Conventions

P-Con: Day 1

~ Cheryl

The first day of P-Con has massed without major incident and with much amusement.

I did a panel about superheroes in fiction, largely on the strength of Karen Burnham’s excellent paper on the subject, and a very knowledgeable audience.

That was quickly followed by a panel on mentioning the unmentionable. Apparently you can get away with almost anything in fiction, though killing young children and dogs is still frowned upon. What is a problem, however, is covers. US publishers are apparently still very reluctant to put brown-skinned people on the cover; and all publishers are reluctant to put disabled people on the cover. You can, as Justine Larbalestier proved, do something about this. However, publishers are not always wrong about what people will buy. Sometimes there is a trade-off to be made between having the cover you want, and selling the book; and if you happen to have a book that you want to be read by the sort of people who might not buy it if it has the wrong sort of person on the cover…

Nick Harkaway’s Guest of Honour speech was a lot of fun, especially the bits of The Gone Away World that he read. I believe that I have film of it on the Flip, and hope to put it online in a week or two.

Clare, poor dear, has gone down with some sort of infection and is hiding in her room. I did, however, check with Nick, and can now reveal that what she was doing last night was making an extended phone call to people in Texas as part of the campaign to save the life of Linda Carty.

My final panel for the day was on international genre writers. I thought we spend rather too much time talking about translations and not enough time actually plugging people’s books. Also the audience was very small as we were up against a discussion of social networking. But we did cover a bunch of good issues.

I have gathered up my courage and entered the Frank Darcy Award contest for drabble-writing. Laura Anne Gilman has entered as well, and I expect her story to be much better than mine.

Thus far there has been no sign of Cthulhu cultists, possibly because Fluff and his minions are not here.

P-Con, Briefly

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

The travel went fine, as you may have seen on Twitter. Juliet McKenna was apparently much less fortunate, but I think she has made it. I shall get the story out of her tomorrow, but she is OK.

In the absence of Jules I managed to snag an invite to dinner with Bob Nielson, Colin Harvey and Mike Shevdon. Bob took us to a favorite Italian restaurant of his. I had Pizza Diavolo, primarily because the menu promised “spacy Italian salami”. Sadly I am not tripping out as a result, but it did taste good.

I had a nice chat with Nick Harkaway in the bar, but have not got to meet the famous Mrs. H. yet as civil rights campaigners don’t get holidays and she was on the phone doing something very important that I don’t know whether I can blog about.

The big problem is the hotel Internet, which doesn’t like Windows 7 very much and doesn’t like my email at all. (Very annoying as it worked last year.) I can get a web browser to work, but I don’t yet know if I can get Skype to work. More testing is required. If I can get Skype running I’ll be calling in a report to Star Ship Sofa on Sunday afternoon.

On the way over I finished reading Kaaron Warren’s Walking the Tree, which is a fascinating book that I need to write about. I have just started N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and a few chapters in I am very impressed. I can’t remember being this excited about a book for a long time.

Mad March Travel

~ Cheryl ~ 8 Comments

Deep breath, here we go.

On Friday (5th) I head off to Dublin for P-Con, returning on Monday (8th).

The following Wednesday (10th) I’m off to London where I’m staying with the Clutes overnight in preparation for an early morning flight to San Francisco on the Thursday (11th).

Kevin’s stuck in Portland on a training course, so I’ll need to find my own way to our sadly neglected apartment. Fortunately BART will take me most of the way, and there are cabs available at Fremont BART. Then I’ll need to get a bus to the shops as there’ll be no fresh food at home.

I was hoping to get to Nova Albion over the weekend, but Kevin has the van. Also there’s an SFSFC Board Meeting on Saturday (13th).

Kevin should be back on Sunday night (14th), so we ought to be able to make BASFA on the Monday (15th), but early Tuesday morning (16th) I’m off to Orlando for ICFA where I will finally get to present my paper on trans characters in science fiction and fantasy.

I’ll be back in the Bay Area on the following Monday (22nd). Sleep may follow.

Lazy Sunday Linkage

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Because I’d much rather be watching the Sharks take on Team USA in the Olympic final.

– A.S. Byatt has some long thoughts about Alice that seem to me to prove that everyone brings their own biases to reading a book.

– The Finnish government continues to subsidize important cultural activities such as science fiction fanzines.

– This year the UK will be celebrating the 50th birthday of Alan Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. Report in The Guardian here, and official web site here.

– Some folks at NASA think a new propulsion system could mean a trip to Mars would take just 39 days.

P-Con Programme Schedule

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The programme for P-Con is still in a little bit of flux, but here’s what I think I am doing.

Saturday

Superheroes – limited to the graphic arena?
About superheroes in novels

Genre Fiction as a means of discussing the unmentionable
In which we shall discuss the unmentionable in non-ficitional ways

International genre fiction
In which I get to plug the Translation Awards and say nice things about my pals in non-English-speaking countries

Sunday

Genre bending
In which we shall thoroughly explode genre boundaries

The Eagle has landed; in Dublin
In which a group of intrepid foreigners pretend to be aliens and give their impressions of Planet Dublin

Has the Internet become indispensable?
Very short panel. The answer is “yes”.

I Get Interviewed

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

I have been talking to Tony Smith of Star Ship Sofa about helping him get live coverage of conventions, specifically Worldcon. Given that he needs a decent audio feed, we needed to test the technology, so we did a little test run of using Skype on my iPhone (using my home wi-fi, not over 3G which I think Skype still doesn’t support, though it is coming). Ever keen to get material, Tony asked if he could podcast the conversation, and you can find the results here.

The Skype-Skype conversation worked really well, but when Tony tried calling my mobile from his Skype account the sound quality dropped off significantly. That suggests this will work best when the phone has a good wi-fi signal to work with. But the 3G is OK as long as people understand they are listening to a live report from the field, not a studio conversation.

In the interview you will find out why my accent sounds so funny, why I think non-fiction writers often get a raw deal, and why, later this year, I may be calling Tony while I am naked.

Alt.Fiction Has Guests

~ Cheryl

The Alt.Fiction folks have announced some of the people who will be appearing at the event in Derby in June. Attending writers and others include: Sarah Pinborough, Rob Shearman, Tim Lebbon, Pete Crowther, John Jarrold, Juliet McKenna, Chaz Brenchley, Mark Chadbourn, Kim Lakin-Smith and John Berlyne. Sounds good. More information here.

SFX: Some Good, Some Bad

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The latest edition of the Geek Syndicate podcast (another audio fanzine worthy of Hugo considerations) sees Dave & Barry interview Dave Bradley of SFX about the recent SFX Weekender convention. It sounds like things went pretty well, and that the SFX people are learning a lot about con running. I was particularly amused to hear Bradley explaining that they didn’t announce awards in every category on the night because they had worked out that the ceremony would take forever. Yes, exactly. That’s one reason why WSFS has a fit every time someone suggests new Hugo categories.

Paul Cornell was very complimentary about the weekend as well, so I guess it will be with us for a few years yet. I can’t see me going, because the sheer horror of spending a weekend in a Pontins holiday camp will take a lot of getting over. The Tor UK people obviously had the right idea. But it is good to see a decent-sized UK convention being well run, and heartwarming to hear (from the podcast) how good the costuming was.

At this point I’d be very happy to say nice things about SFX, except today I also saw this. Yes, it is sadly predictable. Let a bunch of men to talk about a literary field, and they’ll completely forget that any women are involved, except of course to gawp at and be murdered in all sorts of horrible ways for the “entertainment” of readers.

Reno Goes For Youth

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I am delighted to see (via this press release) that the Reno Worldcon is making a concerted effort to reach out to younger people by introducing a Young Adult attending membership for persons aged 17 to 21 as of August 17, 2011 (the first day of the convention). Hopefully similar levels of discounts will be extended to day memberships.

Octocon Booked

~ Cheryl

Oh dear me, that’s another convention I have booked up for. The whole October/November thing looks totally crazy. Still, Octocon has GRRM and The Fabulous Lorraine and Mike Carey. And it is in Dublin. And I promised Dani. So I’m going.

One More For The Diary

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The fabulous Write Fantastic crew will be putting on a one-day convention in Oxford on May 8th. Details on the web site are a little sketchy right now, but I have email from Juliet McKenna that says membership will be £15 (£12 for students) and that the guests will include Geoff Ryman. What’s more, I’ll be in the UK at the time. See you there.

ICFA Draft Program

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

There’s a draft program up on the ICFA web site. (Because they don’t allow deep linking you’ll have to go to the home page and click on the link at the right that says “Preliminary Online Program for ICFA-31” – silly people.) My paper is in a session on posthumanism, but it sort of fits there because so much of the discussion of trans people in SF is in that context. The conference itself is focused on race and there is very little gender material this year. And provisionally I have Saturday morning, not too horribly early, which suits me fine.

I’m looking forward to the conference already. There’s loads of interesting material there. I’m particularly interested in Irma’s paper: “Queer Con: Finnish Anime Fandom as a Queer Space”. She’s also on a panel titled: “Antifans: What Fans Love to Hate”. Is that about me, by any chance?

Most of the time, however, I’ll be busy talking to people about the Translation Awards. I’m delighted to see that there is a whole panel on Mexican science fiction, apparently full of Mexican science fiction writers, including Pepe Rojo whose story I thought was the standout piece in Cosmos Latinos. Awesome! (Larry, you should be there.)

Convention Schedule Update

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

I have another convention to attend. Nova Albion, which bills itself as a steampunk exhibition, is taking place in the Bay Area the weekend after I arrive in California (and a couple of days before I have to head out to Orlando for ICFA). Kevin and I will not be there all weekend as we have an SFSFC Board Meeting on the Saturday, but we do have memberships.

And talking of conventions, I have just made some exciting changes to the BristolCon web site: in particular the announcement of Paul Cornell and Joe Abercrombie as Guests of Honour.

Un Congrès Virtuel

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Hooray for our Francophone friends in Montréal! Via Fractale Framboise I discover that they are planning a virtual convention (Boréal is the name of their annual real-world convention). Unfortunately for most of you, it looks like it will be entirely en Français, but they have timed it so that people in Europe can participate and I know of a few of my readers will be able to take advantage of that.

By the way, folks, if you want a suggestion for a program item, how about picking some French-language fiction that you can all get behind in the nominations for this year’s Hugos. I’m sure that there are enough Francophones with nominating rights to get something on the ballot.

Eaton Conference 2011

~ Cheryl

Yes, I have a convention penciled in for 2011 already. It is, after all, where we will be presenting the inaugural translation awards. But (if you enjoy academic discussion of SF) I think it will be a fascinating event. The theme of the conference is Global Science Fiction and you can find the call for papers here.

I’m thinking that someone should present a paper on the globalization of fandom. Ipa, we should talk.

Web Site Incompetence

~ Cheryl ~ 10 Comments

Last night I did some bookings for my trip to P-Con (GoH, the very wonderful Nick Harkaway). I had no trouble at all with booking the flight and hotel. They were both with Irish companies. The train ticket, on the other hand… I didn’t get that far as I had another train ticket to buy and the FGW web site crashed on me.

Why is it that UK companies* are so utterly incompetent when it comes to web sites? It has got to the stage where I dread using a web site if the company that created it is based in the UK. I can cope with the usual annoyances of only being able to use Internet Explorer and only being able to use credit cards registered in the UK, but I do at least expect the site to work. I do not expect it to give me an error message of “URL not syntactically valid” and have no means of recovery from that error.

And if that isn’t bad enough, I expect that when I report such an error I get treated seriously. I do not expect to be told that the problem was probably my fault for failing to enter my credit card billing address properly. It is entirely possible that I might have done so, but any competent web site will deal with that by producing an error message tell you what you have done wrong, and allowing you to correct the mistake. It should not produce a message understandable only by web programmers and then leave you with a blank screen.

So, First Great Western, your web site is crap, and your customer support is crap. Unfortunately you are the only option I have if I want to travel by train. I guess I will have to walk down to the station and buy my tickets there.

* Exception here for Sainsbury’s whose web site worked fine. OTOH, I am seriously considering changing banks because I’m so concerned about the RBS web site.

Aussiecon 4 Hotel Update

~ Cheryl

At SMOFcon the AussieCon 4 folks expected hotel bookings to be open on January 15th – that’s this weekend. I have just spotted this on the A4 Travel LiveJournal. Apparently there’s some delay and the new ETA is between now and the end of Feb..

For those of you about to start on a rant, this is what happens when a convention has multiple hotels and the attendees expect a full-feature room booking service that holds their hands throughout the process.

Warmer in the Mind

~ Cheryl ~ 14 Comments

There was quite a lot of melting of snow around here today, but it will freeze again overnight, and we are forecast more heavy snow for this evening. The long range forecast now suggests a possible thaw on Saturday, which would be good because I’m supposed to be going to Bristol that day.

I ran out of fresh fruit and bread today, but in theory the Sainsbury’s van will come tomorrow with more. We shall see. Bean chili for dinner. A good canned meal to have in store, requiring only a fresh onion.

In the meantime I have been cheering myself up by thinking of warmer climes. I have booked my flight to the USA for March/April, and I’ll be booking the internal flight to Orlando for ICFA as soon as I get an OK from Kevin on the times. I have also been looking at flights to Australia. It will be warmer there, even if September is only spring for them.

I’ve also booked my membership in Au Contraire, the New Zealand Natcon. It looks like getting there on United will be difficult and expensive, so I may just fly United to Melbourne and hop back across the Tasman to Wellington on QANTAS, with whom I still have a bunch of points I should use up.

Finally on the subject of flights, I need to get to Dublin for P-Con. As RyanAir has made travel with them so unpleasant I’d prefer to avoid them if possible. I’m looking at the possibility of Aer Arann from Cardiff as that doesn’t seem to require overnight stays and doesn’t involve stupidly expensive train fares into London. Does anyone know anything about them? Their advertising seems very much geared towards saying “We are the opposite of RyanAir” without actually saying so.