Where I've Been

[coalescent]

• As a pre-con holiday, I went on a reading week with thirteen other people. A reading week involves taking a lot of books to a self-catering cottage in a beautiful location and then letting nature take its course.

• Best thing: mattia's cooking.


• Worst thing: the 24-hour lergy that went round the cottage.


• Lesson of the week: the music scene has better movements than the sf scene. Apparently The Zutons are part of 'cosmic scouse'.


• Books read:


• Not Before Sundown by Johanna Sinisalo: deserved Tiptree winner, and the consensus hit of the week.


• Kuhn vs. Popper by Steve Fuller: incoherent yet facile for anyone with any knowledge of the history and philosophy of science at all (I really don't count myself as having very much).


• The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene: good, though I found myself more interested in how the story was constructed than in the story itself.


• The Warrior Who Carried Life by Geoff Ryman: felt like a pure, abstracted Fantasy story; not Ryman's best, but Ryman so worth reading.


• Past Magic by Ian Macleod: new collection coming out from PS. Review at Strange Horizons soonish.


• Burn by James Patrick Kelly: Hugo-nominated novella, but like pretty much all the other Kelly I've read, rather average and quite predictable.


• The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison: intense. Still processing.


• Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand: good enough to make me want to read her other books (Generation Loss sounds very promising), but not quite a home run in itself.


• Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds (started last week, finished yesterday): chunky, clunky, and a bit too reminiscent of the Rama books.


• Books acquired (from the village book fair):


• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides


• The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene


• Yesterday's Men by George Turner


• Concussion




• More books acquired (from the dealers' room):


• The Helliconia Trilogy by Brian Aldiss


• The Issue At Hand by William Atheling Jr.


• More Issues At Hand by William Atheling Jr.


• The Holy Machine by Chris Beckett


• Scores by John Clute


• Gig by James Lovegrove


• Temeraire by Naomi Novik


• Giant Lizards From Another Star by Ken Macleod


• Extra(Ordinary) People by Joanna Russ


• Viator by Lucius Shepard


• Programme attended (a selection):


• Elizabeth Hand interviewed by Graham Sleight: added to the feeling that I must read more Hand soon. Also, stunning reading from Generation Loss.


• Reading As A Writer (M. John Harrison, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Graham Sleight, Farah Mendlesohn [M]): interesting discussion of how writers and non-writers differ in their approaches to criticism and reviewing.


• M. John Harrison interviewed by Elizabeth Hand: Another good reading, and (in what became something of a running theme) more discussion of the difference between 'M. John Harrison' and 'Mike Harrison'.


• When One Is Not Enough (Ian McDonald, Justina Robson, Colin Greenland, Paul Barnett, Amanda Hemingway [M]): panel about the use of multiple viewpoint vs. single viewpoint. Started well, with Colin Greenland's contributions particularly interesting, but got derailed (largely by the moderator) into what seemed to me fairly tangential discussions about religion and the differences between men and women.


• Justina Robson interviewed by Jon Courtenay Grimwood: the least spontaneous of the GoH interviews, but arguably the most entertaining. Worth it not least for an articulation of something I should already have realised about Living Next-Door to the God of Love but hadn't, and which makes me respect the book even more.


• Won't Get Fooled Again (John Berlyne, Graham Sleight, Hal Duncan, Justina Robson [M]): lively discussion of whether we should just burn sf down to the foundations and start again. Graham did his best impression of a curmudgeon.


• Programme contributed to:


• The Creative Possibilities of the Fanzine (with Yvonne Rowse and someone whose name I have, embarrassingly, forgotten John Dallman, of course; thanks hawkida): small panel, small audience, discussion never quite took off, but some interesting things said all the same, particularly about podcasts. Shame flyingsauce couldn't make it.


• Why Can't They Just Write It So People Can Understand? (with Elizabeth Bear, Hal Duncan, John Clute, and Maureen Kincaid Speller): discussion of accessibility, difficulty (as a Clutean term) and audience. Lots of interesting points raised by both panelists and audience, but I don't think I managed to give the discussion much of a shape. Notable for the applause contest with the neighbouring room half-way through.


• Harrison, Harrison and Clute: That would be M. John Harrison, John Clute, and me, drafted as a substitute for Brian Aldiss, 'in conversation'. We ended up spending most of our time talking about our respective development as critics. I felt more than a little presumptuous about my part in this, given the relative levels of experience involved; I mean, I found it personally very interesting, and it helped me articulate some things, but I'm not sure the audience were getting much out of the discussion.


• BSFA Award shorts book group: me leading a discussion of the nominated fiction. About eight people showed, which was a pretty good turnout even if I did already know half of them. Some good points made, and I really must write something about 'Magic for Beginners'.


• Communal Criticism: me and Maureen Kincaid Speller. Again, it felt a little strange to be talking about being a critic, but thankfully it was a small room and the audience chimed in plenty.


• Does Anyone Watch Broadcast TV Any More? (with Judith Proctor, Paul Cockburn, John Toon, and Morgan Gallagher [M]): a panel of two halves. In one half, the moderator had decided on the narrative she wanted to impose on the discussion and didn't respond well to people challenging that. In the other half, the moderator raised some fascinating points about tv as a social experience, and how that social experience is changing, which spun off into really interesting discussion. Depressing thing: I asked how many people in the (largish) audience had read 'Magic for Beginners', which on one level is of course all about being a media fan. The answer? Four, and three of those were people I know personally.


• General observations


• Being back in Glasgow gave me several moments of deja-vu.


• While my impression is that the con in general was well-organised and went pretty smoothly (all hail Farah and Simon!), I think my experience of it was ... skewed. This is probably clear from the lists of programming I went to and contributed to above. I am now ready to get back to actually talking about books, rather than talking about talking about books, thanks.


• Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy the con, because I did.


• I did not get stung by the (apparently high) bar food prices, because I was on a two-stop strategy (large breakfast, large dinner, no lunch). This was helped by the wondrous and plentiful breakfasts supplied by the Crowne Plaza.


• The panoramic lift. All tall hotels should have panoramic lifts. The view from our room didn't suck, either.


• The convention produced a smart A5 book of fiction and criticism, called Concussed. My favourite contribution was probably Stephen Baxter's, which consisted of six six-word sf short stories. The best of these is like the ultimate distillation of the Baxter worldview: "Big Bang. No God. Fadeout. End."


• I went to have dinner instead of watching Doctor Who on the big screen on Saturday evening. Having now seen the episode, I can say that I made the right decision.


• I have seen comments that there were a number of panels where the panelists didn't seem to know why they were there. This is true. What I don't get, however, is how it happened. All panelists were emailed well in advance of the con and asked if they wanted to be on panels X, Y and Z; if they didn't think they had something to contribute, why did they say yes?


• The tiny tiny gophers! I'm not sure whether they were growing children specially or retraining ones they already had available, but being handed my con newsletter by a very earnest eight-year-old was rather endearing.


• I lost one of my favourite bookmarks. Boo hiss.


• I found the blanket "Year of the Teledu" posters annoying. This may just be me.


• The Richard Morgan Award for 'Most consistently entertaining panelist despite over-use' goes to Justina Robson.


• On the subject of future Eastercons, I am lukewarm about 2007 (I think a year off may do me some good), but looking forward to 2008.


• Burning question of the con:
  [Poll #713554]


• Other reports:




• despotliz here.


• brisingamen here, here, here and here.


• palatinate here, here, here, here and here.


• daveon here and here.


• mattia here.




I am vastly behind on email, so if you've sent me something that requires a response in the last ten days, please bear with me. Normal service will be resumed, etc.

Comments

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

I do like in-jokes and a certain amount of cliquey-ness, but only when it's only done with people "in". If done when there's someone else around, then I don't like it. I know, however, that I do sometimes continue, but I try to catch myself when I do.