(no subject)

[bookzombie]

Here is the first part of my WisCon report. More to follow if I get my act together!

My panels
'Books You Bounce Of' was very interesting and enjoyable. Interesting to see what caused other people to bounce off book. Not entirely startled to realise that books that dealt badly with class (e.g. Gregory Benford's Timescape which is justly praised for the way it deals with scientists at work, but all the working class characters are either stupid or villainous) tend to get my goat. This seems to have led me kicking and screaming into involvement with imnotandrei's proposed 'Plunckett' award.

As expected, I ended up being the villain of the piece just a little in the 'Why is no one talking about Stargate?' panel. Cross-cultural problems led to me pretty much being hissed at after suggesting that one of the problems with Stargate is that it is very conservative; I didn't emphasise the 'small c' which leads to all sorts of assumptions! It also included one of my treasured memories of WisCon 30 - trying to explain the phrase 'thinking man's crumpet' to a mainly American audience (referring to Claudia Black, just in case anyone was wondering...)! Overall this was a very enjoyable and entertaining panel to be on - I hope for the audience as well!

My final panel, 'The Wages of Trash' I think was slightly less succesful. Partly this was because the tone and direction was not really clear. Some of us thought it would be for fun - talking about trashy books we like anyway and why we like them. But one panel member wanted to make it a serious sociological panel on trash reading being a way of distancing from family abuses or something (going back to the originator of the quotation that gave the panel its title). So while it was okay it never really quite took off.

People
We had company for meals for most of WisCon which was very nice, met a number of old friends and made some new ones. One of my abiding memories of WisCon 30 will certainly be walking towards the hotel after a meal singing 'Slap that Bass' with Nina Kiriki Hoffmann!

LJ people who I remember seeing include:
annaoj, badger2305, billzilla, brisingamen, cabell, cynthia1960, dotar_sojat, imnotandrei, lcohen, littlebutfierce, maryread, no_i_am_phredd, olivia_circe, orangemike, peake, raanve, rawdon, replyhazy, robgates, sdn, tinyhand, whumpdotcom & wrdnrd

I did meet various other people who had LJs but either I a) couldn't read their badges or b) couldn't remember it even if I did! So apologies (if anyone knows of anyone they know I met that have LJs please drop me a note and let me know.

In part two - other panels I attended!

Comments

[littlebutfierce]

Don't know if you've seen this writeup of the Trash panel... I wish I had gone to it, because it sounds kind of intriguing. I think I forgot that I wanted to, & just ended up going to the parties early instead. Sieve-head!

And OMG! You got to hang out w/Nina Kiriki Hoffman! I really need to tail you two more @ cons. ;)

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

Thanks for linking to the write-up; it was a fair assessment of the panel in general. Frankly, it's the panels that sticks least in my mind.

Hanging out with Nina (ooh, first names!) was by accident really (though we'd met her briefly a couple of years ago), as we had arranged to go out for a meal with sdn and Nina (and Lucy Sussex!) joined us.

It was quite cool though...

[sdn.livejournal.com]

you guys can really sing, both of you!

[dotar-sojat.livejournal.com]

Re: Trash. I had someone at the Baring Your Soul in Bare Feet Panel do the same thing- try to turn it into a meditation on the nature of roots of shame.

Talk about a way to kill the fun...

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

In fairness to all concerned, please don't read my comment as implying that there was anything wrong in the serious discussion. My point is that the panelists had different expectations of what the panel was about which meant it wasn't as successful (or at least as coherent) as it might have been.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

That's the problem when one panelist is really attending a different panel. Flow really matters. I was in the audience and wished that I'd seen only one panel; still, it wasn't bad, and I've already started checking out some of the writers mentioned there.