balticon
last weekend, we went to balticon, a regional science fiction convention in – surprise! – baltimore.
it seemed much better (and bigger?) than we remember it from the last time we went *mumble* years ago. both of us had a bunch of time slots where there were too many things we wanted to see. the con seemed to developed have complete science, video, and gaming tracks in addition to the usual discussions on genre fiction, writing genre fiction, and making costumes.
a few things that stood out:
• "revolutions are messy", a panel discussion on revolutions in fact and fiction. in short, fictional revolutions are too tidy. they're often presented as the large-scale equivalent of a hero pure as driven snow vs. a puppy-kicking nazi. american authors tend to unduly influenced by hagiography of the american revolution, though it was by the standards of the thing, relatively tidy. (there was only one major unresolved ideological conflict that turned into another war later.)
but revolutions tend to be all loose ends, driven by immediate tactical goals, with lots of people fighting for control, especially whoever is paying for the bloodletting. they don't really make good stories, because the characters frequently suck and the plot makes no sense, even leaving out fluke events that nobody would believe anyway. ("and then the dirty, starving, frozen rebels were saved from annihilation at the hands of the world's most powerful empire by a freak storm, again!")
the story and non-fiction recommendations produced one surprise, managing the middle class household, a guide written for middle-class wives a century or so ago. its advice is unusually solid: figure out what you want to do, who's going to do it, and if it's something nobody in the household can do, who's going to pay for it. i'm going to try to track down a copy.
• there were a couple of very useful panels on writing, one on character development, valuable to my own written roleplaying nonsense, and one on writing action scenes, which i'll need for alpha-reading a friend's draft novel. i've been promised a fight scene, and if it's not good, i'm gonna make it good.
• i picked up a long list of urban fantasy stories to read from a panel on those, and one which takes fairy tale logic as natural law from a discussion of what the world would be like if that held.
• i was disappointed that one of the panels on human expansion into space was trotting out the same misunderstandings (no, "rare earth" elements aren't that rare, nor are they that valuable. $100 - $1,000/kilo for 99% pure stuff vs ~$10,000/kg to orbit.) and fallacies. they repeated the usual cart before the horse fallacy, or whatever it is, along the lines of "X is extremely valuable because you need it to explore further out into space/for some hypothetical technology." i tend to think of this as building a 10-lane highway from the tip of the antarctic peninsula to the south pole: it's very valuable if there's a city of ten million people at the south pole. but there isn't and won't be, so the highway isn't valuable and won't be.
at least the other panel, on living in extreme environments, mentioned a city on mars as a must-read book for space fans.
• the masquerade – despite the name, a costume judging contest – was the best we've seen in years, even including worldcons.
the costumes ranged from copies of franchise outfits to a fancy historical replica, and the quality was amazing, even at the lower levels.
a couple of examples:
a, um, guy in heavy armor inspired by the empire of man from warhammer 40k. the guy inside is much smaller than the costume, and is 72 years old. he found a hobby he likes and ran with it.
a 19-teens historical outfit, using a pattern from then, with a print that also fits the period.
i have a few more in an album. i would have liked to have gotten some photos while the costumers were showing off on stage, but the camera i brought has too slow a lens for that. i shoulda just broken down and brought the serious camera with the fast lens, since the masquerade was really all i expected to photograph.
it seemed much better (and bigger?) than we remember it from the last time we went *mumble* years ago. both of us had a bunch of time slots where there were too many things we wanted to see. the con seemed to developed have complete science, video, and gaming tracks in addition to the usual discussions on genre fiction, writing genre fiction, and making costumes.
a few things that stood out:
• "revolutions are messy", a panel discussion on revolutions in fact and fiction. in short, fictional revolutions are too tidy. they're often presented as the large-scale equivalent of a hero pure as driven snow vs. a puppy-kicking nazi. american authors tend to unduly influenced by hagiography of the american revolution, though it was by the standards of the thing, relatively tidy. (there was only one major unresolved ideological conflict that turned into another war later.)
but revolutions tend to be all loose ends, driven by immediate tactical goals, with lots of people fighting for control, especially whoever is paying for the bloodletting. they don't really make good stories, because the characters frequently suck and the plot makes no sense, even leaving out fluke events that nobody would believe anyway. ("and then the dirty, starving, frozen rebels were saved from annihilation at the hands of the world's most powerful empire by a freak storm, again!")
the story and non-fiction recommendations produced one surprise, managing the middle class household, a guide written for middle-class wives a century or so ago. its advice is unusually solid: figure out what you want to do, who's going to do it, and if it's something nobody in the household can do, who's going to pay for it. i'm going to try to track down a copy.
• there were a couple of very useful panels on writing, one on character development, valuable to my own written roleplaying nonsense, and one on writing action scenes, which i'll need for alpha-reading a friend's draft novel. i've been promised a fight scene, and if it's not good, i'm gonna make it good.
• i picked up a long list of urban fantasy stories to read from a panel on those, and one which takes fairy tale logic as natural law from a discussion of what the world would be like if that held.
• i was disappointed that one of the panels on human expansion into space was trotting out the same misunderstandings (no, "rare earth" elements aren't that rare, nor are they that valuable. $100 - $1,000/kilo for 99% pure stuff vs ~$10,000/kg to orbit.) and fallacies. they repeated the usual cart before the horse fallacy, or whatever it is, along the lines of "X is extremely valuable because you need it to explore further out into space/for some hypothetical technology." i tend to think of this as building a 10-lane highway from the tip of the antarctic peninsula to the south pole: it's very valuable if there's a city of ten million people at the south pole. but there isn't and won't be, so the highway isn't valuable and won't be.
at least the other panel, on living in extreme environments, mentioned a city on mars as a must-read book for space fans.
• the masquerade – despite the name, a costume judging contest – was the best we've seen in years, even including worldcons.
the costumes ranged from copies of franchise outfits to a fancy historical replica, and the quality was amazing, even at the lower levels.
a couple of examples:
a, um, guy in heavy armor inspired by the empire of man from warhammer 40k. the guy inside is much smaller than the costume, and is 72 years old. he found a hobby he likes and ran with it.
a 19-teens historical outfit, using a pattern from then, with a print that also fits the period.
i have a few more in an album. i would have liked to have gotten some photos while the costumers were showing off on stage, but the camera i brought has too slow a lens for that. i shoulda just broken down and brought the serious camera with the fast lens, since the masquerade was really all i expected to photograph.
