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Eastercon etc.
I am back from Eastercon, where I had a smashing time catching up with folks, spinning in bewilderment around curious corridors, talking so much that I crashed far too early each night, and blathering madly on panels. In what's becoming a tradition, I arrived just in time for my first panel, "Is the new Trek a Trekker's Trek?" Quite a big panel (6 of us), but with a good mix of opinions, from those of us who had thoroughly enjoyed the film for what it was, to those who felt it had destroyed too much of canon. I had a lot of a fun; I thought it was a jolly and good-natured affair, and I hope the audience enjoyed themselves too.
My final commitment was that evening, when the Conflicts anthology (in which I have a story) was launched (see the NewCon Press website for more information). After that I was free to come and go as I pleased, which means sitting around and yakking with friends, particularly![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
katlinel, jellynewt, games_player, kalypso_v and communicator. And of course catching up with many other friends as I wandered about the hotel in high-octane con-dazed fashion.
A panel on reviewing critically boiled my blood in exactly the right way by sparking off ideas and response; a later panel on "feminist heroes" unfortunately boiled the blood in the wrong way. On Sunday night I was a last minute replacement on a panel about rogues and anti-heroes; I managed about twenty minutes of coherent thought, but suspect I wasn't much use during the last half of the panel. Never mind, there were other sharper-minded people around me and in the audience. I lovedcommunicator's session on translating Chinese poetry, and enjoyed a session on "the mutable body", which wandered around the topic but always interestingly. Another panel about non-SF for SF readers touched a little upon multiple reading practices: I would gladly have heard more.
And of course, there was Doctor Who. What can I say? I loved it madly. The only disappointment is the title music, which turns out to sound a LOT better in 5.1 surround - you can hear the dumdy-dums much more clearly. (Yes OF COURSE re-watching was the first thing we did when we got back home.) Is Matt Smith going to turn out to be the Best Doctor Ever? It's a distinct possibility.
Also, when I got back home, I was at last able to open my COLOSSAL Easter egg, which turns out to be made up of five eggs nested inside each other like a Russian doll, each flavoured differently. So much chocolate, so little time! I'm going to try to make it last the whole of this season of Doctor Who, but scoffing is going to be a real temptation...
My final commitment was that evening, when the Conflicts anthology (in which I have a story) was launched (see the NewCon Press website for more information). After that I was free to come and go as I pleased, which means sitting around and yakking with friends, particularly
katlinel, jellynewt, games_player, kalypso_v and communicator. And of course catching up with many other friends as I wandered about the hotel in high-octane con-dazed fashion. A panel on reviewing critically boiled my blood in exactly the right way by sparking off ideas and response; a later panel on "feminist heroes" unfortunately boiled the blood in the wrong way. On Sunday night I was a last minute replacement on a panel about rogues and anti-heroes; I managed about twenty minutes of coherent thought, but suspect I wasn't much use during the last half of the panel. Never mind, there were other sharper-minded people around me and in the audience. I loved
communicator's session on translating Chinese poetry, and enjoyed a session on "the mutable body", which wandered around the topic but always interestingly. Another panel about non-SF for SF readers touched a little upon multiple reading practices: I would gladly have heard more. And of course, there was Doctor Who. What can I say? I loved it madly. The only disappointment is the title music, which turns out to sound a LOT better in 5.1 surround - you can hear the dumdy-dums much more clearly. (Yes OF COURSE re-watching was the first thing we did when we got back home.) Is Matt Smith going to turn out to be the Best Doctor Ever? It's a distinct possibility.
Also, when I got back home, I was at last able to open my COLOSSAL Easter egg, which turns out to be made up of five eggs nested inside each other like a Russian doll, each flavoured differently. So much chocolate, so little time! I'm going to try to make it last the whole of this season of Doctor Who, but scoffing is going to be a real temptation...
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That's a pity about the panel. I think it is a good sign that the organisers of Sci-Fi conventions increasingly consider it important to address gender issues through their panels, but I've seen a similar example of it not working out very well in practice myself. A couple of years ago I went to a convention which featured a panel on the subject of "Why aren't more women into Sci-Fi?", where it felt to me that the predominant belief in the room was that women are just silly for not realising how great Sci-Fi is and how much it has to offer them. No-one seemed prepared to voice what I felt was the real problem - viz. that Sci-Fi has a 100-year history of being written and produced in a way that is largely alienating to a female audience, so it's no surprise that most women feel disinclined to try leaping over that massive hurdle in an attempt to discover the stuff that isn't. Thankfully, no-one went anywhere near the subject of rape, but I can really see how that could go horribly wrong in such a situation.
no subject
This, absolutely. For ages, I came to the conclusion that for various reasons, I couldn't really call myself a science fiction fan. Then I thought, "Screw that," and started calling myself one anyway.