Disorganized WisCon Notes: Day 1
May. 29th, 2003 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslutI make no pretense of narrative here. Expect impressionistic fragments as usual.
I got into Madison on Thursday afternoon, probably nine hours earlier than usual -- we usually blow into town about midnight. There were already a lot of people in the hotel, which surprised me. Didn't do much but catch up on sleep. We did attend the Room Of One's Own reception, which was *packed.* Afterwards we went out to dinner at the Angelsomething Brew Pub. I think I prefer the Great Dane.
Friday morning, I got up bright and early (ugh), because next year I am taking over the Writer's Respite, so I was to meet Melodie Bolt, the outgoing director, and learn the ropes. I sat in on a workshop session -- it was much like most workshop sessions I've been in.
Melodie is frighteningly organized. I am in mild terror at the prospect of having to step into her shoes in this regard. On the other hand, she has three kids, so much practice. The kids are why she's stepping down: 3 kids + one big volunteer job = no time for her own writing.
I was amused to learn that she took the online "what science fiction writer are you" quiz (URL has gone missing) and came out Olaf Stapledon.
After the workshop, lunch at the hotel. The WisCon hotel salad bar had herring salad available, a fact which made me pretty happy, since the rest of their food was merely OK. I love the Midwest. Jim of Tor Books bought my whole table lunch on his free lunch ticket. I had to run before I got to double-check that his little trick worked. I am still grateful.
Friday afternoon was the Gathering, a new thing for WisCon. It's like a big carnival festival, with little activity booths like "Publisher's Crap Shoot" or tarot readings. It's run as a charity for Broad Universe, an organization that promotes genre fiction written by women. It was fun, though I was feeling too poor to participate much, and eventually the crouds and the loudness got to be a bit much. I liked the fact that it was directly connected to the dealer's room by a little passage in the back.
Dinner was noodles at Noodles with Kelly Link and Gavin Grant and other people who are escaping my mind at the moment. Noodles is not remarkable food, but it's decent and quick and cheap. I wish they offered peas as one of their optional vegetables,, because then I could just eat buttered noodles and peas and be deliriously content. I can't remember any of our dinner conversation -- the usual silliness, I suspect. I do remember discussing Traci Lords, briefly.
Sometime in the course of the evening, I ran into my friend Bill, several other Clarionoids (Scott and his girlfriend, Karen, Kate), my friend Cliff and his on-again off-again girlfriend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
punkrockgrrrl, and probably dozens of other people I know. My friends Heather and Aaron were unable to attend this year's WisCon, and I missed them terribly.
Instead of attending my friends' reading in the evening as I probably should have, I dropped into the last half of the panel "American Politics as Science Fiction." It was, er, lively, and I told the moderator, Alan Bostick, afterwards that he deserved a medal for moderating the discussion. It was a bear to keep on-topic, because everyone wanted to vent about the state of U.S. politics. Everyone. The audience was seething. It was impressive, though I wish of course that we could *direct* all that energy toward something more productive than yelling at each other.
And if I hear one more person say "we lack a leader on the left!" I am going to shout back, "you've just nominated yourself!" Why are we waiting for a left-wing Messiah instead of stepping into the breach ourselves?
Anyway.
China Mieville, one of the guests of honor, pointed out that there's a gap between what the US media (remember, I am part of the US media) says that people should believe, and what they actually believe, and this gap is wider here than in the UK, but that's about the only difference between their media and ours. I followed up by saying that it is precisely that gap that people try to fill in with conspiracy theories. I still think this is a useful insight.
I also stopped into the panel on "Urban Fantasy and Pastoral SF," but it annoyed me. One panelist (name omitted to protect the guilty) more or less told me flat out that you can't write a story about, say, bioremediation, because people don't want to read it. Tell that to Nicola Griffith (Slow River) was Bill's response, afterward. My comment at the time was that I don't see why bioremediation can't be an element in a story the same way an FTL drive can be. And no-one could refute that either.
While the panelists were quick to demolish the false dichotomy of urban vs. pastoral (and insightful enough to realize that pastoral does not equal rural), they did not go on to discuss the intersections of these concepts -- like bioremediation, or urban gardening, or all of that. Or satellite dishes and wireless networks in your cabin, or networked goats, or something. All of which I am terribly interested in.
I could tell that if I stayed there, I would become the audience crank, so I left for the parties.
Somehow I missed the reading by Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, and Hiromi Goto. I heard it was great. It certainly had the best title: "I'll Just Play With The Girls I Adore."
Sometime here I discovered I did not eat enough food for dinner and so ate half a plate of chicken wings at the hotel bar. I was sorely in need of vegetables by the time the night was over -- carrot sticks in the con suite do not count.
Coming Soon: Day Two. In which Our Heroine braves the temptations of the farmer's market, has two panels back to back, learns to plot a story, and attends more parties.
But right now, I need to break for lunch.
I got into Madison on Thursday afternoon, probably nine hours earlier than usual -- we usually blow into town about midnight. There were already a lot of people in the hotel, which surprised me. Didn't do much but catch up on sleep. We did attend the Room Of One's Own reception, which was *packed.* Afterwards we went out to dinner at the Angelsomething Brew Pub. I think I prefer the Great Dane.
Friday morning, I got up bright and early (ugh), because next year I am taking over the Writer's Respite, so I was to meet Melodie Bolt, the outgoing director, and learn the ropes. I sat in on a workshop session -- it was much like most workshop sessions I've been in.
Melodie is frighteningly organized. I am in mild terror at the prospect of having to step into her shoes in this regard. On the other hand, she has three kids, so much practice. The kids are why she's stepping down: 3 kids + one big volunteer job = no time for her own writing.
I was amused to learn that she took the online "what science fiction writer are you" quiz (URL has gone missing) and came out Olaf Stapledon.
After the workshop, lunch at the hotel. The WisCon hotel salad bar had herring salad available, a fact which made me pretty happy, since the rest of their food was merely OK. I love the Midwest. Jim of Tor Books bought my whole table lunch on his free lunch ticket. I had to run before I got to double-check that his little trick worked. I am still grateful.
Friday afternoon was the Gathering, a new thing for WisCon. It's like a big carnival festival, with little activity booths like "Publisher's Crap Shoot" or tarot readings. It's run as a charity for Broad Universe, an organization that promotes genre fiction written by women. It was fun, though I was feeling too poor to participate much, and eventually the crouds and the loudness got to be a bit much. I liked the fact that it was directly connected to the dealer's room by a little passage in the back.
Dinner was noodles at Noodles with Kelly Link and Gavin Grant and other people who are escaping my mind at the moment. Noodles is not remarkable food, but it's decent and quick and cheap. I wish they offered peas as one of their optional vegetables,, because then I could just eat buttered noodles and peas and be deliriously content. I can't remember any of our dinner conversation -- the usual silliness, I suspect. I do remember discussing Traci Lords, briefly.
Sometime in the course of the evening, I ran into my friend Bill, several other Clarionoids (Scott and his girlfriend, Karen, Kate), my friend Cliff and his on-again off-again girlfriend
punkrockgrrrl, and probably dozens of other people I know. My friends Heather and Aaron were unable to attend this year's WisCon, and I missed them terribly.Instead of attending my friends' reading in the evening as I probably should have, I dropped into the last half of the panel "American Politics as Science Fiction." It was, er, lively, and I told the moderator, Alan Bostick, afterwards that he deserved a medal for moderating the discussion. It was a bear to keep on-topic, because everyone wanted to vent about the state of U.S. politics. Everyone. The audience was seething. It was impressive, though I wish of course that we could *direct* all that energy toward something more productive than yelling at each other.
And if I hear one more person say "we lack a leader on the left!" I am going to shout back, "you've just nominated yourself!" Why are we waiting for a left-wing Messiah instead of stepping into the breach ourselves?
Anyway.
China Mieville, one of the guests of honor, pointed out that there's a gap between what the US media (remember, I am part of the US media) says that people should believe, and what they actually believe, and this gap is wider here than in the UK, but that's about the only difference between their media and ours. I followed up by saying that it is precisely that gap that people try to fill in with conspiracy theories. I still think this is a useful insight.
I also stopped into the panel on "Urban Fantasy and Pastoral SF," but it annoyed me. One panelist (name omitted to protect the guilty) more or less told me flat out that you can't write a story about, say, bioremediation, because people don't want to read it. Tell that to Nicola Griffith (Slow River) was Bill's response, afterward. My comment at the time was that I don't see why bioremediation can't be an element in a story the same way an FTL drive can be. And no-one could refute that either.
While the panelists were quick to demolish the false dichotomy of urban vs. pastoral (and insightful enough to realize that pastoral does not equal rural), they did not go on to discuss the intersections of these concepts -- like bioremediation, or urban gardening, or all of that. Or satellite dishes and wireless networks in your cabin, or networked goats, or something. All of which I am terribly interested in.
I could tell that if I stayed there, I would become the audience crank, so I left for the parties.
Somehow I missed the reading by Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, and Hiromi Goto. I heard it was great. It certainly had the best title: "I'll Just Play With The Girls I Adore."
Sometime here I discovered I did not eat enough food for dinner and so ate half a plate of chicken wings at the hotel bar. I was sorely in need of vegetables by the time the night was over -- carrot sticks in the con suite do not count.
Coming Soon: Day Two. In which Our Heroine braves the temptations of the farmer's market, has two panels back to back, learns to plot a story, and attends more parties.
But right now, I need to break for lunch.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-05-29 01:34 pm (UTC)i feel your pain. no, really.
One panelist (name omitted to protect the guilty)
email me with who? seriously.
--betsy.
no subject
Date: 2003-05-29 11:17 pm (UTC)I swear you wrote that just for me.
Glad you're back.
--Briana