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valoiseFriday was a long day, but there were panels I was interested in from the beginning of the day, so no sleeping in for me.
SF We Love by Writers of Color
Panelists consist mostly of reviewers so are familiar with a broad range of works and writers. One of my big goals for the weekend was to get recs for new writers and books, so I was looking forward to this.
Recs for writers (and a few books) they thought of first
Octavia Butler
Steve Barnes
Lawrence Yep
Larissa Lai
Karen Lord (Redempton in Indigo)
Nisi Shawl
Nora (N. K.) Jemison (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms I’ve read is good.)
Hiromi Goto
Eiliya Dawn Johnson (Moonshine)
Zetta Elliott
So Long, Been Dreaming (anthology edited by Nalo Hopkinson)
Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora
Zoo City by Lauren Burkes
Andrea Herston
Nnedi Okorafor (Akata Witch)
Tobias Buckell (Crystal Rain, Sly Mongoose)
Saladin Ahmed
Vandana Singh
Aqueduct Press puts out chapbooks
Claire Light
Ted Chiang
Samuel R. Delany
Tananarive Due
William F. Wu
Marjorie Lu
Carl Brandon Society produces reading lists for specific ethnicities
Minister Faust (Coyote Kings, Bachelor Pad & From the Notebook of Dr. Brain)
Greg Walker
Jewell Gomez
Charles Yu
Karen Lowachee
David Anthony Duram
Alice Kim
The Promise and Peril of Rebooting a Beloved Franchise: A Narratological Analysis
Yep, it’s an academic presentation, devoloped into a book. Franchises covered Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek. One point she make was that the age at which we first come to a franchise colors our understanding of it and the remakes. Talks about reimagining as well as reboots. Heather Urbanski’s book isn’t out yet, so I can’t link out to it.
Iron Chef Flash Fiction
Pure entertainment, no notes taken during the panel. Two writers and an editor were given a topic and five minutes to write a story and the audience voted on the winner. Topics were Shatner, cephalopod, sword & sorcery and synchronicity. This was actually supposed to be singularity so the tie breaker was tea and singularity. Absolutely hilarious.
Who is This Robert E. Lee Person? How Much Background Information in Really Needed in Historical Fiction
1st question: how do you add what the readers need to know without boring them? Add tension and break it up. Dialogue, action, and other things can be used instead of exposition. Try using a narrative device like a diary. Don't tell your reader anything that they don't need to know. If it doesn't illuminate the character or drive the story leave it out.
You don't need to tell the reader all of the research you've done. Tolkein was a master of this. Subsequent popular culture has muddied our understanding about what past eras were really like, such as Julius Ceaser as filtered through Shakespeare.
Learn to be vague, there is nothing too small that you will hear from fans about how wrong you are. People respond not just to facts but to their emotional reaction to those facts. Fiction has to plausible, history only has to have actually happened.
Scientific Romances of the Victorian Era
Defining Victoran as 1830s through 1903. What is a scientific romance? Coined by H. G. Wells for science fiction. Differs from steampunk in female characterization, also looking forward to the future while steampunk looks back at what could have been. Victorian was writing flavored by colonialism and "us v. Them" attitude toward minorities. More into social & political commentary than scientific matters. Quality of the fiction mixed. Many authors not often remebered today but it was a worldwide phemomena. From Shelley to Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Science Fiction by Gas light edited by Sam Moscovitz
Science Fiction in Old San Francisco
Compare US dime novels & UK writers. Frank Reed pulps
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & the Holmes and Challenger books. Almost all writers of the era did something that touched on the genre. Jack London wrote sf but it’s rarely republished. Oscar Wilde even dabbled in sf. U. of Nebraska Press a good source. Since these are out of copyright and in the public domain check sources like Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg .
Some writers and books to look for:
E Nesbit
H. Rider Hagart
Harriet Spofford
Edwin Lester Arnold’s Gulliver of Mars
The Mortal Immortal
Robert E. Howard
Gulliver's Travels (esp the last 2 books)
Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward
Edward Abbott's Flatland
I did manage to make time for a quick dinner before the Masquerade. I considered going to the fan photo area, but changed my mind and skipped taking pictures. It was my first masquerade ever and I wanted to enjoy it. And I did like it. So much, in fact, that it makes me think about costuming, something I haven’t done since my SCA days.
SF We Love by Writers of Color
Panelists consist mostly of reviewers so are familiar with a broad range of works and writers. One of my big goals for the weekend was to get recs for new writers and books, so I was looking forward to this.
Recs for writers (and a few books) they thought of first
Octavia Butler
Steve Barnes
Lawrence Yep
Larissa Lai
Karen Lord (Redempton in Indigo)
Nisi Shawl
Nora (N. K.) Jemison (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms I’ve read is good.)
Hiromi Goto
Eiliya Dawn Johnson (Moonshine)
Zetta Elliott
So Long, Been Dreaming (anthology edited by Nalo Hopkinson)
Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora
Zoo City by Lauren Burkes
Andrea Herston
Nnedi Okorafor (Akata Witch)
Tobias Buckell (Crystal Rain, Sly Mongoose)
Saladin Ahmed
Vandana Singh
Aqueduct Press puts out chapbooks
Claire Light
Ted Chiang
Samuel R. Delany
Tananarive Due
William F. Wu
Marjorie Lu
Carl Brandon Society produces reading lists for specific ethnicities
Minister Faust (Coyote Kings, Bachelor Pad & From the Notebook of Dr. Brain)
Greg Walker
Jewell Gomez
Charles Yu
Karen Lowachee
David Anthony Duram
Alice Kim
The Promise and Peril of Rebooting a Beloved Franchise: A Narratological Analysis
Yep, it’s an academic presentation, devoloped into a book. Franchises covered Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek. One point she make was that the age at which we first come to a franchise colors our understanding of it and the remakes. Talks about reimagining as well as reboots. Heather Urbanski’s book isn’t out yet, so I can’t link out to it.
Iron Chef Flash Fiction
Pure entertainment, no notes taken during the panel. Two writers and an editor were given a topic and five minutes to write a story and the audience voted on the winner. Topics were Shatner, cephalopod, sword & sorcery and synchronicity. This was actually supposed to be singularity so the tie breaker was tea and singularity. Absolutely hilarious.
Who is This Robert E. Lee Person? How Much Background Information in Really Needed in Historical Fiction
1st question: how do you add what the readers need to know without boring them? Add tension and break it up. Dialogue, action, and other things can be used instead of exposition. Try using a narrative device like a diary. Don't tell your reader anything that they don't need to know. If it doesn't illuminate the character or drive the story leave it out.
You don't need to tell the reader all of the research you've done. Tolkein was a master of this. Subsequent popular culture has muddied our understanding about what past eras were really like, such as Julius Ceaser as filtered through Shakespeare.
Learn to be vague, there is nothing too small that you will hear from fans about how wrong you are. People respond not just to facts but to their emotional reaction to those facts. Fiction has to plausible, history only has to have actually happened.
Scientific Romances of the Victorian Era
Defining Victoran as 1830s through 1903. What is a scientific romance? Coined by H. G. Wells for science fiction. Differs from steampunk in female characterization, also looking forward to the future while steampunk looks back at what could have been. Victorian was writing flavored by colonialism and "us v. Them" attitude toward minorities. More into social & political commentary than scientific matters. Quality of the fiction mixed. Many authors not often remebered today but it was a worldwide phemomena. From Shelley to Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Science Fiction by Gas light edited by Sam Moscovitz
Science Fiction in Old San Francisco
Compare US dime novels & UK writers. Frank Reed pulps
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & the Holmes and Challenger books. Almost all writers of the era did something that touched on the genre. Jack London wrote sf but it’s rarely republished. Oscar Wilde even dabbled in sf. U. of Nebraska Press a good source. Since these are out of copyright and in the public domain check sources like Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg .
Some writers and books to look for:
E Nesbit
H. Rider Hagart
Harriet Spofford
Edwin Lester Arnold’s Gulliver of Mars
The Mortal Immortal
Robert E. Howard
Gulliver's Travels (esp the last 2 books)
Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward
Edward Abbott's Flatland
I did manage to make time for a quick dinner before the Masquerade. I considered going to the fan photo area, but changed my mind and skipped taking pictures. It was my first masquerade ever and I wanted to enjoy it. And I did like it. So much, in fact, that it makes me think about costuming, something I haven’t done since my SCA days.
