ExtraPenguin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
extrapenguin) wrote2019-08-24 05:31 pm
extrapenguin) wrote2019-08-24 05:31 pm
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Worldcon Reportage, Sunday
The final day I and my minion spent at Worldcon, as we could only get flights for Monday.
The bare bones of worldbuilding: archaeology in SF Sun 10:00 Wicklow Hall 2B
Ehud Maimon (M), Dr Katrin Kania, Alyc Helms, Marie Brennan
- lots of labor went into making things, so we generally only excavate things from landfills after they've been repurposed multiple times and come to the very end of their useful life
- eg garment pieces were reused as brushes to tar ships with (so they got preserved due to the tar)
- everything around the piece is what gives it context
- technology enables smaller-scale research into teeth wear patterns, pottery residue, and pollen, so we can see what people ate, stored, and grew as crops, respectively
- skeleton sexing is statistical, so there's a margin of error involved, and we gain no insight on gender roles from it
- archaeology is inherently destructive, so an archaeologist must document absolutely everything, even if it's not relevant to the thing they're interested in
- if an archaeologist doesn't recognize something as a tool, biases might form [? possibly connected to some point I lost the context of]
- speculating from site detail = worldbuilding
- a hearth, as a heat source, changes the magnetism of the surrounding region
- waterways are a mode of transport, so in a land of waterways, roads aren't needed (hence a bunch of archaeologists thought the Maya etc were primitive – they were looking for the wrong thing ie roads, and waterway transit infrastructure decays faster)
- the Amazon is actually a very overgrown orchard
- archaeology is about the material culture, influenced by the thoughts and priorities of the populace
- knowing how a city grew makes it more realistic
- book rec: Amanda Downham, The Drowning City
- multistorey houses have deeper foundations, and the arrangements of industries and habitation is very informative
- the change in "in" areas is faster than the time scale archaeology can pinpoint
- preserved texts are mostly upper-class
- every roof is an invention, as only stuff in the ground (the "ankle level of the building") is preserved.
This was a nice panel, with an actual medieval textile archaeologist and two authors who'd met on an archaeology dig! (Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms will in the future be publishing a book together under the pseudonym M.A. Kerrick, as they met on a dig in a place called Kerrick.) I learned new things, got confirmation for some things I'd osmosed, and in general had fun.
Things that SFF writers often get wrong: logistics Sun 14:00 Wicklow Room 4
D.A Lascelles (M), Ginjer Buchanan, Brian Smith, Yoon Ha Lee
- a 90% casualty rate over multiple battles is highly implausible
- isolation from the supply chain is generally disastrous, unlike portrayed in eg Star Trek Voyager
- the Star Trek replicator simply breaks logistics
- infodumps bad, repetitive infodumps worse
- a lot of people enjoy didactic fiction about "exotic" stuff – but not about stocking a grocery store
- logistics that works flawlessly isn't interesting for a story
- logistics is important if it's obvious that the thing wouldn't work without logistics
- handwave "there was a logistics train" and give no numbers to avoid people going "well, actually" at you!
- Napoleon's logistics problem in invading Russia was that the peasants burned their own crops, so he couldn't scavenge
- The Cold Equations and something called the Ark series are basically logistics; The Traitor Baru Cormorant also has a lot of it
- heist and spy stories are about logistics and subverting them.
(I skipped out at that point to give myself time to find the next panel.) The panel was ... well, a large proportion of it was not even about the topic of logistics, but more about storytelling and the utility of prologues. IDK if it'd have required more preparation from the moderator or simply for all the panelists to be at least somewhat in something logistics-related. I came for Yoon Ha Lee and because I was all conned out and incapable of making better decisions. *g*
Then I ran off to find the Stratocaster room in the Gibson Hotel. I was early enough that I caught some of the prior programming:
To the edge of the Sun: the Parker Solar Probe Sun 14:30 Gibson Stratocaster
Geoffrey A. Landis
It was a very nice talk! I learned some interesting stuff about the solar panels – apparently they're shaped like \_ so that they can be extended out when the probe is far from the Sun and then retracted in so that only the small curved bit at the end that's optimized for high temperature photovoltaic collection is outside the shade (it's at 9 solar radii, so even that small amount of exposed surface area is more than enough). In addition to their solar stuff, they're also testing relativity by having their clock on a spaceship, and they'd love to fly through a coronal mass ejection, since they're far enough it wouldn't be harmful and also Science!
Intelligent others in SF Sun 15:30 Gibson Stratocaster
Mika Koverola (M), Russell Blackford, RB Kelly, Benjamin C. Kinney
- an intelligent other is something that makes a human face alienness
- there was some conversation about where Othered people are in this and whether they should be included, but then the panel decided to talk about aliens and robots
- there's a pressure towards making robots/mutants/aliens etc to be allegories of human others
- a basic classification was brought up: evolved vs constructed vs self-modified evolved vs stuff like "the Internet woke up"
- also, evolved (with cruft, adapted to multiple environments) vs recent
- is plausibility something we need to be concerned about re: aliens?
- we need to make monsters accessible if not plausible (eg Frankenstein's monster)
- the enjoyment of the Other comes from what the Other is meant to discuss
- there's a long literature of demon and fairy lovers, even if the demon erupts into our world and violates all the rules (like Dracula)
- it's difficult to make something alien enough that will nevertheless connect with human readers
- then there's also the kettle of fish of exploring otherness vs mapping an alien/robot/etc onto a real-world group
- not all Others are an 1-to-1 allegory for real-world groups, even if there is a resonance
- alien aliens are more present in short fiction – "The Dance of the Change of the Three" was brought up as something with very alien aliens, and also something where the aliens would be hard to keep up for an entire book
- there was discussion of whether SF fans grow more accepting of Others due to SF, or whether people who find themselves Othered/marginalized/whatever find themselves reflected in SF [*]
- Solaris, Greg Egan's work, and the Presger translators were brought up as alien aliens in novels
- the Hugo finalist Nine Last Days on Planet Earth is about inability to communicate with aliens
- a lot of alien SF is also about communication.
This was a decent panel, but at this point I was all conned out and couldn't make the most of it. I'm glad I took notes, though, since this was a nice thing to return to! There was an interesting compare-and-contrast of Frankenstein's Monster (in which we get the monster's POV, and he's shown to be more human than his creator; Viktor is a whiny ass while his creation is a gentleman embittered by prejudice) and Dracula (where the titular monster is supposed to be evil and feared and not at all sympathetic).
[*] My personal suspicion is that autism spectrum adjacent people are statistically overrepresented in SF fandom, since those hard SF novels that everyone maligns for having characters who communicate like no human does were actually some of the only places where I, penguin with Asperger's, could find myself reflected. Similar things are probably true of certain other forms of outsiderness, but I doubt a similar mechanism would be in effect for people marginalized based on eg race.
Then I collected my minion and we ate actually adequate portions at one of the restaurants in the Oriental Restaurant Block! Their Beijing duck in pancakes starter was delicious.
I went to bed early and woke up at 5am, then enjoyed the logistics hellhole of lies that is Dublin Airport (our plane was an hour late, amongst other sins), and had a blessedly peaceful time at Helsinki-Vantaa. Having that as my "home airport" is perhaps giving me a skewed impression of airports everywhere, but fuck it, it's a nice and efficient place that actually works. Then I hopped on a train and got home at 9 pm. During the plane ride and train trip, I read all of Hexarchate Stories and enjoyed them. My favorite was Glass Cannon, the sequel novella at the end!
The bare bones of worldbuilding: archaeology in SF Sun 10:00 Wicklow Hall 2B
Ehud Maimon (M), Dr Katrin Kania, Alyc Helms, Marie Brennan
Whether it’s an actual archaeological dig looking for evidence of alien civilisations or fantasy characters camping in the ruins of their ancestors, archaeological evidence and research can be used to help develop a world beyond the here and now and add complex layers to a story without the need for exposition. The panel will discuss the ways in which archaeology has been used to deepen SFF worldbuilding and storytelling.
- lots of labor went into making things, so we generally only excavate things from landfills after they've been repurposed multiple times and come to the very end of their useful life
- eg garment pieces were reused as brushes to tar ships with (so they got preserved due to the tar)
- everything around the piece is what gives it context
- technology enables smaller-scale research into teeth wear patterns, pottery residue, and pollen, so we can see what people ate, stored, and grew as crops, respectively
- skeleton sexing is statistical, so there's a margin of error involved, and we gain no insight on gender roles from it
- archaeology is inherently destructive, so an archaeologist must document absolutely everything, even if it's not relevant to the thing they're interested in
- if an archaeologist doesn't recognize something as a tool, biases might form [? possibly connected to some point I lost the context of]
- speculating from site detail = worldbuilding
- a hearth, as a heat source, changes the magnetism of the surrounding region
- waterways are a mode of transport, so in a land of waterways, roads aren't needed (hence a bunch of archaeologists thought the Maya etc were primitive – they were looking for the wrong thing ie roads, and waterway transit infrastructure decays faster)
- the Amazon is actually a very overgrown orchard
- archaeology is about the material culture, influenced by the thoughts and priorities of the populace
- knowing how a city grew makes it more realistic
- book rec: Amanda Downham, The Drowning City
- multistorey houses have deeper foundations, and the arrangements of industries and habitation is very informative
- the change in "in" areas is faster than the time scale archaeology can pinpoint
- preserved texts are mostly upper-class
- every roof is an invention, as only stuff in the ground (the "ankle level of the building") is preserved.
This was a nice panel, with an actual medieval textile archaeologist and two authors who'd met on an archaeology dig! (Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms will in the future be publishing a book together under the pseudonym M.A. Kerrick, as they met on a dig in a place called Kerrick.) I learned new things, got confirmation for some things I'd osmosed, and in general had fun.
Things that SFF writers often get wrong: logistics Sun 14:00 Wicklow Room 4
D.A Lascelles (M), Ginjer Buchanan, Brian Smith, Yoon Ha Lee
That’s not how it really works! Organisational planning and logistics often get overlooked or written wrong – whether it’s the time needed to hunt and cook an animal in the forest, or to develop the cure for a disease. Timing, availability, and coordination of things often get pushed into a grey area where good logistical planning goes to die. What does it take to get these details right? When the details don’t work within the story, how does an author work around them? Our panellists share their own experiences, including what they have got right and wrong along the way.
- a 90% casualty rate over multiple battles is highly implausible
- isolation from the supply chain is generally disastrous, unlike portrayed in eg Star Trek Voyager
- the Star Trek replicator simply breaks logistics
- infodumps bad, repetitive infodumps worse
- a lot of people enjoy didactic fiction about "exotic" stuff – but not about stocking a grocery store
- logistics that works flawlessly isn't interesting for a story
- logistics is important if it's obvious that the thing wouldn't work without logistics
- handwave "there was a logistics train" and give no numbers to avoid people going "well, actually" at you!
- Napoleon's logistics problem in invading Russia was that the peasants burned their own crops, so he couldn't scavenge
- The Cold Equations and something called the Ark series are basically logistics; The Traitor Baru Cormorant also has a lot of it
- heist and spy stories are about logistics and subverting them.
(I skipped out at that point to give myself time to find the next panel.) The panel was ... well, a large proportion of it was not even about the topic of logistics, but more about storytelling and the utility of prologues. IDK if it'd have required more preparation from the moderator or simply for all the panelists to be at least somewhat in something logistics-related. I came for Yoon Ha Lee and because I was all conned out and incapable of making better decisions. *g*
Then I ran off to find the Stratocaster room in the Gibson Hotel. I was early enough that I caught some of the prior programming:
To the edge of the Sun: the Parker Solar Probe Sun 14:30 Gibson Stratocaster
Geoffrey A. Landis
From Golden Apples of the Sun to Sundiver, SF has examined missions to the Sun. Now NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has turned SF into reality – travelling faster, making the closest approach to the Sun, and facing heat and radiation more intense than any spacecraft before. How do you design a spacecraft to survive the intense environment near the Sun? How do you power it? What are we trying to learn?
It was a very nice talk! I learned some interesting stuff about the solar panels – apparently they're shaped like \_ so that they can be extended out when the probe is far from the Sun and then retracted in so that only the small curved bit at the end that's optimized for high temperature photovoltaic collection is outside the shade (it's at 9 solar radii, so even that small amount of exposed surface area is more than enough). In addition to their solar stuff, they're also testing relativity by having their clock on a spaceship, and they'd love to fly through a coronal mass ejection, since they're far enough it wouldn't be harmful and also Science!
Intelligent others in SF Sun 15:30 Gibson Stratocaster
Mika Koverola (M), Russell Blackford, RB Kelly, Benjamin C. Kinney
The outsiders. Inhuman intelligences. What are they and what do they signify? Let’s explore the concept of aliens, mutants, cyborgs, artificial intelligences, and other cases in which sentience is different to our own. How difficult is it to write from the perspective of a nonhuman sentience? Will we inevitably insert some humanity into our inhuman creations – and what does that make them?
- an intelligent other is something that makes a human face alienness
- there was some conversation about where Othered people are in this and whether they should be included, but then the panel decided to talk about aliens and robots
- there's a pressure towards making robots/mutants/aliens etc to be allegories of human others
- a basic classification was brought up: evolved vs constructed vs self-modified evolved vs stuff like "the Internet woke up"
- also, evolved (with cruft, adapted to multiple environments) vs recent
- is plausibility something we need to be concerned about re: aliens?
- we need to make monsters accessible if not plausible (eg Frankenstein's monster)
- the enjoyment of the Other comes from what the Other is meant to discuss
- there's a long literature of demon and fairy lovers, even if the demon erupts into our world and violates all the rules (like Dracula)
- it's difficult to make something alien enough that will nevertheless connect with human readers
- then there's also the kettle of fish of exploring otherness vs mapping an alien/robot/etc onto a real-world group
- not all Others are an 1-to-1 allegory for real-world groups, even if there is a resonance
- alien aliens are more present in short fiction – "The Dance of the Change of the Three" was brought up as something with very alien aliens, and also something where the aliens would be hard to keep up for an entire book
- there was discussion of whether SF fans grow more accepting of Others due to SF, or whether people who find themselves Othered/marginalized/whatever find themselves reflected in SF [*]
- Solaris, Greg Egan's work, and the Presger translators were brought up as alien aliens in novels
- the Hugo finalist Nine Last Days on Planet Earth is about inability to communicate with aliens
- a lot of alien SF is also about communication.
This was a decent panel, but at this point I was all conned out and couldn't make the most of it. I'm glad I took notes, though, since this was a nice thing to return to! There was an interesting compare-and-contrast of Frankenstein's Monster (in which we get the monster's POV, and he's shown to be more human than his creator; Viktor is a whiny ass while his creation is a gentleman embittered by prejudice) and Dracula (where the titular monster is supposed to be evil and feared and not at all sympathetic).
[*] My personal suspicion is that autism spectrum adjacent people are statistically overrepresented in SF fandom, since those hard SF novels that everyone maligns for having characters who communicate like no human does were actually some of the only places where I, penguin with Asperger's, could find myself reflected. Similar things are probably true of certain other forms of outsiderness, but I doubt a similar mechanism would be in effect for people marginalized based on eg race.
Then I collected my minion and we ate actually adequate portions at one of the restaurants in the Oriental Restaurant Block! Their Beijing duck in pancakes starter was delicious.
I went to bed early and woke up at 5am, then enjoyed the logistics hellhole of lies that is Dublin Airport (our plane was an hour late, amongst other sins), and had a blessedly peaceful time at Helsinki-Vantaa. Having that as my "home airport" is perhaps giving me a skewed impression of airports everywhere, but fuck it, it's a nice and efficient place that actually works. Then I hopped on a train and got home at 9 pm. During the plane ride and train trip, I read all of Hexarchate Stories and enjoyed them. My favorite was Glass Cannon, the sequel novella at the end!
no subject
WHAT
That is straight-up hedge witch magic I love it.
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no subject
Very interesting write-up, again!
- lots of labor went into making things, so we generally only excavate things from landfills after they've been repurposed multiple times and come to the very end of their useful life
- eg garment pieces were reused as brushes to tar ships with (so they got preserved due to the tar)
I'd never thought of that before, that is a really interesting point!
no subject
The whole bit about labor was very informative, and I'll definitely use it in fic someday. Maybe not in present Guardian fic – I intentionally skimmed over the excursion to the past – but Shen Wei can be very thrifty as a habit, in addition to loving all the comforts of modernity.
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I agree with that suspicion. I am particularly fond of AIs, which are most common in hard SF, and I think it has to do with the way they think, too. (No idea what that says about me.)
no subject