Over at readercon via delicious.

Possibly of interest: Torque Control has started a virtual panel on blog reviews of fantasy & science fiction, having taken issue with the reported content of Readercon's panel on the same topic.

(Nb. comments apparently require human intervention to be released to public view, but get there eventually.)

[ Readercon link roundup ]

I found this one stimulating, especially for a Sunday morning. And now I'm done (granted, by doing even more minimal editing on my typewritten notes than usual, but still.).

Description:

See it Like Saruman: Reconciling Fantasy and Progress.
Judith Berman, John Crowley, Ken Houghton (L), James Morrow, Michael Swanwick.
History is written by the winners. That explains why Tolkien never mentions that the destruction of Fangorn Forest and other efforts towards industrialization by Saruman significantly raised the standard of living for the wild men of Dunland, in fact creating (for the first time in Middle Earth) a comfortable middle class. While there is a natural opposition between the romantic and pastoral ideal embodied in traditional fantasy and the Enlightenment ideal of progress (especially in its modern industrial and technological modes), we don't believe they are completely incompatible. What works of fantasy have attempted to accommodate both? What interesting new direction might the heroic fantasy novel be taken if the true positive effects of modernization were acknowledged? Readercon hopes to put the audio recording of this panel online at some point after the convention.

( panel notes )

[ Readercon link roundup ]

Immediately after the "Inner Landscape" panel, so it had the same sound problems, though less so—I think the panelists were better about their mikes, or I was more used to it.

The Case for Archetypal Evil in Fantasy.
Ellen Asher, S. C. Butler, Jeanne Cavelos, James Morrow (L), Joshua Palmatier.
The pervasive trend in modern fantasy is to give the bad guys moral complexity and psychological depth-good reasons to be bad. This approach stands in stark contrast to the legions of past Dark Lords who were utterly evil because, well, they were utterly evil. Tolkien, however, wrote pages of philosophy on the nature of Melkor / Morgoth (published in Morgoth's Ring), suggesting that our rejection of the old model was a reaction only to badly done Dark Lords. Is there an argument for making things at least somewhat black and white (how much psychological depth does a human sociopath have, anyway)?

( panel notes )

[ Readercon link roundup ]

I'd say this was disappointing, but I didn't really understand the panel description in the first place, so I can't complain that it wasn't what I expected.

Also, the mikes and/or speakers in this room really did not work well, so I frequently had to struggle just to recognize the words coming out of people's mouths.

Description:

Fantasy as Inner Landscape.
John Crowley, Greer Gilman, Kelly Link, Kathryn Morrow (L), Paul Park, Michael Swanwick.
It's easy to criticize fantasy for its apparent acceptance of outmoded social structures, and in fact we've done so in past panels such as "Efland Über Alles" and "The Return of the Prime Minister." But are the social structures of fantasy actually a metaphor for inner experience? The king, the knights, the aristocracy, and the noble peasants who aspire to one or more of the above—do these appeal to writers and readers not because of any fondness for their reality, but because they provide a map of human experience and growth? Readercon hopes to put the audio recording of this panel online at some point after the convention.

( panel notes )

[ Readercon link roundup ]

This was a good one. Description:

Other Points of View.
David Louis Edelman, Laurie J. Marks (L), Maureen McHugh, Wen Spencer, Peter Watts.
In several places, Karen Joy Fowler's The Jane Austen Book Club adopts a first-person plural viewpoint: "we" are thinking about the conversation described, and the reader gets to think about who, exactly, "we" may be—not everyone in the room! While third person and first person singular are the standard viewpoints in fiction, here we talk about the alternatives, and when we (you?) can best employ them.

( panel notes )

[ Readercon link roundup ]

Previously-scheduled doctor's appointment this afternoon, after which I just came home because I feel lousy. So have a panel report, and an updated roundup.

Description:

The Readercon Book Club.
Judith Berman, Ron Drummond (L), Elizabeth Hand, Graham Sleight, Konrad Walewski.
In celebration of its 25th anniversary edition, an in-depth discussion of John Crowley's Little, Big.

I hadn't planned to take notes on this, but I was very sleepy and thought it would be a good way to keep myself awake. Disclaimer: I haven't read Little, Big for a long time, so my notes may be misguided in places.

( panel notes )

Panel writeups will come later. Also, I've created a link roundup over at readercon; comment here or there with links to be added.

( Readercon, cut for length )

Possible Readercon panels (this weekend!), behind the cut.

( Readercon possibilities )

Given that I have to read,

by July 20:

• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,

and by July 27,

• Rainbows End,
• Eifelheim,
• Blindsight,
• The Mirador (ARC, woo!),
• Five novellettes,
• Four novellas,
• and a partridge in a pear tree (that is, Red Seas Under Red Skies, on the very unlikely chance that the nice people at Bantam didn't just delete my e-mail request for an ARC),

It would be foolish to try and re-read Little, Big by next weekend, so I could participate in Readercon's book club, right? (Right?)

Actually, does anyone know when the book club is? With luck, it'll be Friday morning and I wouldn't be there for it regardless.

(Yes, the Hugo & Campbell voting deadline is July 31, but we're going to be Internet-less then.)

Description:

Michael A. Burstein (M), John Clute, Debra Doyle, Geary Gravel, China Miéville, Delia Sherman

There are, perhaps, three kinds of beginnings to stories: those that promise no ending, those that promise an ending which is later delivered, and those that promise a different ending than the one provided. Are these, in fact, three fundamentally different types of stories? What are the different types of promises a beginning can make? The first line of Pride and Prejudice ("It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife") or the last line of the first chapter of The Book of the New Sun ("It was in this fashion that I began the long journey by which I have backed into the throne") make promises about the content of the ending, but many beginnings merely promise the form of the ending ("there will be a twist of some sort").

My first panel of the con, so my hands were fresh and fast, and I had time shortly after to review my notes against my memory.

( What was said at 'The Beginnings of Stories and the Endings They Promise' )

( Why my post-panel reaction was 'This is why I will never read a China Mieville book' )

[Edit: compare yhlee's panel notes.]

At the request of yhlee in comments to the Readercon structure panel report, some quick thoughts about the structure of the Sarantine Mosaic (Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors).

This discusses the ending of the duology and contains enormous, book-destroying SPOILERS.

( Sarantine Mosaic structure, SPOILERS )

Description:

Michael A. Burstein (M), John Crowley, Thomas M. Disch, Greer Gilman, Pamela Zoline

There's a small group of novels with overt organizing structures, like Thomas M. Disch's 334, John Brunner's The Squares of the City, John Crowley's Ægypt, and (most famously outside the genre) Ulysses. We suspect that this is the tip of the iceberg and that authors routinely invent covert structures as a natural part of the creative process. (Of course, one reader's covert structure is another's overt, and vice versa, so that all such structures are worth talking about together.) It's time to 'fess up and trade notes.

This was the third and chronologically-last panel for which I took notes. I'm posting it out of order because I need to think more about the first panel.

Nb.: spoilers for a novel-in-progress by Greer Gilman and the books cited in the panel description.

( Notes on 'My Secret (or Not-So-Secret) Story Structure' )

Description:

Eric M. Van (+M) with discussion from R. Scott Bakker, John Clute, John Crowley, Glenn Grant, John Langan, Charles Oberndorf

Talk/Discussion (60 min.). What brain mechanisms (and evolutionary rationales) underlie the fundamental narrative elements of plot, character, and style? Which narrative element seems to be more fundamental than generally recognized, when looked at from this perspective? How can the deep meaning of a narrative work be rigorously conceptualized in terms of information storage in the brain? On how many simultaneous levels do we process a story as we try to fully understand it? Van offers up the beginnings of a theory of narrative aesthetics informed by cognitive science, with feedback at every stage from the audience.

This was the middle panel that I took notes on, but it's the one I'm least sure I understood, so it seemed best to post it first before my notes got any more incomprehensible. (I went over my notes on the first panel shortly thereafter and so am a lot more confident in them.)

I should also say that I'm trying to do less work on the notes—I used to try and turn everything into nice coherent paragraphs, and the end result was re-writing the whole damn thing from scratch (yes, even with notes on the Palm), which took forever. I'm still trying to indicate connections and make the notes grammatical, but in many places this is much more dialogue-like than prior reports.

( Notes on 'A Theory of Narrative Aesthetics Informed by Cognitive Science' )

Behind the cut is my weekend at Readercon, minus detailed panel descriptions where noted. Those writeups are coming in separate posts, because they are very long and because I want to invite discussion on them.

( Readercon in brief )

ETA: My detailed panel reports:

• "A Theory of Narrative Aesthetics Informed by Cognitive Science"
• "My Secret (or Not-So-Secret) Story Structure"
• "The Beginnings of Stories and the Endings They Promise"

ETA: other people's reports (will continue to be updated—please point me to more):

• veejane
• theodosia
• rushthatspeaks
• impressionistic panel notes by yhlee: "Libraries in Imaginative Literature" and "Towards a Taxonomical Nomenclature of the Fantastic (Assuming We Care)"; notes on "Beginnings of Stories and the Endings They Promise"
• Chad's panel comments: "Embracing the Uncomfortable"; "Social Class and Speculative Fiction"
• ckd: Friday, Saturday, Sunday

We'll be at Readercon this weekend, staying at the hotel in a room under my name. We're getting in on Friday night, time uncertain; we'll be around Saturday day and Sunday day (Saturday night we have family commitments).

Notes on panels below the cut.

( Readercon possible panels )

Okay, I actually went to three things at Readercon; this was the last. As it was a discussion, I didn't take many notes; and since work is going fairly well, I think I can spare a few minutes to type up my few notes while they're fresh (and while I'm waiting for the Advil to kick in. Boo, headaches.).

Short non-spoilered version: There were only six people in the audience, and one of them, well, I had to say at one point, "Excuse me, I wasn't finished talking." Despite, or because of, that John Langan did a nice job as moderator. No-one really had answers for my questions, but a few interesting points were brought up for me to ponder in other areas.

Here's the spoiler version. If you haven't read the books, it won't make any sense; and if you might read the books, it will ruin things for you.

( SPOILERS for the ending of the Dark Tower series )

Oh, and hey, I got thanked in the program for the suggestion of this discussion! I am unreasonably chuffed by this.

Due to crushing quantities of work, I won't be at Readercon much this weekend. My current plan is to attend one thing a day, and browse the dealer's room / hang out with anyone I bump into for a bit before or after.

Right now I'm leaning towards these two things as what I most want to see, even though the Saturday one is a bit inconveniently timed in terms of getting work done.

Sat 02:00 F
Traumatized Authors: Encounters with Evil and the Speculative Response. Debra Doyle, Joe Haldeman, Elizabeth Hand, James D. Macdonald, Graham Sleight (+M). "It is possible to see Tolkien as one of a group of `traumatized authors,' all of them extremely influential . . . all of them tending to write fantasy or fable. The group includes . . . Tolkien, Orwell, Golding, Vonnegut . . . C.S. Lewis, T.H. White, and Joseph Heller . . . Most of these authors had close or even direct first-hand experience of some of the worst horrors of the twentieth century, horrors which did not and could not exist before it . . . All of them responded with highly individualized images, and theories of evil." -- Tom Shippey, foreword to J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Hence the dominance of speculative rather than mimetic fiction in works that address the horrors of the modern age.

Because it sounds interesting.

Sun 10:00 RI
Stephen King's The Dark Tower Completed. John Langan. Discussion (60 min). The ending of Stephen King's Dark Tower series has been a matter of much controversy and discussion. Join in! (Spoilers, obviously.)

Because I suggested it, and if no-one else showed up I'd feel really bad.

Various LJ people who are going to be around: let me know if you want specifically to meet up around those times. Or, perhaps we'll bump into each other. Whichever.

(No, this is not how I'd like to spend my weekend, but I'm reasonably resigned at the moment.)

I've barely scratched the Readercon program, but the grid shows a Sunday morning discussion called "King's The Dark Tower."

I suggested a discussion on this topic, never heard back from programming, figured they thought it was a dumb idea, and didn't try and fit in a re-read so I could talk sensibly about it (since those of you who have read the spoiler-filled posts will have noted that I am not exactly a model of clarity on the topic).

I'm certainly not implying that the program committee should have done anything otherwise—I'm sure they've enough to do, and they may not have known they were putting it on until the last minute. But, but, I'm going to be so unprepared!

(Also, I woke up with a headache and itch appallingly from eight separate insect bites (acquired in less than five minutes, how I hate biting insects) and am stuck inside on a gorgeous day trying and failing to do loads of critical work. Pout pout pout.)

Oh, and in the unlikely event that anyone out there is a PHP guru willing to take commissions, drop me a note.

I'm again suffering a failure of memory when it comes to the first part of the week. All I can remember is that I went to a presentation on the electronic filing system that the local federal court is starting on January 1, 2004. Since every time I finish a big motion, I lament the number of trees that have died for it, I'm quite enthused about electronic filing, though I recognize that it will have some bumpy moments.

Friday we drove to Massachusetts, which was unpleasant: very thick fog (read: clouds) in the mountains; highway construction that caused the road to go from three lanes to one just as I came over a little hill, with zero warning (not only that, but then it went back to three lanes for 100 yards and then back down to one!); and my car turns out to be uncomfortably narrow for Chad to sit in over long distances. Got in, said hi to my folks, admired our wedding album that finally arrived (tip: don't wait to order your wedding pictures. Our photographer is apparently teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and for a while it was unclear if we were getting our pictures at all.), fell into bed.

Saturday afternoon we drove into Boston to Socialize with larabeaton, one of her sisters, M.S., and N.S. We had excellent barbecue in Davis Square and then hung out at an Irish pub across the street. There was a very good trio doing live music, and a step dancer who I'm convinced was flying at points. In-between we stopped in at a used bookstore; not much genre fiction, it wasn't that kind of store, but we did see The Prize in the Game shelved under Literature. We re-shelved it in proper alphabetical order after admiring the dedication for a bit.

Sunday we dragged ourselves out of bed early to go to Readercon. The first thing I went to was "The Manner of Fantasy, Amended and Restated," a talk by Donald G. Keller, who coined the term "fantasy of manners" in the early 1990s (and did not coin "mannerpunk", a related term). The works that are probably most-often cited as fantasy of manners or mannerpunk are Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint, the Bordertown shared universe (several anthologies, Will Shetterly's Elsewhere and Nevernever, and Emma Bull's Finder), and Bull's War for the Oaks.

This was interesting because Keller talked first about the structural aspects of the subgenre, which I hadn't thought much about before; I'd primarily used the style as a marker. (Those were, to summarize briefly and possible inaccurately: negotiability and mutability of social structures, e.g., social mobility and disguises such as girl-as-boy and the foolish fop; coming of age; intimacy as a danger, one that the characters recognize yet strive to overcome; the importance of language, especially as manners; mixing of genres.) Keller also suggested that when he wrote the original New York Review of Science Fiction article, he saw that the authors working in the subgenre were of a common generation with common influences, such as Dorothy Dunnett, the Fairport Convention, certain TV shows, etc. (He noted that when he asked some of these authors, they denied reading Dunnett; I asked later, apropos the false fop, if Dorothy Sayers could be an influence. He thought insofar as she was an influence on Dunnett; I am somewhat skeptical that it's only a secondary influence, but that's just a guess.)

[ ETA: I also asked if a happy ending was also a structural feature, as someone had brought up Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as a work that had some similarities, though obviously not stemming from the same cultural sources—because, to my mind, CT,HD doesn't have one. Keller wasn't sure; on second thought, happy endings are common enough that I don't think that they're a useful marker for the genre. ]

Keller thought that fantasy of manners hadn't really grown as a subgenre since he originally wrote his article, possibly because the original authors write very slowly? [This was the point at which I realized just how accurate it is to call Issola a novel of manners. I'm not so quick sometimes.] Some newer authors are writing within the subgenre; he cited Holly Black's Tithe as being similar in plot fixtures (my characterization) to War for the Oaks, and Madeleine Robins' recent Point of Honour, which is apparently Austen noir. (I haven't read either yet, but both are on my list.) And then Buffy came up, about which I have nothing to say as I've never seen it.

Does anyone know of a good reading list for fantasy of manners and mannerpunk? I'd make a stab at one myself tonight, but I'm tired. Maybe I'll try later.

[ Update: here's the second draft of a reading list. ]

I then went to blackholly's reading of a short story, "The Night Market," soon to appear in an anthology called Faerie Reel. I like going to readings at cons, but I think I'd do better sticking to excerpts from longer works, or maybe poetry; I read text so much faster than people talk that I get impatient and start ripping things to pieces in my head as I wait for the next sentence. It's not a way of approaching a text that works for me. That said, as best I could tell it was well-done, interestingly woven with details from Filipino culture, though not of a story pattern that I like.

Thence to the dealer's room, where I bought the Robins novel and two other books someone in the audience recommended to me after the talk, Andre Norton and Rosemary Edgehill's The Shadow of Albion and Leopard in Exile. I'm currently *counts* six books behind on the book log (arrgh), so don't look for a report anytime soon, but they're on the list. Quick lunch with Chad and then off to the panel "Psychology, Myth, and Fantasy," which Chad has already described. My only addition is that the best mis-statement of the weekend came from Delia Sherman, who was wondering animatedly what an awareness of neuropsychology would contribute to fantasy: "We know that we have four arms—"

This panel is also a good example of how I prefer smaller discussions, where you might actually get to say something instead of just muttering to the person next to you, "Middle-aged women's stories? That's Katherine Blake (a.k.a. Dorothy Heydt)'s The Interior Life, isn't it?" and so forth.

Met up with thegraybook and blackholly after the panel, by which time I was more than a little bleary; as a result, I don't remember a heck of a lot of what we discussed: Dunnett, redeemed Draco, [ETA: the vast gaps in Harry Potter canon regarding how magic works,] and, err, stuff. It was nice to meet both of them, even though I was fading fast.

Back to my parents' and saw my aunt and uncle, who were visiting with their shiny Corvette, so we popped the hoods of our respective new cars and had a look. (Mom called to tell me they were coming down with the 'vette, which was initially baffling because I've had our dog search on the brain . . . ) Had a nice visit, then went through all the stuff I still had at home and sorted out what I actually wanted. Stuffed it in the car and headed out. No fog on the drive back, thankfully, and all the worst traffic was going the other way. I was still too fried to write when we got back in.

And yesterday I brought home work, a case that needed to go out this morning (I have emergency duty this week). Hence the update today. And with that I'm going to bed, as I'm still not caught up on sleep.