My Readercon pictures (tardy, poorly-lit, but funny)

So at last year's Readercon I brought my camera because when I attended in 2009 I took pictures with my phone and they were awful. So awful. The large meeting rooms are not well-lit and distances confounded my camera. So last July I brought my unipurpose camera. It can take good pictures, but it is several years old and thus is one-step removed from the albumen process in digital terms. Also, the screen is dead, so I can neither see what the camera sees nor know what the settings are, except for scrolling through choices until the edge of an identifiable symbol appears and I then count the number of clicks to get what I think is the proper configuration for the photo I want to take.

With this in mind I took many pictures at Readercon 21, about 225 of them, about 2/3rds of which were at the Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition and involved me shifting about the room hoping to get enough light in the shot for it to not be a chaotic fuzz or nine shades of darkness. I went through them a few months ago and tossed over 85% of them, because, indeed, my camera betrayed me and most of them were unusable. Those that survived aren't fantastic, but they go give you a bit of the flavor of the con, so I offer them to you for a chuckle or, perhaps, a moment of wistful recollection.

---Peter Straub at a panel. He was the jolliest panelist of the convention, but sadly always dwelled in darkness:

---Samuel R. Delany at his reading. Note the casual attire!

---Mr. Delany again, minus his spectacles:

---Barry Longyear at the panel on anarchism and SF. Um, he REALLY does not like anarchism. All of my other photos are of him looking annoyed or leaning his cheek on his hand in exasperation:

---Contestants waiting to get called up for the Kirk Poland Memorial Bed Prose Competition: Mary Robinette Kowal, Yves Menard, Mike Allen, and Craig Shaw Gardner:

---Down to three. I selected this one because Mike Allen looked right at me with that "haven't you taken like 40 pictures of us standing here already?" smile. And I had.

---The contestants seated and ready to regale us with bad prose:

---The opening of the competition. The disk was really funny for some reason:

---Craig Shaw Gardner reading. I tried to think of a Jimmy Doohan look-alike joke that would not get me punched in the nose at the next con, but failed:

---Mary Robinette Kowal reading. She was the smilingest contestant I've ever seen:

---Yves Menard reading. Note the Halo of Inevitable Victory that surrounds him:

---Mike Allen is pleased with his hat:

---Eric Van, emcee and SF bon vivant. I've never seen someone so happy about tallying scores and doing math:

---Finally, a few photos of Rob Shearman at his reading. Incredible reader, animated and enthusiastic:

---No, REALLY:

I wish that more of them had come out. I apologize for the lack of photos of women; I took a bunch of panel pictures that just did not come out, and my camera batteries croaked at the start of Liz Hand's fabulous reading from Available Dark. But I hope to get a better camera before July so that I can get better pics this year.

New FOG column!

My peculiar take on Readercon. Read, enjoy, pass it on.

I wrote it in two hours, while my daughter has been napping. Thankfully a morning of play tuckered her out. As I hit "publish," I half-expected her to suddenly wake up. But Morpheus has been kind enough to sit with her for me.

I like this one a lot.

Aetheric Ephemera: The Quest Fulfilled Edition

1) Matthew Cheney on one of the most important and fun aspects of attending Readercon: The Book Haul. I will detail my own haul soon. It was quite a bargain-land this time around, so much so that I wonder how the full-price dealers made out.

I heard that there was near-record attendance this year, around 840 people or so. I could not stay for the talkback session but I hope there was a lot of praise given to the committee, because I thought they put on a great con this year.

2) A great piece from Publisher's Weekly on the longevity and influence of Lovecraft. I was pleased to discover that there is a B&N collection of all of his fiction, among other alluring titles, and my Goodreads queue will be tinged with antediluvian corruption shortly.

3) A long reflection on Mel Brooks from one of my fellow contributors at Forces of Geek. It echoes a number of my own thoughts on the genius and absurdity of his calculated comic chicanery.

4) A brief historical discourse on full-time SF novelists from Robert Silverberg (responding to Robert Sawyer). Has there ever been a time when we have had a cadre of writers who just wrote in the genre and were financially successful? I think the possibility arises occassionally, but most writers will never be able to achieve that ideal. (via SFSignal)

5) Top 20 Unfortunate Lessons Girls Learn from Twilight. Heh. (swiped from my friend Michelle D. Sonnier)

6) This year's Shirley Jackson Award Winners were announced at Readercon yesterday. Congratulations to all of the winners, especially Robert Shearman, whom I met this past weekend at the Con and who gave a fantastic reading of one of his stories from the nominated collection.

A Few Brief Meta-thoughts on Readercon

We've taken a break for a couple of hours and after a dinner of Guinness and carefully-selected bar food (including an astonishingly fresh salad of genuine mixed greens), we went back to our room to assess book finds, tomorrow's schedule, and our aching feet.

I am going to post more about the con specifically tonight, but something struck me this afternoon that I want to get down: a lot of the panels this year have spent more time questioning the topic, specifically the definition of the central term, than actually discussing the topic. That struck me strongly when Barry Malzberg, on a panel about unpleasantness in fiction, wanted to know if they were making it into a genre or something. He seemed quite displeased with a discussion of unpleasantness as a concept. And much of the conversation about the topic got bounced back to Peter Straub (who had some great comments on the idea of writing in an unhappy vein) and related to questions of genre. And I thought "so, when will they actually talk about the presence and tropes of unpleasantness in fiction?"

This happened even more forcefully in a panel on anarchy in speculative fiction earlier in the day. Two of the participants were so completely stuck on an idealized, overdetermined idea of anarchism that they spent the panel denigrating it and fighting almost any attempt to discuss it. I give a lot of credit to the panel leader for trying to keep people on-topic, and to Graham Sleight for consistently returning to the topic, the presence of the idea in speculative fiction, with actual books recommendations. And while at times the other participants came back to the general purpose of the panel, they would quickly go off on a tangent and go back to beating the dead horse of their very myopic definition of the term.

I saw this to some extent yesterday as well, although in the first panel I thought that John Clute and Michael Dirda did a fantastic job of critiquing and exploring the idea of interstitial fiction. But they were not just questioning or deriding the idea; they engaged it, and they contextualized it both as a term and as a literary strategy. They were neither dismissive or eliding; they took the notion seriously and tackled it head-on. I think that first panel has been the best I have attended thus far, because you learned something about the idea and its usage in literary production and you came away with a lot of thoughts to ponder.

I think this is a good topic for my next Apex post.

I also wanted to say that the readings I have attended thus far have been stellar. Liz Hand read the beginning to her new Cass Neary novel Available Dark last night, and it was creepy and compelling. Around lunchtime today Robert Shearman (Shirley Jackson Award nominee) gave a delightful and funny reading of a new story. I went to this reading based solely on his hilarious performance on the Bookaholics panel last night,and was not disappointed. I have not read any of his work, but this reading made me want to find his books immediately. Sadly, none were to be found in the Bookshop.

I want to read some of his plays also, because I think I could glean a lot from his sense of pacing and timing.

Readercon XXI: Friday, Part the First

Exhausted, mostly because I am full of ideas and other people's words. I had a good first day atReadercon. We got there without getting lost for the first year ever (their address foiled GPS in the past) and got set up in our room and registered quite smoothly.

The panels were not all fantastic, but mostly solid. The first panel was "Interstitial Then, Genre Now" which had some heavyweight critics in the panel. John Clute and Michael Dirda seriously interrogated the idea of interstitial fiction, while Peter Dubé, attending his first SF convention, provided some fresh thoughts to how to strategize and envision the idea of writing between genres. Theodora Goss, a participant in the Interstitial Arts Foundation and co-editor of the firstInterfictions anthology, guided the discussion but had to think fast to deal with the depth of the panel's critique of the idea. I am going to do a much fuller, reflective write-up of this panel later.

The next panel, "History & Memory in Historical & Spec. Fic," ended up being a much more personal discussion by the panelists than I had anticipated. Howard Waldrop told a great story about an ancestor who fought in the Confederate War, N. K. Jemisin talked at length about her preacher grandfather and his influence on her work, and David Anthony Durham discussed how he projected feelings about the father-son relationship into his portrayal of Hannibal in Pride of Carthage. The anecdotes were compelling, but were much more linked to individual history than ideas of history in fiction. I had hoped to hear about both during the hour, about how personal memory/history and larger ideas of the historical are channeled into an author's work.

I was pretty excited about the next panel: "New England: At Home to the Unheimlich?" Another stellar group of panelists were on hand to discuss the peculiar resonance of the region to horror and the uncanny. Everyone on the panel contributed to the discussion, but I wanted to hear about more than how Stephen King influenced everyone and how the change of seasons is significant to fiction set in the region. I appreciated how people kept coming back to the deep, peculiar history of New England, and I loved the idea of Cotton Mather as the first regional horror writer, and there were a number of moments where you could see how region and genre interacted, how this setting influences a number of tropes and can be both rote and surprising.

The last panel I attended before taking a break was "Non-Western Cultures in Fantasy." Theodora Goss once again led a spirited discussion about respect, cultural appropriation, and getting a feel f0r walking around in other people's skins. There was some tension in the discussion of owning people's stories and a rather unreflective take on the idea of universalism, but Cat Valente did a smashing job of reformulating the idea of borrowing with the metaphor of renting/leasing stories. Nalo Hopkinson provided some strong advice on writing about other cultures, including the need for writers to realize that regardless of who the subject is, you cannot write about "the other" without creating some friction, and it is important to have not just respect, but a moral compass when deciding how to write about things outside of your personal experience.

It was a thought-provoking morning. I had a lot to digest as I headed to the Bookshop.

More tomorrow!

Let There Be (E-book) War: A Few Thoughts and Points of Information on the Amazon-Macmillan Dustup

I write this with the notion that you, Dear Reader, know what I am referring to in the title of this post. If you don't, here is the AP article that lays out what is the opening round in the new Literary Range War. And, there has already been a resolution of sorts to this battle: Amazon just announced a short time ago that they are capitulating to Macmillan's position. This after a day of copious discussion of this in a number of circles, but most intensely, perhaps, in the SF world (as evidenced by the fact that the AP article quotes John Scalzi and CoryDoctorow), as many authors took up their keyboards to respond to this situation and analyze it.

I have a few thoughts on this matter, but they come from an odd perspective. I am an aspiring author, an avid reader, an observer of SF's social milieu, and a fan. So what I offer here are reflections on how this has been received and what significance it might have for the producers and buyers of SF literature, beyond the harsh business details. Several authors who know a lot more about the business have already responded, and for sometimes mind-bending amounts of detail about book pricing, distribution, etc., I urge you to check them out: Tobias Buckell, Charles Stross, and Scott Westerfeld have all expounded on this hullabaloo at length, with industry insights that illuminate the larger issues quite well. As for me, well:

1) The hegemons at Amazon are being dicks. Yes, I think that is the proper cultural term for them. Having read a lot of the responses to this from authors, publishers, readers, and clueless business reporters who know nothing about how publishing works, I believe that I can safely use this characterization. Macmillan wanted to talk price restructuring, and before John Sargent got back home from the negotiation Amazon pulled physical and e-book titles, dropped the titles off of wishlists, and reportedly even removed sample chapters from Kindles. As Jay Lake put it, "[i]t's bullying, pure and simple..." as Amazon tries to flex its rippling market musculature to intimidate a publisher into doing what it wants (as it has done in the past). Personally, I don't care if they have the right to do it, or if it is some tactical maneuver to gain position for more negotiations, or even if it is just Jeff Bezos being crazy. It is purely a dick move, an attempt by an entity with a lot of market power to force other players in the bookselling game to let them write the rules. It disrespects the market, it disrespects their suppliers, and even disrespects their readers, although many of the latter seem to not realize this.

I know that using the word "disrespect" in relation to the American business-scape may be cause for a chuckle, as businesses routinely undercut, deceive, and strongarm each other and everyone around them to turn a profit, or at least appear to try to turn a profit. But I mean it; Amazon has demonstrated that in this instance it: cares nothing for how the market works; thinks its suppliers are chattel who must bow to their feudal overlord, and; trusts that its customers are loyal and blinkered and easy to sway with promises of low prices that are artificially kept low to lure them into buying an expensive contraption for reading their books. That is a mountain of churlish disdain that should tell all involved that Amazon is at the higher levels no longer in the business of selling books, but of gathering influence and control to deepen its dominance in the online world. It is both a business move, and a grab for symbolic capital.

2) This situation has created a lot of frustration, anger, and pre-emptive bitterness, particularly from the most vulnerable quarter of the bookselling world: the authors, but it has also spurred many authors to examine the issues surrounding Amazon's tactics. SF authors such as Jay Lake were the first to bring attention to this situation, and have written at length and with great passion about it. Most of them have approached it from a business perspective (as seen in the blogs cited above), but in reading these pieces there is a sense of not just defending one's livelihood, but of defending one's position as a creator, as a dynamic part of the book industry. SF authors, moreso than many others I think, are not just keenly aware of their structural position in the book business, but have a strong sense of identity as the engine of that business.

The fact that even those who do not move a fraction of a percentage as many books as James Patterson, Inc. feel that they can and should defend the publisher and their own stake in this skirmish says a lot about the social position that SF authors occupy, one bolstered by fans and often by adherents in the publishers themselves. SF authors also have a strong sense of their creative abilities that is heightened by the challenges of the genre itself, I believe, and often have a more critical perspective on the world. While partisans of the publisher, they try to take the wide and the long views of this situation and have provided some solid analyses of Amazon's actions. I think that the citations of John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow in the AP article are not just a matter of the reporter's preference, but stem from the strong, thoughtful stances that they publicly took as soon as the situation unfolded, stances that reify their positions even as they shed some insight on this battle.

3) I am reading widely on this and taking lots of notes, because I think this is the beginning of the next stage of the publishing market's transformation. This is just the start of the Great E-Book Kerfuffle, which won't end until, like the music industry, publishers and e-sellers relinquish control over the books themselves, forced by consumers and, perhaps, creators to cede to the market's evolution. Part of Amazon's control scheme is to maintain DRM on its Kindle e-books, and while some publishers demand it, those that don't are overridden by Amazon when it sells their e-titles. The question of control is going to be the central dispute as this mercantile war unfolds. Price control, product control, format control: how the players deal with these issues will likely determine the success of the e-book market.

From Hell's Heart, I Write at Thee!

Despite still being under the weather, I managed to hammer out a new Forces of Geek column. Who knew it would be "timely" and all that, given SF Signal's Mind Meld question today?

Right after submitting the column I followed one of the links from the Mind Meld thing to a larger discussion collated at Lou Anders' blog. I love the quotation from James Enge about the effect of mainstreaming, but don't we already have that today with some of the paranormal romance stuff and SyFy movies? I think his remarks, and the article Lou points to, require some more consideration. After all, this kind of stuff is an important part of the social life of SF (as I talk about in my FoG column!).

But I am out of juice for today. Hopefully a bit more rest and good night's sleep will knock this bug or whatever out of me.

Geekery!

My latest Forces of Geek column is up. Astute readers will not its genesis in the previous blog post.

There's more I want to say about this topic, because I think that the social life of SF is so important and that both the works and those who appreciate them exist in a tighter synergy than readers of most other types of books. And I am not just talking about SF fans being "bigger fans" than mystery or romance fans; the word synergy is very specific here. And I think that the significance of synergy could do with more discussion and a little critique. But that is for another day.

Enjoy the column. Please do comment.

The Stuff In My Head

It has been a weirdly exciting few days in my little writing world. Besides struggling with fear (apparently, of success for once rather than failure), I was all juiced up to write my new Forces of Geek column on literary steampunk vs. the DIY culture it has spawned, when Lev Grossman wrote a WSJ piece that tumbled into the SF playground like a Saturnian mind-grenade. A lot of pixels have been configured either taking Grossman to task or wondering what the heck his piece means. The best responses so far are Cheryl Morgan's and Catherynne M. Valente's. In writing something so broad that makes such a large point, Grossman has set himself up for a lot of critique and started a pretty fascinating conversation about what authors should write and what readers want to read.

It kind of feels like a set-up too. The article is a social act, a ritual performance of a sort that is often seen in SF, and also in the wider writing world. It not only sets out an argument about the nature and proper design of the novel, it sends the reader a message about the author. The author positions himself (in this case) not only as an authority, but as both guardian and trailblazer of Good Literature. The author aligns himself with whatever movement or variety of literature he is championing, even as he interprets the literary world for the reader.

I've been jotting down ideas all day for a new column that picks up some of these ideas and lays them out. I think there's a lot to talk about, both in literary terms and in terms of the social life of literature and how we participate in it when diatribes such as these surface. The column is gonna be long, but I won't be able to talk about everything that I want to address, so I will continue my musings here.