This week has been all about catching up after BayCon (I returned to a deluge of over 600 emails and 100-200 more come in each day) so I don’t have very many links for you to enjoy. However, I’ll give my first real con report below them to make up for it.

What I Am Reading

I finished This Is Not A Game by Walter Jon Williams while at BayCon and haven’t had time to write up my thoughts. It’s definitely an interesting read, though I have some issues with the storytelling. I talk about the reader’s 50% for description here: http://fmwriters.com/Visionback/Vision43/Alteredpeception.htm, but in this case my quibble is which thread of a complex novel was given dominance.

Science

Video games have been accused of being responsible for all sorts of things, but this study took a slightly different turn in exploring the connection with lucid dreaming and the ability to control nightmares:
http://www.livescience.com/culture/video-games-control-dreams-100525.html

Science fiction is full of cautionary tales that I hope will influence the paths this advance will take. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that synthetic creatures are now almost within grasp, along with the mysteries of evolution currently subject to the “best guess” version of science.
http://www.livescience.com/animals/synthetic-genome-origin-of-life-100524.html

Writing

A fun review of the key elements in any story:
http://www.romancejunkies.com/rjblog/?page_id=344

Reading

If you haven’t heard of NetGalley and you’re willing to review the books you read, it’s worth checking out. The site opens a communication pathway between reviewers and publishers for early reader electronic books. They’ve even added some science and academic titles now:
http://www.netgalley.com

BayCon Con Report for 2010

For those of you who don’t know, BayCon is a Bay Area Science Fiction convention that has been running annually for a very long time (how long I have no clue ). It’s a combination of speculative fiction book, costume, music, and media fans with a writing arm upheld by a writing critique program and various panels on writing topics. The final tally of participants ranged somewhere close to 2000 if I remember correctly, with most full members and a couple sporting the fancy “Sidekick” label because they’d only bought a day ticket.

I generally spend my time between panels, the Con Suite, the game room where I do puzzles of all things, and then often some combination of filking and Regency dancing. This year I only managed one of the two Regency dancing sessions. Imagine controlled, energetic movements in a sweat lodge with a lot of character play mixed in. Obviously, it’s hard to describe, but a lot of fun, especially when people take the names or dance steps to heart like one saucy wench I was partnering for a dance that was clearly crafted by a sailor’s wife. Yes, I usually end up dancing male. I don’t care which side of the line I stand on, and I do not wear skirts to BayCon. It’s usually too cold…though not this year.

Sadly, I was afflicted with a sleeping disease that had absolutely nothing to do with my trying to push on 5-6 different programming/writing projects all at once since…umm, April?…and so did not make it to the filking, concerts, or parties. I did manage quite a few interesting conversations with friends and in both the Green Room and the Con Suite on topics ranging from the surprisingly positive effects of long term radiation exposure to the con art scene versus real world galleries. Some year I’m coming down with a lot of cash to spend because I do so enjoy the artwork. I was able to get my son a t-shirt with a painting from one of the artists I’ve admired for years though, and got to eye beautiful metalwork by two different artists. Oh and a quick plug for my favorite t-shirt company. Just when I think I’ve purchased all the designs I like, they go and add a ton more. Check them out here: http://www.fopaws.com/.

But the meat of the con for me has always been the panels, whether I’m on them or in the audience, because they get my mind thinking on new lines. This year was no different.

The panels I went to were:

– This IS Rocket Science and It Isn’t Easy

The discussion ranged from where rocket technology is currently and what are the issues with getting to space to the concept of a space elevator with an interesting perspective from Linda Clements who is a materials specialist. There are still serious problems to work out, and we’re not on the cusp of a breakthrough, but neither is the question being ignored. One panelist spoke of a challenge to get something to climb a vertical tether a significant distance during which I believe one team succeeded and another came very close. There’s hope that I’ll see spaceflight in my lifetime as something more than a teaser for a privileged few.

– YA Fiction: More Than Blanking Out the Sex

Here we heard a wide stretch of perspectives ranging from teachers, teacher/writers, and YA and adult fiction writers. The biggest takeaway for me was two-fold in that YA literature is very much about the coming of age tale that is considered a little passe in adult literature (sadly in my opinion) and that any novel has the potential to appeal to the YA crowd just as many adults read YA titles. Oh, and as long as the characters are clearly not human or human stand-ins like humanoid aliens or elves, the restrictions on sexual content are lessened. That last was the nod to the panel title, but most of the discussion was about what makes up YA in a broader context than just handling sexual content.

– From Harry Potter to Twilight to ? – Transitioning New Readers

This was my first assigned panel, and as is con tradition, it was scheduled across two hard science panels I wanted to go to. It wouldn’t feel like a con if that didn’t happen. This is the first year that the con organizers had potential panelists list their top five choices. It made me respect the job they’ve done even more than I had before. Though I didn’t always know why I was on a panel, it never turned out that I didn’t have something to contribute either as a writer, reader, teacher, and/or editor. I’ve been reading SF long enough to have opinions on everything . But having to figure that out in advance was nearly impossible.

That said, I approached this panel with trepidation. I have two teenaged boys who both transitioned from Harry Potter into more adult reading, but they’re not your typical young readers and were reading well above their age level early on, making it hard to use them as a baseline. Even worse, I feared this would become a memory game as I struggled to remember specific titles.

In all reality, it became both. I did use my boys as examples, sometimes cautionary ones like when I gave my oldest a book that hit on a particular phobia I wasn’t aware of until that moment as well as talking about how young readers establish mental blocks that require something special like reading Harry Potter aloud but at too slow a rate to be tolerated. And I did indeed recommend a series by saying one of the titles is Drowned Wednesday and I think the author has a G in his name. Sure enough, one of the participants came up with Garth Nix for me.

However, the discussion stretched broader than the original plan as we discussed ways for parents to engage their young readers, the particular struggles teachers face when they want to inspire readers but a bad choice could mean their jobs on the line, options for screening books from opening discussions to pre-reading everything, and many more aspects of the young reader equation.

I certainly enjoyed the content, and I think the parents in the room got something out of it as well.

– Real Long-Haul Trucking

This panel was of interest to me because I’ve set a number of short stories (still waiting on edits) in the short jump and/or long haul concept of space travel, though not one specifically about a hauler, I don’t think. Listening to them talk about the different experiences they’d had in real world trucking and how those would translate into a space context made me want to dig those stories out and work on them again. We got to hear accounts of anything from carting precious library collections to what happens when miscommunication means what you have on the truck isn’t what they’d expected, and then a look at how similar experiences would have to be avoided when instead of a couple hours, you were talking years. The discussion touched on how shipping would function, whether independents or corporations would dominate and on which runs, what complications would arise if trading families lived on their ships with occasional contact to exchange children for genetic diversity, and so much more. It was great fun and very thought provoking.

– Publishing Credits: What Matters, What Doesn’t, and Why

I went to this panel for two reasons: 1) I’m often put in the position of mentor for new writers, and this is a common question. 2) I have two anthology credits that fall into the limbo of not enough copies to be SFWA qualifying but they are both professional publications.

And the answer was…

Okay, the panel didn’t really provide an answer. It boils down to editorial preference. One said to mention some pro credits or workshops, another said it looked arrogant. I didn’t hear anything that addressed the anthology question and was too far back to ask. The comment that stuck with me, though, (remembering that this is only one opinion) was Nick Mamatas who said he asked for a cover letter when editing Clarkesworld to weed out the crazies. A bland cover letter didn’t count against you for him, but opening that door revealed writers who would likely be harder to work with as demonstrated by the 50 credits listed in the cover letter.

– Can We Stop the Violence?

I was the moderator for this panel, and I can tell you it was scary at first with only two audience members in attendance, one of whom was my husband. But, shortly after the start time, the room starting filling up. What I found odd was not one of the attendees were what I saw as the intended audience. The gamers on the panel had been joking about the impossibility of scheduling a gaming panel at 10am, but it made more sense to them when I pointed out it seemed targeted more to parents of gaming children. So, I had to revise my seed questions on the fly when the room filled up with gamers across the generations, but none in the YA or younger crowd.

Despite the shaky beginning, we ended up having a strong discussion on what made up interesting game play, speculating why so many games went the violence route, Jeff Fennel providing an insider look at the pressure to go violent as a managing artist on a number of video games, and suggestions of games that had content requiring more than just skill with simulated weapons. The name escapes me at the moment (if my husband or someone else from the panel who stops by is willing to add in the comments, I’d appreciate it), but one game with an internal puzzle system and game play not 100% focused on the violence was well reviewed by several of the panelists, and I plan to track it down.

We touched on the correlations between violent play and violent activity, a topic made livelier by Tim Crowley’s childhood recollections, backed up by his mother in the audience, of the shock factor when imitated cartoon violence actually hurt! We also grazed gun exposure with a short discussion on the differences between city folk and country folk where arms are concerned and why the two cannot be treated as the same when talking of expectations of gun safety and knowledge.

– Birds of Prey

Are you kidding? I wasn’t going to miss this and had promoted the demonstration to my husband after seeing it last year. We are avid bird watchers (a hobby adopted when it turned out the slough behind our house is home to wild heron, more duck species than I knew existed, harriers (including a female), peregrines, red-tail hawks, cooper hawks, and rough-legged hawks, plus a variety of transient species, including pelicans (quite a sight considering we live on an inland desert).

This year’s presentation was even better. Because of the standing room only issue last year, the presentation was in the ballroom, a space large enough that the presenters actually flew some of the birds from one to another across the room, swooping low enough to brush against us. They also walked the birds around so we could get a close view and revealed the little known fact that wise owls are…well…dumb as a post.

– Writing on the Slippery Slope of the S-Curve

This was my last panel, and I certainly didn’t have the SF publishing credits of the other members, but I’ve written enough SF short fiction and long to have run into this problem often enough. Gerald Nordley, who both suggested and moderated the panel, gave us a quick terminology lesson, explaining the S-Curve for those who might not have come across the term as the path of technological growth. A new technology starts out slow, gains momentum into a steep climb where enhancements and variants come out frequently, and then tops off into another slow period as the possibilities have all been explored. Okay, he explained it better, and with hand gestures, but if you draw what I described, you should see an elongated S.

The discussion covered whether to include technology in that sharp growth period, what are the risks with having out-dated technology, what is the purpose of technology in the story, and what the reader can reasonably be expected to understand.

While I’d been expecting a heavy hard SF discussion (something I can participate in as a long-term reader, but I largely write sociological SF which is considered soft science), the actual discussion focused more on writing techniques, author choices, and the consequences of those choices. I believe we all agreed that the technology was there to support a human story, though that was not always the case, and as such the specifics matter less than the consequences to the characters and the point being made. Juliette Wade said how she avoids the issue by using out-dated technology despite writing in the far future, which lead to a look at what we were trying to accomplish and how the technology aided or hindered that.

It’s hard to describe the discussion because it was very fluid, from looking at cell phone technology advances to the psychological impact of an embedded phone, and even a genetically bred phone, to modifying what Juliette called our “myopia,” or the ingrained expectations we have based on our experiences that may prevent us from integrating with other societies and the consequences of removing all bias.

Definitely good stimulation for all those science fiction brain cells.

Conclusion

I’m starting to understand why I never get around to writing con reports. It’s hard to articulate the experience, and what my conscious mind retains of the panels is a small fraction of what I absorbed, information sure to prove useful in conversation or story sometimes years to come. BayCon is a huge convention with something for practically everyone. It’s absorbing, fascinating, energizing, and exhausting. I love seeing people I’ve met and meeting new friends who are all just as engaged by the thoughts and ideas in speculative fiction as I am. Here you will find no glazed eyes unless the exhaustion has set in, and you’re apt to learn something from pretty much everyone, regardless of whether or not their name is on the guest list. If my writing brain is a swamp with untapped riches, then BayCon is a tributary that contributes to the substance below the surface.