The Camden Court is a nice, modern hotel. Everything looks very smart and new. The toilets are very spacious, and have those clever sinks where you just have to wave your hands and water appears. Except it doesn’t. If you wave your hand, nothing happens. You can wave until you are blue in the face and no water appears. There is a trick to these sinks. The only way to get water is to bring your hands together from either side. Yes, only in Ireland do they have the sinks configured so that in order to get water you have to pray.
Conventions
Briefly from Dublin
Hello world. I am in Dublin for Octocon. I’ve been offline for a day or so due to lack of Internet access. I’m staying at a friend’s apartment rather than in the con hotel. However, I am now at the con, and the hotel wifi is working OK in the lobby. People are in the bar, and I plan to go and join them soon.
The place I am staying is very nice, sandwiched between a lovely park and the Royal Dublin Showgrounds. Leinster, and indeed Ireland, have played at the RDS, though with Croke Park now opened up as a rugby venue and the renovations as Lansdowne Road finished I don’t suppose they will do so much in future. In any case, BOD and the boys are playing Saracens at Wembley tomorrow so I won’t have any distractions from the convention.
The first people I saw on arriving at the con hotel were George & Parris. As George noted, the last time I saw them was on the other side of the world and we were both waving around large, chrome-plated phallic symbols. We seem to keep running into each other. George has been checking in on the progress of the Song of Ice & Fire TV series filming, which is being done in Belfast. I’ll have more information on that later in the weekend (and hopefully an interview with George for Salon Futura).
I don’t actually know a lot about the TV series right now. As I confessed to Parris, I had a quick look at the casting, saw that Sean Bean was involved, and stopped paying attention as I knew all I needed to know. I gather I’m not alone in this, though Parris tells me that the young actors cast as the Stark kids and Jon Snow are all unbearably cute and liable to set young hearts a-flutter across the world.
I was able to test this theory. Joining us for lunch were George’s German agent and publisher, Venor, and his two twenty-something daughters. Who did the young ladies want to see? Sean Bean, of course. I rest my case. But I’m sure Parris will be proved right in the long run.
A Documentary About Conventions?
This looks like an interesting project: a fan-made documentary about fannish conventions. Details here. I know who is behind this, but I can’t see a name on the LJ so I’ll refrain from saying anything just now.
It does look to be a rather expensive project. That sort of money could keep Wizard’s Tower Press going for years. But then again, people get excited about movies, and they cost a lot of money to make.
Award Ceremony Video
Kevin is doing a good job in looking after the Hugo Awards web site now that I’m banned from updating it. He has got the video he took of the Aussiecon 4 Hugo Award Ceremony posted to the site. It is quite long — just over an hour and a half — and probably chews bandwidth like nothing else, but it is good to have it there.
In addition he has video of the Australian Awards ceremony, which we uploaded to my Vimeo account because Kevin has hit his upload limit for the week. You can watch that here.
Smoke Filled Rooms
Many thanks to all of you who joined us for the live blogging of the Hugo ceremony on Sunday night. It was a blast to do. Kevin, Mur and Mary were fabulous. We all had a lot of fun. Sadly it won’t happen again, at least not in that form. I have been banned from doing it.
Surprised? I was. Kevin and I spend a lot of time talking about how open and democratic WSFS is. Anyone who goes to Worldcon can attend the Business Meeting and have their say in how the Hugos are run. But there are still little committees where acts of political skulduggery can take place.
The Hugo Awards website, where Sunday’s coverage took place, is run by a body called the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee (HAMC). It is something that Kevin helped set up several years ago. I’ve done a lot of work behind the scenes, including creating and maintaining the website.
The HAMC is managed by another WSFS committee, the Mark Protection Committee (MPC). They are the people responsible for looking after the various service marks that WSFS owns, so it makes sense that they should also oversee how the Hugos are marketed. However, some members of the MPC have always been opposed to the existence of the HAMC, and they have a long track record of trying to obstruct what it does.
In 2008 I was all ready to start work on upgrading the Worldcon and WSFS web sites as I had done for the Hugos. I wasn’t able to attend the MPC meeting, and when Kevin got back from it I was surprised to discover that I had been relieved of responsibility for the job. Someone else had been taken on to do the work. As it happens, that someone is rather better qualified to build web sites than I am, and the lack of action over the past two years is mainly due to his life going through some major changes. But even so, had I been given the job it would have been done by Montreal.
In 2009 Kevin and I managed a contest to design a logo for the Hugos. I was delighted to see the logo being used all over this year’s award ceremony, and even in newspaper articles about the awards. But at the end of the Montreal Worldcon a meeting of the MPC effectively forbade us from attempting to register the logo as a service mark. Apparently it was not necessary, and would be a waste of the MPC’s money. This year Kevin (by way of the HAMC’s report to the MPC and thus to WSFS) put a motion before the Business Meeting suggesting that we register the logo. It passed easily, and none of the MPC members who spoke so forcefully against registering it in Montreal was prepared to put that position forward in a public meeting.
This year once again I missed the MPC meeting. (I was recording an interview for Salon Futura). When I finally caught up with Kevin I discovered that the MPC had adopted a new rule forbidding any member of the HAMC from being on the Hugo ballot. Any member who wanted to remain eligible for a Hugo next year had to resign immediately.
I thought about this for all of about two seconds. I have no idea what Neil plans to do with Clarkesworld from now on, and I certainly have enough Hugos. But I would love to see Salon Futura on the ballot. What’s more, I would love to see Kevin get a nomination. He’s my business manager, fulling the same role that Kirsten Gong-Wong has for Locus. But there’s no way he was going to abandon the HAMC, so if we do get a nomination next year his name won’t be included. I, on the other hand, am staying in the Hugo race, because I have other fine staff who also deserve nominations and I want to see that happen. Accordingly I have resigned from the HAMC and won’t be allowed access to the Hugo Awards website in the future.
The official reason for the new rule is that anyone who is on the HAMC could potentially abuse their position to campaign for a Hugo for themselves. I can see how one might do that, and I have made a point of trying to avoid it. If you look at the Hugo website you won’t see much mention of me there. I certainly don’t sign any posts I write. Kevin’s name is much more prominent than mine.
The live reporting of the ceremony is a bit different. In previous years I have done that through my own websites because key staff on the current Worldcon have been actively hostile to the HAMC. This year was different, but even so we didn’t announce the coverage until we had been given express permission to do it by both Vincent Docherty, the Hugo Administrator, and Kathryn Daugherty, the ceremony director. Aussiecon 4 co-chair Perry Middlemiss came to see what we were up to during rehearsals, so he knew we were doing it too.
The thing about the live reporting is that it ought to be on the Hugo website, or that of the current Worldcon. The results should be presented to the world through official channels. It is actually of far more benefit to me to do it through my own websites, because then I get the traffic. If someone else wants to do it for the official Hugo website next year I’ll be delighted. After all, I won’t even be in Reno, so it will be hard for me. But that does mean someone else has to be prepared to do the work.
That, I suspect, is the main issue. Some of this is undoubtedly pure spite. One or two people on the MPC, having seen me win a third Hugo, will have been determined to do something to try to hurt me. But far more important than that, by removing me (and trying to remove Kevin as well), the MPC was trying to get rid of the people who actually do the work, and bring the process of marketing the Hugos to a grinding halt. They are doing this because they are strongly opposed to encouraging anyone other than Worldcon regulars from voting.
Personally I’m not too annoyed about this. I have Wizard’s Tower and Salon Futura to run. Having less WSFS work to do will be a good thing. As a WSFS member, however, I am furious. I want to see the process of marketing the Hugos go forward, not be hamstrung by a small group of selfish, elitist conservatives operating behind the scenes in little-known committees.
Kevin needs help. If you have experience in maintaining a WordPress web site and have no ambitions to win a Hugo he’d probably be delighted to hear from you. Ditto if you have experience of actual marketing. And if you can’t do any of these things, but think that what has been done here is wrong, please say so in the comments. If we want to convince people that WSFS is a fair and open organization, we have to put a stop to this sort of thing.
Kevin talks about another piece of skulduggery on his LJ.
Because People Are Asking…
Firstly, it is highly unlikely that putting me on program, or even another Hugo nomination, would be sufficient to get me a visa to the USA for Reno. The State Department has already made it very clear that they see no value in the (non-profit) work I do for the SF community, and this would be more of the same.
Secondly, applying for the visa, with the attendant need to clear my name, would cost at least $7,000, possibly a lot more. Immigration lawyers do not work for free.
Finally, I have pretty much only one shot at this. If I apply again and get turned down again them I can probably kiss goodbye to any chance of getting back to the US. Therefore, even if you can find a lawyer who will work for free, or somehow raise the money, I would be unwilling to roll the dice at this point.
And you know, if people have that much money to throw around, I can think of much better causes than my travel budget.
The right thing to do — for me, for Reno and for other conventions — is to make better use of the Internet in doing online programming.
The Dead Critics Panel
Yesterday I got to moderate a panel on literary criticism featuring John Clute, Bill Congreve and James Bradley. I’m pretty pleased with how it went, in no small part because it could easily have been taken as a manifesto for Salon Futura.
The title of the panel was “Is Criticism Dead”, the assumption being that because critics are losing their positions as gatekeepers of literary taste they no longer have a role in the world. Of course us critics are actually undead (and want your braaains!), but hopefully we still have a role in providing entertainment for the public.
The substance of the panel turned on making a distinction between criticism and reviews (and thanks to Peter Nichols for making this clear from the audience). We had, on a couple of occasions, tried to define criticism, and failed. However, we came up with a number of things that it is not.
To start with, as Peter so eloquently put it, criticism is not like writing for Which? magazine. We are not trying to tell you which book you should read next. Reviewers may try to do that, though I think it is a pretty foolish enterprise.
James noted that, especially in today’s online world, critics should approach works with an attitude of humility. We are not there to hand down judgment from on high. We are there to give our impression of the work. Clute added that we may well get it wrong on first reading, and should not be afraid to re-visit works at a later date. I added that even if we get it right for ourselves, other people may approach the work in a very different way. As I said in the first issue of Salon Futura, there is no one correct way to read a book.
Clute also noted that criticism is not spoiler free. You can’t talk intelligently about a book if you have to tiptoe around everything that happens in it. Reviews can try to be spoiler free. Blurbs perhaps should be but rarely are. Criticism, however, has to engage with the work.
Bill made some very interesting points about the nature of reading on computer screens and why the supposed short attention span of the online reader is more a function of font choice, line length and screen clarity than a dumbing down of people’s reading ability. I’d like to know a lot more about that and will try to find Bill to get references. This is relevant, because many online venues are uncomfortable with articles that try to develop an argument, as opposed to simply making points. Criticism should not be simply stating an opinion.
The rough conclusion that we came to is that the role of the critic as a gatekeeper who hands down judgment on books from on high may well be dead, but the need for critics is as great as ever and the new freedoms provided by the Internet, in which magazines like Salon Futura can find a niche without being beholden to the publishing industry, create plenty of opportunities for criticism to flourish.
Business Meeting News
Yesterday’s WSFS Business Meeting was fairly short and mostly unexciting, which is the way the Friday meeting is supposed to be. Today, however, is likely to be more interesting.
The motion to decouple the site selection voting fee and the initial supporting membership cost will probably be controversial because it will raise membership costs for regular attendees and lower them for people who only attend Worldcon infrequently.
The motion to allow electronic voting on site selection also looks like being controversial. Some prospective bidders are a little worried about safeguards, which is entirely reasonable, but I think their concerns can be taken care of. I suspect that some of the other people who are opposed to the idea would really like to make participation in site selection as difficult as possible.
The elections to the Mark Protection Committee are contested this year, which is unusual. This is undoubtedly because Kevin has made his re-election effectively a referendum on the work we have done for the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee. If we lose the vote, that committee may cease to exist as of today (and we’ll be barred from updating the official Hugo Awards web site).
For those of you following along from last year, the committee investigating the rules for the semiprozine Hugo has not come up with any firm recommendations. Somehow or other I got left off the mailing list, but Neil Clarke tells me that he and David Hartwell have participated in the discussions so I’m much less worried than I was yesterday. I suspect that the main problem is that the committee is made of of people with very different objectives, and neither side is willing to budge.
Worldcon, Day 1
Can I be exhausted already? Thank you!
It has been a good day thus far. My panel on trans characters in YA fiction went very well. Lots of people have said nice things about the iPad edition of Salon Futura, and I have been out to dinner with Cat Valente and Seanan McGuire. But I was up half the night finishing the aforementioned magazine, and now I am struggling to keep my eyes open.
What I should say is that the convention center building is the nicest such venue Worldcon has ever had. It is about the right size for this con, the rooms are all very well equipped, and the wi-fi is superb.
A lot of people are complaining that the wi-fi in the convention center is not free. Clearly they have never had to get wi-fi at other convention centers. AU$20 buys you 8 hours or 250 Mb, whichever is used first, and which you can use in any was over a 48 hour period. This is om much better than the $300/day I have been asked to pay at other convention centers. Also the quality of the signal is excellent.
The con, as usual, has a whole lot of furious paddling going on just below the surface, but thus far there have been no obvious snafus. Long may it continue.
Au Contraire Wrap
There are still bits of Au Contraire going on this morning. The con committee has kindly laid on various tourism opportunities for the foreign visitors, including a trip to the Shrine of the Squid God. For me, however, the con is over. I’m leaving for Melbourne this afternoon. It is time, therefore, for some brief reflection.
When I was in Auckland last year a certain amount of concern was expressed by some older Kiwi fans. Who were these young women from Wellington with their grandiose plans? What experience did they have? Would it all turn out to be a dreadful disaster?
I’m pleased to say that nothing of the sort transpired. Au Contraire ran pretty much flawlessly. There were a few minor hiccups, as there always are, but the program ran to time without any seeming effort. They even managed to get the little signs outside the program rooms saying what the next panel would be updated on time. I never saw anyone doing it. I think it may have been fairies.
The programming was interesting and varied. There was everything from writing workshops to an introduction to cosplay. I’m now rather sorry I missed the masquerade as it appears to have been very good.
There was no art show, and the dealers’ room, such as it was, was a program item scheduled for a couple of hours. This did not seem to be a problem. Given the price of books in New Zealand, I guess people are very careful about what they buy.
Cuba Street was, as I had expected, one of the stars of the event. It is packed with interesting restaurants, and the Seamarket over the road provided some of the tastiest fast food you could wish for. Who needs burgers when you can have good old fish & chips?
The hotel staff were extremely friendly and efficient. The wi-fi was a bit of a disaster, but if you had a wired connection in your room (or in function space as I did last night for the Vogels) the network was fine.
Obviously no con is perfect. I would have liked a document listing who was going to be on which program items. But I probably would not have attended any more because I’ve been so busy and in need of naps.
One thing I did notice is that the local fans are very used to small, intimate panels where anyone can chime in at any point. With small panels that’s fine, but if you have 50-100 people in the audience, most of whom are there to listen to the panel, attempting to dominate proceedings from the audience looks rather rude. Most people were very well behaved, and I can understand why some people have got used to this, but it did irritate people at times.
I should note, however, that the Kiwis were unfailingly polite and welcoming (except to Australians, of course, who were subject to the usual friendly banter). I’m pretty sure that if there had been a con in the UK where a third of the members were from overseas there would have been a lot of muttering about how the local con flavor was being swamped by the influx of people who “do things differently”. Au Contraire always felt like a great, big fannish party.
It was announced last night that the con had 253 paid members. Around 60+ of those were foreign visitors. Lynelle Howell tells me that the usual attendance for an NZ Natcon is in the 120-150 range, so Au Contraire attracted an unusually large number of locals despite the fact that a number of prominent Kiwi fans did not attend because they needed all of their savings to get to Worldcon.
Overall, Au Contraire can be counted a huge success. Kelly, Daphne, Jess and the rest of the (all female) crew can be very proud of themselves. And on behalf of us visitors who have had a wonderful time, Thank You!
New Zealand in 2020
So, the assembled overseas visitors enjoyed themselves so much at Au Contraire that they threw $20 bills at Norman Cates and encouraged him to bid for a Worldcon. It is all Sean Williams’ fault. He started it.
Quite how serious the Kiwis are about this remains to be seen. I think those who threw money today have got their money’s worth already. But if they do decide to go through with it I think it is definitely possible.
Also a lot of Australians will be very grateful at the thought of a decade off.
Lions by a Whisker
Well, that was a lot closer than it had any right to be. The Wellington Lions lived up to the reputation of their namesakes in the first half — they spent most of the time laying around yawning. As a result, Northland had a healthy 15 point lead at the half. Thankfully the home side decided to pay attention towards the end of the game and, one has to say, came roaring back.
After a spectacular try for which the Lions ran almost the length of the field, we got back to a one-point ball game. Northland then got a penalty to stretch their lead back to 4. There followed a long period where the Lions were camped on the Northland try line, and eventually they got over for a score, giving them a 3 point lead with just under 3 minutes to play. Northland attacked, and won a penalty well inside the Wellington half, but their kicker missed and Wellington managed to close out the game winners, despite having been ahead for only a few minutes.
I guess I did say I thought it would be a close game.
In other news, my two panels today went well, and the con appears to be buzzing. There are over 200 people here, which for a New Zealand Natcon is enormous.
My Au Contraire Schedule
Here’s what I’ll be doing for the convention:
- Saturday, 2:00pm: How to Read SF
- Saturday, 4:00pm: Queer SF (with Elizabeth Knox)
- Sunday, 9:00am: Wordcon: What to Expect
- Sunday, 5:00pm: The Art of Reviewing (with Juliet Marillier
- Sunday, 8:00pm: Liveblogging the Sir Julius Vogel Awards
The last one is, of course, dependent on the hotel wi-fi playing ball. Failing all else, we’ll tweet the winners.
Mission Accomplished
… in more ways than one.
Firstly, I have napped, and managed to wake up in time for the opening ceremonies.
Secondly, the con has been formally opened. Daphne provided the most energetic opening speech I have seen at any convention. The international contingent continues to grow. It is all looking very promising.
I have also achieved dinner. Wellington turns out to be one of those places where they roll up the sidewalks at 9:00pm, but a few places are still open and I managed to be just in time to catch some superb fish and chips from a place just across the road. It was excellent value as well. I have probably eaten way too much, but I’m hoping that in best big cat style this now means I shall sleep soundly for many hours.
I should, of course, be in the bar, except that the bar here is quite small and Sean Williams is busy DJing so the obvious bar crowd is seriously diminished. Elizabeth did recommend a pub nearby, but I think that would require an Expedition, which I don’t think I’m up to putting together.
Talking of Elizabeth, during the kaffeklatsch she mentioned that her sister, Sara, who teaches “death and culture” at a university in Sydney, is also an author. Her novel, The Orphan Gunner, is a lesbian romance in the RAF in WWII Britain. There’s a review here. It looks like the book is only published in NZ and Australia.
Adventures in Wi-Fi
It turns out that the CafeNet signal is coming from the School of Architecture across the road. I can see it from my room because I am right at the back of the hotel. It doesn’t reach as far as the function space. I have yet to meet anyone who has made the hotel wi-fi work (as opposed to the wired connections in the more expensive rooms).
What I have done is get to Elizabeth Knox’s Kaffeklatsch, along with Spike & Tom, and Sean Williams. I have discovered that Elizabeth has written way more books than I knew about. Sadly I have no room in my luggage, but I’ll try to get hold of them when I get home.
Meanwhile I have hit the jet lag wall. I am going to lie down and hope it helps.
Convention Under Way
There is a con going on here somewhere. I know that because I have run into people from all over the globe: from New York and California; from Norway and Ireland; from Canada. I’m so pleased that New Zealand decided to do this, and that so many people have responded by attending.
The downside is that most of us are wandering round in a jet-lagged fog right now. This is not good for me because I have a magazine to edit, but hopefully my brain will catch up with me eventually.
Internet access was a bit of a crisis to begin with. The hotel’s supposed free wi-fi didn’t reach my room and didn’t work where it did reach. I found a lovely little French Cafe just along Cuba Street where I could get online for free over breakfast, but getting work done, and covering the Vogels, was looking dodgy. Fortunately I thought to investigate the wi-fi servers I could see, and one of them turned out to be CafeNet, a service with hotspots around Wellington. It is working fine in my room, and is only $NZ10/day. Now I’m going to see if I can access it from the function space.
Graphic Novel Recommendations Wanted
As some of you have already noticed, I am on a panel at Worldcon about science fiction and graphic novels. The contention, as Jeff Beeler put it, is that the new Hugo category is effectively for, “the best science fiction graphic novels that people who do not read graphic novels on a regular basis know about.” Paul Cornell has already waxed lyrical upon the subject. Now it is my turn. But I don’t read nearly as many comics and graphic novels as some of you. So I want your suggestions. What should we be nominating for the Best Graphic Novel Hugo next year?
Remember, the work has to either be first published in 2010 or, in the case of a serial work, the final issue has to be published in 2010.
Rugby Expedition at #AuContraire
One of the things I have never done on my visits to New Zealand is attend a rugby match. It so happens that the Wellington Lions are playing a home game on the Saturday of Au Contraire. Kick off is at 5:30, and I’m on a panel from 4:00 – 5:00, but Wellington isn’t that big a city so getting to the game sounds feasible. It does mean missing Sean Williams’ GoH speech, but I think if I buy him enough chocolate he’ll still speak to me.
FYI, the Lions are the local Wellington side, not the Super Rugby franchise Hurricanes. The squad does boast a number of Hurricanes players, but the top stars such as Cory Jane, Ma’a Nonu, Conrad Smith and Piri Weepu are all on duty with the All Blacks and unlikely to play. On the other hand, Rodney So’oialo and Hosea Gear didn’t make the All Blacks squad, and in Julian Savea the Lions have one of the most exciting young players in world rugby. The Lions’s opponents, Northland, are having a good season and are scoring very heavily, so it should be a cracking game.
Because this is a Lions game and not the Hurricanes tickets for the Cake Tin stadium are easy to get and reasonably priced at between NZ$20 and NZ$35.
Anyone up for an expedition?
Aussiecon 4 Draft Program Online
You can see the draft program for Aussiecon 4 here. It is a draft, so take it with a pinch of salt. For example, it has me listed on panels I will not be on. Ditto Jonathan Strahan. I think it is probably a good list of what panels will be on when, but not a good list of who will be on them.
Aussiecon 4 Provisional Program
Here is my provisional program schedule for Aussiecon 4.
Trans characters in YA spec fic
An exploration of Trans characters in YA speculative fiction.
Thursday 1700 Room 213
Is criticism dead?
What role does the literary critic play in modern science fiction? Do readers continue to base their book choices on critical recommendation, or are they more easily swayed by their friends and by cover design and marketing? A no-holds-barred look at the role of the critic in the 21st century – are we a dying breed?
Friday 1300 Room 204
Science fiction and graphic novels
The Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story was introduced in 2009, bringing an entirely new medium of SF into formal consideration. Two years into use, how is this new category working out? Is the best science fiction and fantasy in graphic form being nominated? A look at what is currently being produced in science fiction and fantasy comics, manga and graphic novels at the moment, where the five 2010 nominees fit in, and where SF fans should be looking to for next year’s best candidates.
Saturday 1500 Room 212
I’m sorely tempted to wear a zombie costume to the “Is criticism dead?” panel, but I have no space in my luggage allowance for fun stuff. (This is due to the internal flights I’m taking which have 20kg limits.)