one more draft…

so that’s it. my brain is largely melted after four hours of typing this in (including zero HHNF work, i might add – you should feel grateful) and i know it’s too long for one post, but i need to get ready for work.

final thoughts: readercon is a truly excellent experience. the content ranges from the deeply philosophical (Novels of Advocacy v. Novels of Recognition) to the directly tangible (Odyssey Workshop) and eveyrwhere in between (Hacks v. Art Police, Strong Stories with Strong Parents, Words as Magic, etc.). of course, i’m still a newbie at all this, and this is only my second readercon and my second convention of any kind, but i can’t really picture a better place to start than here.

for anyone who has read this whole thing, congratulations! it’s over! of course, i also want to thank you very much and i hope it’s been at least a little interesting.

and now that that’s done, i’ve got a book to type up…

The Year in Short Fiction

this was the last panel of the con, sunday afternoon at 2, and the audience was quite sparse. of course, this wasn’t so much about the conversation as it was to hear the panel give names of some of their favorite works over the past year. also, Neil Clarke was supposed to be on the panel but was absent, which was a let-down, but there were some very interesting nuggets here. [UPDATE: as Neil mentions in his comment below, he'd lost his voice following the Future of Magazines, Part 2 panel earlier that day, so was unable to participate.]

Theodora Goss started by asking the panel if they’d seen any particular trends or issues over the last year and Ellen Datlow, who edited The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror #21 (the last of that publication), said that she saw fewer standout stories by known names, but several of relatively unknowns, as well as some first-timers, had strong showings. she said this made it a little harder to please the publisher, who is hoping for headliner names to grab people’s attention.

Kathryn Cramer, who co-edits The Year’s Best Science Fiction  and The Year’s Best Fantasy, said she largely agreed, though a couple bigger names had enormous years, including Peter S Beagle and Elizabeth Bear. she also identified the difference between three types of anthologies: theme (duh); movement (a collection of writers with an ear to what the others are doing, quasi-together, and the stories tend to resonate on one or more levels with each other); and trend (a marketing thing, where the stories usually end up looking the worse for being put together – she described steampunk as this).

Doug Cohen, Assistant Editor (among other things) for Realms of Fantasy, said he hadn’t actually seen any specific trends, per se, though he did mention the importance of reprinting for short fiction, as reminding people of what has gone before or introducing newcomers to classics. the main example of this he gave was Wastelands, edited by John Joseph Adams.

Theodora pushed a little, asking where else can people go, other than the anthologies, to find the best new speculative fiction. Ellen was firm in her statement that for horror there’s far more junk out there than quality stuff, but recommended Black Static as the place to start. Kathryn offered Mike Ashley’s Mammoth Book of… series, and mentioned that the gender split in the genres seems to be higher for women in fantasy/sf than elsewhere. she also said she’s gotten too narrow in her ‘editor blinders’ and has been trying to break tham apart by reaching into new areas. Doug said to go to Tor.com, and then followed a list of authors and/or stories that went from 2008-2009 and too fast for me to catch them all, but here’s what i caught:

• Trent Hergenrader – ‘The Hodag’
• Unknown – ‘Cargo’ (one of Ellen’s mentions, saying it was not horror, per se, but powerfully horrific and terrible in its content – a story about the pilots who flew the bodies of the Jonestown ‘suicides’ back to the US)
• M K Hobson – ‘The People’s Republic of the Edelweiss Village Putt-Putt Golf’
• Euan Harvey -  ‘The Claw Unseen” and ‘Harry and the Monkey’ (one of Doug’s contributions, saying that Euan is ‘exploding’ in RoF, describing how sometimes an author and an editor will ‘click’ and the editor will start accepting nearly everything from that author*)
• Unkown – ‘Beachhead’
• Daniel Kayson – ‘Tears for Godzilla’
• Paolo Bacigalupi – several
• Graham Edwards – (didn’t catch the name)
• Robert Reed – ‘Shadow Below’ and ‘Unstrung Zither’ (this was one of Kathryn’s offerings, and she made a point of saying that he writes something different every time, which intrigues me and now i must learn more)
• Peter S Beagle – ‘The Rabbi’s Hobby’
• ‘The Parable of the Shower’
• Bruce Sterling – ‘Black Swan’
• Ellen Kushner – ‘Wild and Wicked Youth’

* the very idea makes me both wildly jealous and insanely hopeful.

Strong Stories with Strong Parents

this was the first panel that caught my eye when i was scanning the program before the con, and i think it was an interesting and revealing conversation of sometimes differing opinions. i now have a pile of to-reads. i seem to have missed a lot of fantastic classic YA material growing up.

Sonya Taaffe (who was sitting in for the absent Sarah Prineas) kicked it off splendidly with a frustration at YA novels where parents are deadbeat, neglectful, or actually dead. Laurel Anne Hill agreed, adding that kids can get into all sorts of trouble right in front of their parents, which is often more interesting.

Judith Berman mentioned that a friend of hers once described the problem this way: children don’t feel they can get away with anything while their parents are around, but parents now feel it is their specific job to prevent adventure/excitement (i.e., danger). she went further, relating that as a child she would get on her bike in the morning and come home for dinner and her parents didn’t bat an eye; her son, however, is never out of adult vision. she openly admitted the dichotomy and was troubled by the difference, but couldn’t, as a mother, bring herself to change it. nobody else picked up on this, really, which i thought surprising and depressing. i think this question of the changing views of safety in fiction is a major issue and would like to have heard others’ thoughts on it.*

Alaya Dawn Johnson did say that mainstream YA has more ‘normal’ adults than F/SF YA, which was interesting. in fact, she recalled that Guy Gavriel Kay said that his book ‘Isabel ‘ was not YA, precisely because the parents were present. I believe Sonya followed this, saying that part of being a young adult is coming to terms with adults, and Laurel went further, saying adolescence certainly does not end when kids go off to college (she claimed to still be in the midst of it). Shira Daemon then posited that the point of YA should be to help teach kids how to deal with the world and the relationships in it, though she admitted that the fantasy environment did twist that, slightly.** Laurel made it clear that it can’t come acroass as teaching, though, because they would put it down immediately. Sonya mentioned Rosemary Sutcliff‘s books, which weren’t didactic, but you can learn a lot about how Roman Britain really worked from them.***

there was a little discussion of kids jumping from kids books to adult books too quickly, and someone mentioned finally reading Twilight and lamenting ’400 pages of adolescent foreplay!’ which got a good laugh out of the audience.**** Alaya followed that, saying that YA is no longer just Judy Bloom, but lamented the fact that there are often seen to be certain topics that are ‘un-usable’ in genre YA, such as discussion of sex.

Shira raised as an example the 6 months Ron and Hermione spend traveling the country alone in HP and the Deathly Hallows without so much as a kiss; however, she said she was perfectly okay with this, especially when considering what her own children would read. Judith brought up Philip Pullman’s Golden Compass series, and his statement that he had to be explicit about the sex in the final book to be honest to the story and to his readers. Alaya agreed that fantasy YA is very resistant to this kind of honesty in regards to many topics. Laurel noted that all stories should be about the characters first and foremost.

Judith related a story of a parent asking her about one of her books, whether it was okay for a child to read: Judith responded that it had some scenes of gore/violence in it, but there was no sex. ‘okay, great!’ said the parent, clearly giving it the green light. discussion of American society’s acceptance of extreme violence and prudishness about sex followed, and Alaya pointed out that her novel Racing the Dark is Polynesian-based, which gave her enormous flexbility in areas considered taboo in America, and that different cultural attitudes, particularly to sex, get almost no awareness here. Shira concurred, noting that the genre is still extremely white (4 of the 5 panelists were white, and all were women), and publishing is not yet pushing variety.***** unfortunately, this conversation didn’t go very far before the end of the panel.

in addition to references above, there were a number of books/authors mentioned, in no particular order:

• Ysabeau S. Wilce – ‘Flora Segunda’
• Joan Aiken – ‘Wolves of Willoughby Chase’
• P.B. Kerr – ‘Children of the Lamps’
• Ian Fleming (seriously!) – ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ (seriously, again! ignorant me had no idea it was a book first, and apparently far better than film, of course)
• Diane Duane – ‘So You Want To Be A Wizard’ series
• Eleanor Cameron – ‘The Wonderful Flight to Mushroom Planet’
• Patricia McKillip – ‘Song for the Basilisk’ (not explicitly YA, but notable for parental role)
• Diana Wynne Jones – ‘Tale of Time City’
• Ursula K. LeGuin – ‘Gifts’
• Pamela Dean – ‘The Secret Country’ trilogy
• Lauren Mcloughlin – ‘Cycler’ (girl becomes boy every month during her period and family hides her away each time)
• Ray Bradbury – Something Wicked This Way Comes
• Cory Doctorow – ‘Little Brother’

* readercon topic?

** interesting to note: about this time i realized that the overwhelming majority of the conversation and works mentioned were fantasy, not science fiction. i wondered if that was telling, but it didn’t come up. i didn’t dare raise my hand again after the Espionage panel incident.

*** which made me feel better about my total consumption of Danny Dunn and Encyclopedia Brown stories at that age.

**** see footnote 3 in previous post

***** again, another readercon topic? although it occurs to me that these topics i consider new may well have been done to death in previous readercons, given its 20-year history.

[after some haranguing, i've decided to split this last post up. i'll refit the others later, i think.]

seriously. with the HHNF first draft finished last night, i have no excuse, so one way or another, this will be the last of them.

The Future of Speculative Fiction Magazines, Part 2: Online Magazines / Conclusions

this was another powerhouse panel of folks from the publishing and editing world, this time primarily online, obviously. Mary Robinette Kowal (writer and puppeteer) started off by asking the panel if they wanted to respond to the previous panel, as most everyone seemed to have been in attendance for both. Neil Clarke (editor/publisher of Clarkesworld) first responded to an earlier statement about 50% of users in US still offline, saying that the number is actually closer to 20% (i did a little research myself and found the Pew Report here, showing just under 75% penetration as of August 2008). Sean Wallace (founder/editor of Prime Books) responded to the ‘invisibility’ of SF online, stating he gets between 30- and 60,000 page views (though no-one raised the point about the difference between page views and unique visitors, which i thought was surprising). K Tempest Bradford (writer, bloggger and former Fantasy Magazine editor) replied to a previous statement that print publishers could go online easier than online publishers could go to print, asking ‘why would online mags want to go to print?’ followed by stating that you have to find the best way to reach your audience, regardless. Matthew Kressel (writer, and publisher/editor of Sybil’s Garage) responded to the lack of SF print magazines in India, saying that Sybil’s garage has selections available online and many other mags have more, all accessible from anywhere.

Robert Killheffer (many things, including former editor and co/founder of both Century and Event Horizon magazines) didn’t respond to anything, but said that the fundamental issue is how to make a viable business from an online publication. how do you make money? Matt brought up Steampunk Tales, an iPhone app-drivencollection of fiction, which, by virtue of being on the iPhone, avoids the perception of online=free.* this position of online(free) v. app($) was supported by the group, though i still think it wasn’t fully explored.**

Neil also agreed, but said there is no 1 business model of success, that subscription is also key. ads, though, for him aren’t worth it, which the panel also unanimously agreed upon: “the purpose of online ads is to take the audience away. why is that a good thing?”

Matt identified that in all times of media transition, the old medium must prove it’s worth in order to survive; it must show what it does better or different than the others. he used radio as an example. instead of being wiped out by talking pictures (TV and movies), it found a sweet spot in the car and other mobile venues, where people can’t focus on visual media (though someone did point out that they’ve seen people watching their little DVD screens while driving, which made everyone laugh, with just a hint of terror). Matt said the key of print is its physicality and in the flexibility of its form, referring to the art and other marginalia that he uses liberally in Sybil’s Garage.

K (i’m not sure if she goes by the initial or not, but boy did i save a lot of space and time not writing out her whole name, eh?) had another of those self-evident-after-the-fact statements: the online world is capable of some pretty amazing stuff (hypertext stories – Robert mentioned Geoff Ryman’s hypertext story ‘253‘  – visually, etc.), but we actually have to wait for the writers to catch up to the possibilities. authors are not writing for the web, yet. Neil responded with a story from Clarkesworld #32 ‘From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7‘ by Nnedi Okorafor, which played with audio and text.

Neil then made a point of saying that a PDF of a print mag is NOT what he considers online content. it’s still bound by the same constrictions as print. Sean said that one of the key elements and benefits of genuine online content, especially important for fiction, is timely interaction with your audience: the immediate response times of blog posts, reviews, and other community-style elements.

Mary summed the conversation so far up with reference to Jim Henson’s removal of the proscenium in his work. this then moved to CGI, but there has been a recent and steady return to puppetry (and other physical animation) in films because people have learned that CGI is not the answer for everything. after which statement, K said ‘because CGI Yoda was not cool!’, followed by someone (i think either Sean or Robert) saying ‘Cool it was not!’, which together got, i think, the biggest laughs and cheers of any of the panels i attended, and rightly so.***

the core point is valid, though, and was the essence of much of the rest of the panel, with a small but important digression brought in by Ernest Lilley of SFRevu who was in the audience, regarding stickiness: how do online pubs keep people on the site, instead of landing on one page/story and then bouncing right back out afterward? Sean mentioned ‘related items’ features, but Neil gave what i think was the best answer: ‘i used to worry about it. i don’t anymore. it’s unimportant. if one story gets a major hits compared to others, then it’s extra marketing and that’s all. it’s like the iPhone, now. nobody buys the whole album anymore.’****

then Mary asked the panel to posit about the future, any conclusions/visions:

• Robert: we’re still in the infancy of all this.
• Matt – fear is wrong, excitement is cool; any way we can get fiction to people is good
• K – this isn’t about print OR online, it’s about quality; also, keeping up with readership, who looks more like her (a black woman) than the rest of the panel (white men)
• Sean – short fiction is not dead, period.
• Neil – i love the frontier, i love the chaos.

all of this was good, but Michael Burstein’s comment from the previous panel bears repeating: if you like it, pay for it.

* it’s now available via regular PDF so not iPhone-specific, but still at a cost.

** perhaps another readercon topic?

*** and also indicated a particular, though not always obvious, tone to readercon, which appeared again in the next panel, re: Twilight. there is sometimes a very distinct tone about the types of works discussed, and those notably not discussed, at readercon, which, as a relative newbie, i find very interesting. it may be seen as elitist, and certainly by authors some of the books in question, and while i tend to personally agree with many of the statements, i tend to keep such things to myself. and my ever-suffering wife. sorry, dear.

**** except me, i guess. the point is well made, though.

okay, i’ve got four panels left, and i’ll probably only get two, today [NOTE: make that one, unfortunately, but i've got to punch in a a quick book update and then get to work early today so i can leave early so i can meet my wife for an early show of Harry Potter]. so, without further ado (usual inaccuracy caveat applies):

The Future of Speculative Fiction Magazines, Part 1: Introduction / Print Magazines

this was obviously a standing-room only panel, with a number of major print magazine publishers and editors in this field, which caught me off guard. i think this is where i really understood how serious and unusual readercon is.

while this conversation obviously has been going on for years, this was my first panel on the subject and i heard a number of interesting points, not all of them in agreement, which was even more interesting.

Gordon van Gelder (publisher/editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) started it off, saying that print is downsizing, but not disappearing, and that anecdotal evidence from customers is that they like e-books, but they want print; this was roundly echoed by most of the panel throughout. Warren Lepine (longtime magazine/book publisher and new owner of Realms of Fantasy) went a step further, saying that the decline of his previous DNA banner was not due to the fiction mags (Absolute Magnitude, etc.), though they were an unfortunate casualty.*

Tom Purdom (writer who’s been selling spec fic for 52 years. seriously.) said that e-publishing is actually limiting, because it’s not as clearly shown to the casual audience, compared to books/magazines on newsstands, in bookstores, etc., but, importantly, for him the media is irrelevant. the core value of magazines is in the editors. Hildy Silverman (publisher/editor of Space and Time Magazine) followed with an important clarification: having problems and an inevitable end are not mutually inclusive items. branching out is inevitable, but her customers have been explicit in their desire for print, as well as their dislike of online material. John Benson (publisher/editor of Not One of Us) added that the move from print to online was inevitable, of course, but it will be incomplete; the printed word will remain, even if it’s in a much smaller scope.

Michael A Burstein (writer and recent editor for recent issue of Apex Magazine) described an interesting and perhaps telling anecdote about the SFWA Forum, which was a print item forever. when the idea of putting this online was first proposed, the reaction was overwhelmingly negative. the powers that were heard and accepted this, with one note: all the responses had come in via email. a few years later, the powers that be decided to push the forum online anyway, without asking, and the readership hardly bat an eye, moving right over to the online service. this prompted another later conversation from the audience about whether there was a difference between getting news or information online and getting fiction online. it was agreed that the current environment was still largely news, but a generational change was in the offing.

Gordon referenced Eric Flint, saying that readers don’t want print books or ebooks, they want both, and John agreed, noting though that there are real and distinct differences between print and online aesthetics and functionality (page scrolling, dynamic content, ads), which need to be attended to. Michael asked about advertising, noting that it is harder to get entities to pay for ads online, because they can see exactly how little they make off it. Gordon said marketing works great online, but sales (ads) don’t.

this was followed by what seemed to me to be a powerful and fundamental point: content that appears online (i.e., in my web browser**) is almost universally expected to be free of charge, whereas people self-select themselves when purchasing a print mag. Warren added that when he picks up a print mag, he’s more likely to pay attention to and even purchase what he sees in the ads contained there. according to Gordon, who spent a large chunk of money hiring a survey company examine his readership, there is no sf demographic. it’s too broad. they told him the only thing they could say about all the readers is that they like stories of a fantastic or science fictional nature. which sounds like well, duh, until he explained that ours is unlike other niche markets (and sf/f is still a niche market) where the demographic is 18-35 year old men who like to ski, or some such. without that kind of specificity, advertisers are simply not willing to throw money into something anymore.

Warren responded to this, and seemed alone in saying so, that RoF was not dependent upon advertising. it was making more money on subscribers than on ads. it still took ads, because the money was good, but it wasn’t core.*** interestingly, no-one else said anything like this. in fact, Gordon actually mentioned the old saying: the way to make a small fortune in publishing is to start with a large one. much head nodding, there.

the audience asked a number of questions, here, including the expansion of those existing, though minimal, web presences of these magazines and the lamentation of the poor quality of many of those web sites (Asimov’s was raised as an example of this); the inclusion of more ‘extras’ like DVD; and a gentleman just returned from India asked why there were no sf mags whatsoever in that country. with the single largest-selling English-language broadsheet (The Times of India) and the single largest-selling sf mag in the world existing in China (Science Fiction World – in Chinese, though), what about pushing print beyond the largely western world?

Warren and Gordon both answered that it was largely a question of getting local publishers to buy in, which was all but impossible, though Warren said his new deal with Amazon and Lightning Source meant that wherever they were, RoF was going to be, so as that progressed, so too would their readership.

finally, the audience asked a key question: can i just pay for an ad-free version? Gordon responded directly: the current submission price for F&SF is $35; would you pay $42 for an ad-free version? resounding yes from the group. Gordon seemed surprised and said then it might be possible.

Michael closed the panel out with a call to arms: if you like short fiction, if you like print, then you need to step up and buy in. buy submissions, pick up copies at newsstands. which made me realize i’ve let all my subscriptions lapse over the years, which makes absolutely no sense, given my attempts to get into these same. hypocrite. time to step up.

* i actually asked him about this in reference specifically to RoF and what caused it to go under. according to Warren, it was because the previous owners (Sovereign Media) had a business model of X number of magazines, run by X number of staff. they recently re-acquired magazine they’d had before and decided to bump RoF purely based on their business model, having zero to do with profitability, and that RoF had been doing very well. this was supported by his later statement that RoF used ads, but didn’t need them and was already in the black from submissions before ad revenue came in.

** i know, i know. see Part 2 for more on this topic.

*** see first footnote, above.

I Spy, I Fear, I Wonder: Espionage Fiction and the Fantastic

this one started off with C C Finlay asking the panel what they considered basic elements of the spy genre. Ernest Lilley said it requires cynicism and bleak world view and Chris Nakashima-Brown said they are a realist dystopia of the present. James Macdonald said the spy doesn’t fully grasp the larger machinations of his world, but Ernest put a caveat on that, saying that in reality it was true, but in fiction, which requires more closure, some knowledge is required. I think James replied something to the effect that this was one of the problems with the believability of spy novels, in his experience.*

Don D’Amassa said spies have 1 or 2 basic missions: get information on a person or instituation, or sabotage a person or institution, and Ernest added that they are always working for someone else, which raised a nice but brief conversation about agents as always alien, or ‘other’, and that most spies have no close relationships**, but this last was refuted by Chris who brought up Le Carre, and the difficulty as a spy of not knowing not only whether others’ feelings are genuine, but your own as well.

this led to discussion of the ‘innocent enlistee’ into the spy world, of which there are numerous examples, though James made an interesting comment that there is very little innocence in the world, a topic which came up again later.

C C noted that cyberpunks make perfect, ready-made spies (they’ve got the gadgets, secret identities in the form of online avatars, etc.), and Ernest mentioned Charles Stross’ “The Atrocity Archives” and “The Jennifer Morgue”,*** as further examples of this being what sf has brought to the spy novel (gadgets, data, etc.). Don mentioned that sf also gave the paranormal, such as “The Wolf Hour” (werewolf in WWII). discussion of psionics came next, though roundly lamented as a brief spark without any staying power. the audience pointed out that psionics hasn’t disappeared, but actually gone over into urban fantasy and paranormals.

titles of fantasy spy novels followed, including Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories**** and Tim Powers’ “Declare”. somewhere in here, James said that the rules for writing are cool stuff now, more cool stuff later. Ernest also observed that detective novels are more detailed by virtue of the detective, whose job it is to observe in order to succeed. he also said that sf is generally suspicious of large agencies, making detectives more common in sf.

the audience asked about the statement in the panel description that spy fiction is a reaction to a fear of [insert large scale paranoia here, such as nuclear war]. Ernest agreed, using WMDs as an example, explaining that the larger the fear, the more leeway the protagonist has, i.e., the ends justify the means, regardless of depth.

then the panel took a sudden and unexpected (for me) turn, when an audience member asked a question about the propensity of males and the assumption of males in the genre. it was a purely straightforward question, without any negativity or intent that i could see. the response was equally straightforward and without intent: that female spies in genre fiction are not women but men painted as women.

this didn’t go down too well with the majority female audience, who raised a number of excellent questions/points, ranging from ‘if you change the names and pronouns and nothing else changes, how does that prove that the original character was not a woman?’ (which forced me to reconsider my own perceptions of so-called inherently gender-based traits, particularly in our modern western world, where equality means equally good and equally bad), to ‘if you changed the name to Jane Bond, i’d be all over that – bring on the russian women!’ (reminding me that my comfort-level and familiarity with non-heterosexual relationships is not nearly as ingrained as i sometimes like to believe).

it started to get a slightly contentious, though not out of hand, but then we ran out of time and another panel was moving in. however, i think this would make an excellent topic for next year’s readercon, at the very least.

…and that brings me to page 11 of my notes and the end of my brain’s ability, today. man, am i long-winded.

* which, by the way, is apparently extensive with 15 years in the Navy in ‘passive and active intelligence’, and which immediately prompted me to put some of his books on my to-reads.

** ‘except of course the women he sleeps with, with whom he certainly develops deep and meaningful bonds’- said with extreme sarcasm and much laughter from the audience.

*** to-reads!

**** these have been on my list for years. obviously, not much use being on my list doesn’t help at all, eh? guess i should stop pointing them out, then. right. by the way, this is also where i made an ass of myself proposing The Lies of Locke Lamora. i felt so proud of myself for finally contributing something in a discussion, small as it was, and then AAANNNHH! sorry hans, wrong guess. care to try for double jeapordy where the scores can really change? yep, i was effectively – and accurately i completely admit – corrected by another audience member that LLL is actually crime fiction. i contend that there are similarities, but we were talking pretty specifically about spy fiction, here.

Novels of Advocacy v. Novels of Recognition

apparently this is a conversation/discussion with some history to it, of which i was (unsurprisingly) unaware. anyway, Graham Sleight summed up the basic premise: advocacy meant sf books that presented a view of the future that was clearly supported by the author, while recognition referred to books that presented a view of the future that wasn’t necessarily supported by the author but rather deemed unavoidable. the text identified with advocacy was Robert Heinlein’s “The Roads Must Roll”*, while William Gibson’s “Neuromancer” was identified with recognition. John Clute expanded on this, explaining that in Neuromancer, the protagonist is unaware of the engine of the plot or the larger sphere of the ‘world’ in which he exists; he isn’t going to change the world . Graham later referred to this differentiation as identifying whether protagonists were ‘effective agents’ of change or not. if so, then advocacy; if not, then recognition.

Barry Longyear said any novel represents some level of advocacy, regardless of its inflection, adding that Neuromancer was not the massive pardigmatic shift it’s often held up as. there followed a conversation that around semantics for a bit, but Ken Howe** clarified that the Roads and Neuromancer were mainly chosen because of their presumed popularity, that most everyone (except me, obviously) would be familiar with them.

Paolo Bacigalupi pointed out that the separation between authors’ and characters’ intents. for Heinlein, he said the two were the same, but not so for himself in his fiction, where his characters struggle merely to survive their worlds. John went even further, saying that in Paolo’s excellent Pump Six collection***, that the least effective story (and i think it was ‘The Calorie Man’ but i’m probably wrong) was one where the protagonist was, in fact, out to change the world. Graham added that dystopias can be  advocacies, too, using Cory Doctorow’s “Little Brother” as an example.

Robert Sawyer took it a step further, saying that while his sf books look like novels of recognition, that is only the structure he builds, which is intended to be brougth crashing down or stripped away, revealing a core discussion/theme/plot of advocacy about the present day. Paolo then asked what is meant when we talk about ‘the future’ or if we’re really talking about the present, where Heinlein was explicitly talking about the future. an unexpected discussion of the Canadian v. American experience followed this, with 3 panelists (John, Robert, and Ken) being Canadian (either born or living the majority of their lives in like William Gibson) and the rest American, and there seemed to be a fairly clear line grouping Canadians with advocacy and Americans with recognition. nothing wholesale or polarizing came out of this, but it was a very interesting sideline.

* one more thing for my list of to-reads

** i believe he’s a book critic or something like this, but i couldn’t find a proper link for him.

*** to-reads. *sigh*

[UPDATE: i've reorganized these into separate posts for each panel, for easier reference. follow the links below to the new posts.]

two things before i jump in here:

1. i just wanted to direct any interested parties to another series of excellent summaries (more in depth than mine) on some of the readercon panels i didn’t get to, over at the Yunchtime blog.
2. and it struck me after a comment from my wife that i’ve written more notes about a three day convention (19 pages) than i did about three weeks in the vast wonders of Australia (maybe 2). i feel like i should fix that sometime.

here we go.

Novels of Advocacy v. Novels of Recognition

I Spy, I Fear, I Wonder: Espionage Fiction and the Fantastic