The Plot Bunny Farm

I started off the day by going to a panel on the works of Vernor Vinge (the Hal Clement Science Speaker), which was essentially a Q&A by the other panelists -- a sort of cruel thing to do to someone at 10 in the morning, perhaps, with parties on Friday night, but it was very informative. One of the questions, of course, was "What is the Singularity?" His response included a quote from one of his stories: "This is a different sort of arm's race we're in." He also made the point that it's hard to write a sudden high impact of technology, that it can't be realistic because it's chatted up years, even decades before it's widespread.

Next up was "Technology of T/o/d/a/y/ Tomorrow," with Charlie Stross, Edie Stern, and John Cohn. This was a high-science talk, where everything was discussed from the pros and cons of smartphones (decreased time in office & increased time on street for cops who can make reports remotely, increased stress from executives who feel they're never away from the office), the feeling of withdrawal being away from the Internet (John Cohn was on a reality TV show where everyone reported phantom vibrator cellphone rings during the time of filming), the decreased cultivation of personal memory, and the low cost of DNA sequencing. And some other stuff besides, such as whether we ever will be "jacked in" to the Net.

I went to the literary beer with David Hartwell. It was fascinating: large periods of listening to him talk with Michael Swanwick about Swanwick's new book and about a memoir being worked on by Murray Leinster's daughter. There was also some discussion of unreliable narrators (with the recommendation to read Pale Fire by Nabokov) and of Gene Wolfe's new book -- which evidently ends with a highly crafted bit of unreliable narrator.

The panel on the city, with James Patrick Kelly, Steven H. Silver, Patrick Neilsen Hayden, Alexander Jablokov, and S.C. Butler, provided some prods to my muse (and what doesn't?), but a lot of what was discussed seemed to relate to New York City, despite some attempts to mention cities elsewhere in the country and the world, from African cities to Rome's continued presence, despite periods of expansion and contraction during history. One of the points made was that in science fiction, the cities always feel as if they are constructed whole and entire, as arcologies, rather than growing organically, as real cities do. Fantasy stories do a much better job of representing that organic feel. Also, generally, cities play larger roles in novels than in short stories, because a short story can't really explore very many aspects of a city. (Though Metatropolis was used as an example that it can be done, and done well, with short stories.) James Patrick Kelly also commented that science-fiction writers are not particularly good economists: "Where does the money come from to do these things?"

The "Is Fantasy Displacing Science Fiction?" panel featured David Hartwell, F. Brett Cox, Mary Kay Kare, and Justine Graykin. David Hartwell started off by saying the question has been asked since at least 1980 at cons. When it comes to straight numbers, the answer is no, according to him. SF is in steady state, neither shrinking nor expanding. Fantasy has expanded both in subgenres and absolute number, so it might seem otherwise, but SF is still healthy. Questions of accessibility were addressed, and Brett Cox said that it wasn't as easy to just pick up a good SF book and get it. Hartwell gave a counterexample of Needle by Hal Clement, which is good old-fashioned SF and just as hard to get. For short fiction, Hartwell said that their Year's Best Science Fiction outsells the comparable fantasy volume at least 5 to 1 (which is why YBF9 is POD). Fantasy readers want longer works. Twenty years ago, you could write stand-alone fantasy. Ten years ago, you could write a trilogy for fantasy. Today, readers want open-ended series and big books (which still doesn't mean you should necessarily write a doorstop as a debut novel). I found that a tad depressing, since Sundered Sword is going to be stand-alone fantasy, but I can't worry about the market now. I just have to write the best work I can.

The last talk I went to on Saturday was Jordin Kare's "Beaming Power and Space Elevators," on winning NASA's Centennial Challenge with Otis the Climber. Awesome pictures and video. Also amusing, as his wife (the aforementioned Mary Kay Kare) chipped in with comments about "horror."

After that, bonniers showed me a bit around the waterfront, walking down Summer Street, over to the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, then around Fan Pier before heading back to the Westin. It was a bit more than my ankle was truly up for, but I kept saying, "Oh, no, I can keep going." Boston has some truly lovely views, and walking around made me feel closer to Pepper for a bit.