatsby, etc., but always found that were bangers

Rebecca: Frankenstein, high school hated it because emotionally engaged with Creature, did not understand on any other level. after twice coming back in college settings, have reached understanding that emotional reaction was product of really good book! ability to come back and get more every time

TjZ: find that reading about the writer and milieu sometimes gets psyched to go back to read. Henry James, Turn of the Screw; see why interesting book, but read bio of him, just interesting person. like doing a deep dive before the fiction. not for everybody. Heart of Darkness enriched by knowing about author. reading text separate from writer might detract from classics bit (?? I'm not sure I heard this properly).

Ian: want to go back to Heart of Darkness. Passage to India, when taught in high school, presented as moralizing tale, colonialism *clap* is *clap* bad. then in grad school, and after had come out; it's really gay. entirely different reading experience.

Laurence: what book is it that typifies unfairly bad reputation?

Ian: Heart of Darkness is example of that, have very thorny relationship with. writer from Indian Caribbean background, Wilson Harris, wrote a good deal about: book stands on threshold of capacity that Conrad never attained. (see, e.g., The Frontier on Which "Heart of Darkness" Stands?) interested in books where writers trying to think through something that don't have full ability to do because of background. in HoD, racist as it is, see Conrad grappling with the colonial project and horror therein. threshold novels, allowing authors some grace when encounter. in some ways all writing these, trying to work through things that don't have full capacity to deal with right now, literature tool of working through

Rebecca: Dickens: long career, see transitions; Our Mutual Friend is not a nuanced portrait of Judaism but he's trying to do better than in first book. correspondence with Jewish reader that resulted in this change.

TjZ: try to go a little more classic: Jewish problems, women problems, name is ... Shakespeare! constantly told this is a classic, this is the man. why??? a lot of readings for classics depends on ability to adjust to style, if can content is maybe less important. Shakespeare let wash over, may take several washings before can discern whether speak to you, major or minor play. "timeless approaches" to this or that, have to watch a lot to see if affects you or not

Max: I wonder if disagree with idea, seems poisonous endorsement in label of classic. go into with very raised expectations, not a good way to enter into a book for him.

Rebecca: almost find that more powerful with recent books. if everyone I know is raving, can't experience until see one negative review, now I'm freed

Max: oh good point

Rebecca: 100s years old, everyone's had all the thoughts

Max: hidden benefit to undeservedly bad reputations. Moby-Dick, everything gestalt thought was bad about digressions etc was the thing liked best, uncovering treasure trove.

Ian: discourse that dominates popular opinion about book, has effect hiding elements of book that are often much more interest. Moby-Dick, shocked about how formally experimental, book just becomes a play at some point, had no idea that did that

TjZ: think know what you're reading and then you get sailor's book of whaling chapter by chapter. had to read for high school, class gave massive groan (he had read summer before, this is awesome). still have to read Huck Finn, more interested in annotations then story itself, but sure there will be more there

Rebecca: thinks most accurate adaptation of Les Miserables would be series of documentaries linked by frame story. with theater, reframing in performance but text is still there. more challenging in adapting books because moving away from original text further

Max: adaptation and public reception and flattening that brings, almost come to see as advantage for me as reader, because signals that more going on than can be compressed into extremely lossy format. Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, read in pandemic, really surprised that Madeleine bit is like 10 pages in: oh that's because most people have read only that far! no one mentions lesbian sex 45 pages in, very little of social satire. does spend 10 pages on why someone didn't answer letter but also able to focus into little sharp satires

Rebecca: often most lost is that lots of classics are really funny and fun to read, too busy looking at ways that are important

Laurence: Tristram Shandy, reading first half of first chapter, WTF is going on, until realize, hilarious.

Laurence con't: dismissively called category: "world classics" in some bookstores. anyone touch on subject, favorite works?

TjZ: Brian Stableford, did a lot of French translations, yes still white European colonialism, amazing depth of stuff out there, can imagine beyond that. recommend anthologies, novels, MIT Press carrying some in dealers' room, non European outlook.

Rebecca: read Arabic adventure story 12th-13th c. recently translated, very fun; translator made choice to remove a lot of religious language, felt would be distancing; very conflicting feelings about that, especially since only translation of that text. Tale of the Princess Fatima, only Arabic epic named for single woman

Ian: so often when see books characterized as world literature classics, in marketing or classroom, leads to assumptions about contents and reading experience: difficult book about suffering in unfamiliar culture. so many books that would enrich speculative fiction's canon of base texts. Wilson Harris, Palace of the Peacock, one of most startlingly abstract and experimental things ever seen, 1960, wish more writing about how in conversation with Borges etc.

Max: found book on parents shelves with tagline "cosmic kung-fu on the scale of Star Wars," which is not even slightly inaccurate for an extremely abridged Journey to the West: nonstop globe spanning adventures, betrayals, really funny comedy. can approach as academic text but just tremendous adventure story. picked up other books on those shelves. Mahabharata: dharmic quests to talk to God to give really big weapon to kill someone who took over kingdom. Journey to the West: just as often has poetry breaks that are also slo-mo badass fight. much better than anything in Iliad! othering quality to calling adventure stories from other traditions "classics", just as adventure like Treasure Island etc., but used to be treated as distant objects of study

Rebecca: one of things where adaptations as medium can really be entry point. two separate wildly different K-drama versions of (edit) The Story of Hong Gildong. read SL Huang's Water Outlaws, now want to read Water Margin. so if interested in classics, looking at adaptations always interesting

audience: should we champion classics that are closer to our style, sense of humor?

TjZ: yes. sense of sharing, have you read this too?

Ian: as a teacher, think a lot about ways of extending craft toolbox offer students, develop personal canon and foist on 18 years old that can't say no

Rebecca: disagree a bit of concept of championing, I read to experience, tell about my experiences; don't know that anyone ought to read anything, people should make decisions for themselves, but do like be able to describe elements that resonated with me for assistance of others

audience: what contemporary books do you think will be classics 100 years from now?

Ian: most significant recent horror novel, about dirty war in Argentina, Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez, recently translated into English

Rebecca: question is bit of a head trip, sometimes things are overlooked in their time (Moby-Dick), sometimes remembered for being massive popular bestseller and thus may be read in 100 years as an example of what was reading them

TjZ: A.S. Byatt, Possession. Zadie Smith, The Fraud, such a good book. but a classic? we might be beyond that, no longer setting up a pantheon any more, depends on what you're interested in.

Max: great, unanswerable question, would not play bets of more than $5 on any book. one that hope gets Great Gatsby-burst of attention (story is that rights were cheap so was sent to American soldiers abroad in WWII 20 years after flopped): Sarah Caudwell, Thus Was Adonis Murdered: if copies were just suddenly all around the world, what great world that would be.

Which is an excellent vision to have ended on.

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kate_nepveu: sleeping cat carved in brown wood (Default)

I was really excited to go to this one, even though it was at 10 a.m.! Good turnout for it, too.

Mad Prophets & Time Travelers: Dementia in SFF

Writing in the New Yorker, Stefan Merrill Block suggested that mainstream fiction often relies on the redemptive idea of a true self revealed by Alzheimer's and dementia, but that depicting such diseases as transformative events was truer to his experience. Panelists will discuss SFF depictions of dementia (for instance, Bujold's Memory; Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell; and Mosley's The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray), how or whether they differ from mainstream fiction's approaches, and what they say about our willingness to engage honestly with mental disability and vulnerability.

Allison King (moderator), Ann LeBlanc, Julie C. Day, Noah Beit-Aharon, Zin E. Rocklyn

(This was the point in the con where I started trying to write notes without looking at my laptop screen, to reduce the strain on my neck, so thank goodness for spell-check, is all I can say.)

panel notes

Noah: worked as activities guy in eldercare for 8 years, in practice meant make friends, slowly lose, make more; good at but takes toll, glad to no longer be in industry. sense of what people go through, bleeds into fiction

Zin: personal experience, mom has dementia. moved down to where lives to help care. "I'm one of those weirdos who loves diseases but also is freaked out by them." become egghead. mom symptoms really early, early 50s, interesting and heartbreaking

Julie: creatively often play with unraveling, transformation of person. personally, dad died this year from Alzheimer’s, known for about 7 years, also knew early. tasked her with mediating care with goal of slowing down, best possible outcomes, thus the one who dealt with some issues in industry as to how people are treated. culturally, discussions around death and dying do disservice to selves and people going through, fiction as way to mediate how we can think about these changes in people

Ann: number of short stories about memory, what means when people lose part of selves. multiple family members currently with, died from, kind of unknown space where know that high risk, is this normal aging or oncoming approach of dementia

Allison: what SFF examples do we have

Julie: Flowers for Algernon is the classic, does a good job of depicting sense of losing sense and having no control from outsiders perspective. seeing that moment of fear is generally universal. most heartbreaking moment of that story and of reality

Ann: not in panel description: Rainbows End, Vinge, man with pretty heavy Alzheimer’s miraculously cured, has to go on and live life after; doesn't deal with Alzheimer’s after initial scene but does fit into narrative cure that often seen in speculative and even literary fiction. My Real Children, Walton, woman with Alzheimer’s experiences two diff versions of world

Allison: also recommend your own work!

Julie: her "Flyover Country" is about (pre-pandemic, Jan 2020) disease where slowly sense of self disintegrates, becomes something different; about disentanglement of self, watching as you and others have disease, attempts at avoidance; also about points of connection make

Noah: "The Many Taste Grooves of the Chang Family," Allison's beautiful story, touched heart, one of parts of dementia care that rarely see, constant grueling process of letting loved one go little bit at a time. often they reach crisis point where sense of self has been slowly crumbling: enough facilities to recognize serious loss (if lucky go through to sense of peace). have I lost them now? then every now and then, moments of grace where recognize that person you knew, doesn't say oh good they're back, just tremendous relief and beauty in seeing some part of person love come roaring back. beautifully done

Allison: in response to "where can we find this": link above, also read by LeVar Burton

Noah: I wrote stuff with dementia in it too, but hers is better

Zin: first ex, Bubba Ho-Tep by Joe R. Lansdale. movie is also excellent. black man believes he is JFK, another character believes he is Elvis. (I heard this as "Eldest" and just shrugged and wrote it down in the expectation that it would make sense eventually.) comedic but heartwrenching. older time-toughened kind of toxic masculinity characters that are losing their grip on reality, bit of denial. resonated more with her because mom still in denial, incredibly difficult. SFF idea of cure and hope, maybe not get better, will stop.

Noah: really important when talk about cures that recognize that there are many kinds of dementia, not all are progressive, but Alzheimer’s and many are, literally the brain disintegrating, less brain there than was (Julie: all about cell death). can talk about prevention, but insofar there could be a cure, it would be to stop progression; almost disturbing to think about stories about people returned to self they were. almost don't want to people to dream about that because not a thing that could happen. same for anyone! can't rewind brain to when I was six!

Julie: we have a sense of self that's artificially static, our brains are constantly changing networks. because brain is complex organ, dementia different for everyone. can't predict who someone is going to be when go into memory care.

Noah: can have people who are complete assholes, become nice people! family would tell him: were abusive asshole. I'm glad you to get see nice person in that body

Ann: Bujold's Memory: after cure, fundamentally different person

Julie: strokes do same thing but not degenerative re: fundamental personal change, ditto traumatic brain injury. when talk about cure stories, same as amnesia or coma stories = come back and fine! no!

Ann: The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Umberto Eco, litfic. after stroke? elderly person loses all memory, has to put life back together, does by going through old house trying to spark memories. book that talks one of more interesting tings, how integral is memory to who we are? one of scary things, slow degradation. A.G.A Wilmot's Withered, horror, fascinating look at character who begins to lose part of self even as can't die and is connected to this house

(a few comments ago is where I started trying to remember a SFF work that turned out to be A Memory Called Empire, which addresses this with a neat added bit:

Are we ourselves?

One of them is asking. One of them thinks this is a rhetorical question: there’s continuity of memory, and that makes a self. A self is whoever remembers being that self.

One of them corrects: Continuity of memory filtered through endocrine response.

One of them corrects: We all remember being that self, and we are not the same.

I remember thinking that the endocrine response is very elegant, but I need to reread and see how the theory and practice of continuity of memory works out in the book, because just as a phrase there's much to argue with!)

Zin: genre-bending horror, Iain Reid, We Spread. See also his second book, I'm Thinking About Ending Things. always toys with memory and jumping in time, which is kind of what mom going through in terms of memories: seeing her childhood, repeating traumatic story from childhood. if away from home, her domain, still understands that things getting dangerous but won't admit where danger is coming from. show Castle Rock on Hulu, episode with Sissy Spacek as mother who has object, chess piece that holds on to for dear life; disorienting, heartbreaking, worth watch. (This is probably Season 1, Episode 7, "The Queen.) personally, they move mom's unicorns around house which triggers memories, also to put back and remember what was going on

Ann: sense of repetition. whenever conversation with grandmother, same questions, in between conversations seems to retain stuff in that questions shift over. Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, Mosley, cure narrative temporarily, but in pre-cure section, does good job showing that kind of getting lost in past, repetition, difficulty of both sides

Julie: time travel narratives in title? in some, person experiencing time travel is moving through life out of sequence, seems like more coherent metaphor than what people experience but does tie to dementia experience

Ann: My Real Children kind of did that

Allison: different types of arcs: cure narrative, transformation. what are we gaining or losing with SFF, which makes cure narrative easier?

Ann: astonished how many stories coming up with are cure narrative, sense of needing character to have agency, because suffering Alzheimer’s is partly process of losing, especially once go into memory care, that's it. great essay by Vida Cruz in Fantasy Magazine how Western storytelling is uncomfortable with characters don't have agency, "We Are the Mountain." in Ptolemy Grey, cure narrative necessary for main character to achieve goal of setting things up for next generation. couldn't think of any speculative or literary stories that don't engage at least a little with cure narrative. maybe My Real Children?

Noah: easier to find in short story space, good place for that small moment, short character arc

Julie: easier to have lack of agency in short fiction, moment of grace can be the story

Noah: "Life In Stone, Glass and Plastic," Jose Pablo Iriarte, story from POV of husband of woman with dementia; comes across artists creating horrible memory sculptures on sides of buildings, which went touch bring into memory; recognizes as both magic and art and tracks down people who are creating, goal is to convince them to make some beautiful art of his memories of his life with his wife, so she can touch them and be brought in

Ann: re: arcs, fiction by necessity is linear process, experience of reading relies on memory; almost unsuited to really depict dementia accurately; curious about potential for interactive fiction, looping narratives. Binary by Steven Granade, interactive fiction about going through memories left behind on space station that has suffered AI equivalent of dementia. distortion of the personal history, fixation or change

Julie: sounds like really interesting! but also especially in short form can work with different structures, doesn't have to be linear, are craft ways to make reader disjointed

Zin: my father still believes in a cure. going to be 82, mom 72, every time I talk to him (memory not as sharp as used to be), still disappointed that every doctor says still no cure. familial denial ends up feeding patient. still kernel of hope, what are we but our memories, informs us as a current person? thinks mom also wants to believe in cure which is why not saying anything

Julie: sometimes hope can be -- dad was very analytic, if there's a problem, there has to be a solution (Zin: mine too) journey was to, work hard to understand disease to understand why so far from being able to address medically, Band-Aid approaches, slow down. hope, especially for patient, helps that horrific moment where are between feeling fine and forgetting what Alzheimer’s is, can slow it down. people in trials, placebo slows decline because hold onto a little more hope

Ann: spouse is neuroscientist, working on cure, family has history of Alzheimer’s, v weird uncomfortable place to be in the weeds with research and know how slow and stop and start it is

Noah: Alzheimer’s v dementia: dementia is umbrella term like pneumonia, doesn't tell why, set of symptoms, Alzheimer’s is one or more than one form of dementia

question: prophet aspect of panel

Noah: I wrote one! second novel, character with dementia which accidentally puts onto same wavelength gods are communicating on, is prophet but is still fucking confused! has to navigate own disease and loss of self at same time as alarming visions, kind of out of place and time in own way, more of Cassandra also

Julie: general way, something about dementia takes away social barriers so you will speak any truth that occurs to you

question: videogames have amnesia plots to point of cliche because difficult to frontload infodumping. not sure that is nearly as common in written speculative fiction

Ann: interesting thing about amnesia plot, does answer what are we without memory. video games: we are the tools that we are given. Bioshock: only interact with world in ways games allow you to. in short fiction world, when slush reading, see as oh no not another amnesia story, really high threshold

Zin: Amnesia the game (Amnesia: The Dark Descent?). horror tends to explore the idea of not reclaiming the person were; usually memories come back as you being a monster, there is the narrowing of the person; I realize I have a little bit of hope in my book ("damn!") do play with memory quite a bit, think something that so close to death while being alive, fascinating look at just functioning

audience: story recommendation: Life Sentence, Matthew Baker; no prison penal system, remove X years of memories instead; on Lightspeed

(me, to myself: A Matter of Oaths, Helen S. Wright, in which one of our main characters is memory-wiped for oathbreaking)

question: can longer form fiction can work with dementia by showing how as agency constantly changes, what you want also changes? any recs?

panel: not off top of head, but sounds like excellent writing prompt

Ann: Memory does this a little

And that was time.

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kate_nepveu: sleeping cat carved in brown wood (Default)

Another panel I was on (and wrote, as you can probably tell).

The Novels of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

Mo Xiang Tong Xiu is the author of three Chinese webnovels; one was adapted into the influential live-action drama The Untamed, and all three landed on the NY Times bestseller list in English translation. Her books are romantic, horrific, funny, tragic, intimate, epic, layered with more narrative foils and parallels and inversions than you can shake a stick at, and very queer. Panelists will introduce her works, argue for their favorite and least favorite aspects, and discuss her influence on the genre.

Kate Nepveu (moderator), Lila Garrott, Rebecca Fraimow, Sophia Babai

Unfortunately my notes for this one are particularly a mess? Also if you don't know the books, this post may resemble an avalanche of abbreviations.

panel notes, somewhat

The audience was generally familiar with all three novels, so we were able to dive right in, which was fun.

I'd previously read TGCF, read SVSSS for this panel, and got 1.5 volumes into MDZS but was pretty familiar with the changes The Untamed had made (though, as I said on various social media such as Tumblr, there was one change that gave me pause ... ). Rebecca and Lila had read all of them; Sophia hadn't finished SVSSS.

I proposed talking about them in order of least to most to say: SVSSS, TGCF, and MDZS. Lila had said SVSSS was his favorite in introductions, because the distance between the external appearance of SQQ, our protagonist (as opposed to The Protagonist), and his internal reality as an internet gremlin troll. I believe I said that I did not enjoy SVSSS because I didn't like being in SQQ's head, but I did want to put him under a microscope for his absolutely amazing layers of self-denial and unreliability, for which fic (of course) has my back. Someone said that the book is absolutely not trying to make him likeable, which is true and interesting; it ties into something I think we didn't get around to re: MDZS that Sophia said ahead of the panel, the difference in reception of WWX between Chinese and Western audiences, where the taboo of WWX's necromancy is that it's depriving people of the cycle of reincarnation (infinite murders, basically), so his villainy doesn't come across to a mostly-Christian audience. (We had to briefly explain to an unfamiliar audience member that LBH did not, in fact, turn out to be a psychopathic mass murderer.) And we talked about the humor—somehow I did not mention this deeply slapstick scene, which I'm fishing the English translation's illustration of out of my Tumblr queue—and the deep meta. Rebecca mentioned Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint as another work with major meta elements.

We transitioned to TGCF by me making a speech about how like SVSSS, the main character is deeply in denial about his sexuality and desire, but to me TGCF is the book most about sex, sexual trauma, alienation from own's body and desires, and efforts to control other people's bodies, despite being the only one of the three to have no actual sex in it. Plus the usual joke about how Hualian deserves good, or at least sexily-written, sex, which is why MXTX didn't write it. (Sophia said that the real reason is increased censorship, alas.)

(When mentioning censorship, someone was like, is she planning to leave? And I thought Sophia was tremendously restrained in pointing out if so, she would not be talking about it publicly. Plus, of course, it's not that easy on so many fronts!)

We talked about doing the right versus the accepted thing, and balancing the personal and political, which is a major theme of course in both this and MDZS (XL: well, if the gods don't like what I'm doing to help people, they're the ones who are wrong!). We tied together three other common themes in the person of Rebecca's favorite, Mu Qing (who might spit in your drink but wouldn't poison it): class; shadow doubles; and secondary leads with attitude problems (Liu Qingge and Jiang Cheng being the other two). I think someone who was not me said that the romance in this one was their favorite because they are really kind to each other? And, to change topic wildly, we talked about the straight-up racism in the Banyue arc which echoes an actual ongoing genocide.

Then MDZS. We talked about how there are so many things that are only known to the reader, and how they then are all laid out in the very long Guayin Temple scene (which some people especially appreciate just because of that) ... except for Jiang Cheng's secret. In general, we noted how different all MXTX's protagonists look when you don't have their internal narration. We talked about how many layers and parallels MDZS is working on: the Yi City trio, who are the worst outcome; the pre-timeskip version of the main characters; the post-timeskip version; and the juniors—each set of parallels getting better as time progresses. The interspersed flashbacks work so much better than the 30-episode flashback of The Untamed for this reason. I mentioned treatment of disability and women as bummers.

And I'm sure there's more but the only thing I have in my notes is the suggestion that MDZS is not actually fixable in the fanfic fix-it sense, by time travel or whatever, because it's all so balanced and proceeding from characters and theme. I said, as an ending joke, that that might very well be true, but I was nevertheless fond of the fix-it where Wen Qing time travels and thinks she's in an afterlife so starts just murdering people. (It's called With Surgical Precision by metisket, who wrote one of my other favorite MDZS stories, the LJY/WWX bodysharing fic.)

Anyway, tell me about your MXTX feelings, do!

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A panel that I was not on, so I have more detailed notes! I did come in a little late, though.

The Paradox of Writing Series Endings

Attack on Titan, arguably the most popular anime of our era, ended controversially in November 2023 after a decade of acclaim. Author Hajime Isayama said in a New York times interview, "If I was completely free, then I should have been able to change the ending... [but] I was tied down to what I had originally envisioned." When are series endings set in stone and when can they be changed? How does one balance reader expectations with one's own intent, and what lessons can we take from finales that have either strayed from their original vision or succumbed to it?

Andrea Kriz (moderator), E. C. Ambrose, LJ Cohen, Melissa Caruso, Scott Lynch

panel notes

came in to Scott "throwing Pat (Patrick Rothfuss) under the bus" (as a buddy): 2/3 of way through Kingkiller Chronicles, no Kings have been killed! readers probably not expecting series to end with narrator saying, hah, no Kings were ever going to be

LJ: author has duty of care to characters not to readers; spouse says, can't understand, just force the characters to do what you want: no

E.C.: long road trip, listening audiobook, really intrigued, but midway through started to feel like same scene over and over again, ending felt very abrupt; character expecting to confront antagonist, didn't; one who did, didn't have reaction would expect

Andrea: time constraints issue in manga industry, how do come up with right ending under difficult time pressure

Melissa: last book of first trilogy, had to write draft in x months, fortunately knew basically where going, but. privilege in traditional publishing, can ask for more time to stick landing. feels that if hadn't been satisfied with draft, would have asked--or just not slept! that's an option too

E.C.: had brainstormed and developed ending from start, drafted all in relatively short period of time, saved from pitfalls on both ends

Scott: (things ask not to repeat outside of this room, so I just took hands off keys)

LJ: self-publishes, so in enviable position of only time pressures being self-inflicted

Andrea: question for emotionally devastated Attack on Titan fans: adaptation of anime was better received, had few extra scenes, more context. endings can be bad in execution or in content, how decide which?

Melissa: one of biggest ways endings fail, characters take turn that feel not justified. that's easy to fix, take the time to show us, fix the pacing issue. maybe not fixable, if going against core of series, but hard to think of what that could really be. also fulfilling reader expectations: talking about work-in-progress with daughter, who said mom, have been setting readers up for two books to dread Thing, can't have Thing not happen because they all make good choices! so okay, just have to figure out how Thing happens and doesn't end story prematurely

E.C.: "surprising and inevitable" is said to be ideal ending. how fail at this dream? conceptually, when don't obey the characters and work with contract established with readers. execution, rushed; what does that mean? two things: movement, things moving too quickly; intensity, not just that stuff happens, what brings reader into the moment, gasp at the top of the roller coaster after slow rise

Scott: "rocks fall, everybody dies" should be a thematically appropriate ending rather than writer pitching a fit. readers generally can tell difference. personal complaint, things that stop rather than end. art has a frame unlike real life, and ending is part of framing. ending should be thematically appropriate, answering question raised during course of story rather than question that was brought in at end.

L.J.: yes, that leaves story unbalanced, best endings resonate with start

Andrea: re: Attack on Titan: the way the world is today, happy ending just not possible. what about events in world affecting endings?

L.J.: of course. happy ending misnomer, appropriate ending.

Scott: there's a secondary character who was originally scheduled to die in book 5 or 6. was talking about with prior British editor, saying started to have doubts about that; editor said, no, kill them, preserve possibility of surprising reader, don't spare because feeling temporarily weak-kneed. at time, editor was right, but since then have been able to piece together more of the story would allow to character to have more of role, plus pandemic, decided going to live. a) don't need to flaunt credentials about killing characters b) external world comes in, how much more do need, readership pretty aware that the world is a hard place!

Melissa: as someone who writes political fantasy, keep getting scooped by reality or proven wrong

Scott: I miss being able to satirize things, the sensation I was being a little over the top

E.C. Mary Doria Russell, notoriously wrote WWII novel Thread of Grace, halfway through gave son list of characters and a coin to flip to see who would live or die. wanted to be true to historical period, in way that feels inappropriate as novel. then something I didn't hear title of, sometimes want to give reader the feeling that yeah, it can be okay

audience question: interested to hear what people do in practical sense, going back over series to see what need when get to final book.

L.J.: definitely do. look at book as series of nested commands, literally wrote down all the problems I opened, to track which parenthesis needed closing

Melissa: three lists, I like lists. one was like L.J.'s, one was moments readers have been waiting for (not just dangling plot, but has this character had their big moment), one was cool things been wanting to do. then ideally merge them into one

E.C.: put all that on note cards, rearrange until get most dramatic order

Scott: do reread, either been long enough or memory bad enough finding "new" things. solicit questions ongoing basis from most trusted readers, which is super-useful. can't guarantee pay complete attention to those questions, but they hint at what should. (commissioned database to track everything mentioned from super-fan, asked that person for questions, got absolutely giant list)

L.J.: created wiki for editor, because every version of book write still lives in head (oh no, I cut that so that character doesn't exist any more etc.)

Scott: after writing more than three books, understand completely how his mom has started just running through all the names of her three adult sons until she lands on the right one.

And that was time. (and surprisingly clean notes, thanks past me!)

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kate_nepveu: sleeping cat carved in brown wood (Default)

I am skipping doing a report on The Stories We Tell About Israel and Palestine, which was the panel between this one and the last I wrote up, because through sleep deprivation I managed to irrevocably delete my contemporaneous records and I'm not comfortable writing it up without anything to refer to. Plus, the panel ending up continuing in the overflow space but I couldn't go to that, so the first hour was almost entirely biographical and scene-setting anyway. I'll just say that I was tremendously impressed with the thoughtfulness, compassion, and moral clarity of all of the panelists: Amal El-Mohtar, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Karen Meisner (moderator), Noah Beit-Aharon, and Sophia Babai.

Right. On to

Fanfic Writers Going Pro: the Most Recent Generation

Pro authors have always also written fanfic, but prior generations were likely to limit their public connections to their fandom pseudonyms. In the last several years, newer pro authors are openly linking their fannish identities, and publishers are buying works first published as fic, including original fic. What are the effects of this greater openness on individual works, authors' careers and oeuvres, and the overall field? What, if any, relationship does this have to fic writers filing the serial numbers off stories for self-publication?

Cecilia Tan, Claire Houck, Kate Nepveu (moderator), Sunny Moraine, Victoria Janssen, Wendy Van Camp

I'm just going to start by excerpting the email that I sent to panelists beforehand:

pre-panel email excerpts

I proposed this panel because I was thinking about fannish generations that I've seen:

1) people like Diane Duane, Martha Wells, N.K. Jemisin, who write (or wrote) fic but are like, you will pry my pseudonym out of my cold dead hands;

2) people like Naomi Novik or Sarah Rees Brennan, who told their fannish communities about their pro book deals, but either ask that their pseuds not be shared in the other direction or took down their fic;

(my grudge against Novik's most recent series for being Harry/Draco but het is ... probably not on topic for this panel)

3) people like Tamsyn Muir and Freya Marske, who are entirely open about both identities--Muir hands out her pseud in interviews and Marske is just using her fannish social media accounts for all purposes--or like Emily Tesh and Everina Maxwell, whose first pro publications were first published as origfic on AO3.

and I just think that's so fascinating!

plus there's serial-numbers-filed-off, with varying levels of coyness, in both pro and self-published works--I mean, there always has been (waves at panelists), but apparently Reylo writers have become a thing in romance these days? or I didn't read past the first book in Emily Skrutskie's Finn/Poe-inspired trilogy, but that was pretty transparent in its cover design and (as I recall) marketing.

anyway, as you can tell from this email, I have a lot of feelings about this but no particular answers!

("A lot of feelings but no particular answers" was apparently one of my themes for proposing programming this year.)

Everyone but me on the panel writes or wrote fic. In addition, Cecilia founded Circlet Press, and Claire founded [personal profile] duckprintspress (and very graciously let me wheedle her onto the panel last-minute).

Once again, as I was moderating, my notes are sketchy. See also this pre-panel post for other relevant authors.

panel notes

We started by briefly running over the reasons people keep their identities separate: different audiences have different reader expectations and etiquette. Sometimes authors are writing sufficiently different topics between their pro and fic works that they don't want to cross those streams. Also—this was brought up much later in the panel, but logically it fits here—there are harassment campaigns, unfortunately.

On the other hand, we have the increased mainstreaming of fic over the past X years, which (I proposed) is a significant overall reason that more people are being open about their fic writing. Panelists noted that publishers see existing audiences as a plus for debut pro writers (which raised concerns about whether the publishers were considering the safety concerns noted above). There's also the marketing of books through tropes (which has had mixed receptions that I've seen). Panelists also suggested that the queering of speculative fiction has led to more openness; queer speculative fiction is becoming in some ways its own subgenre, mixing up other genres along the way, which can also be hospitable to the kind of writing that fic authors engage in.

Continuing on whether published works are becoming more "fic like," I noted that I'd seen it suggested, though in a derogatory manner that emotional catharsis is commonly the goal of fic (which, like the proximity and backgrounding of plot noted in that linked comment, seems perfectly reasonable to me in the context of fic). Is this something that people were seeing carrying over into pro work? Someone suggested that the "full fanficcy" effect they think of is when you like the villain by the end; fic loves its morally grey characters. He Who Drowned the Sun was cited positively as something that felt fic-like because of that and the way its plot felt almost serialized.

(I need you all to know that I initially wrote that as "morally gray" and changed it because it didn't seem right. Do not ask me to justify this.)

A great comment was that there are genres of fic, after all, in terms of where a story falls on the multiple axes of length, AU-ness, being a fix-it, and many more. The extent to which writing a fic differs from writing an original/pro story will vary greatly depending on the genre of fic.

And that's all the notes I've got!

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kate_nepveu: sleeping cat carved in brown wood (Default)

Next up is a panel I was moderating, so my notes are sketchy.

The Joys of the Truly Long Novel

SFF loves its giant series, of course, but what about the very long solo novel? How do the pleasures and pitfalls of such novels vary from other lengths and plotting structures? How does serialization affect the length of a story people are willing to follow? Gwynne Garfinkle, Kate Nepveu (moderator), Natalie Luhrs, Rich Horton, Storm Humbert

panel notes

I prefaced by saying that I was going to (a) out myself as a fanfic reader by talking about story length in terms of words (thank you, audience members who smiled in recognition) and (b) try not to be a snob about what "truly long" was, because that was neither attractive nor productive. However, for general calibration purposes: a novel these days is generally around 100k to 150k; Lord of the Rings without appendices is 480k, 550k with; Les Miserables (Hapgood translation) is 570k; Moby-Dick is "only" 220k; and Heaven Official's Blessing (a Chinese webnovel by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, published in English translation in 8 volumes) is 750k.

We started by talking about the factors that lead to length. In pre-panel discussion, we had brought up the time period (e.g., the 1800s); genre, both overall and within SFF, science fiction versus fantasy; and serialization. As to why there seemed to be fewer honkin' huge science fiction novels, we tossed around a few ideas: maybe fantasy needs more worldbuilding, because at least science fiction is usually in the future of our present. Maybe it's the scope of the stories that tend to get told, where science fiction is often about elucidating a single idea, whereas fantasy is often about an epic story and/or building a portrait of a society. Maybe it's a function of the pacing, where fantasy often seems to wind everything up and then set it all going toward the end.

(Someone mentioned that Kelly Link's novel The Book of Love almost has anti-pacing: at the start of a chapter it'll back up to before the end of the last, to go to another character.)

I asked whether the worldbuilding and exposition had to take up lots of pages, or if that was a matter of styles of a particular era; I referenced Naomi Mitchison, the Memorial Guest of Honor, who often would just drop stuff in and expect you to notice. (See also: John M. Ford.) In response, someone pointed out that Dune (which I have not read) was both long and initially serialized. We also talked a bit about the pulps and the physical constraints of publishing.

We talked about the narrative strategies that a single very long novel requires or can use. Serialization requires a mini-climax at the end of each installment, for good or ill. If an author wants long payoffs, serialization may require considerable planning or revising for e.g. collected publication.

As far as reading very long single novels, a surprising number of people seem to not use the features in their ebook reader of choice that let you know how much book you have left! To me that is something I cannot do without. This is related to the very different expectations you have going into a book in a series versus a standalone novel. People briefly complained—as we have been doing for so long—about books that are marketed without reference to a series when they are clearly book 1.

I have a note that says "fanfic; comfortable, wallowing; ease of investment; both," which I presume had something to do with why people might more easily read very long fanfic?

In pre-panel discussion we established that some people sipped their very long books, reading just a little bit at a time, while some of us were gulpers. This seemed to be a factor of ability to retain books in our memory and overall reading speed.

Question from the audience about what they perceived to be artificial inflation of hardcopy page counts, citing margins and font size. I don't remember which book was cited, but I do remember that it was one that was already always talked about as a brick and therefore an investment, so I didn't think that it was likely to have been a marketing ploy. We generally thought that it was more likely to be an attempt to reach whatever multiple-of-X-pages is best for production purposes (binding signatures etc.), though one of us noted that as we age, we start appreciating slightly larger fonts...

Question from the audience about whether length affected the likelihood that we would bounce off of, or stick with, a book. Someone, I think Storm, had a rule to stick with a book for 20% of it before deciding to put it down.

There were a bunch of recommendations that I failed to get down in my notebook, but I do have The Hands of the Emperor, Victoria Goddard; the Kelly Link; The Reformatory, Tananarive Due; Black River Orchard, Chuck Wendig; and two that didn't meet the single novel criteria but were still really loved: Ken Liu's Dandelion Dynasty and John Crowley's AEgypt sequence.

And that's it!

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kate_nepveu: sleeping cat carved in brown wood (Default)

I had a lovely time at Readercon this weekend! And I had already scheduled tomorrow as a day off so that I can try to actually get all of my panel notes out while they are fresh, rather than run out of steam after I go back to work and leave them languishing forever.

The first report is for

Fantasies of Political Inagency

Lois McMaster Bujold famously proposed that many speculative fiction works are "fantasies of political agency." What about fantasies of political inagency? In the Hunger Games trilogy, Katniss wants to leave both the Games and the revolution; in two of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu's influential Chinese webnovels, the happy ending is addressing immediate injustices and then withdrawing from wider society. Might fantasies of political inagency counter the more imperialist tendencies of speculative fiction? Can Anglophone audiences find such stories satisfying?

Amal El-Mohtar, Charlie Allison (moderator), Rebecca Fraimow, Sophia Babai

I admit up-front that this is an idea I submitted and a description I wrote, because it was an idea that occurred to me that I couldn't take any further; and it exceeded my wildest expectations. I knew Amal and Rebecca are great, of course, and Sophia was just as enthusiastically intelligent as they are. I knew I was going to be lucky enough to be on panels with all three later and so it was a great way to start the con. (Charlie was also a very good moderator!)

panel notes

Charlie: start: set stage by covering imperialist tendencies of SFF and its infinite horizon: examples, things to look out for

Rebecca: baked into founding texts of genre. SF, constant expansion, destiny of finding new planet that will be our homeworld; fantasy, putting right ruler in place

Sophia: tendency, especially in fantasy, to play up the Great Man theory of history, which is very rarely true. to degree this is built into Western storytelling, usually telling about 1, 2, maybe 6 people if feeling really spicy. idea that one person, usually through violence or magic, can change face of entire society. don't think can divorce from imperialism

Amal: something from Tumblr: when people talk about time travel to past, worry about radically changing present by doing something small, but rarely talk about radically changing future by doing something small today. something activists talk about a lot, small actions scaling. in terms of fiction, not sure if it's necessarily imperialist stance

Sophia: no, individual people changing world in Western fantasy tends to contain imperialist ideas because people aren't thinking of way that broader culture stems from imperialist roots

Amal: think very natural to want to fix the world and fantasize about it. this is where I ask, have you read The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

Sophia: when was asked to be on this panel, said would probably just talk about it

Amal: 100% my favorite book read last year, I needed it so badly when I read it, made excited about what fantasy can do, which is something need periodically as a critic. without spoilers, book that makes so much room for different kinds of approaches to changing a society or addressing injustice, none of which are inherently glamorous. premise is bunch of Chosen Ones having a therapy session over how suck at it

(gift link to Amal's review at NYT)

Sophia: yes, probably favorite book ever read, read 6 times and like it more every time, usually after 3 times start liking a little less. one thing really appreciated: protagonist has very little agency, which is different from power, because of enormity of what's happening, but trying is still really important. every time decides has to stop trying, either problem finds him or decides can't live with himself. so often fantasy is that we can do it, but here it's not whether succeed or fail, are you willing to keep going, do you feel it's important to keep going

Rebecca: it's specifically political fantasy re: revolutionary change, but protagonist is not leader of revolution, is relatively small part of something no-one can see entirety of, even those spearheading change. much more realistic portrayal of how can get involved in changing society. maybe here last year, panel about revolutions in fiction, can you write a satisfying novel where revolution doesn't conclude, maybe just shows the middle; consensus was that it would be really difficult to do satisfyingly, which was surprising because felt like what was wanted to see

Amal: think question of satisfaction is interesting one, goes to shapes of narrative. wonder if part of project of putting forward fantasy of political INagency = finding way to make dissatisfaction desirable, leave story on note of unscratched itch, needing to move from this shape to a different one. going back and forth on whether think fits, Hadestown: obsessed with it. it is a tragedy. English class way of looking at tragedy as catharsis

Becca: but maybe it won't be next time!

Sophia, Amal: yes!

Amal: literally come out and tell you it's a tragedy, then make you forget that, then while you're sobbing, Hermes looks at you, says, why do we tell tragedies? connect that a lot to inagency, need to do the thing even if it's not going to accomplish what you want: so that failing doesn't crush you. so tying that to satisfaction

Sophia: successfully brought up both of my favorite pieces of media, so thank you. Hadestown: one of amazing things, whole crux is that Hades and Persephone are unhappy in their relationship which is destroying entire world because weather. Orpheus essentially powerless, can't even finish the song. Hades all the power, miserably lonely. Orpheus loses woman he loves over course of trying to change the world.

Sophia con't: Great Man, more colonialist than imperialist, power of one-ness. any story where don't win or maybe winning isn't issue, is rooted in community. in present day, things that keep going are community and art, which is what Hadestown is about, which is also achievable for most people

Rebecca: one of things that makes Hadestown so satisfying is the circularity, now we're going to tell it again. what about when happy ending when protagonist walks away: now you get to take a break. (Hunger Games trilogy, TGCF/Heaven Official's Blessing per panel description.) honestly often find that less satisfying that the tragedy that continues, if it were me I'd want to stop, but sometimes disappointment to me to watch characters do, don't think is a good impulse but what feels. is building a community of two enough?

Amal: I think I wrote a book about that. I'm saying that in a genuine ... I never thought of This Is How You Lose the Time War in that context. feel like slightly insufferable to go on about

panel: but it is relevant

Amal: arc of two people refusing to fight a war that is entrenched, permanent, literally reality defining, trying to find new way of being that involves connection and relinquishing great deal of power to be on the run forever. that's where it ends! I as a writer was satisfied by it.

Amal con't: Hadestown: way ending is staged, look for this: reset stage to beginning but with small costuming changes: Hades slightly different costume, Orpheus has a flower already; things we saw happen have had an effect. something has carried forward. seed of possibility that you can carry out of theater

Charlie: Deathless, Valente, about how stories replicate themselves, Koschei the Deathless. someone explains to the protagonist: to become a demon, is to wear a groove in reality just through repetition. something to this about talking about everyday changes, radical change not sexy, not top-down power, really appropriate to moving away from traditional stories and institutions

Charlie con't: re: Hunger Games: is this because we only see from Katniss' POV?

Sophia: read a MDZS fic that was beat-by-beat retelling of Time War, then couldn't read Time War; also have not read Hunger Games; understanding is that walking away in both of those was the action. Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, choosing to walk away from complicity. find more dissatisfying: Les Miserables, nothing works but this one rich couple get to run off and be happy

Rebecca: often has a lot to do with the system being walked away from. In Time War, don't think reader thinks, they should keep fighting that war! then there's, we failed to fix unjust system, not going to keep trying

Amal: Omelas, remarkable staying power, people wanting to engage with it in literature. first Le Guin read when very small, love that can keep coming back to it and really get it, again and again. where is your certainty, in walking away from or where going? last line's ambiguity: leaving, or has to be something better and they are going to find it?

(there was in fact a panel about responses to Omelas later in the con that sadly we were scheduled against)

The Day Before the Revolution, different Le Guin story; prequel to The Dispossessed, story of woman who wrote all these philosophical books about ways to change the world, which have been having effect but it's a lifelong process. leave it there, without spoiling or sobbing, very short, should all read it and talk about it on the internet and make the world a better place. tremendous to encounter as companion to Omelas.

audience questions: how deal with prequels and constraint of how knowing where end up, that kind of inagency, for example, Max Gladstone's Craft sequence, prequel means that revolution can't go too far in any particular book

Amal: amazing question, think so many layers to answering. creative layer, challenge in small-c craft to making prequel justify own existence. bad example is every Tolkien movie & TV show other than Lord of the Rings. good version: Day Before the Revolution. also interesting philosophical question, how much determinism want to put into your world, do you want to destabilize the work you wrote first

Rebecca: don't necessary say good, but interesting: Clone Wars, really interesting that prequel to a prequel, lot of moments Anakin does something that looks like standard great man protagonist thing ... tinged by valence that know ends in becoming Darth Vader. reframes lot of more classic heroic beats. dramatic irony, makes look at differently because know prequel

Sophia: Rogue One: know that all going to die but that mission will succeed in way that will change face of everything, tragedy for characters and success for greater cause, usually prequel is other way around, because plot usually dealt with in the earlier-written work. such an interesting story, able to linger in characters way that big action movies don't usually

Amal: Going Rogue podcast, unbearably charming, brilliant researcher; personally thinks movie has many fascinating failures, podcast explains brilliantly. Andor, prequel to Rogue One, what it is accomplishing = creating breadth and depth that (live action) Star Wars didn't have, stakes and granularity in world where supposed to experience explosion of planet as comprehensible, which you can't, the films don't make room for that.

Rebecca: talking about Star Wars: prequels, side stories, all let broaden scope when have narrow palette

me: Les Mis is about failed revolution because it's Hugo trying to convince readers to have another revolution, it's propaganda; any works that think similarly work (or not) in that way?

Sophia: Rakesfall also by Vajra Chandrasekera; brilliant and totally structurally different from Bright Doors; amazing, made angry about all over again about its subject (Sri Lankan civil war) even though knew it because it killed my family

(Edit: per Sophia on Bluesky: "Quick correction: the Sri Lankan Civil War did not kill my family — I’m no longer sure what I did say I was angry about though, due to post-con brain-dead")

(I apologized to them after the panel for assuming they didn't know Les Mis the book rather than just the musical/movie)

audience question: what about violence resulting from inagency, things that happened in second and third books because Katniss refused to act

Amal: framing of violence: if you are the protagonist, for example the Doctor, there is never an impasse, looks like you have to do a violent thing or another violent thing will happen, but you don't, because you're the Doctor and you're magic and you just get to opt out forever and tut-tut at anyone who didn't. violence always framed as a failure and can't exist in tandem with ethics, just can't. literature's imagination broadly often fails to conceive of that. fascinating and frustrating, love to see that challenged. Bright Doors challenges in really interesting ways, protagonist refuses to engage in violence, refusal sort of tenderly honored by people finding other ways to enact violence in course of resistance

Rebecca: Westmark trilogy, putting rightful heir on throne at end of book 1 and revolution nevertheless needs to happen because problems are not fixable by Great Man theory. one of only things think has that, would love to see more that deal with longer arc of problems

Sophia: somatic therapist, work pretty heavily with refugees: violence is the inherent result of political inagency (though not only reason for violence by long shot), whether against someone else or themselves, just a truism, what fight or flight is. as someone who cares very strongly about peace, frustration about discussions: lot of deeply traumatized people, trying to jump right to peace when violence still in their bodies. which does not mean more violence is answer but needs to be addressed

If I missed something, mischaracterized something, or left something too cryptic, please let me know!

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kate_nepveu: sleeping cat carved in brown wood (Default)

is so great! and I'm so swamped with it and other things!!

*whooshes away*

(I should clarify that I'm just helping with question-gathering for the Israel-Palestine panel, it belatedly occurs to me!)

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kate_nepveu: sleeping cat carved in brown wood (Default)

and I even booklogged it! Okay, "a bunch" here is four books, but they're all long: Cyteen; 40,000 in Gehenna; Downbelow Station; and Regenesis.

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"Fast Car"

Feb. 5th, 2024 08:57 pm
kate_nepveu: sleeping cat carved in brown wood (Default)

I spent my morning having a lot of feelings about "Fast Car," because social media was full of videos of Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs performing it as a duet at the Grammys. Here's my Tumblr reblog of the full performance.

As I said in the tags over there, I had been very "huh?" the first time I heard Combs' cover, because the original's perfect as is and his cover doesn't really reinterpret it or anything. But then I learned that he just wanted to introduce the song to new audiences because he loves it so much, and I think that admiration and respect really shows in the performance, which I found charming. And Chapman is just radiant, so happy and assured, and sounding absolutely wonderful. (The NYT (gift link) had a nice article about the performance, including how "welcoming and expansive" it felt.)

The other interesting thing about the duet is that it's Chapman's version except for a single word. Combs's cover is indeed quite faithful, but it's not 100%. First, he reduces the number of instrumental refrains between verses. The Grammys duet uses the original instrumentals, except slowed down just a tad and with an added violin (which I really like). Second, Combs's cover changes the two critical question verses.

lyrics comparisons

The first of these comes after the narrator recounts dropping out of school to take care of her alcoholic father after her mother leaves. Copied from Genius:

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so we can fly away?
We gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way

Combs's cover:

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so we can fly away?
Still gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way

Which is fine. However, the second question verse comes after the narrator realizes that her (edit:) partner also drinks too much:

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so you can fly away?
You gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way

Whereas Combs makes no changes to his first iteration:

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so we can fly away?
Still gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way

And that's the end of the song, and it's SO important that the narrator is choosing differently than her mother! She's made her decision, she knows what she's doing; the "you" can take it or leave it.

The duet sort-of splits the difference.

Combs: You got a fast car
Chapman: Is it fast enough so you can fly away?
Combs: We gotta make a decision
Chapman: Leave tonight or live and die this way

I wish that he'd gone with "you" instead of "we," of course; actually, "still" might have made more sense there than in his cover. All the same, it's otherwise such a beautiful performance that I'll forgive it.

But really, thinking about that lyrics change mostly reminded me of how affecting I've always found the deep sadness, hope, and determination in the song. It's so beautiful, and I'm delighted by its second life.

Anyway. Here's the remastered original.

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kate_nepveu: sleeping cat carved in brown wood (Default)

which I posted elsewhere last night but it was late and I forgot DW:

"Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole," by Isabel J. Kim.

The title is the content warning.

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kate_nepveu: sleeping cat carved in brown wood (Default)

And I wrote it up for the booklog: non-spoiler post, spoiler post.

I'd love it if you discussed over there, but I'm leaving comments open here because I'm also soliciting fic recommendations.

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