Monthy Archive: August 2006
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August 02, 2006

Books : The Unfolding of Language

The Unfolding of Language
By Guy Deutcher

Almost all of the diversity of terrain in the world – all of the mountains, valleys, hills, dales, bays and peninsulas – owe their diverse forms to two principle forces: plate tectonics and erosion. Plate tectonics shoves the ground up into the sky, and wind and water erode it down again. There are patterns of terrain which reappear time and time again - for instance, river valleys tend to have certain common characteristics; but what strikes you as you travel the world is how varied the terrain is. Yet all that diversity can be explained by the interaction of just two forces. It is true that vegetation can affect the rate and pattern of erosion, but vegetation is also affected by the shape of the terrain, so it is not a principle factor. Likewise, the hardness of the rock effects erosion; but is itself a product of how the rock was formed which goes back to plate tectonics and erosion.

Which brings me to Guy Detcher's excellent book "The Unfolding of Language" in which he presents a quite comprehensive theory for how all of the diversity of languages in the world can be explained by three forces working on how people communicate with each other - a desire for clarity, a desire for ease (laziness), and a desire for order. Detcher shows how the interactions of these forces will inevitably produce those common elements we see in world languages and yet also explain the great diversity of languages which exist. I have read many linguistic books, and this is the first presentation of language evolution which I personally have found to be plausible. The book tackles some very hard problems - for instance verbal forms in Semitic languages which seem like something which could never have occurred naturally – and shows how the basic rules he presents could have created such forms.

I started with the geographical metaphor because there are significant parallels. Human laziness is like erosion – constantly trying to simplify those words and phrases we use often. This is not only a matter of obvious things like contractions but also changes in pronunciations to reduce how much we must move our tongues and mouths when we speak. Yet as we wear common words down into nubs, we find the need to add words to increase the clarity and forcefulness of our communication – building up more complex forms like plate tectonics drives the mountains higher, only to be worn down again. I love one example he analyzes from French – the phrase "au jour d'aujourd'hui" which apparently has become to be used recently as an emphatic form of "today", yet if you look at the linguistic history of that phrase, expanding all of the nubs that were worn down, it literally comes from "on the day of on-the-day-of-this-day".

The third force Detcher proposes has no geographical equivalent – the human desire and expectation of order which leads us to generalize rules to situations which don't apply. Given irregularities in languages (which often come about because common words and phrases are made easier to say while less common one retain their more complex forms) people then tend to generalize changes, even when they don't apply. An example presented in the book is the origin of the singular terms "pea" and "cherry". Historically, the singular form for these edibles were "pease" and "cherise"; but because people heard the "-s" sound at the end, they assumed those words were plurals and started to use the obvious singular forms "pea" and "cheri". This is however only a simple example, and the book provides other more complex ones where differences between languages with common ancestors often hinged on which of a set of irregular "rules" the people assumed was the dominant one and applied to other cases.

Finally, the book takes the story all the way back to what the author calls the "Me Tarzan" stage of language – where language consisted only of some words for things, some words for actions, and a couple of "pointing words" (the equivalent of "this" and "that" which would originally be accompanied with hand gestures). From that humble beginning, Detcher shows how the three forces he proposes could produce all of the complex forms of grammar, syntax and morphology found in modern languages around the world.

To me this book finally provided the "grand unified theory" for languages which I had been looking for. It also makes clear why all attempts to lock in one pattern of "correct speaking" will inevitably fail. Languages are living things, and change is inevitable.

Posted by Steven at 08:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 06, 2006

Faith : My Christianity

While I haven't been writing much on this blog for the last few months, that doesn't mean I haven't been writing anything. In that time I composed a few essays that I sent out on my church mailing list. Which leads to the question – why not just post them here as well? To remain true to my goal that this blog should reflect what I am thinking about, I suppose I should (and perhaps I will, eventually); but these recent essays always felt more like private "family" conversations – reflecting what I see that God is doing within my own congregation - than something to share with everyone. There have been some duplicate posts over the last year – essays I posted here as well as to the mailing list; but there have also always been ones I chose not to share because I felt they were meant for a specific time and audience. My most recent writings always seem to have belonged to the later category because of what God has been doing in our little gathering in Fremont.

Thinking on that got me to look back at which I have chosen to post here; and in hindsight I see somewhat of a common theme. There is a point which I think I have felt compelled to make on this blog – that while I declare myself to be a Christian, my faith is not what many Americans would think of when they hear that word.

My faith is not a matter of institutions, buildings, meetings, and leaders. It is about a community of people who know God and support each other in knowing Him better.

My faith is not loud, calling attention to itself. It is a matter of quietly speaking in ways that call attention to God.

My faith is not a matter of imposed rules which I must follow, "or else". It is the process of allowing God to transform me into someone that lives productively and peaceably with myself, others, and most of all with God himself.

My faith is not political – concerned with the policies of the government. It is personal, concerned with individuals' relationships with God and with each other and no more.

My faith is not a memorial of the past, honoring a distant God who departed long ago. It is a current and active relationship with Him.

My faith is not a matter of blind acceptance of things other people told me. It is something whose reality God wants to (and does) prove to me regularly.

Yet it seems what most people in America think of when they think of "Christians" (even those who think of themselves as Christians) are large denominations and institutions (and their leaders) who loudly proclaim the rules by which everyone else must live, trying to use the political process to make the US government enforce those rules as law; but whose only basis to claim that they are correct is something which happened a couple millennia ago.

I hope you understand why I feel compelled to distance myself from that.

And I am not alone in my thinking. Every where I go I meet other people whose understanding of God is the same as my own. People for whom God is current and real and whose only desire is to know Him more intimately and by that relationship to be transformed into His image. People who are conducting a quiet revolution within "the church", behind the great edifices of old, to get back to the simple truths of the Gospel: Love, Grace, Faith, Hope, and Transformation and to abandon the "religion" which has been built by men on top of those truths.

If by my writing here you get some sense that what I have experienced is somehow "different", then I have succeeded.

Posted by Steven at 05:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

August 08, 2006

Life : Gearing up for WorldCon

WorldCon (the world Science Fiction Convention) is in two weeks and I am getting ready to attend. The official program is not yet available (so I don't know yet what tough decisions I will need to make between seminars which have been scheduled at the same time); but the preliminary list of seminars has been posted and here is that subset which caught my attention. BTW – the best seminar title IMHO is "Everything I Needed to Know About Quantum Physics I Learned From the Three Stooges" which is apparently a serious explanation of Quantum Mechanics illustrated with clips from Three Stooges movies. Go figure.

Writing:
Assistant Editors: Glorified Gophers or Finders of Hidden Gems?
The Author/Editor Relationship
Character Vs. Plot
Clichés of the Future
Creating Languages
Culture Building 101.
A Day in the Life of an Editor
Different Types of Writing? The Novel, Novella, Short Story, etc.
Distribution: How SF Gets to You
Editing: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Escaping the Slushpile
Furgonomics (designing a world and the stuff in it with non-humans in mind)
Getting Started Writing SF -- Part I & Part II.
Good Endings?
How to Kill off a Character.
It Crawled out of the Slush Pile.
Mistakes New Writers Make
Promoting Your Book & Yourself
Publishing Science Fiction
Revise, Revise, Revise!
The Secret of My Success.
Small Press Publishing
Time in the Novel: the Stapledon/ Woolf Correspondence
Writing Military SF
Writing Non-human Characters
Writing While Holding down a Day Job
You Are Responsible for Your Own Career.

SciFi
Aliens Beyond Probability (aliens that were too alien)
Dune Again Kevin J. Anderson talks about continuing the Dune series
Fantasy Doesn't Have to Be about Kings and Wizards, Well, does it?
Favorite Fallacies of Science Fiction
Future Trends in Science Fiction
Great First Lines
Overlooked Books & Overrated Novels
Look at past Futures (What did the science fiction of the '30s - '60s say about today?)
Military Tactics in Science Fiction
No, Really, That Makes Sense (a "stump the panel" event where they need to come up with explanations for things raised by the audience from fiction)
Page 119 (Can you really tell if a book is good by randomly opening it and reading a page or two?)
Religion in SF Books & Movies
Science Fiction of the '30s & '40s, '50s & '60s, and '70s & '80s (3 seminars)
from Smallville to Secret Identity (how the superman myth has been constantly reinvented)
Style Vs. Substance (Is science fiction becoming too concerned about literary style at the expense of storytelling?)
The Sound of Thomas Jefferson Spinning in His Grave (Why do the descendants of rebels love reading about kings and wizards?)
The Worst Ideas in Fantasy or Science Fiction

TV
Battlestar Galactica ( with Executive Producer Ron D. Moore and others.)
Crafting Buffy
Lost & How to Get There
Running TV Shows
SF TV as Western
The Surface of an Invasion is at the Threshold
What Is it about Buffy ? (why are people still talking about this show?)
What's next from the Sci Fi Channel
Star Trek: from Concept to Editor in 14 Days

Real World
Buffy the Masters Thesis (about the growing acceptance of "TV Studies" as an academic discipline)
Craig Newmark on Craigslist.
The Future We Didn't Expect (what did SciFi get wrong?)
Is the Scientific Method the Death of God?
Mistakes Future Historians Will Make about Our Time (If we were to read a story written in the 23rd Century but set in our time, what might we find wrong with it?)
Robocop Vs. Real Cop: Future Law Enforcement (Criminologists and others discuss what changes they're already seeing in their work and what they expect for the future)
Real Aliens (what might we expect real aliens to be like)
Secrets of Area 51 (Based on declassified government documents, personal interviews and extensive fieldwork, aerospace historian Peter W. Merlin reveals the secrets of Area 51. )
Nanotechnology: the Future or a Dying Fad?
Okay, You've Got the Moon. What're You Gonna Do with It?
Unexpected Heroes of the Future (what people from today will be revered in 100 years)
Unintended Consequences (how much do you trust science?)
What If Superheroes Were Real?

People
Being Anne McCaffrey.
Harlan Ellison Tells Us.
An Hour with Frederik Pohl.
Jerry Pournelle: Inventing the Future.
J. Michael Straczynski On...

The catch of course is that there are only 28 schedule slots in the program, and I already have 70 seminars I want to attend, so even if these were optimally scheduled for me I'd end up missing two-thirds of them. Sometimes you are lucky and two seminars you are interested in are across the hall from each other and you can time share between them; or you discover your first choice seminar has a bad panel and you quickly run to your second choice. But my observation from my last two WorldCons is that I probably miss about half of what I would have liked to have seen.

In addition, the seminars run straight from 10AM to 7PM every day with no break - there are no scheduled slots to go find a lunch - and then the evening programs usually run from 8PM-11PM. The bottom line is that WorldCons are endurance events. You try to grab as much as you can without killing yourself in the process.

Posted by Steven at 06:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 19, 2006

TV : Best … Episode … Ever

Watched the 200th episode of Stargate SG-1, and it was a hoot. The kind of episode only they could get away with, and certainly a worthy celebration of this long-lived TV series. While I think the quality of the show has been variable in later years, I still watch it on and off, and it was good to see them having fun.

The series is about how an ancient alien artifact was found buried in Egypt from the time of the Pharaohs. The artifact turns out to be a 'stargate', which allows you to dial up another stargate and transport yourself (via a stable wormhole) to that other location in the universe. The US Government uses it to run a secret project (managed by the Air Force) to explore the universe through the 'gate and to protect Earth from various alien threats.

There were a couple of episodes several years back which dealt with them discovering an alien living on earth who has been brainwashed by others of his kind into thinking he was a human. The alien did however have these vague memories of the existence of Stargate Command, and ended up writing and producing a TV show "Wormhole Extreme" based on his clouded memories - Wormhole Extreme is essentially a bad parody of Stargate SG-1 itself. The team helps him regain his memories; and the Air Force allows the show to continue production because it gives them plausible deniability about the real Stargate program (anyone who leaks anything about the real thing could be dismissed as having been inspired by the show).

So, for the 200th episode, the story is that a "Wormhole Extreme" movie is in production, and the alien writer/producer comes to the team for help on the script. The show essentially becomes the ultimate exercise in self-parody, as they the characters talk about everything that is cliché, overdone, silly, and otherwise humorous about their own show. The inside jokes and writers tricks fly fast and furiously. The stage scenes with the Stargate SG-1 characters that they could never actually do on the real series; but can here in the context of pitching ideas for "Wormhole Extreme". The ending of the episode is interviews with the actors in "Wormhole Extreme" on their 200th episode, allowing them to say the things which everyone assumes the actors on Stargate SG-1 would love to say but never would.

All in all, a perfect self-parody without anyone having to actually break character. The best celebration show I have seen on any TV series.

Posted by Steven at 03:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Life : Off To Worldcon

I have some vague hope that (assuming I can get internet access) I will post daily reports from the show. More likely, I'll just sleep in any spare time I have. I will at least post a trip report when I return.

Posted by Steven at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 21, 2006

Life : A Thoroughly Modern Road Trip

When I was in my 20's, I used to go on road trips quite often. Between lack of funds for flying and the pleasure of driving the open highway, it was my preferred form of vacation. However, since Anne and I got married, the places we have wanted to go for our vacations (like London) have tended to be places where driving was impractical (although we did drive cross country a few years back). It is certainly the case that I have not been able to do a road trip with a tricked-out car like our Prius until now. What a difference.

Mileage
I made it from Mountain View to Anaheim, a distance of 450 miles, using about 9 gallons of gas (I didn't need to fill up), and that includes being stuck in LA traffic for about an hour with the A/C on. The car's on-board computer said we did 53.0 MPG over the trip, although based on how much gas I put in (an unreliable measure), it came out slightly less than that. Nonetheless, given gas prices these days, I have no complaints.

iPod Audio
Anne and I actually used this on our cross country trip, so it wasn't a new experience; but having access to all of my albums (grouped in various ways) to listen to on the way down certainly made the trip more pleasant. Started it playing all of my Folk albums the first day (never made it to the end), and switched to Country on the second day. I decided to save my Rock and Roll albums for the trip back when I expect to be more tired. Not having to fiddle with the radio, and having only those songs I actually enjoy made a significant difference.

Cruise Control
OK, cruise control is very old technology; but back when I did a lot of road trips I couldn't afford such bells and whistles on my cars, so it is relatives new to me. Not only was my leg not tired at the end of the day; but my back felt better too.

GPS Navigation System
By far, the biggest advantage was having the GPS Nav System which came as part of our package on the Prius. I prepared for this trip the same way I have always prepared for a road-trip - by picking up maps and a Trip-Tick from AAA (the main national auto club in the 'States for those from elsewhere). Never used it once. I simply told the nav system where I wanted to go and followed the instructions it gave. I also programmed it to show icons on the screen for all gas stations, restaurants and hotels, so as I approached an exit, I could tell with a glance how "civilized” it was. When I got to LA, I turned off hotels and restaurants and quickly found a gas station nearby to top off the tank.

The best example of how the nav system changed things was when I hit a bad traffic jam on a highway in the middle of no where. As I neared an exit we were stop and go (mostly stop) and state troopers came by with sirens going so I assumed there was an accident someplace ahead. Now in the past, I would never consider getting off the highway in a winding rural area - while the roads would almost certainly connect to a later exit somehow, knowing what turns to make to get there would not have bee a safe bet. However, a quick glance at the nav system showed that it know about the local roads (they showed up on the screen), so I got off and headed in what appeared to be the right direction. Soon the nav system started to show a route other that heading back to the exit I got off at, so I followed the directions and in less than 10 minutes I was back on the highway passed the jam. My guess is that it saved me 30-40 minutes.

I can definitely get used to doing road trips the high-tech way.

Posted by Steven at 08:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 22, 2006

Life : Disneyland

I confess that I am a frequent visitor to Disneyworld in Florida. The fact that my father retired only a 90 minute drive from the resort complex helps, although I was addicted to Epcot, Typhoon Lagoon and the rest of the parks there long before that happened. However, despite having lived now in California for nearly 16 years, I haven’t managed to make it down to Disneyland since we moved here. In fact, I haven’t been to Disneyland in California since I was about 5 years old. To put this in perspective, the last time I visited Disneyland, there actually were “E Ticket” rides.

However, WorldCon is being held this year at the Anaheim Convention Center which is essentially across the street from the Disney complex, so I spent the morning there today.

Now for those who are unfamiliar, the “Magic Kingdom” theme park at Disneyworld Florida is essentially a clone of the original Disneyland in California, so I went assuming I knew the place fairly well. What surprised me most was how small Disneyland was. While the arrangement of the rides is essentially the same between the two theme parks, at Disneyland, all of the rides feel like they are right on top of each other. I knew that one of the things Walt did when he created Disney World was to spread things out some; but I hadn’t really seen how much until now.

The other interesting thing was how they have expanded the complex here in Anaheim. For many years, Disneyland was hemmed in on all sides by businesses which were established to take advantage of the flow of tourists that Disney brought it, preventing the park from expanding (which is why Disney bought a large part of central Florida before building Disneyworld to make sure it didn’t happen again).

Fortunately, in recent years, the Disney corporation has managed to get control of some of the adjacent real estate and built “Disney’s California Adventure” and “Downtown Disney” to finally expand the complex here. While still miniscule compare to Disneyworld (which now had 4 major theme parks and several smaller attractions), with these additions they have managed to bring the best elements of Florida to California while keeping the original Disneyland intact.

A couple other quick comments. Two of the rides - “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “The Haunted Mansion” have been at least somewhat renovated and “re-themed” since I last saw them. Pirates’ was substantially modified both to bring in elements from the successful movies and to remove some “objectionable material” (the implication that the pirates were taking women by force). The changes were in my opinion rather heavy handed and I could have done without them. The ‘Mansion however was a more subtle thing, weaving into the ride a story about a bride who killed each of her many husbands, providing some background as to why the house was haunted and by whom. While I am not sure it was necessary, it certainly didn’t detract from the ride at all.

BTW (being at Worldcon and going to Disneyland) I should note that there is an interesting little subculture within SF fandom of folks who are fascinated with Disney theme parks - the most obvious example being author Cory Doctrow who wrote “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom”. These people are not so much interested in the theme parts as rides, or in the technology itself; but how the rides are designed to interact with the guests. Think of it as an exercise in user interface design - how do you get people to notice the things you want them to notice and ignore the things you want them to miss. It is an interesting subject, and having played through the recent game sequels to Half-Life 2 with the commentary tracks on, I can see some parallels with the problems Valve faces in designing games.

Well, that’s all for tonight.

Posted by Steven at 08:07 PM | Permalink

August 23, 2006

Life : 64th Annual WorldCon, Day 1

And so it begins....

Opening Session
Opening sessions at WorldCons tend to be fairly minor affairs. Gifts are exchanged between the chairs of the previous convention with the chairs of the current one (last year's WorldCon was in Aberdeen Scotland, and they were presented with ribbons which read "So long, and thanks for all the haggis". The guests of honor are introduced (somewhat sad this year as two of them passed away between the invitation and the convention). And the opening gavel was struck.

The highlight this year (in honor of special guest Frankie Thomas who played the title role in the 1950's) was viewing the pilot episode of "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet", complete with the original commercial for Kellogg's Corn Flakes.

Buffy, The Master's Thesis
Panel: a TV studio person, an academic, and an editor of a couple of collections of papers
The session was not about Buffy' itself; but about the growing acceptance of "Television Studies" as a legitimate academic topic for study (in the same way people study Shakespeare's plays). The consensus of the panel was that there were several factors causing this. In part it is because the generation that grew up watching shows like "All in the Family", which did far more than entertain, are now coming to power in academia. In part it is because the ready availability of DVDs of TV shows make detailed study of individual shows practical. In part there are more and more TV shows being produced which are worthy of study (although there was some debate as to whether that was just a result of the Sturgeon Effect - with so many new shows being produced for 100's of channels, the bell curve was bound to produce more good ones).

Given that I love writing about TV shows on this blog, hearing other folks echo some of the thoughts I have had was quite gratifying.

Fantasy doesn't have to be about Kings and Wizards, does it?
Panel: 2 fantasy writers and a fantasy fan
As it turns out, the moderator of this session's flight has been delayed, so the other members of the panel had to scramble to fill in. I stayed long enough to hear all of their initial statements and decided I wasn't going to get as much out of this as I oped so I punted, and headed to my 2nd choice for the time slot....

Why doesn't Science Fiction last on mainstream TV?
Panel: mostly TV and SF writers (I missed the intros; but knew a number of them)
... and boy am I glad I did. The thesis of the panel was that horror and fantasy seem to do better on network TV than SciFi. The quality of the discussion and debate was quite good, and I ended up with nearly a page of notes on this. A lot of points were made which I wish I had time to repeat here; but the consensus view was that mainstream audience wants something that is familiar so that they can get into quickly. SciFi by its nature is about new things, new ideas, and as such it usually takes too long for people to come up to speed and understand it. Horror and Fantasy do somewhat better because they rely on existing tropes (folks know what a vampire is, so you can tell a story with one without having to explain a lot). The agreement from the panel is that the best chance for SciFi on network TV is to do some other genre and add SciFi elements (X-files could be understood as a cop show first, allowing a mainstream audience time to get hooked on the SciFi elements). The other common agreement was that people watch TV because they get involved in the lives of the characters. Too many SciFi shows have characters that are too thin to be interesting to a wide audience.

The best part of the session however was that Tim Minear (a TV writer whose show's I am a big fan of) was added to the panel at the last minute. He was a riot - making fun of all sorts of shows (including his own). His insights on why certain of his shows failed to gain as mass audience were very interesting.

The Brain's Process
Panel: one neuroscientist
A presentation by a rather eccentric and entertaining neuroscientist on some of the latest understandings on how things like consciousness work. A lot of the talk was fairly technical, and so is hard to reproduce here. While I didn't agree with everything he said (a lot of it is creative guesswork without a lot of hard facts), I did learn a lot from the session.

The Buffy Sing
One of the big things in London these days is showing the film "The Sound of Music" and inviting the audience to sing along. Well tonight they did a similar thing, only with the musical episode of Buffy'. I was not surprised that despite the event being held in one of the larger rooms, the place was packed - standing room only. What I was surprised at is how well folks sang - at least enough of them to drown out those who didn't. A good fun time.

Well, that's all for today (first day is short). More tomorrow.

Posted by Steven at 11:03 PM | Permalink

August 24, 2006

Life : 64th Annual WorldCon, Day 2

Today was a tough day for decisions. Except for the first session, there was always at least 2, and up to 4 seminars in each schedule slot that were on my "must see" list. Have no idea if I made the right choices; but here's what I did:

What's next from the SciFi Channel
Panel: a rep from SciFi.com
A quick peek at some of the upcoming shows from SciFi followed by some Q&A. The project which most intrigued me was the 6 hour miniseries coming this December "The Lost Room". Something happens in a hotel room in the 50's, and all of the mundane objects in the room at the time acquire unusual powers. If you comb your hair with the comb, time stops for 5 seconds. If you touch the bus ticket, you are immediately transported to a location on Route 66. If you tap the paperclip, a penny appears. A whole secret culture evolves among those who know about this, with people collecting and trading the artifacts. The most powerful item is the room key itself, which fits any door lock and transforms the door into a portal to any other door in the world, including the door to the original hotel room.

Aliens Among Us
Panel: a collection of writers including one trained anthropologist
The concept of the session was that anthropology can serve as good inspiration for someone designing an alien society - that the diversity of real human cultures can provide interesting ideas for the writer. Unfortunately, the debate quickly digressed into talking about how to do this respectfully to the source culture and I lost interest. So I moved on to my second choice....

Revise, Revise, Revise
Panel: a collections of published writers, some of whom also teach writing
This was a great session on various approaches to getting from the first draft to the final one (or at least the one you turn in to the publisher, understanding that they will desire their own revisions). I have three pages of notes from this one. Some of the key points were:

All authors are different, there is no "one size fits all" approach. Even for a given author, each story is different. Different stories come from different places in the subconscious, so what worked for one may not work for another.

There was a strong consensus that the first pass at revision should focus only on structural issues, and that the level of detail you look at with each subsequent pass should be progressively smaller. Everyone felt that the biggest mistake novice writers make is getting into detailed wordsmithing too early, with the result that they get too invested in good phrases and are unwilling to make bigger changes that may be needed. A couple of the authors felt you should only revise the document twice before sending to your editor - once for structure and a second time for style and wordsmithing.

Everyone felt that reading the text out loud was important, and if you can get a friend to read it to you, that's even better.

Some suggested that you should never edit a document in place when revising it, no matter what the computer lets you do. They felt that retyping the whole thing forces you to think about every word again and produces a better product.

There was a long discussion on outlining, and one author on the panel has the most useful opinion I have herd on the subject. They took the point of view that every author has strength and weaknesses, and that you should design an outline style that addresses your weaknesses. If you tend to lose your character arcs in all of the detailed action, then outline the character arcs in advance; but trust your ability to write the action without outlining. On the other hand if you tend to write your character arc well but get lost in the flow of the action, the outline the action. And so on.

Writing SF for TV and Movies
Panel: Some writers with a bit of experience
It was the hope for panels like this that I decided to go to this WorldCon. The panel was packed with TV writers whose work I know well, going back to D.C. Fontanta who wrote many episodes of the original Star Trek (and became associate producer for the show), and Melinda M. Snodgrass whose recent work I am a fan of.

The concept of the session was to talk about the differences between writing for the page vs the screen. To start off with, the panelists agreed that you have to turn the story inside out. In novels, you generally write from inside the character's head looking out, while for the screen, you are almost always looking from the outside in. The result is that you need to be even better than in novels at "show, don't tell". Dialog is everything in script writing, and prose descriptions should be minimal. Famously, the script for the movie "Sparticus", in describing the key fight in the gladiator arena, only says "they fight". People reviewing scripts written on spec often just read the dialog. The pace of a script is unnaturally fast for most novel writers, particularly for TV. With only 42 minutes to tell your story and the need to set up commercial breaks, you can't have any extraneous content. In fact, all of the writers on the panel who also wrote novels said that their novels got better because of the script writing experience - much tighter and clearer.

2081: The Remake everyone was waiting for
Panel: miscellaneous Schmos
This panel turned out to be a hoax, designed to see how far they could push the audience before they realized it was a joke. The idea was that Sony was going to "re imagine" 2001 a Space Odyssey for the 40th anniversary of the show, only as the panel described the project it would become clear that they were butchering it. I realized what was going on after about 5 minutes and moved on to my next choice (although I did check back at the end to make sure I was right)...

Distribution: how SF gets to you
Panel: missed the introductions
The session was on how book distribution works and how that effects the writer. Things like the differences between mass-market and "trade" paperbacks, etc. What I heard when I came in after leaving 2081 seem to me to be fairly incoherent with lots of isolated facts and figures and I decided to punt (having already wasted 5 minutes). I know it might have improved if I had stuck around; but I wasn't willing to risk it given that there were two other seminars I wanted to see in this time slot. So, I moved on...

The "Surface" of an "Invasion" is at the "Threshold"
Panel: missed intros, but there was at least one writer and one TV critic
The panel was about the three new TV shows last season that involved "alien" invasions that start in the water, and in particular why they all failed to gain a mass audience. A lot of the discussion duplicated a lot of what was said in yesterday's session on "why SF doesn't last on TV", only in applied form. All of these shows were viewed by the panel as "Children of Lost", down to the one-word ambiguous names. They were all guesses by the networks at what made Lost a succeed, and all (in the opinion of the panel) guessed wrong.

Surface never figured out what type of show it wanted to be. Threshold had a great pilot; but then the abandoned all of the character stuff that made the pilot interesting. Invasion was acknowledged as the best of the shows; but it lacked a clear hero that the audience could connect with, and relied on the audience watching each show to pick up all of the clues. It eventually became too complicated, with too many characters having different agendas for a mass audience to follow it. The consensus was that Invasion and Threshold could have probably been written to succeed; but that Surface was too much of a jumble to do anything with.

British SF Television Today
Panel: a bunch of British TV writers and one American critic
I'll start off by saying that while the information content wasn't as high as I hoped, the British writers were an outrageously funny crew and I needed some good laughs at that point in the day. They started with a long list of TV shows currently in production in the UK which we should look for (or avoid) on this side of the pond. "Life on Mars" has already started to play (I'll do a separate blog on it someday). The most highly recommend was "Robin Hood" which isn't actually SciFi; but has a lot of SciFi writers working on it so the dialog is intelligent and snappy. The most interesting news is that a new series of "Sapphire and Steel" is being produced with the original writer from the 60's at the helm.

A lot of the discussion however was about the impact the new "re imagined" Dr. Who has had on British TV. The panelists told some of the story of how it got made (the successful writer refused to do any more work for the BBC unless they let him do Dr. Who). How the BBC then pawned the project off on BBC Wales because they didn't want to waste their time on it; but how the production has been so successful that Cardiff is now becoming a major TV production location thanks to Dr. Who. Given this success, the BBC has now taken a much more positive view on SciFi, and is funding a bunch of new shows - not all of which are worthy. They also talked about how the BBC is starting to adopt some more "American" production methodologies, with both good and bad results (although the writers thought it was mostly for good).

Another interesting side fact that came up - the reason DVDs make in the UK are so "bare bones" - without a lot of extras - is that by law the censors have to approve everything you put on the disk, and that approval costs an outrageous amount per minute of content. Given the cost, they just don't bother over there.

Publishing Science Fiction
Panel: a mix of publishers and editors from small, medium and large press
I didn't stick around long as they weren't saying much I didn't already know from previous WorldCons. The best comment was the "Three laws of editorics":
1) you will buy books which are best for your publisher's bottom line
2) you will buy books which are best for your readers except where such purchases conflict with law 1
3) you will buy books which are best for the genre except where such purchases conflict with laws 1 and 2
stayed about 10 minutes then moved on to...

Good Endings:
Panel: TV and print Writers (including Fiona Avery) and some writer/instructors
The panel was about how to end a story. The key concept is that "writing is a promise, which must be fulfilled in the conclusion". That if you are having problems writing the end of the story, the problem is likely to be in the middle of the story where you didn't set things up right - "the middle justifies the end". Another choice quote was "non-fiction is about facts, fiction is about truth" - that the best ending for any story must be emotionally honest with the characters you have created.

The bulk of the discussion was about how to correctly "twist" the ending. The best endings are those which the reader doesn't see coming, but feels (after the fact) that they should have. The list of individual ideas on this is too long to enumerate here; but among the better suggestions (IMHO) is to fulfill the reader's external expectations but have the emotional impact on the characters to be unexpected, or visa versa - have the character's internal emotional conflict resolved by some unexpected external means. Another option is provide some information at the end which causes the reader to reevaluate the story as a whole (The Left Hand of Darkness was given as a good example of this - where you are given information which causes you to re-evaluate how one character felt about another, and therefore reinterpret certain events in the story).

There was also more discussion on the different types of writers - those than plan their stories, and those that grow them organically as the write them. The latter can actually be surprised themselves by how their stories end.

Posted by Steven at 10:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

August 25, 2006

Life : 64th Annual WorldCon, Day 3

This is always the day that scares the locals. Because night 3 is when they hold the masquerade, a lot of people head out in the morning wearing their costumes. The reactions of hotel staff and other guests is often interesting.

Getting Started Writing SF, Part II
Panel: An agent, an editor, and two published authors
Yes, I skipped part I which had a panel of authors who has recently been published for the first time. Just too many conflicts.

The really short version of the session can be summed up as "As an author, you are the proprietor of a small business, act like it. You and only you are responsible for your career" and "Your rights are all you have, keep as much control of them as you can, and get as much money you can for any control you give away."

A lot of the session was warnings about a lot of the scams and otherwise underhanded dealings which are out there. The most basic principle is that money always flows to the author, not the other way around. If a publisher or agent is asking you to spend money (either paying them for services up front or paying someone else for something), its a scam and run away. A more subtle recent invention is companies which claim to be small press publishers who promise to pay a good commission on books they publish and half the amount for any subsidiary rights they sell. The catch is that the contract doesn't actually promise that they will publish any books (and in fact they never do). Their businesses is raking in the 50% commission you gave them when they re-sell your book to a real publisher.

Even real publisher have started to get more hardball as they have been acquired by large conglomerates. The agent on the panel told about a contract they received recently from a major publisher that had the author sign away all rights to the use of the name they were publishing under indefinitely, and the publisher's new legal office (inherited from the corporation that bought they out) said that the clause would not be removed under any circumstances.

All this led into the importance of having a good agent. The problem of course is that agents good enough to want won't deal with people who haven't sold a book. The solution (which I have heard on every similar panel at every WorldCon I have been to) is that you pretty much are on your own to sell your first book. However, as soon as you get an offer letter, you tell the publisher that you will have your agent contact them to negotiate the contract, and then and only then approach an agent, offer in hand. While the top agents might still decline, there are plenty of good agents who will take you on once you have the offer letter. The important thing is to find an agent who is experienced and knows the kind of writing you do. Another trope which I have heard repeated time and time again is that choosing your agent is as important a decision as choosing your spouse. Also, having an agent is much better than having a lawyer (this being the opinion of the editors and writers). An agent is paid 15% commission, and is well motivated to get you a good deal. A lawyer is paid by the hour and is well motivated to slow down the process as much as possible.

Books that should be filmed
Panel: a critic and several author/screenwriters (big names too)
The panel really turned into a discussion on why most SF makes bad movies. Why Dune failed (both times in the opinion of the panel) and why Enemy Mine worked. The consensus seemed to be that SciFi is (as has been said many time before) "The literature of ideas", and ideas don't translate onto the screen very easily, and it is even harder to convince a studio to try and translate ideas to the screen. The result is that books that film well are action stories with minimal intellectual content. You might want certain books to be turned into films; but you are unlikely to enjoy the results.

It Crawled out of the Slush Pile
Panel: five editors from various sized publishing houses.
The "slush pile" is the industry term for the stack on unsolicited manuscripts the editors have to wade through each week looking for those rare new authors who are worth investing in. This session wasn't about them; but rather the other end of the spectrum - stories of some of the worst submissions the panelists have ever received. Stories with incomprehensible prose, cover letters overflowing with the author's ego, concepts that make you check the return address to see if its a mental institution. The session was quite a laugh.

Perspectives on SF and Media, part 2: Femme Fatales
There is a small track at this WorldCon for presenting formal academic papers, and I wanted to check out at least one of these sessions to see what it was like. This was the only one I could fit in. Two papers were presented:

One was a correlation between gender roles of robots in 50's SciFi and the attitudes of society towards cosmetics. I know that sounds bizarre; but the presentation actually made sense (it wasn't some kind of joke).

The other was a very detailed analysis of a German novel and movie "Alarone" (?sp?) which translates to "The Mandrake". The story is about a girl who is conceived (literally) as part of a scientific experiment and becomes evil, ruining all those around her. The paper was an analysis of those texts in the context of the nature/nurture debate, and the degree to which the various characters' preconceived notions of what would happen and their unwillingness to consider alternatives became a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy.

Not sure I'd go to one of these again; but I was glad I went this once.

Hotel Room
Panel: bed, pillow
I was getting burned out at this point and decided to punt for a slot and get some rest

An Hour with Walter Koenig
Panel: Walter Keonig
Being focused on literary SciFi, WorldCons typically do not feature much in the way of actors. This time however, given the location, the overall TV and Movie content of the program is much higher, and there are a number of sessions which feature actors from a variety of TV shows, most of which I have chosen to skip (although I hear I missed some real entertainment from Marina Sirtis' talk). My one exception is Walter Keonig (Chekov, Bester,...). This is largely based on having read his autobiography which led me to believe that he's not a "star" or a "celebrity" but a hard working actor who really loved his craft and who has a great sense of humor. Hearing him speak only improved on that estimation.

He talked about a lot of stuff. His favorite TV role is Bester (from Babylon 5) - not a surprise. However there have been a number of stage productions he has done which he feels is even better work (such as playing an old Tom Sawyer who encounters Huckleberry Finn one day and they talk about how their lives turned out). When Walter was young, people would mistake him to be Davey Jones (from the Monkeys); but most recently he had someone who thought he was Woody Allen. I think the most telling part of the talk was when someone asked him what historical figure he'd love to be able to play. This was obviously a question he hadn't considered before, and while he contemplated a response, someone from the audio shouted as a joke "George Bush", to which Walter responded quite seriously (and obviously a bit of thought) why a chance to play the president would be a very interesting challenge as an actor - how to play him as a human being as opposed to the caricature that either side of the political spectrum would want to see (and implicitly not whatever he personally believes about the man). You could see the wheels start to turn in his mind as he considered how he might do it. The session was more like an episode of "Actor's Studio" than seeing a "Star Trek Actor".

The Business of Writing
Panel: an agent, three writers, and a writer's business mangers (and wife)
At the first session today they talked about how once you were a published author you were the proprietor of a business. This session was about some of the nuts and bolts of what that means.

There was a discussion of contracts and some of the things to watch out for (or rather get your agent to look out for - they echoed all of the same stuff about agents as in the first session). Be very clear about what rights you are granting, a lot of publishers will try and grab a lot of secondary rights (audio, foreign, etc) in the initial contract without much additional payment. Watch out for exclusion and non-compete clauses - make sure you can live with the limitations. Watch out for how the rights revert when the book goes out of print and how that is effected by "print on demand".

There was a discussion of how advances are paid out (generally not in an initial lump sum any more - you may have to wait for up to a year to get the last installment of your "advance"). Agent fees (usually 15%) and taxes must be taken out of that. There was a lot of talk of tax consequences of being a writer. The irregular income causes all sorts of issues (all of the writers had been audited at some point), and a good accountant is a must. On the plus side, many things become deductible - two of the writers have done TV scripts, and legitimately deduct their cable bills as professional research. Keep receipts on everything. While doing these deductions is clear once you have been paid as a writer, its a bit more fuzzy for aspiring writers.

Publishing houses are viewed as tough businessmen - trying to get as much as they can as cheaply as they can; but are generally honest. There's a bit of short-term magic accounting in how they deal with returns from chain stores; but while you may get less than you should in any given year, in the long run the numbers get corrected. All of the writers felt comfortable doing work for a (real) publishing house based on a handshake, trusting them to work out the contract in the long run. This is in sharp contrast to they experience doing work for TV or movies where they will not type a word without a signed contract in hand (and even then expected to get shafted). The one consistent complaint the writers had was having to remind their publishers to send later installments of their advance.

There was some discussion of publicity and how you should not expect the publisher to do much for you. It is recommended that authors make an effort to publicize their books in any way possible that doesn't cost money - but don't actually spend any of your own money. For instance, a couple of the authors stop by bookstores in any city they are in and offer to sign copies of their books that the store has on hand. The store then tends to position the signed books to sell better (since they can charge more), which increases overall sales. You should at least stop at every bookstore in your home town and suggest they stock the books as being written by a local author.

The most important thing however is not to focus too much on the sales of your last book; but always be working on the next one. Don't let publicity get in the way of productivity. Standard novel contracts expect you to deliver a second book in 6 months - longer than that, and the sales of one will no longer help the other. The synergy between a sequence of books is critical to their success.

The Masquerade
One of the standard features of WorldCon is the Masquerade. This is not a party where everyone dresses up; but a competition where people go on stage in their costumes and are judged, with prizes awarded at the end of the show. I managed to make it this year (normally night 3 is when I run out of steam and end up sleeping through the masquerade). Had a fun time.

Robot Stories
Also watched an independent movie "Robot Stories". I had heard about the film when it won prizes at the Asian-American Film festival (the filmmaker and most of the cast are Asian-Americans); but hadn't had a chance to see it until now. This is a film I plan on ordering a copy of as soon as I get home. The "tag line" they developed to market the film was "Science Fiction with a heart", and that's appropriate. The film is an anthology of four stories, each dealing with human relationships in some way. The "SciFi" elements are there to support the emotional stories, and do so nicely without distracting the audience from what's important. I haven't been moved by a work of SciFi like that since the last Orson Scott Card book I read.

Posted by Steven at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 26, 2006

Life : 64th Annual WorldCon, Day 4

Mistakes Writers Make
Panel: 2 editors, 2 writers and a journalist
It quickly became clear that they were going to cover things I had already heard at this and previous WorldCons, so I moved along....

Moonbase Science
Panel: A former astronaut, a couple former NASA people and some space engineers
While it appeared that everyone on the panel owed their living to NASA at some point in their career, the overwhelming message of the session was that NASA can not and should not be trusted with the future of space exploration, and the private sector was the way forward. If it was only one or two member of the panel, I might have chalked it up to axe grinding; but everyone on the panel had horror stories of how bloated, self-centered, and incompetent NASA is - some quite shocking. While the actual science content of the session was rather low, as a "NASA brat" (my father was involved in the Apollo program), I found it quite interesting.

Behind Forbidden Planet
Panel: five movie writers, directors, and art directors
This was supposed to be a one man show by a guy who had done a lot of research on the history of this classic movie. He however backed out at the last minute, and a director who was a fan of the film stepped in and brought a bunch of folks from the industry who he knew were fans (including director Bill Malone, who owns most of the original props from the movie). Given the substitution, I almost headed to my next choice; but it quickly became apparent how passionate this group was about the film, so I stayed.

As they began to talk about all of the "firsts" in this film and what made it great, I came to realize that "Forbidden Planet" is to SciFi films what "Citizen Kane" is to cinema overall. A lot of people these days watch 'Kane and are unimpressed - there's "nothing new" in it for them; but they miss the point - so many of the cinematic techniques we all take for granted were invented for Citizen Kane. Yeah, they are all standard now; but they were "new" when Citizen Kane came out. So it is with "Forbidden Planet" - so much of what we take for granted in "good science fiction films" today, was done for the first time in Forbidden Planet.

A Key factor in the films greatness (in the opinion of the panel) was how it treated all of the earth/human technology as "matter of fact" - correctly showing that the characters were used to living in this environment. This pointed forward to Lucas's "lived in universe". The cook in "Forbidden Planet", while used for comic relief, was a precursor of the freighter crew in "Alien". This also means the movie is a great example of how to "show, not tell" in cinema.

There was also an interesting side discussion on whether the Internet could be interpreted as our version of the Krell planetary machine, and are there social "creatures of the id" which will be unleashed by giving everyone the ability to publish and access data world wide. Not sure I buy it; but the discussion was interesting.

There is a 40th anniversary DVD of Forbidden Planet due out soon, which may include an early working print that shows how much the film changed in editing.

Harlan Ellison Tell Us
Panel: Harlan Ellison
Harlan, for those who are unfamiliar, is one of SciFi's greatest writers. He has also spent 50 years cultivating a reputation as SciFi's bad boy - offending in person everyone and everything, every chance he gets. He started his talk by kicking people out of their seats to make room for his friends, and then insulting people in wheel chairs ("pretty careless to lose your legs like that, losing your keys I can understand; but your legs..."). He then warned everyone that if they were offended with what he had done so far, that they should probably leave now since it will only get worse. Going to a talk by Harlan Ellison is like watching a car wreck - you know you shouldn't watch but you can't turn away.

Most of the session was taken up with him asking the audience to state the most outrageous story they ever heard about him, which he would then confirm or deny. There was only one denial, and quite often he corrected the story to explain what he actually did was much worse. The bulk of the talk was his correction to "Did you send a dead rat to a Hollywood producer". The answer was no - he actually sent a dead gopher to a New York publisher, and that wasn't the only thing he sent to get the guy's attention. Others deliveries included 100's of bricks, all mailed individually with postage due; and a mob enforcer (with the side story of how he arranged that). To be fair, the publisher has violated the terms of the contract, and Harlan had tried normal means to address the issue first. It was however the gopher, which got (by chance) delivered Friday and spent the weekend in the mailroom, resulting in the building having to be closed on Monday that finally got the mater resolved. The lesson - don't mess with Harlan.

The other bit of news is that he announced that he plans for this to be his last convention appearance. While he continues to write (and has done an episode of "Masters of Science Fiction" to air in January/February), after 50 years he's grown tired of doing conventions.

Mistakes Future Historians Will Make About Our Time
Panel: several writers, some known for their historical research
This was quite an interesting discussion. While there were few specific predictions (other than the future will find our attitudes towards politics, sex, and particle physics to be strange, and probably amusing), the overall discussion was about the kinds of things people misunderstand about other ages, with many good examples.

There was a lot of talk about how people project their attitudes onto people of the past. As an example, many folks today project their post-civil-rights views of race on to the slavery debate in the 1800s - thinking that those who opposed slavery viewed people of African decent as equals, while many of them did not.

There is also the issue of language change. Even today you may get a chuckle in the room when you play the theme song to the cartoon series "The Flintstones" as Fred and Barney sing about having a "gay old time". One panelist reminded people that "motion" used to mean any change, and that "locomotion" (change in location) was the word used for what we mean by motion today. Likewise to "exterminate" was to put something outside the boundary - to evict or exile, not to kill. The point being that folks from the future looking at records of today will be at best confused and at worst will completely misunderstand them.

This then led to the question of what records will actually survive. We like to think that in our modern society that we can now preserve our history; but many examples were given of information which is lost every year. Even within entertainment media, what movies have not made it from film to tape, or tape to DVD? The problem with the last machine that can play the original recordings from Apollo 11 being decommissioned, and NASA not being able to find the tapes was mentioned. It was stated that "the only writings which made the transition from papyrus to parchment were those that were interesting to the people at the time the transition was made".

The final issue discussed was the telescoping effect - how people tend to collapse distant time periods together in their mind, jumbling events together. How many people know who reigned first - Elizabeth I of England or Louis XIV of France? In the future, will people think of long-haired hippies protesting the Gulf War?

Trailer Park
This was just a session where they showed movie trailers for upcoming films. In some cases they were test versions which had not been released yet.

Crafting the Whedon-verse
Panel: Two writers (Tim Minear and Jane Espenson) and a special effects supervisor (Loni Peristere) who worked with Joss Whedon
Joss Whedon is the genius-creator of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly; who, along with J Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5), are the two TV writers I most admire. The three panelists are "Joss-lings" who (by working on his shows) went to "Whedonversity". The panel was them talking about the experience, what they learned, and a bit of what they are working on now.

I think the most telling story of the session was one Jane shared. One of the key principles Joss believes in is that even though you may be writing action/adventure/horror, the story must always be driven from the characters out to the plot. Many other writers of such stories develop stories based on gimmicks – let's send them through time, let's have an evil twin show up, let's have them repeat the same day over and over, etc. - then decide how the character will respond. Joss's approach is to ask what is happening internally to the character, and then what action/adventure/horror situation will best reflect that.

The story Jane Espenson told was soon after she started writing for Buffy', she discovered that Nicholas Brendon (who plays Xander in the show) has an identical twin brother. Immediately she saw all sorts of opportunities to use that and pitched a bunch of story ideas based on using Nicky's brother. Joss rejected them all as gimmicks. A couple years later, the character Xander was in the middle of making a transition from fun-seeking teen-age to responsible adult, and there were conflicts between the two sides of who he was. That's when Joss pulled out Nicky's twin and told a story where the character was split into two people – the teen-age Xander and the Adult Xander, making his internal conflict manifest. That's a great example of the difference between Joss and most TV writers.

The Hugo Awards Ceremony
The climax of each WorldCon (and probably the only event everyone attends together) is the ceremony where the Hugo Awards are presented. While this is the "academy awards" for SciFi, it is a much less formal affair. Connie Willis served as MC, with "help" from Robert Silverberg (they are close friends and have a long standing gag of always interfering with each other when one has a role in the Hugo Awards).

I won't list the winners (lots of places to grab that on the net); but will mention a couple other items:

The "Big Heart Award", given out "for outstanding service to the Science Fiction field" to someone who has contributed in some humanitarian way to SciFi fandom, was given to Forrest Ackerman (who actually co-created the award back in 1958), and the award itself was renamed "The Forrest Ackerman Big Heart Award". Forry (as he is known) is one of the recipients of the first Hugo awards, and was the person who coined the term "SciFi". More relevenat to the honor, he is known for rallying the SciFi community when one of its members is in need.

Betty Ballantine (who together with her husband Ian created both Bantam Books and Ballantine books) was presented with a special award for her contributions to SciFi. At 87, she is still actively involved in publishing and is a strong supporter of the genre.

Harlan Ellison also received a special award, and was obviously surprised and moved by the gesture as he almost made it through his acceptance speech without insulting anyone. He was actually speechless for a bit when he first went to the podium, and was clearly grateful for the sincere honor. While I find his public persona annoying, I can not disagree that his writing disserves all of the honors it has received, including this one.

Posted by Steven at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 27, 2006

Life : 64th Annual WorldCon, Day 5

The final day for this year, and I was exhausted (as were many of the panelists).

What is it about Buffy?
Panel: Writers of the show (including Jane Espenson) and people who have written about the show.
The basic question of the panel is – why, two years after it want off the air, are DVDs selling so well, are people writing doctoral theses on the show, are viewers still watching the re-runs, and are people still holding panels about the show?

The first question the moderator asked each panelist was interesting in that all of them (serious professional writers, journalists, and academics) had very similar stories. All of the came to the show "late" (after it first started), having discounted the show originally. All of them walked in on some group friends intently discussing a work of fiction talking about things like "subtext", "thematic density", "metaphoric integrity" and "character development". All of them asked what great work of fiction was being talked about and in response to being told "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", responded "Buffy? You have got to be kidding."

In terms of answers to the main question, the responses tended to revolve on two ideas. The first is that Buffy' managed to tap into the power of metaphors in a way that no other show has managed. (I'll note that I believe Grey's Anatomy has followed the same path as well).

The other key factor which the panel discussed at length is the way that the show transgressed genre boundaries, not only by a being a comedy/horror/drama but making it such that you can never tell what genre the next 10 seconds will be based on the previous 30. This was central to Joss's concept of the show and was the reason he resisted both request from the network to change to change the name of the show (to "Slayer" before it aired and to simply "Buffy" after season 1). Joss's reason is that the name of the show itself has all three genres "Buffy (comedy) the Vampire (Horror) Slayer (Drama)".

The analysis of the panel is that there are three emotional reactions you can encourage from the viewer – they can laugh (comedy), they can scream (horror), or they can cry (drama). Life is also a mix of these three emotions, and in reality, you never know what is coming next. By writing the show to mix these element in unpredictable ways, they made the show more resemble real life, and therefore was able to connected with viewers in ways other shows was not. I'm not sure I agree; but it is an interesting thesis.

There was more; but I've run out of room.

Inside Battlestar Galactica
Panel: all seven of the show's writer.
A discussion from the writing staff about what they are trying to do with the show and how they do it.

While not "ripped from the headlines", the intent is that the show would be about current issues in society. SciFi is "just the prism through which they examine current issues".

In the miniseries (and first few episodes of the regular show), they enforced a documentary style of filming to make it all feel more real. Even for the CGI shots, there was a rule that you couldn't position a shot unless it was possible for someone to be at that location with a camera. Now that they have the foundation style down, they are a bit more flexible and allow exceptions.

Ron Moore (creator of the show) also wanted to create a very collaborative environment where everyone felt they were a stakeholder. All of the writers are encouraged to suggest improvement. What's even less common in other shows is that this extends to the actors too, and there have been several cases where actors have proposed lines which they felt better communicated their characters. When actually filming, the actors are required to do the scene as scripted at least once; but after that are allowed to improvise if they feel so motivated, and some of the best scenes have been ones the actors created on their own. (all of this is in sharp contract to how Joss Whedon and J Michael Straczynski work).

In other news, the season 2.5 DVDs will contain a 90 minute cut of the episode "Pegasus". Also 10 short "webisodes" will be made available on-line to lead into season 3, filling in some of the gap between the seasons. Finally, "Caprica" (a spin off series) is still in development. It is set 50 years prior to 'Galactica and is about how the Cylons were created. It is more of a drama about families and corporate politics, and tends to stay on the planet.

A Day in the Life of an Editor
Panel: Two (very) senior editors from Ace and Tor and the editor for Asimov magazine.
All about how editors actually spend their time. For the book people, it’s a lot of meetings and fire fighting. There's even a regular meeting to decide the exact font size to use for each book (actually the meeting is to talk about price and page count; but the knob they can actually turn at that point is font size). The editor of Asimov is pretty much a one woman show (she even does some of the type setting), so there aren't as many folks for her to meet with.

There was some discussion amount various levels of editors are publishing houses. There are usually several grades of junior editors (with titles like editorial assistants, assistant editor, etc.) who are all editors; but have someone supervising them. At the top end you have various senior editors (with titles like supervising editor, senior editor, executive editor, etc.) who in addition to handling books also provide supervision to the junior editors. In the middle are the people whose title is just "editor" who are not supervised but don't have to supervise anyone else either. Both of the book editors said that that was the sweet spot in the career of an editor – you can focus entirely on books. Note, the various titles do not represent a hierarchy within the organization – you don't have editorial assistants reporting to assistant editors and so on – the titles are more a matter of pay grade and seniority. New authors will almost always be assigned to junior editors, and the more senior editors tend to just support the authors they established as they worked their way up (mostly because they are too busy with other responsibilities).

An editor might be responsible for publishing 30-90 books a year, with three times that many somewhere in process. The point was made that an editor is never done with a book – years after it as been published they are still the person to go to if some issue comes up with the title – so for senior editors a lot of time is taken up fighting fires on old books.

At the two book publishers, there are a half dozen editors who are focused on doing Science Fiction; but that is just a matter of the editor's preferences – any of the 100's of editors at the company can buy a SciFi book (and do), and those that are focused on SciFi also buy other books when they find something they like. When looking for an editor to send a manuscript to, the second most important thing is to find an editor who has a track record of doing books like yours (the first is to follow submission guidelines).

Advances for authors are based on formulas. They type certain numbers into a program and it tells them the advance to offer. They have some flexibility as to what numbers they type in; but their career depends on those numbers being proven correct most of the time.

The number one requirement for anyone wanting to become an editor is "Move to New York City". The publishers are all based there and while senior folk might be able to arrange to telecommute, new employees don't have that option.

Punt
After that, there was one more seminar slot and the official closing ceremonies. I know from past WordCons that the closing ceremony is puntable, and I was tired enough that I really wanted to get headed home, so I passed on the last seminar (which would have been "The Query letter" – how to write a good "Dear editor, can I send you my manuscript?" letter).

I'll post some summary comments on the conference later this week.

Posted by Steven at 10:18 PM | Permalink

August 28, 2006

Life : 64th Annual WorldCon, final remarks

So, I managed to make it to 35 events in the week on a variety of topics. That sounds pretty good until you consider that there were 1057 events total in the program, so there were vast portions of the convention I never saw. Some of that is by preference (I have no interest in costuming; and there are very few people I'd care to get autographs from, none of whom had scheduled autograph sessions); but a lot of it is just that I couldn't be two places at once. I say that to make the point that if the sessions I attended didn't seem interesting to you, that doesn't mean that there weren't others that would have been.

The other point I wanted to comment on was that "Graying of Fandom". Looking out at most of the sessions and you can see a sea of gray (or bald) heads. They had a display showing the programs and pictures from all 64 WorldCon, and a place for people to sign their names under the first WorldCon they attended. There was a definite bell curve in evidence in the number of names below each convention with the peak in the 70's. This correlates to my own informal observation that the median age for a WorldCon attendee is around 50 (I'd love to have some hard facts on that). Total attendance at WorldCon BTW is reasonably constant (roughly 6500, and preliminary data for this one indicates it will fall in that range as well).

The optimistic view is that this is a result of the addictive nature of attending WorldCon. Once people start to attend, they continue to do so until their health prevents it, so all of the 70 years olds attending now include those who started attending in the 90's as 60 year olds, in the 80's as 50 year olds, 70's as 40 year olds, 60's as 30 year olds, and the 50's as 20 year olds. There is at least some evidence to support this view. According to this theory we reached steady state in the 90's, adding enough new people each to replace those who can no longer attend.

The other opinion however is that WorldCon was created as a means to support a community of fans (sometimes referred to as Fandom with the capitol F) at a time when physically meeting was the most effective way to support each other and our strange common interest. Individuals have raised the issue that perhaps in the age of the internet there are new ways of creating community which are more flexible and effective than large conventions, and that WorldCon itself is in danger as more and more young people look to the net instead of the fan conventions to build the community. These people predict that WorldCon attendance should soon start to decline.

Since no decline is apparent, I provisionally include myself in the first category. I do think that the net has and will change the nature of Fandom; but there is no substitute for getting in the same building as 6000 other people with the same interest as yours. I know when I showed up at the hotel on Monday and started to see familiar faces in the halls, there was a feeling I just don't get visiting web pages.

While I expect to skip the next few conventions, this is clearly not the last WorldCon I will attend. I admit it. Hi, my name is Steve, and I'm a WorldCon-aholic.

Posted by Steven at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)