Worldcon diary: day 2
Thursday was a full and interesting day; so many familiar names of writers and editors have now attached themselves to real people in my mind. Very nice!
I began the day with Stanley Schmidt's presentation for Analog, which was billed as news of upcoming issues of the magazine, but evolved quickly into an open Q&A about submissions and editorial process. Schmidt is a very likeable and articulate individual, and I left with a very good feeling about who I'm approaching when I submit to Analog and what really happens to my manuscript. Some interesting tidbits: Analog recently began accepting electronic submissions. Why not sooner? Because neither reading huge quantities of submissions on a computer screen nor printing them out at the magazine's expense just to be discarded after reading made much sense. That changed with the advent of the e-reader. Schmidt reads submissions on the Kindle. The upside of electronic submissions: some good writers are submitting now that hadn't before. The downside: because submissions can now be made with zero expense and minimal effort, the magazine is being flooded with manuscripts that are not even remotely suitable for Analog.
Another interesting insight: Schmidt asserted (and I trust his sincerity) that he cares only about the quality of the story, not about whether the author has a famous name. The rationale is that almost all their circulation is subscription. The small increase in newsstand sales that might result from a famous name on the cover is outweighed by the damage done to the subscription base by publishing a story that disappoints the regular readers.
Next I attended a panel discussion on "When Faith and Science Meet". They did a good job of keeping the discussion nonconfrontational, but perhaps overcompensated, as it seemed a rather bland look the subject at times. Still, nicely done and interesting to listen to.
The panel discussion on "Fairy Tales and Story Telling" covered a lot of ground, from the roots of folktales to the merits and issues of modern retelling and revisioning of traditional stories. Joan D. Vinge talked about goddess religion in folktales, and Ellen Asher and Bill Willingham had a spirited and protracted debate on the ethics of appropriating traditional stories from outside one's own culture, which had to be truncated by the moderator.
The panel discussion on Far Future sf (Howard V. Hendrix, Kay Kenyon, Louise Marley, and Alistair Reynolds), was exceptionally good, with lots of talk about the challenges writers face in writing about the future. For me, this transcended the particular focus on far-future sf and said a lot about speculative fiction of all sorts. I was disappointed by the absence of Larry Niven, who was on the list of panelists, but everyone on the panel did an excellent job.
"Short but Containing the World: A Look at Novellas" (Jonathan Strahan, Gardner Dozois, Robert Siverberg, and Robert Reed) was simply wonderful. These four long-time masters of the writing and editing world were completely at ease with one another and with the audience, and spoke candidly about all different aspects of the business. The virtues of novella-length fiction were contrasted with novels that are too often padded with words that do not contribute much, and there was some fascinating discussion of the shifting trends in what lengths of fiction are desired by publishers.
By the time I got to the panel on "Creating Gods", it was standing room only, so I took a break and checked out the art show. Fascinating to see how many sf/fantasy artists work on remarkably small formats. A thrill to see some Kelly Freas originals, including two of a series of portraits of the bridge crew from the original Star Trek.
"Writing Non-human Characters" was a fascinating discussion, leaving me with more questions than answers. There was a brief but surprisingly heated exchange between Robert J. Sawyer and Amy Thomson about whether relying on half-alien characters to establish reader identification is racist.
"An Introduction to Linguistics" was moderated by Stanley Schmidt and included (among others) Lawrence M. Schoen, founder of the Klingon Language Institute. Even as a self-identifying language nerd, I found this panel embarrassingly geeky. There seemed to be no real roadmap for how to introduce the subject of linguistics in 50 minutes, so it degenerated into the panel showing off their knowledge of obscure linguistic facts and terminology. All was familiar to me, but I think anyone coming in for an "introduction" would have been bewildered and left shaking their head. In fact I think I saw just that as I was leaving. The hour was saved by the Klingon in the audience, who reacted with appropriate drama when the panel used examples from Klingon.
I finished up the day with a panel on worldbuilding with Greg Bear, Kay Kenyon, Colin Fisk, and Amy Thomson. Lots of good tidbits and inspiration here, even though there was a lack of focus most of the time.
All in all, a wonderful day spent in the company of "pros" discussing so many things of interest to me as an aspiring creator of speculative fiction.
I began the day with Stanley Schmidt's presentation for Analog, which was billed as news of upcoming issues of the magazine, but evolved quickly into an open Q&A about submissions and editorial process. Schmidt is a very likeable and articulate individual, and I left with a very good feeling about who I'm approaching when I submit to Analog and what really happens to my manuscript. Some interesting tidbits: Analog recently began accepting electronic submissions. Why not sooner? Because neither reading huge quantities of submissions on a computer screen nor printing them out at the magazine's expense just to be discarded after reading made much sense. That changed with the advent of the e-reader. Schmidt reads submissions on the Kindle. The upside of electronic submissions: some good writers are submitting now that hadn't before. The downside: because submissions can now be made with zero expense and minimal effort, the magazine is being flooded with manuscripts that are not even remotely suitable for Analog.
Another interesting insight: Schmidt asserted (and I trust his sincerity) that he cares only about the quality of the story, not about whether the author has a famous name. The rationale is that almost all their circulation is subscription. The small increase in newsstand sales that might result from a famous name on the cover is outweighed by the damage done to the subscription base by publishing a story that disappoints the regular readers.
Next I attended a panel discussion on "When Faith and Science Meet". They did a good job of keeping the discussion nonconfrontational, but perhaps overcompensated, as it seemed a rather bland look the subject at times. Still, nicely done and interesting to listen to.
The panel discussion on "Fairy Tales and Story Telling" covered a lot of ground, from the roots of folktales to the merits and issues of modern retelling and revisioning of traditional stories. Joan D. Vinge talked about goddess religion in folktales, and Ellen Asher and Bill Willingham had a spirited and protracted debate on the ethics of appropriating traditional stories from outside one's own culture, which had to be truncated by the moderator.
The panel discussion on Far Future sf (Howard V. Hendrix, Kay Kenyon, Louise Marley, and Alistair Reynolds), was exceptionally good, with lots of talk about the challenges writers face in writing about the future. For me, this transcended the particular focus on far-future sf and said a lot about speculative fiction of all sorts. I was disappointed by the absence of Larry Niven, who was on the list of panelists, but everyone on the panel did an excellent job.
"Short but Containing the World: A Look at Novellas" (Jonathan Strahan, Gardner Dozois, Robert Siverberg, and Robert Reed) was simply wonderful. These four long-time masters of the writing and editing world were completely at ease with one another and with the audience, and spoke candidly about all different aspects of the business. The virtues of novella-length fiction were contrasted with novels that are too often padded with words that do not contribute much, and there was some fascinating discussion of the shifting trends in what lengths of fiction are desired by publishers.
By the time I got to the panel on "Creating Gods", it was standing room only, so I took a break and checked out the art show. Fascinating to see how many sf/fantasy artists work on remarkably small formats. A thrill to see some Kelly Freas originals, including two of a series of portraits of the bridge crew from the original Star Trek.
"Writing Non-human Characters" was a fascinating discussion, leaving me with more questions than answers. There was a brief but surprisingly heated exchange between Robert J. Sawyer and Amy Thomson about whether relying on half-alien characters to establish reader identification is racist.
"An Introduction to Linguistics" was moderated by Stanley Schmidt and included (among others) Lawrence M. Schoen, founder of the Klingon Language Institute. Even as a self-identifying language nerd, I found this panel embarrassingly geeky. There seemed to be no real roadmap for how to introduce the subject of linguistics in 50 minutes, so it degenerated into the panel showing off their knowledge of obscure linguistic facts and terminology. All was familiar to me, but I think anyone coming in for an "introduction" would have been bewildered and left shaking their head. In fact I think I saw just that as I was leaving. The hour was saved by the Klingon in the audience, who reacted with appropriate drama when the panel used examples from Klingon.
I finished up the day with a panel on worldbuilding with Greg Bear, Kay Kenyon, Colin Fisk, and Amy Thomson. Lots of good tidbits and inspiration here, even though there was a lack of focus most of the time.
All in all, a wonderful day spent in the company of "pros" discussing so many things of interest to me as an aspiring creator of speculative fiction.
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