Orbital: Eastercon 2008
We have just spent 5 brilliant days at Orbital – the annual science fiction convention. This year it was hosted at the Radisson Edwardian Hotel at Heathrow. Over 1200 sf fans got together over the Easter weekend to meet up, discuss and share their enjoyment of sf.
One of the strangest things about being at a con is the fact that you enter a self-contained world. Once inside the hotel we went for the Star Trek type womb fantasy of 'this hotel is our self contained, all providing universe for the next 5 days'. It's amazing how quickly it is possible to adapt to being in a place - so that the outside world seems unreal. The surrounding areas seemed so divorced from the convention that when we got another glimpse of them from the car park as we were leaving, 'normality' had taken on an unfamiliar, alien quality. Semi-detached houses and urban decay - the norm when we arrived at the hotel, seemed strangely out of place after spending all that time amongst marble and wood and crisp sheets and thick white towels. Now, back home our house too feels like an alien space - devoid of fans, real ale and booksellers. It has been a strange day today, reacclimatizing and getting over a strange sense of grief that the con is over for another year (to try to overcome our post con depression, we have, like Mr Roy and Procrastinatrix booked for the next 2 years).
In terms of the con itself here are the highlights:
The hotel. This was the first time I’ve ever stayed in a 5 star hotel. It seems to me that, aesthetically at least, what distinguishes the 5 star hotel from the other varieties, is the fact that it is made primarily of marble and wood. So, as you can imagine, it was beautiful, if a little strange in its décor. On the one hand there was marble floors, wood panelling, enormous chandeliers and on the other there were areas that were modern, including illuminated bridges (like something out of a 1920s musical) over glass areas with glass fish, but surrounded by old fashioned statues and antiques from around the world. Anyway, it was delightfully posh – so posh there was a phone in the en suite and in the public loos were individual towels to dry your hands – yes – real towels (must admit though these disappeared as 1200 guests arrived!).
The discussion panels. Except for one where one of the panellists was clearly rather drunk, the panels were great. I particularly enjoyed the one on our future survival on this changing planet and the one on surveillance societies – these 2 will get separate blog posts about their discussions at a later date. I even enjoyed being mocked about going to a panel which had on it a certain author whose book I reviewed rather negatively recently. The reason I was mocked (apart from the fact this author is now one of my editors) was because the panel’s subject matter was ‘should authors respond to reviews?’. I got all kinds of threats that I would be named and shamed. My only consolation was that Christopher Priest, who was also on the panel, had also written a negative review of this author’s work in the past too. So at least I wasn’t alone.
The guest of honour talks:
China Mieville, as well as turning out to be a really nice guy and friend of someone we work with (weird in itself – small world) gave a great talk. Again the subject matter will be a blog post for a later date. But his speech sparked a fantastic debate about the death of the author that night in the real ale bar (discussions at length over a beer are officially one of my hobbies and since cons are just like a 5 day version of that it’s no wonder I had a good time).
Niel Gaiman read some fantastic pieces of writing to us and spoke very entertainingly. Although not as intellectual as China Mievill’s talk, Gaiman’s was interesting, amusing, and when he read his fiction, captivating.
Charles Stross. Went to this one a bit late. Met Geoff Ryman and had a little chat with him and we decided to sneak into Stross’s talk. Geoff is so tall I manged to use him to hide behind. Stross’s speech was more technology based that the other two talks. Interesting in a different way I suppose.
The dealer’s room. Got some great stuff this year. A couple of books on Lovecraft I’m very pleased with and there will probably be another blog post on those at some point. Best of all though I managed to get some fantastic 1920s sf magazines with some great story titles – ‘Vibrator of Death’ definitely warrants another blog post – expect that one immanently!
Meeting up with some great people – got to see some old friends and make some new ones.
The general mix that you get at cons of fans, authors, academics etc all chat in to one another in one great melting pot.
The real ale bar.
The food. This was the best convention food I’ve had, especially considering the amount of people being catered for. The only problem is that all that good food has had waistline implications. All I’m going to say is that P. has put on 4lb since we went away. And since he is officially the thinnest man ever there’s no hope for the rest of us! I blame pastries at breakfast…
I’m going to finish by saying that the con organisers deserve a massive thank you – this was the best Eastercon we’ve been to.
I shall blog again (when I get time) about some of the points mentioned in this post – particularly ‘Vibrator of Death’. I’ll also post the photos on my facebook as soon as poss…
P.S. Arthur C. Clarke - RIP
Tuesday, 25 March 2008
Wednesday, 19 March 2008
'Trusted' information
I was interested to read an academic journal article recently that had wikipedia listed in its sources.
What shall we find in bibliographies next?
Bloggs Bob, (3/1/07) ‘Conversation with my mate in the pub’, (recalled 18/3/08)?
What shall we find in bibliographies next?
Bloggs Bob, (3/1/07) ‘Conversation with my mate in the pub’, (recalled 18/3/08)?
Sunday, 16 March 2008
The Brick Testament
This website is fantastic. The Bible told in Lego. And since we all know that Lego is the toy of the Gods, there's a nice symmetry.
Credit must go to Mister Roy for finding this... a slightly more normal discovery than his best beloved, Procrastinatrix, who discovered this website all about Kitlers.
The internet is a strange place indeed...
Saturday, 15 March 2008
The Year of the Sex Olympics
Further to my last post, I got to thinking about television and the way it has gone in recent years (reality TV, endless shows like Dancing on Ice, X Factor Pop Idol etc) and it brought to mind 1968s The Year of the Sex Olympics.
Prophecy? I think so.
Prophecy? I think so.
Friday, 14 March 2008
'On Sf' Or 'Why I hate Torchwood'
Current research commitments have led me to revisit my old science fiction love Babylon 5. The show has its flaws – what show doesn’t, but overall it was one of the most well told stories on television. Reading about the series’ creator J. Michael Straczynski and his experiences of working in television has got me thinking about how far television sf has come since B5.
B5 was the first multi-layered US TV sf tale with an overall narrative trajectory. More like a novel for the screen, it was complex, filled with foreshadowing and assumed an intelligent, engaged audience. Many of the show’s strengths lie in its unpredictability - during its 5 year run main characters are replaced (B5 has 3 captains as each takes on a different role in the narrative), and most of the characters change (dramatically in many cases) during the show’s course. Along with its richness of narrative and character, B5 deals with philosophical questions, issues of faith (in a technological universe) and a number of interesting sf concepts (such as time travel, morality, pre-destination and the nature of the self). It is Jungian, political, historical, philosophical and yes, a little over written at times. This, I personally, can forgive. I can also forgive its now dated CGI. Normally I’m not a fan of CGI when it’s used in large quantities (usually because it is a sign of style over substance) but in this case there simply wasn’t the budget to make something so epic for the small screen without the aid of a PC (or an Amiga to be more precise). The success of the show is that the narrative and the characters are so good that the CGI works as a facilitator to the story – more substance over style than style over substance. It is the strength of the story that also allows me to forgive its other flaws – as a whole B5 is as good as any sf novel.
Since B5 we have had some fantastic new TV science fiction. One example of this, (which appears to have been influenced by B5 directly in many ways) is the new Battlestar Galactica (BSG).
Needless to say I’m not a fan of Torchwood. It has crap sf concepts and treats it’s audience as if it is stupid (examples that come to mind mainly involve unintelligent plot events that snap viewers out of their willing suspension of disbelief; or Owen date raping someone using alien technology; or the fact that all of the characters have only one dominant preoccupation – sleeping with one another. This kind of lack of emotional depth really annoys me). But I have developed an amusing drinking game which involves drinking every time a character makes a pass at someone. This results in anebriation very quickly and dulls the pain (before people say ‘just don’t watch it then’ – I don’t actually watch it now – I only watched it 1st in disbelief, then in the hopes it would get better, and then in disbelief again, as all media publications were telling us how great it is. This, I think, astounds me most of all).
It’s not that I demand all SF to be of a high standard – I just can’t bare this idea that all sf fans want is novelty (in this case sex) and gadgets. This coupled with the idea that you’re making challenging sf is just insulting.
Russell T. Davies’ concept of sf seem to derive from what a juvenile hormonal soap opera writer would think would be really cool in adult sf. British sf under Russell T. Davies has become style over substance, novelty over sense and sex over story. Quite frankly it’s vacuous and rubbish. I find this demise of the BBCs science fiction output infuriating.
It seems now, that to see the legacy of B5, eyes need to turn to the US or to shows like Life on Mars which they won’t label sf for fear of alienating audiences. Grrrr.
In creating Babylon 5, Stracyznski wished to address the dearth of intelligent television sf. Babylon 5 was the first major attempt at a science fiction series with an overall story arc, and which attempted to capture the genre’s defining ‘sense of wonder’, so familiar to science fiction readers.
B5 was the first multi-layered US TV sf tale with an overall narrative trajectory. More like a novel for the screen, it was complex, filled with foreshadowing and assumed an intelligent, engaged audience. Many of the show’s strengths lie in its unpredictability - during its 5 year run main characters are replaced (B5 has 3 captains as each takes on a different role in the narrative), and most of the characters change (dramatically in many cases) during the show’s course. Along with its richness of narrative and character, B5 deals with philosophical questions, issues of faith (in a technological universe) and a number of interesting sf concepts (such as time travel, morality, pre-destination and the nature of the self). It is Jungian, political, historical, philosophical and yes, a little over written at times. This, I personally, can forgive. I can also forgive its now dated CGI. Normally I’m not a fan of CGI when it’s used in large quantities (usually because it is a sign of style over substance) but in this case there simply wasn’t the budget to make something so epic for the small screen without the aid of a PC (or an Amiga to be more precise). The success of the show is that the narrative and the characters are so good that the CGI works as a facilitator to the story – more substance over style than style over substance. It is the strength of the story that also allows me to forgive its other flaws – as a whole B5 is as good as any sf novel.
Since B5 we have had some fantastic new TV science fiction. One example of this, (which appears to have been influenced by B5 directly in many ways) is the new Battlestar Galactica (BSG).
Like B5, BSG also has 3 dimensional characters changing as they respond to their circumstances, and it does not offer morally simplistic representations of events or people. Main characters who, on the one hand, are good people but are addicted to drugs, are alcoholics, who sometimes do terrible things in terrible circumstances and who are psychologically disturbed by catastrophic events are found in both B5 and BSG.
Battlestar also takes from B5 the notion that a happy resolution does not have to be reached every 45 minute episode (or even ever in the whole arc – those familiar with B5 will think of Londo here, and Sheridan’s departure in ‘Sleeping in Light’). I will never forget my shock at seeing the B5 episode ‘Believers’ in which a child’s parents will not let him have a lifesaving operation due to their religious beliefs. The doctor goes ahead with the operation anyway and the child is cured. That’s normally the end of the episode. But in this case, when they discover what the Dr has done the parents kill their son – since, in their eyes he is now an abomination. Similarly in ‘Confessions and Lamentations’, doctors search for a cure to a plague, only to discover it too late and an entire race is wiped out. At a time when Star Trek dominated TV sf this kind of plot resolution was powerful stuff. This type of narrative has only recently been matched by BSG, when, in season one, the ships that can escape the Cylons leave everyone else to die. No rescue mission, nothing. This kind of ‘un-cosy’ television marked a drastic movement away from the dominant Star Trek mould.
In Britain, the opposite of ‘the B5 effect’ appears to have taken place. We’ve gone from making series like Blake 7, the BBc’s Day of the Triffids and The Last Train et cetera to ‘New Who’ and Torchwood. New Dr Who is, it proclaims, for children so I won’t address that here. Torchwood, however, is Who’s adult spin off. Bearing in mind my above comments, imagine my amusement when I was reading this website about Torchwood and was offered this insight into how it is challenging TV sf:
Battlestar also takes from B5 the notion that a happy resolution does not have to be reached every 45 minute episode (or even ever in the whole arc – those familiar with B5 will think of Londo here, and Sheridan’s departure in ‘Sleeping in Light’). I will never forget my shock at seeing the B5 episode ‘Believers’ in which a child’s parents will not let him have a lifesaving operation due to their religious beliefs. The doctor goes ahead with the operation anyway and the child is cured. That’s normally the end of the episode. But in this case, when they discover what the Dr has done the parents kill their son – since, in their eyes he is now an abomination. Similarly in ‘Confessions and Lamentations’, doctors search for a cure to a plague, only to discover it too late and an entire race is wiped out. At a time when Star Trek dominated TV sf this kind of plot resolution was powerful stuff. This type of narrative has only recently been matched by BSG, when, in season one, the ships that can escape the Cylons leave everyone else to die. No rescue mission, nothing. This kind of ‘un-cosy’ television marked a drastic movement away from the dominant Star Trek mould.
In Britain, the opposite of ‘the B5 effect’ appears to have taken place. We’ve gone from making series like Blake 7, the BBc’s Day of the Triffids and The Last Train et cetera to ‘New Who’ and Torchwood. New Dr Who is, it proclaims, for children so I won’t address that here. Torchwood, however, is Who’s adult spin off. Bearing in mind my above comments, imagine my amusement when I was reading this website about Torchwood and was offered this insight into how it is challenging TV sf:
‘Last season Gwen hopped into Owen's bed despite her devotion to her clueless live-in lover, Rhys (Kai Owen). "It was completely out of character for Gwen," Myles [who plays Gwen] said, "but that's what good drama is all about. You don't want to spoon-feed a sci-fi audience, you want to challenge them, so none of these characters are safe." In the future, Gwen "does the best she can" with monogamy, Myles said. "But it's a case of anything is possible with the Torchwood bunch."
Hard hitting stuff indeed. Torchwood's obsession with sex is the pinnacle of its intellectual feats. Clearly Farscape needn’t have spent its 4 seasons addressing questions on the nature of reality, or the madness that may accompany estrangement. BSG needn’t have spent the past 3 seasons questioning the nature of humanity and what happens if machines behave more humanely than organic beings; or making contemporary political comments, in which the main characters resort to suicide bombings to try to free themselves from their oppression. And Babylon 5 needn’t have bothered trying to formulate new myths and a sense of wonder so often missing from TV sf. If only we’d known that if we just make all the characters sleep with one another, no matter how unattractive/morally apprehensible they are, we’d have all been suitably challenged (presumably because all sf fans are so sex starved they crave seeing the ‘battle with monogamy’). If people think that this is sf that challenges its audience something is very wrong. It’s not even good escapism; it’s just utter rubbish.
Needless to say I’m not a fan of Torchwood. It has crap sf concepts and treats it’s audience as if it is stupid (examples that come to mind mainly involve unintelligent plot events that snap viewers out of their willing suspension of disbelief; or Owen date raping someone using alien technology; or the fact that all of the characters have only one dominant preoccupation – sleeping with one another. This kind of lack of emotional depth really annoys me). But I have developed an amusing drinking game which involves drinking every time a character makes a pass at someone. This results in anebriation very quickly and dulls the pain (before people say ‘just don’t watch it then’ – I don’t actually watch it now – I only watched it 1st in disbelief, then in the hopes it would get better, and then in disbelief again, as all media publications were telling us how great it is. This, I think, astounds me most of all).
It’s not that I demand all SF to be of a high standard – I just can’t bare this idea that all sf fans want is novelty (in this case sex) and gadgets. This coupled with the idea that you’re making challenging sf is just insulting.
Russell T. Davies’ concept of sf seem to derive from what a juvenile hormonal soap opera writer would think would be really cool in adult sf. British sf under Russell T. Davies has become style over substance, novelty over sense and sex over story. Quite frankly it’s vacuous and rubbish. I find this demise of the BBCs science fiction output infuriating.
It seems now, that to see the legacy of B5, eyes need to turn to the US or to shows like Life on Mars which they won’t label sf for fear of alienating audiences. Grrrr.
Monday, 10 March 2008
Mono no aware.
Summer grasses:
all that remains of great soldiers'
imperial dreams
- Basho (1644-1694)
A self indulgent post on the nature of mono no aware and its place in our everyday lives:
All of my life I have always been fascinated by mono no aware (although when I was younger I did not know there was a name for it) - the beauty in sadness and loss. Loss is an intrinsic part of life, yet, it seems to me, that in the West particularly (note that mono no aware is a Japanese/Buddhist concept) we spend much of our time avoiding that truth. We use what Freud calls palliative measures including escapism, hedonism and religion to help us to forget the unpalatable truths about life – the centrality of loss and the possibility of meaninglessness.
Personally, I find this topic captivating.
To me life can be divided in to three states: comfort or contentment (often characterised by an absence of feeling); unhappiness (where the prevailing objective is the desire for happiness); and happiness. Happiness I find the most interesting of these three states as it is the one people spend much of their time trying to attain. Since life is characterised by two certainties: change and death we know that all things are transient. Hence, happiness can never be a permanent state. The notion of ‘happy ever after’ is fallacy, because everything must end. That which makes us happy will, at some point cease or change; or if not, then the end will come in the form of death, where happiness ceases, to be replaced by nothingness (or whatever afterlife you happen to believe in).
For me personally, I find that moments of happiness can become preoccupied with the idea of loss. That all must end. The laughing moment will, only a short while later, be a mere memory never to be recaptured. Time spent with a loved one is a series of passing moments. One day youth will be replaced by old age and the impending realisation that life is coming to an end, and the recognition that it wasn’t long enough to appreciate it.
A realisation of these things needs to be accepted for what it is – simply the truth about the nature of the universe, in which change is the inevitable consequence of the unceasing march of time. It is the way it always has been and the way it will always be. There is no point becoming depressed about it; that would be like spending every day obsessed with the idea of your own death. Instead it is about accepting this truth and appreciating the beauty of each moment. The realisation of the sadness inherent in the fact that all things are passing, should serve to make us appreciate more strongly the beauty in that which is around us.
Recognising that in the sadness of the transience of life there is a poignant beauty, to me at least, is the true meaning of mono no aware.
Now I see her face,
the old woman, abandoned,
The moon her only companion
- Basho (1644-1694)
all that remains of great soldiers'
imperial dreams
- Basho (1644-1694)
A self indulgent post on the nature of mono no aware and its place in our everyday lives:
All of my life I have always been fascinated by mono no aware (although when I was younger I did not know there was a name for it) - the beauty in sadness and loss. Loss is an intrinsic part of life, yet, it seems to me, that in the West particularly (note that mono no aware is a Japanese/Buddhist concept) we spend much of our time avoiding that truth. We use what Freud calls palliative measures including escapism, hedonism and religion to help us to forget the unpalatable truths about life – the centrality of loss and the possibility of meaninglessness.
Personally, I find this topic captivating.
To me life can be divided in to three states: comfort or contentment (often characterised by an absence of feeling); unhappiness (where the prevailing objective is the desire for happiness); and happiness. Happiness I find the most interesting of these three states as it is the one people spend much of their time trying to attain. Since life is characterised by two certainties: change and death we know that all things are transient. Hence, happiness can never be a permanent state. The notion of ‘happy ever after’ is fallacy, because everything must end. That which makes us happy will, at some point cease or change; or if not, then the end will come in the form of death, where happiness ceases, to be replaced by nothingness (or whatever afterlife you happen to believe in).
For me personally, I find that moments of happiness can become preoccupied with the idea of loss. That all must end. The laughing moment will, only a short while later, be a mere memory never to be recaptured. Time spent with a loved one is a series of passing moments. One day youth will be replaced by old age and the impending realisation that life is coming to an end, and the recognition that it wasn’t long enough to appreciate it.
A realisation of these things needs to be accepted for what it is – simply the truth about the nature of the universe, in which change is the inevitable consequence of the unceasing march of time. It is the way it always has been and the way it will always be. There is no point becoming depressed about it; that would be like spending every day obsessed with the idea of your own death. Instead it is about accepting this truth and appreciating the beauty of each moment. The realisation of the sadness inherent in the fact that all things are passing, should serve to make us appreciate more strongly the beauty in that which is around us.
Recognising that in the sadness of the transience of life there is a poignant beauty, to me at least, is the true meaning of mono no aware.
Now I see her face,
the old woman, abandoned,
The moon her only companion
- Basho (1644-1694)
Saturday, 8 March 2008
Blog
Having abandoned Livejournal in favour of Facebook, I find myself with no place to put my personal random musings.
Why not return to Livejournal then?
Well, the answer to this question lies in the nature of the blog. Livejournal is used by many for what it says in the title – an online journal. This is great for keeping in touch with friends and hearing what people are up to. More and more though, I found myself on Livejournal either, laboriously wading through stories of what people I barely know did over the weekend, or skipping large chunks of it to get to news of my friends. Increasingly I had to wade through posts of (sometimes) very personal information that I didn’t really want to know, by people I didn’t really know. As such I haven’t been on Livejournal for ages and have decided to enter the world of the blog.
As it is my nature to get drawn into these things and then get fed up when I feel they are a bind (this happens every time I start a paper diary) I make no promises about how often I will update this – who knows, it may be every day or it may be every year. This way I do not have to feel bad if I neglect to post for a while. This has worked well with my paper diary which I now have no rules about updating – I merely write it when I have something to say.
So, with that, I’ll be back – when I have something more to say…
Why not return to Livejournal then?
Well, the answer to this question lies in the nature of the blog. Livejournal is used by many for what it says in the title – an online journal. This is great for keeping in touch with friends and hearing what people are up to. More and more though, I found myself on Livejournal either, laboriously wading through stories of what people I barely know did over the weekend, or skipping large chunks of it to get to news of my friends. Increasingly I had to wade through posts of (sometimes) very personal information that I didn’t really want to know, by people I didn’t really know. As such I haven’t been on Livejournal for ages and have decided to enter the world of the blog.
As it is my nature to get drawn into these things and then get fed up when I feel they are a bind (this happens every time I start a paper diary) I make no promises about how often I will update this – who knows, it may be every day or it may be every year. This way I do not have to feel bad if I neglect to post for a while. This has worked well with my paper diary which I now have no rules about updating – I merely write it when I have something to say.
So, with that, I’ll be back – when I have something more to say…
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