Posted by Sari
This is my Worldcon report.
1. The meeting between Europeans and Native Americans is the closest we have to first contact.
2. If there is sex in a story, the story automatically becomes about sex. Sex takes over. Thus a panel about asexuality in SF became a panel about sex.
3. Adverbs
4. We all know cities are palimpsests. But there are examples of cities that are not: Brasil, the hidden, secret cities of Soviet Union. How about spinning them into something fantastic?
5. There is a certain interesting dichotomy between the endings of Buffy and Angel: Buffy achieves thematic closure by returning to the original idea of a blonde in the alley kicking monster’s ass by the montage where women everywere are empowered by Willow’s magic. Angel has an open ending, both thematically and narratively.
6. Man to man kissing on Dr. Who! Way to go!
7. I want to read some Laura Ann Gillman
8. Fannish space is safe. It allows self- expression in ways which in mundane space would be read totally differently. Thus it is a space where it is possible to experiment, to be outrageous, sexy or plain weird. Conflicts and problems arise when the values of the mundane space is brought to the fannish space.
9. “Trollope does not understand dragons?”
10. Why fandom gets so riled when our writers are represented like they were mainstream authors: because we are not just readers, we are fans. We are like supporters of a League One football team whose best players have been bought to Chelsea, and the journalists are raving about what good job Chelsea is doing nurturing and developing talent.
11 Clarke felt it necessary to have Strange save a spy of Wellington because he needed him later. She tweaked history as little as possible, even when it was trivial. Stephenson created his own CABAL which had very different interests and power relationship from the original ministers. A large tweak with no apparent reason.
12. The birth of modern fantastic in the threnches of First World War.
Eating Muffins 