incidents and accidents, hints and allegations

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!

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.

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).

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.

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.)

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!

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!

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