![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
extrapenguinI visited 3 panels, the art show, and tried to buy books except they closed the damn shops on me the moment I found something to buy.
So, first I and my minion registered, then like good Finns who eat at 11 (and we were still reeling at the time zone lag, so 9-10 local would've been an acceptable lunchtime), we tried to find lunch, except that the nation of Ireland doesn't have lunch available before 12. Hungry, we went to the first panel of the con, at the Odeon Point Square. They were in movie theaters, which was very comfortable, but the panelists couldn't really see the audience (so questions were hard) and it created a very ... distant feel between panelists and audience, in some way.
Before our first panel, we ate some sandwiches and were informed that the queueing for George RR Martin wouldn't start until 14; we told the organizers that we just wanted to eat a sandwich and sit on the floor. We were also informed that the art show didn't start until 14 when we were tossing out the trash in the trashcan right next to the art show opening.
So long and thanks for all the fish Thu 11:30, Odeon 2
Dr Claire McCague (M), Linnea Sternefält, Lionel Davoust, Becky Chambers
- "are they intelligent" generally used to mean "are they intelligent like us"
- animal communications systems are so far not limitless, unlike human language – bees are close, as they can generate complex and unlimited communication, as long as the topic is flowers or places to found a new hive
- other species communicate with each other all the time (crows lead wolves to carcasses so the wolves would pre-butcher the carcass and make it easier for the crows to eat)
- many species use the same pitches for anger and fear, so "anger" and "fear" are universal languages on Earth
- the third level of emotions: are they conscious of experiencing them? do they have theory of mind? (no animals have had this proven about them)
- The Bonobo and the Atheist by Franz de Wall (?) addresses the question of whether compassion exists in animals
- Other Minds addresses the evolution of intelligence – it must've evolved twice, because the human-octopus last common ancestor was so small it couldn't have supported an intelligence in its brain
- symbolic ("fish") vs iconic ("🐟") language – animals have been taught to understand some symbolic language
- if aliens communicate via eg smell (instead of sound), we aren't even realizing what we communicate (Becky Chambers had a long anecdote about her beekeeping and how she shouldn't smell of bananas or gardenias, since they'd make the hive swarm or cause distress, respectively)
- figuring out animals and writing about aliens are all a way of figuring out us
- for book recs on alien communication, we got Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy, Ursula Le Guin's works, and Arrival the film
- material culture also a form of communication
- we rarely see stories about aliens who talk about us like we talk about cetaceans
- the Big Dumb Object of the eponymous genre is always about us, instead of the alien observers.
In general, this was a very engaging panel where the panelists were interesting to listen to. A very good panel to start a worldcon with, and we went in early enough to get good seats. A+, would replicate circumstances.
Horticulture in extreme environments Thu 13:30, Odeon 3
Theresa Storey (M), Ian McDonald, Dr Helen Pennington, Paolo Bacigalupi
- cacti can be grafted onto others to form Frankencacti; Dr Pennington has 5 individuals formed from over 20 originals that are growing in odd Euclidean spirals and propped up by cocktail sticks
- climate change means that we might need eg plants less responsive to sudden warm spells and also better water infrastructure
- we're facing an intersectional apocalypse: global warming, failing soil fertility, and pollinators dying out
- pesticides kill bees, which is the root of a lot of our problems; people are suggesting robot bees as a solution
- apparently, one can give antibiotics to plants
- monocultures are vulnerable to disease, but eg farming two varieties/species in a checkerboard pattern could help break up the disease spread
- "firebreaks" of wildflowers also accomplish the above, plus as a bonus consequence are helping with local pollinator populations
- to survive and become more sustainable, we'd need to change the primary decision rubric from "what's cheapest?" to something more holistic
- ebay is a huge problem for plant import regulations (meant to protect the plant populations from disease spread) – plants arriving in unlabeled post packages can't be processed by customs
- we need to set up permacultures, where we design the whole cycle of the system and have multi-use crops that eg are windbreak, shade, and produce fruit at the same time, especially for small-scale agriculture like in cities
- re: introducing new stuff into systems, it's much better to risk damage to agricultural areas than to convert pristine forests to agriculture
- favorite extreme horticulture books: The Day of the Tryffids, a HG Wells story with blood-drinking orchids.
This panel didn't really follow the description at all, and was more of a "Horticulture after climate change" panel. The panelists were nevertheless enjoyable, and the British guy, Ian McDonald, put an Euro coin into his empty water cup every time he mentioned Brexit. Theresa Storey's also apparently trying to see if tea bushes can grow in Ireland, which is interesting.
At this point, my minion and I met up withschneefink and we went for dinner at the local Japanese restaurant, Musashi. They gave us the lunch menu. (Me: lunch at 11, dinner at 17. Ireland: lunch menu at 12-17. I repeatedly arrived at places an hour or so before they made the switch from lunch to dinner menu.) Then schneefink rushed off to catch a panel, while I went to browse the CCD dealers' hall. I bought some t-shirts (even if the convention t-shirt was out of stock in all reasonable sizes) and was about to buy Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire when the shop closed on me. Not to be deterred, I wandered about until I found a shop that was still open (the only one), and bought Mother of Invention (ed. Rivqa Rafael & Tansy Rayner Roberts) from an Australian small press store. It's an anthology of stories of invention and genius, except all authors are women or nonbinary. I read the Introduction and the first four stories; I think it's a bit too postmodern/deconstructionist for me, but I might get around to finishing it eventually. Of the four stories I read, Seanan McGuire's "Mother, Mother, Will You Play With Me?" is perhaps the most effective. Then I went to queue up for a panel.
Creating wonderful new worlds Thu 19:00, Wicklow Hall 1
Gordon Van Gelder (M), Tanya DePass, Emma Newman, Simon R Green
- the historical model for worldbuilding: add fantasy etc onto historical base
- ripples outwards from the One Big Lie(/change) must be accounted for lest readers fall off
- Frank Herbert's Dune marries background and characters well
- characters have to be shaped by world or an inherent part of it [Ed. Note: this is why most setting-change AU falls completely flat for me]
- character as part of the story's world vs outsider POV
- one way of worldbuilding: get obessed over a minor character, invent a world in which an expy is the protagonist/subvert what happens (eg the Hero's Journey) and give the subversion its own world
- incorporate worldbuilding by making the details work twice, as eg a hook/intrigue/etc plus the worldbuilding, so you hide the infodump
- you don't want actual spontainety in a novel, only the carefully rehearsed simulation of spontainety (plot but don't let readers know you're doing it)
- there is the "what people absolutely need to get the meat of the story" approach to RPG design, and then there are also the "wandering off to do sidequests" people whom you need to design for as well
- if you realize your problem is actually trivial because of your worldbuilding, it's often easier to change the problem, not the worldbuilding
- one shows the world by showing how the characters react to it
- HR Gieger(?) art Ledien [no, I have no idea what the last word is, nor do I recall the context]
- people/works who do this well: Dune, the Broken Earth trilogy, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Wind-Up Girl
- James Hogan was brought up as an example of someone who infodumped too much.
This panel had two novelists and an RPG designer who was occasionally overshadowed by the novelists talking; the moderator did a pretty decent job trying to keep everyone talking.
Then I went back to the hotel, wrote a bit of my WDLF2 assignment #1 (Suddenly Dinosaurs), and fell asleep.
Upcoming posts will deal with Worldcon days Fri-Sun, plus a post on the loot/what I read, and a post on my WDLF2 fics which will sort of hang on the aforementioned; for my assignment #2 I was very much influenced by A Memory Called Empire, and I sort of want to expose my "read this book, then wrote that" orders for this journey and the flashfic, which might be interesting to the one other person who has read what I have (but hasn't watched Guardian) and the one Guardian fan who's interested in metacreation (but hasn't read the books I read). Or maybe the Venn diagram circles will overlap, who knows?
So, first I and my minion registered, then like good Finns who eat at 11 (and we were still reeling at the time zone lag, so 9-10 local would've been an acceptable lunchtime), we tried to find lunch, except that the nation of Ireland doesn't have lunch available before 12. Hungry, we went to the first panel of the con, at the Odeon Point Square. They were in movie theaters, which was very comfortable, but the panelists couldn't really see the audience (so questions were hard) and it created a very ... distant feel between panelists and audience, in some way.
Before our first panel, we ate some sandwiches and were informed that the queueing for George RR Martin wouldn't start until 14; we told the organizers that we just wanted to eat a sandwich and sit on the floor. We were also informed that the art show didn't start until 14 when we were tossing out the trash in the trashcan right next to the art show opening.
So long and thanks for all the fish Thu 11:30, Odeon 2
Dr Claire McCague (M), Linnea Sternefält, Lionel Davoust, Becky Chambers
Like the dolphins of Hitchhiker’s Guide, nonhuman life can communicate with humans in numerous ways including non-verbal interactions, signalling, and even parasitism. Panellists from diverse fields of research discuss the oddness of life and the strange ways the natural world talks to us.
- "are they intelligent" generally used to mean "are they intelligent like us"
- animal communications systems are so far not limitless, unlike human language – bees are close, as they can generate complex and unlimited communication, as long as the topic is flowers or places to found a new hive
- other species communicate with each other all the time (crows lead wolves to carcasses so the wolves would pre-butcher the carcass and make it easier for the crows to eat)
- many species use the same pitches for anger and fear, so "anger" and "fear" are universal languages on Earth
- the third level of emotions: are they conscious of experiencing them? do they have theory of mind? (no animals have had this proven about them)
- The Bonobo and the Atheist by Franz de Wall (?) addresses the question of whether compassion exists in animals
- Other Minds addresses the evolution of intelligence – it must've evolved twice, because the human-octopus last common ancestor was so small it couldn't have supported an intelligence in its brain
- symbolic ("fish") vs iconic ("🐟") language – animals have been taught to understand some symbolic language
- if aliens communicate via eg smell (instead of sound), we aren't even realizing what we communicate (Becky Chambers had a long anecdote about her beekeeping and how she shouldn't smell of bananas or gardenias, since they'd make the hive swarm or cause distress, respectively)
- figuring out animals and writing about aliens are all a way of figuring out us
- for book recs on alien communication, we got Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy, Ursula Le Guin's works, and Arrival the film
- material culture also a form of communication
- we rarely see stories about aliens who talk about us like we talk about cetaceans
- the Big Dumb Object of the eponymous genre is always about us, instead of the alien observers.
In general, this was a very engaging panel where the panelists were interesting to listen to. A very good panel to start a worldcon with, and we went in early enough to get good seats. A+, would replicate circumstances.
Horticulture in extreme environments Thu 13:30, Odeon 3
Theresa Storey (M), Ian McDonald, Dr Helen Pennington, Paolo Bacigalupi
How do we sustain horticulture in extreme places like alien planets or on Earth after a massively devastating event? How do we grow and cultivate food in areas that are hostile to us… or that need extra care and preparation to succeed? And, to put a literary spin on it, how do you write it convincingly if your story is set in such a place?
- cacti can be grafted onto others to form Frankencacti; Dr Pennington has 5 individuals formed from over 20 originals that are growing in odd Euclidean spirals and propped up by cocktail sticks
- climate change means that we might need eg plants less responsive to sudden warm spells and also better water infrastructure
- we're facing an intersectional apocalypse: global warming, failing soil fertility, and pollinators dying out
- pesticides kill bees, which is the root of a lot of our problems; people are suggesting robot bees as a solution
- apparently, one can give antibiotics to plants
- monocultures are vulnerable to disease, but eg farming two varieties/species in a checkerboard pattern could help break up the disease spread
- "firebreaks" of wildflowers also accomplish the above, plus as a bonus consequence are helping with local pollinator populations
- to survive and become more sustainable, we'd need to change the primary decision rubric from "what's cheapest?" to something more holistic
- ebay is a huge problem for plant import regulations (meant to protect the plant populations from disease spread) – plants arriving in unlabeled post packages can't be processed by customs
- we need to set up permacultures, where we design the whole cycle of the system and have multi-use crops that eg are windbreak, shade, and produce fruit at the same time, especially for small-scale agriculture like in cities
- re: introducing new stuff into systems, it's much better to risk damage to agricultural areas than to convert pristine forests to agriculture
- favorite extreme horticulture books: The Day of the Tryffids, a HG Wells story with blood-drinking orchids.
This panel didn't really follow the description at all, and was more of a "Horticulture after climate change" panel. The panelists were nevertheless enjoyable, and the British guy, Ian McDonald, put an Euro coin into his empty water cup every time he mentioned Brexit. Theresa Storey's also apparently trying to see if tea bushes can grow in Ireland, which is interesting.
At this point, my minion and I met up with
schneefink and we went for dinner at the local Japanese restaurant, Musashi. They gave us the lunch menu. (Me: lunch at 11, dinner at 17. Ireland: lunch menu at 12-17. I repeatedly arrived at places an hour or so before they made the switch from lunch to dinner menu.) Then schneefink rushed off to catch a panel, while I went to browse the CCD dealers' hall. I bought some t-shirts (even if the convention t-shirt was out of stock in all reasonable sizes) and was about to buy Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire when the shop closed on me. Not to be deterred, I wandered about until I found a shop that was still open (the only one), and bought Mother of Invention (ed. Rivqa Rafael & Tansy Rayner Roberts) from an Australian small press store. It's an anthology of stories of invention and genius, except all authors are women or nonbinary. I read the Introduction and the first four stories; I think it's a bit too postmodern/deconstructionist for me, but I might get around to finishing it eventually. Of the four stories I read, Seanan McGuire's "Mother, Mother, Will You Play With Me?" is perhaps the most effective. Then I went to queue up for a panel.Creating wonderful new worlds Thu 19:00, Wicklow Hall 1
Gordon Van Gelder (M), Tanya DePass, Emma Newman, Simon R Green
Contemporary speculative fiction features a wonderfully diverse selection of authors, stories, and worlds. Drawing on cultures, histories, mythologies, and landscapes (or something completely new), how do authors develop just the right world to tell their tale? From technology to petticoats, the devil is in the details. So what does it take to make a perfect world? What can we learn from some of today’s fiction about how to do it right and wrong?
- the historical model for worldbuilding: add fantasy etc onto historical base
- ripples outwards from the One Big Lie(/change) must be accounted for lest readers fall off
- Frank Herbert's Dune marries background and characters well
- characters have to be shaped by world or an inherent part of it [Ed. Note: this is why most setting-change AU falls completely flat for me]
- character as part of the story's world vs outsider POV
- one way of worldbuilding: get obessed over a minor character, invent a world in which an expy is the protagonist/subvert what happens (eg the Hero's Journey) and give the subversion its own world
- incorporate worldbuilding by making the details work twice, as eg a hook/intrigue/etc plus the worldbuilding, so you hide the infodump
- you don't want actual spontainety in a novel, only the carefully rehearsed simulation of spontainety (plot but don't let readers know you're doing it)
- there is the "what people absolutely need to get the meat of the story" approach to RPG design, and then there are also the "wandering off to do sidequests" people whom you need to design for as well
- if you realize your problem is actually trivial because of your worldbuilding, it's often easier to change the problem, not the worldbuilding
- one shows the world by showing how the characters react to it
- HR Gieger(?) art Ledien [no, I have no idea what the last word is, nor do I recall the context]
- people/works who do this well: Dune, the Broken Earth trilogy, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Wind-Up Girl
- James Hogan was brought up as an example of someone who infodumped too much.
This panel had two novelists and an RPG designer who was occasionally overshadowed by the novelists talking; the moderator did a pretty decent job trying to keep everyone talking.
Then I went back to the hotel, wrote a bit of my WDLF2 assignment #1 (Suddenly Dinosaurs), and fell asleep.
Upcoming posts will deal with Worldcon days Fri-Sun, plus a post on the loot/what I read, and a post on my WDLF2 fics which will sort of hang on the aforementioned; for my assignment #2 I was very much influenced by A Memory Called Empire, and I sort of want to expose my "read this book, then wrote that" orders for this journey and the flashfic, which might be interesting to the one other person who has read what I have (but hasn't watched Guardian) and the one Guardian fan who's interested in metacreation (but hasn't read the books I read). Or maybe the Venn diagram circles will overlap, who knows?
no subject
Date: 2019-08-21 19:31 (UTC)Oops! It was one of those "past the penguinly bedtime" times so I am not surprised I didn't make much sense. Here I just wanted to dash off something. Maybe I meant creation meta? I really should sleep more... *goes to sleep like a good penguin*
no subject
Date: 2019-08-21 23:47 (UTC)I approve of going to sleep -- hope you slept well.