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Aug. 24th, 2018 12:37 pm
WorldCon, Part 3
The surprising thing was that so many people showed up for a panel at 10 o’clock on a Sunday morning, but we had a standing-room-only crowd. The second surprising thing was that I actually managed to be coherent. The panel was called Mythogenesis, about myth in fantasy and science fiction, and all the other panelists — Tad Williams, Diana Paxson, Heather Rose Jones, and Roni Gosch — had interesting things to say. Heather did a great job as moderator — she told us her theory of moderating, which is that it’s something like being a classical conductor whose orchestra turned out to be a bebop jazz band.
We talked about myths other than the standard Norse or Celtic ones, and regretted that we only had people of European descent on the panel. We talked about cultural appropriation — my opinion, which I’ve stated before, is that you can write about other cultures, but you have to be very respectful and careful and ask the advice of members of that culture or, if that’s impossible, if the culture no longer exists, read a lot. We talked about if the US has myths, and whether they can be myths if they’re created by only one person. I said that superheroes were created by one person but their myths were added to down through the years by other comic writers and now the movies, to the point where you could actually write an epic about any number of them. People seemed to like that, and that’s what we closed with.
Then out to lunch with Pat Murphy, where we talked about thematic resonance and symbolism and deconstruction … no, actually we talked about what writers always talk about, which is advances and gossip and which editors will act in the best interests of your book. On the panel Heather had said that Ursula Vernon’s stories read like myths and folklore that had grown up organically in United States, so we scoured the dealer’s room for her books. I was sure that after Heather had said what a terrific writer Vernon was her books would be sold out, but I managed to snag the last copy of Jackalope Wives and Other Stories. I haven’t gotten very far in it, but the title story is so good that I’m kicking myself for not reading it sooner, for not having had that many more days of enjoyment out of it. There’s a beautiful jolt near the end that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Then to my autographing at 5, this one the official convention signing. I’d done two signings before at a con, and I’d noticed that whichever signing I did first got all the people, and the second one would be mostly me sitting and twiddling my thumbs. This year my first one was at the Tachyon booth, and so, true to my theory, few people showed up at the second. And the other writer scheduled for that time didn’t appear, and the only thing worse than twiddling your thumbs is twiddling your thumbs by yourself. Then, like magic, Bogi and Rose showed up to sign their books — they’d apparently been added to the schedule later. I spent most of the session talking to them and lost track of time, and then had to run to dinner.
Dinner was with Ellen Datlow, Pat Cadigan, Ysabeau Wilse, and Pat Murphy. Then we all went to the Hugos, minus Pat M. John Picacio, the MC, vowed to keep everything moving along, and he managed to bring it in at two hours. I missed the more rambling ceremonies, though, the funny speeches and even the speeches that tried to be funny but didn’t quite come off, the way that the ceremony is run by amateurs, fans, and doesn’t have the cold precision of the Academy Awards. We did get George R.R. Martin and Robert Silverberg presenting one award each, but it wasn’t enough. (Connie Willis couldn’t be there, unfortunately, because of back surgery.) Anyway, Pat C. later said that the ceremony she had M.C.ed had been even shorter — an hour and 50 minutes — and I remember that hers had been pretty funny.
As for the Hugos themselves — Well, once again I realized how few of the new writers I’ve read and vowed to do better. Both Ysabeau and I wondered why the excerpt they showed from “Michael’s Gambit,” an episode of “The Good Place,” gave away the ending for the entire season. Though I liked “Michael’s Gambit” better than “The Trolley Problem,” which was the episode that ended up winning. And I’m glad I was there to see N.K. Jemisin get her third Hugo for the third volume of her trilogy, one for the record books. That should have shut up the doubters, but of course it didn’t. I never like every one of the Hugo winners either, but unlike the doubters I don’t posit some secret conspiracy meeting in dimly lit rooms somewhere. The truth is much simpler than that — my taste and the majority’s don’t always coincide.
Then to George R.R. Martin’s party. It’s terrific that he splashed out on such a lavish affair, with a DJ and pulsing lights and loud music, a bar and refreshments including a chocolate fountain, but these things don’t seem to fit with geek culture somehow, and I wondered how many fans and writers would enjoy them. A lot, as it turns out, but I wasn’t one of them — maybe because I had to drive home after being up for a long time and couldn’t have any of the alcohol. Anyway, I said goodbye to the people I could see through all the glittering lights and left. When I got home I realized that I’d been pretty taken by that chocolate fountain — I found some chocolate on my badge.
Books I bought: The Jackalope Wives, of course, and The Karkadann Triangle, a chapbook with one story each by Patricia McKillip and Peter Beagle, and Lago de Sangre by Ken Wishnia, a mystery in Spanish. (I always think I know more Spanish than I actually do.) And I got some cool swag — many thanks to Ron and Jill and the Woman with the Purple Pen, whose name I didn’t catch but whose pen I will be signing with from now on.
