Star-gazing in Seattle

 

In August my family went to Seattle for the World Science Fiction Conference. Worldcon is a huge annual event (more than 6,000 full members, plus hundreds more who dropped in for at least one of the five days).

A few of the panels I attended: *Why Anthologies?, *No Wrong Way to Write Folk Songs, *Bring on the Bad Guys,  *Alternative Histories from Outside the West, *Cascadia's Many Climates, *Growing Food and Eating in Space, *The Sounds of the Sound,  *An Hour of the Strange, Unusual, Creepy, and  *Home Recording for Non-Techies. 

A lot more than rehash discussions of Star Trek, huh?

I spent a few hours on the Information Desk answering questions for attendees (often the answer was "I don't know." Communication in an ever-changing environment of 6,000+ people is a challenge).  Notice in the picture that some brilliant soul wrote out all the FAQ's, and even put them in alphabetical order.  My people!

One of my favorite totally random moments: I was on an escalator going up while a man going down yelled at his phone: "Stop autocorrecting piroshkies!" Very good food around the Seattle Convention Center, by the way. And speaking of food, Anne Harlan Prather passed on a bit of advice she received for people with a lack of appetite: Eat brightly colored things. They are full of anti-oxidants. 

The Hugo Awards were given out.  They are similar to our Anthonys, voted on by the convention members. I mention this because the winner of Best Novel was The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett, which was also a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel, and how often does that happen?  I read it and it is terrific.  Think Nero Wolfe on a planet where most of the technology is based on vegetation.

Some actual titles panelists mentioned: Lesbians in Space: Where No Man Has Gone Before, 101 Horror Books to Read Before You're Murdered, Thyme Travelers, "Syphillis Sysiphus," My Tropey Life: How Pop Culture Stereotypes Make Disabled Lives Harder, and Unidentified Funny Objects.

A few panels deserve more discussion. One was "Is it Appropriation? Writing the Other."  Moderator  James Mendez Hodes said "A cultural consultant is when you hire someone to tell you you're a racist." Hodes is, of course, a cultural consultant. Panelists talked about outsiders "wearing the culture as a costume."

When asked for an example of cultural appropriation Annie Carl talked about  able-bodied actors playing disabled characters. (She noted that the blind engineer in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was played by a blind man. I might note that panelists also enthusiastically supported Killers of the flower Moon and Chief of War.) Gregg Castro talked about "Indian shopping," which is when writers looking for a Native American who will approve whatever they hope to write. Panelist K. Tempest Bradford runs an educational website, Writing the Other.  She noted that after a certain Beyonce song came out White friends asked her to explain it. "Am I the Beyonce whisperer?"  Shay Kauwe said, approximately, that writer friends will ask her "Can I do this?" when they should be asking "Should I do this? Why am I doing it?" 

I loved the Editing Pet Peeves panel.   Elektra Hammond won my heart by saying her number one complaint is authors who give characters similar names.  Yes!  Another panelist mentioned an author who sent a book pitch to 100 authors - listing them all in the "To" line.  There was a lengthy passionate discussion of hyphens vs em-dashes and en-dashes.  Heather Tracy: "When in doubt ask your copy editor. They will be happy to talk to you for an hour about em-dashes." Editor Atlin Merrick: "I have had new writers treat me like a servant." Also Merrick: "Read the guidelines and you're in the top 30%. Be easy to work with and you're in the top 10%. Send me humor you're in 5%."

The panel on anthologies was particularly interesting. One panelist called them "curated collections." Publisher William C. Tracy pointed out that they are more expensive, since so many writers need to be paid. A lot of them in the science fiction field are funded by kickstarters, with an average of $7500 being raised.  

Oh, and as for payment, here's a shocker.  Reckoning Magazine pays 15 cents per word, Clarkesworld almost as much. 

Come back in two weeks for my favorite quotations from the con.  Until then, keep watching the skies!