home > SF > cons > Interaction: Worldcon 2005

The 63rd World Science Fiction Convention
4-8 August 2005, Scottish Exhibition Centre, Glasgow

GoHs: Greg Pickersgill, Christopher Priest , Robert Sheckley , Lars-Olov Strandberg, Jane Yolen .

• Official Interaction: Worldcon 2005 pages

My third Worldcon, and the second at the Glasgow SECC. Ten years on from the previous Worldcon at the same location , this time many programme items were held in a purpose-built conference suite, and not four little noisy open-topped rooms as then -- leading to the slogan "once more, with ceiling". The items were run to a strict timetable, with gophers running around with STOP signs, which were amazingly obeyed. This made for smooth transitions between items, which were spread between the main hall, the Moat House hotel, and the surreal Armadillo itself. Not everything was so perfect: the catering was abysmal, with the only hot food available being hot dogs, bacon rolls and jacket potatoes: I survived on (expensive!) sandwiches and chocolate for the entire time.

As well as the Souvenir Book with its wonderful Jim Burns cover and fascinating internals, we were graced with a CD, containing 500MB of great stuff, including among other things, historic photos from Loncon 1957 and 1965, PDFs of the Progress Reports, Souvenir Book and Convention Guide, mirrors of various worldcon websites, mini-biogs of all the programme participants, the entire Ansible Web site (up to May 2005), zillions of other efanzines, artwork, and more.

Programme highlights

• Panel -- The Portrayal of Science and Scientists on TV
• Jordin Kare -- There Must be 50 Ways to Leave Your Planet
• Panel -- The Limits of Open Source Knowledge
• Panel -- Hans Christian Andersen & the Dark Side of Fairy Tale
• Panel -- Physics and Astrophysics Year in Review
• Panel -- Room 101 with the Guests of Honour
• Panel -- You Can't Copyright My DNA, Can You?
• Panel -- The Military: Making it Authentic
• Quiz -- I'm Sorry I Haven't an SFing Clue

• Panel -- You've Plugged What into It?
• Panel -- Character vs. Science in Hard SF
• Panel -- Aesthetics of SF
• Panel -- How Mediocre Movies Can Become Good TV Shows
• Panel -- Is Genius Gendered?
• Quiz -- Call My Bluff--SF Theory
• Reductio ad Absurdum -- Lucas Back in Anger

• Panel -- New British Space Opera (and Other Space Faring Cultures)
• Panel -- Byzantium at our Borders in the 21st century: the Future of Europe
• Panel -- Hobbits, Orcs & Homo Floresiensis: Build Realistic Creatures
• Panel -- Mapping your World: Creating the Back Story
• Panel -- Alien Anatomy
• Panel -- Why Should We Mind? SF/Fantasy & Consciousness
• Quiz -- Just a Minute
• Masquerade

• Panel -- AI: the Aliens We Make?
• Panel -- Genre Killing Ideas
• Panel -- As It Happens, We Are Rocket Scientists
• Panel -- Sorting SF After 200 Years
• Panel -- Is The Incredibles the Best Superhero Movie Ever?
• Filk concert -- Three Weird Sisters
• Hugo Awards Ceremony

• Panel -- Finding the Fantastic in The Baroque Cycle
• Panel -- The Future of Malware
• Panel -- Medical Hazards of Space
• Jack Cohen -- Designing Aliens

Panel -- The Portrayal of Science and Scientists on TV

Scientists on TV and in movies are often stereotypes, or are portrayed with no real understanding of science or what real scientists do. But there are exceptions -- for example Scully, in early seasons of the X-Files, was a reasonable scientist.

Andrew Adams, Genevieve Dazzo, Therese Littleton

• AA: I'm a working scientist -- well, I'm a computer scientist -- some people say any subject containing the word "science" isn't -- I think of myself as a scientist
• GD: I'm a non-working scientist -- in the US -- science doesn't pay well, computer science does, which is why it's not a science!
• AA: I'm in academia -- the worst of both worlds -- looked down on and don't get paid!
• Babylon 5 -- Space Opera, not hard SF -- but did have scientists -- Dr Franklin -- archetypical SF TV -- hero as scientist -- head of medical, a research scientist, huge team of staff, on the executive board of the station -- managed to juggle all this .... until his nervous breakdown!
  • either superscientist -- expert in everything, or can become so in 30 minutes -- or supergeek -- outside the group, weird -- never just a scientist
  • except when the plot demands that the scientist can't solve it -- they were that good last week, what happened to them this week?
• same with technology -- ST:TOS: Spock found solutions -- ST:NG: same problems, had forgotten old solutions, had to find new solutions (probably the most realistic thing!) -- transporter solves a problem one week, but can't the next
  • each show has a "bible" -- the ST:NG bible says "don't worry about science, just make it up!"
  • bibles are for outside writers -- staff get to cheat
• Terry Pratchett approach to science: can get away with anything if it uses the word "quantum"
• The new Dr Who -- science definitely not of Earth! -- But nonetheless it's consistent -- if something happens in show 5, hasn't been forgotten by show 11 that this lifeform can be killed by vinegar
  • he worked out what the Slitheen were -- the Doctor said "given me information" -- first time I've seen that
• either it gets forgotten, or it gets done again and it's different
  • one definition of insanity: trying again and expecting a different result
• flood of forensic shows -- DNA tests take half an hour, rather than 3-4 weeks -- fingerprints match instantly, rather than a long time to get 500 possible matches -- science is even more magical on TV than in reality -- it's pretty magical in and of itself, it doesn't need to be made more magical
  • laziness?
  • for plot purposes -- don't want them to say "then three months later..."
  • can speed things up, but the results shouldn't be fantasy -- wouldn't hurt dramatic plot to have 20 possible matches to be checked by an expert (not the machine) -- but writers think you are too stupid to notice -- everyone always notices when the rules change
  • new Battlestar Gallactica -- can't detect Cylons in less than 12 hours
• sometimes the forget the science that actually exists -- B5 episode about cutting open a child [ 1.10 Believers ] -- we can already do surgery that doesn't break the skin
  • they could have chosen something other than airways
  • or could have said it's been abandoned for some reason -- there are things done 3000 years ago that we don't know how to do today, because we have different techniques -- in alchemy they had different means to separate out impurities that were abandoned because they didn't give gold -- the old writings imply they could do it better than we can today with our different techniques
  • like Fermat's Last Theorem -- we still haven't found his proof -- if it exists
  • leeches used to be used for any number of reasons -- now going back to using them, but now we understand how to use them -- never see leeching in SF though
  • same with maggots -- those maggots are very expensive, reared in a sterile environment -- they eat only dead flesh, and stop when they get to the "good stuff"
  • in the past, used trial and error, with no peer review! -- they found out what worked, but not why -- that's the science
  • Naked Time -- they had had the problem before, but it wasn't the scientists who knew this, but Riker, who'd been reading history -- just put it into Google and get the answer!
• can be difficult to find peer reviewers -- very specialised -- even harder to bridge gaps because then you have two groups who don't understand it!
  • SF is all superscientists who know everything -- no specialists
  • no real CSI investigates crimes, goes after bad guys -- CSI is a "science fiction" show! -- the guy who does DNA analysis does not switch to fingerprints next week
  • think Silent Witness , think Quincy
• the average jury does not understand science -- writers are afraid to irritate audiences, to show that they are stupid
  • the original Star Trek pilot was too "cerebral"
  • they though people don't like to think -- no-one picks up a mystery as a casual read -- in a romance, you know the ending, the delight is in finding out how stupid they are in between -- which is why the trend of wildly popular science-oriented dramas have taken the networks by surprise
  • Star Wars -- they thought it was the SFX that made it a success
  • when Scully began to question her rational approach, that's when it lost it for me
  • scientists cast as the centre of a drama have to be glamorous -- but scientists really are nerds!
  • they used a real school for the 1st season of Buffy -- filmed during classes and stopped for breaks -- can see the contrast between beautiful people and real kids
  • often start with a non-glamorous character who becomes popular -- so have to glamorise them
• cliches
  • infected organs will turn to mush in 2 hours 30 mins, -- can save at 2 hours 29 mins and be okay
  • take a picture and enhance it -- a pixel is a pixel! -- has become standard and now everyone has to do it -- audience expects it to work like that

Jordin Kare -- There Must be 50 Ways to Leave Your Planet

Ways of getting off the planet, concentrating on the more exotic tech

• need energy and momentum to get to 8km/s and above the atmosphere

• rocket : throw hot gas out the back and go in the other direction -- but not enough energy available in chemical propellants -- want an exhaust velocity of ~ 8km/s, get about half that -- so need mostly propellant rather than payload, and use staging
• cheat by breathing air, using the atmosphere -- any number of schemes
  • first stage is a v. fast aeroplane -- but no such aeroplanes yet -- squirt LOX in the front -- make the air cooler and denser with more oxidant
  • rockets work better out of the atmosphere -- don't have to fight backpressure which affects nozzle design -- don't have to be streamlined
• combined cycle engines -- breathes air and is a rocket
  • essentially trying to make a much heavier more complicated thing work almost as well as a rocket engine -- people keep learning this over and over
  • once you get above ~ Mach 12, it's easier to run it backwards 2H ₂ O -> 2H ₂ + O ₂ than forwards!
• liquid air cycle engines -- sucks in air like a jet, but separates out some of the the air, liquifies it, extracts LOX, uses it later -- takeoff more lightweight
  • heat exchangers -- nice tech -- but whether it's the right way to get into orbit ...
• Spaceship 1 is a very simple example -- aeroplane carrying a small rocket vehicle -- nowhere near big enough to get into orbit -- only a few percent of orbital velocity -- get up to Mach 4, 3000mph -- only requirement was to get to 100km

• cannon : from Jules Verne onwards
  • provided energy and momentum from stuff on the ground -- guns are very energy efficient
• ordinary chemicals don't have enough energy -- the molecules never get hot enough to push the projectile more than 2-3km/s -- the hot molecules aren't keeping up with the projectile
  • higher velocity gases -- light gas gun using hydrogen -- make it hot -- can get fast enough to push to orbital velocity
• can't launch directly into orbit -- trajectory will return to earth -- so need some other propellant, so include a rocket -- so why bother with the gun in the first place...
• gun-launched rockets -- need to survive very high accelerations -- don't help over conventional staged rockets
  • high acceleration, 1000s of g -- can build things that will survive that -- except astronauts -- but more costly
• going at its fastest at the bottom of the atmosphere -- thermal shielding -- very noisy
• better to heat the hydrogen in a furnace than explosively -- but still not cheap
  • on the moon, escape velocity 2km/s -- need only room temperature hydrogen -- use a large gun with a large "silencer" to trap the hydrogen

• EM guns
• rail gun -- current down one rail, across projectile, back up the other rail -- rails can survive 10s of shots -- up to a couple of km/s -- need big pulse of electricity
• coil guns, mass drivers -- magnetic projectile runs down a series of switching coils -- superconducting coils driven out of superconducting region dump their magnetic field and energy very quickly -- hard to make -- cost of capacitors just to store the electricity is exorbitant

• ram cannon, scram accelerator -- tube full of propellant with inside of a ramjet flying down it -- works very well up to 2-3km/s
• vortex gun -- hydrogen injected sideways around the perimeter of the barrel -- projectile has fins, pushed along -- can "sail faster than the wind" -- have to stop projectile spinning

• beamed energy propulsion
• carry momentum as inert fuel, get energy from the ground
• laser beam, microwave beam -- ablate solid propellant to give exhaust -- spin-stabilised
• heat exchanger -- solid sheet of black-painted metal to heat hydrogen
• need a honking big laser -- 1MW/kg
  • can launch most things in 20kg pieces -- except astronauts!
  • lots of little lasers -- accumulate as many as you want to launch as much payload as you want
• can launch into circular orbit
• accelerations comparable to rockets

• space elevators
• wonderful tech, but still SF, even with nanotube materials
• satellites run into them
• some kid will push all 4 million buttons!

Panel -- The Limits of Open Source Knowledge

Wikis are touted as a huge success, but are they useless for practical work? What happens to data integrity in a world where people can effectively vote on the documented value of pi?

Amy Sisson, Alison Scott, Renee Sieber, John Bray, Karen Traviss, Andy Sawyer

• Wikipedia

• interested in the nature of information -- how to organise it
• both great, and a bane, for an academic -- it's a good way to find out about obscure stuff -- except when it isn't -- problems with amount and reliability
• problems with average level of writing skill, in in the professional world

• we expect sources to be reliable
• so far, have had only positive experiences with Wikis
  • researching some Star Wars information -- I didn't know who produced the page, or what sources they used, but it was still very useful
  • even official info is utterly crap -- everything need second sourcing
• original idea was for collaborative work -- use as an encyclopaedia is relatively new
• SF Foundation series of lectures in London -- Jon Brunner talk -- used the encyclopaedia a lot -- even authorities tend to conflict
• tried research for this panel -- pop group name Procol Harum , Latin for "beyond these things", and a breed of cat
  • Wikipedia confirmed that -- but no source -- also that the actual Latin is Pro cul Harem
• factoids breed -- people pick it up, no provenance -- unravelling it is hard -- I've seen single source "facts" that are wrong, breed -- the Internet makes this faster
• Internet also makes it better -- Urban Myths sites -- still get things wrong, but marvellous at tracking back provenance
  • each Wikipedia has a talk page entirely devoted to tracking back
  • most matters of "fact" settle down to a correct argument -- matters of opinion ping-pong
• can create innumerable sources without being reliable
  • Intelligent Design has 1000s of web pages -- doesn't mean they are reliable
  • we live in a world where facts are incredibly mutable -- may arrive at a consensus -- but may not be a fact
• I'm guilt of using Wikipedia when I shouldn't, when I should be going to paper
• I'm more comfortable with academic peer review because I know it better
• what about 2nd, 3rd editions with revisions?
  • libraries want the latest edition, and the earlier ones as references
• the new SF encyclopedia
  • will be a new paper copy, plus an electronic copy updated monthly
  • would you pay for an e-copy, or go for Wikipedia that's free?
    • paper, because I know it's of very high standard, plus I know the biases/prejudices of the authors -- Wiki is more anonymous -- don't know it it's experts
• H. G. Wells has a World Encyclopedia idea
• I'm very mistrustful of what I'm told, no matter the medium
  • Wiki is a kind of democratisation of information
  • whole definition of a Journal has shifted from information gathering to reliability
  • the vast majority of people on the planet don't know Clute
  • there's no point in reading a book review unless you know who's written it
• Wiki designed to be a neutral summary
  • Ian's shoelace site -- hundreds of knots -- just get the info out there
  • cost model has changed -- storing the world's knowledge
  • I used to have a site on forts -- not accurate or complete, getting behind -- exported it to Wiki -- others can now fix my errors -- no longer mine, but I've done my bit -- no longer a hobby site
• I love the idea of everyone sharing everything no-one else knows
  • Wiki does this -- but not 100% accurate
  • nothing is 100% accurate! -- even reliable sources propagate myths
  • that's why we need multiple sources
  • most of the time, don't need it to be accurate -- "who played X in Y?" -- if it matters , would try harder
  • if it doesn't matter, why not just make up the answer?
    • I trust it mostly, even if there are some mistakes
• after a while, you develop a sense if info is crap or not
  • "who played X in Y" is most likely to be right, and have lots of sources -- "mother left baby in car seat on roof" most likely wrong -- if you say "fancy that!" or "is that so?", it's a flag -- the more neutral the information, the more likely to be true
• often the info is just not there
  • authors are not the best source of info on their own writing -- false memories and back-editing
• it's very frustrating to work with people who won't write things down
  • knowledge is power
  • try opening a notebook when people are telling you something
  • very Western thing -- Eastern car companies share knowledge, makes things more stable
• ownership is status
  • people can own their Wiki pages and get status from them
  • how does collaboration affect status?
    • author lists longer than following paper
    • formal and informal ways to recognise who did the work
  • more contributions to Wiki through altruism
    • some people do just mundane maintenance, fix typos
    • even so, it's for status, egoboo -- I feel better
      • no -- there's no way for me to add in who I am
    • reciprocity -- if I do good stuff, others will too, and I can benefit from that
  • data citizenship -- personal standards of behaviour and responsibility
    • would be nice to be able to rate ones own posts for confidence level
• free rider problem -- Wiki is currently running against this model
  • Tragedy of the Commons -- happening with email
  • the same scum of the earth who've attacked the rest of the free spaces on the Internet will attack Wikis
  • it's still new and fresh
• as someone who lives in a State where over half the population believes in Creationism, I'm a bit worried about the democratisation of knowledge
  • we put our faith in the Academy to distil and correct knowledge
  • and it's not just white Catholic monks who are the academy today
  • the further you get from the source of the info, the less able you are to judge the person who wrote it
  • once something is out in the public domain, it's very difficult to get it back
  • everything is biassed
• offshoot -- Wiki News
  • doesn't really work -- it's not clear when you should publish
  • main Wikipedia article works better -- updated with facts to that point
  • managing shifting information -- can keep track of how things change

Panel -- Hans Christian Andersen & the Dark Side of Fairy Tale

Fairy tales really aren't very nice; they encode the fears and prejudices of adult society. By the time you leave this panel you might have doubts about the red shoes you wanted so much.

Edward James, Greer Gilman, Jo Walton , Faye Ringel, John Clute

• on teaching English as a second language to native speakers
• on writing Snow White from the PoV of the mirror
• I'm not sure why I'm here -- I specialise in the 6th Century, but I've a vague idea HCA is 19th Century!

• what distinguishes written and oral fairy tales and mythology?
• written tales are refracted through a particular/peculiar mind
• there is a false dichotomy between written and oral -- we've never experienced an oral fairy tale -- we have only the written record, not faithful transcription -- just a redaction of it
• the 4th Century called Greek myth "lies of the poets" -- even mythology is a written tradition
• HCA didn't just write down and sanitise fairy tales -- he also made up ones -- and made some stories darker
• fairy stories are only light when being lighthearted -- they are how individuals cope with the world -- there is no presumption that it will work out right
• essentially they're about a little girl walking through a scary world all alone
• light side -- if it has any function beyond joy -- it's a whole way of explaining how to get through to the other side -- that's the triumph
• eucatastrophic -- HCA was a very deeply committed Christian -- The Little Match Girl is a very happy story because she dies and goes to heaven!
• fairy stories are not very Christian
• the original Grimm's tales had some lives of saints
• at one time Denmark had the highest suicide rate in the world -- I always thought that's because they were brought up on HCA
• we don't remember HCA for endings, just for stories about living in the real world
• Prof Dundas classification
  • folk tales -- Aesop/animals/erotic tales/...
  • fairy tales are a subset of these -- fiction
  • myths -- in our world -- how the world came to be
  • legends -- not in our time
• compare HCA and Ibsen -- same tradition
• the more we know about HCA, the less likely we are to make fun of in real life -- he was delusional, weird, obsessed -- his stories are painfully excreted jewels from this life
• Jane Yolen is often called the US's HCA -- but the real contender is Lovecraft!
• great 19th Century figures always seemed to get it wrong which part of their work was great -- HCA wrote a lot of crap adult novels -- Sullivan a load of terrible serious music -- they didn't know what was great, and didn't respect it
• also 20th Century -- A. A. Milne thought more of his serious adult works and plays -- Gordon Dickson was writing SF potboilers to fund a serious historical novel -- he killed his creative drive by becoming serious
• Tolkien felt The Silmarillion was his great work -- it allowed him to write other stuff -- can "let go" on these other works -- can let the darkness out
• HCA never repudiated his fairy tales, but really thought he would be famous for his other novels -- they are very derivative and tedious -- some of the prose sounds like slash fiction!
• Selected Tales are all dark -- others are more lightweight -- we are the ones selecting the dark
• real fairy tales are completely lacking respect and support for institutions like law, state, church -- rather about making do, and surviving them
• Emperor's New Clothes -- very subversive -- he must have known this -- convenient concept -- it's derived from a very lighthearted Spanish folk tale -- he made it subversive
• great fantasies are stories of refusal, not of escape -- demonstrations that the world has gone wrong -- commercial fantasy often misses this -- HCA is a refreshing refusal of all the crap -- but that doesn't makes things happy
• Steadfast Tin Soldier -- ballet girl who dies -- ballet is code for prostitute -- his half-sister was a prostitute, on a street with 38 brothels
• if it's refusal, what about the sentimentality HCA weaves in? -- it's the balance that makes it entertaining and bearable
• it's just very difficult to tell the truth -- you need the zanies -- success is a very dangerous thing to have
• without that shimmer, maybe it wouldn't have been given to children
• Tolkien was trying to kick HCA, tiny elves, etc, out of the way -- he was thinking that HCA is not mythopoetic -- but he does strange and wonderful things with old ingredients
• Tolkien was writing a myth of creation, not a fairy story -- a myth that might work for us
• myth is physics -- how, why, up, down -- fairy tales are biology
• HCA was just sane enough to be influential -- Henry Darger, a sad, lonely American in an institute for the insane, wrote a million word illustrated tale of little naked girls with penises who fought evil -- his obsessions are not easily communicable -- if he'd been a little bit saner his might have been one of the great fantasies of the 20th Century
• I suspect many people have this kind of thing in the back room, and it never comes to light
• HCA had no problems with marketing himself
• his early works are reaching right down -- his later works became tamer, but he never lost the night
• Great Sea Serpent , a late story -- there are lots of creatures discussing what it is -- we eventually discover that it is the transatlantic Cable -- a thing that changes our lives
  • sounds like Kipling !
  • when he's not writing about strengthening the Empire, Kipling is very subversive
• since the beginnings of literature for children, it was declassé to write just for children
• he started in extreme poverty, but ended very rich
• when middle class people write about social problems, it comes across as very patronising -- even if it works at the time, it's dreadful a few years later -- needs to be kept underground
• why did Disney ruin The Little Mermaid ?
  • a story that revolves around a woman having her tongue torn out so that she can't speak, then goes through agonies every step she takes, couldn't be brought to film
  • Disney is Titus Andronicus for fish
• Gulliver's Travels is biting satire and commentary on injustice -- 1984 , Brave New World are attacking social wrongs -- between these, fairy tales are a sneak attack
• 19th Century saw very rapid aging of Western culture -- heavy imperatives on everyone to behave as rulers of the planet -- 20th Century is recovery from this
• Disney is not the first to Disneyfy HCA -- he did it himself -- he completely falsified his early life

Panel -- Physics and Astrophysics Year in Review

Guy Consolmango, Dave Clements, Mark Olson, Jordin Kare

• microscopic inclusions in meteorites appear to show that they were formed 5-10 Myrs after the formation of the solar system in the vicinity of a supernova
  • meteorites have bizarre isotopes -- young stars give of enormous amounts of X-rays -- may have made these isotopes
• 2 new trans-Neptunian objects -- one may be called Xena !
  • if you discover an asteroid, you get to name it -- if you discover a planet, you don't. So if he wants to call it Xena, can't call it a planet! -- talk about your existential dilemma
  • very strict naming criteria for asteroids -- not after money or pets
    • Pluto is Micky Mouse's dog, so can't be an asteroid!
    • Tombaugh wanted to name it Percival Lowell -- couldn't, but it is PLuto
  • infrared observation -- star mostly in the visible, planet mostly in IR -- better ratio
  • when Pluto was discovered, it was a major observation -- 15th magnitude, at the limit of the technology -- now 18th mag objects can be seen by amateurs, trivially -- can get CCD cameras that blow away anything we could do a few years ago
• recent model reproduces the solar system nicely -- 4 large planets, large halo of icy bodies
  • migrating planets idea very popular in the last 10 years
  • Kuiper belt -- trans-Neptunian objects -- many clustered in resonance with Neptune -- more than there should be -- strong evidence the planet has moved -- one model had Uranus and Saturn trading places! Shades of Velikovsky!
  • the thing they are orbiting is changing mass as the solar nebula collapses
  • as major body orbits get more eccentric, chaotic timescales drop exponentially
• extra-solar "hot Jupiters"
  • extra solar planets now seen directly, rather than by moving their stars
  • massive gas giants close to star -- it's what the instruments can see
  • don't expect them to form next to the star -- because all the "standard models" developed are based on a sample of one! -- so migrating planet models become popular -- but not enough data yet
  • could there also be earthlike planets
    • if gas giants migrated, would have scattered small rocky planets -- if formed in place, maybe
    • also, hot Jupiters could have rocky moons
• anisotropies in the 2.7K cosmic microwave background (CMB)
  • 1 in 10 ⁵ variations -- fingerprints of seeds that grew to form galaxies -- until recently, no evidence for this connection -- IR survey shows features in galaxy distribution that matches scale of microwave anisotropies -- implies gravity is enough
• fundamental constants changing?
  • from Eddington to today -- latest set of measurements show that they do appear to be constants
  • changes to fine structure constant ~1/137 would give shifts in spectral lines patterns -- new lab experiments sensitive to 1 in 10 ¹⁵ , over 3 years, saw nothing
• zeptogram balance -- weighed a 7 x 10 ^-21 g Xenon atom -- [ New Scientist article ]
• Pioneer satellites -- launched ~ 30 years ago
  • some of the most distant man-made objects -- Voyager 2 has overtaken Pioneer
  • look at velocity as they leave solar system -- can measure accelerations very precisely -- JPL can count wavelengths there and back -- observed acceleration not accounted for -- even including impulse from sunlight reflecting off spacecraft, photons from power generator, etc -- same level of acceleration that crops up in galactic rotation curves -- first of many issues of galactic dark matter -- may be a coincidence, but fits MOND, a purely empirical theory that adds an extra term to Newtonian gravity when accelerations are very small -- dwarf galaxy Tully-Fischer relation fits MOND better than cold dark matter -- MOND is a fudge factor -- but now a bunch of theorists are looking at MOND in brane-theory
    • ... as long as it doesn't result in Dean Drives!
    • shows something about the sociology of science -- don't want to rip up physics -- problems fitting MOND into GR
• on the very largest scales the CMB seems to lack anisotropy
  • reasons unclear -- may be issues with observations (last time, COBE, was a single bad pixel!) -- seems to be aligned with solar system ecliptic -- may be some ionised material masking it, foreground effect
  • also, have only one universe to measure -- running into "cosmic variance" effect -- run 10,000 computer models or more, get a different universe each time, including some odd variations compared to the average -- significance of observation at 99% level (1 out of 100) with no new physics -- our universe might have had a bad day!
  • or, universe isn't the shape we think it is, but is a lot smaller, and we're looking at the backs of our heads -- averages out large scale variations
• Einstein's cosmological constant -- biggest fudge factor
  • may turn out to be right!
  • that's the difference between Einstein and us -- when he puts in a fudge factor, it's right
• cold fusion
  • hand-held "pyro fusion" device
  • don't get excited -- all based on hot fusion on a tiny scale, and they don't scale -- less out than in
  • nice neutron generators
  • if Pons and Fleischmann had got what they said, they would have died of radiation poisoning
• ITER -- next big fusion reactor -- commercial fusion is 40 years away, and has been for the last 40 years

Panel -- Room 101 with the Guests of Honour

According to George Orwell, Room 101 contains "the worst thing in the world", the thing you most hate and fear. Our guests will provide some pet hates and argue why they deserve a place there; the devil's advocate will try to argue them out.

Bridget Bradshaw, Greg Pickersgill, Christopher Priest , Connie Willis

• GP: one of the things I hate about fandom, and there are many, is the " moving wave of the present " -- new fans realise there is fandom, but anything before they joined is "before my time" and doesn't matter -- Beethoven, Hal Clement , these are okay -- but fandom is something that happened the first moment they encountered it -- fandom gave me a cultural context and a different way of looking at the world -- so it's baffling to me that others since then "don't need to worry about that" -- fandom is a real cultural object
• BB: how many old fanzines are crap?
• GP: most of them -- 90% of everything is crap, as Theodore Sturgeon tells us -- occasionally there's a really good one
• CW: yes, it's maddening when someone comes singing the praises of a very derivative fantasy writer, and you point them at Tolkien , and they say "yes, but he's kind of copying"
• GP: in the 1970s and 80s this "moving wave of present fandom" arose in Leeds
• BB: in it goes

• CP: filk -- [mix of applause and boos!] -- the problem is several -- they comb their hair backwards -- it's a psychopathic condition that once they start playing they are incapable of stopping -- they look you in the eye and encourage you to sing along with the chorus -- it's very unfunny -- I fear it! -- a fan sang at me for hours
• CW: and then they say "this is the first verse of 75"
• BB: it has to stay -- and I've written a little song about it...

• CW: The Panel From Hell -- "Death and Dying" -- I'd researched it, and was ready to talk about how the field handles it -- first person, Barry Longyear , told us about his heart attack -- then the artist GoH told us about when his cat died, and how it made him cry -- the third person, a nurse, made impassioned plea for euthanasia, I was in complete agreement by then -- then it was me! -- I bravely tried to move into SF -- at which point the moderator said "you are off-topic and you need to share something personal" -- then someone from the audience said "we are going to live forever -- frozen heads" -- and it was only 10 minutes in!
• BB: but look at the enjoyment you are getting now!
• CW: I have more than enough material -- I don't need any more
• BB: in it goes!

• GP: Dinner Party Fandom -- we've all got to go out for dinner every night to a nice restaurant -- it takes time to get everyone together -- it's dead time in programming -- also, we can't go to X for a convention, because it's not close enough to Y restaurant -- you're going to a convention ! the food is just fuel! nutrition goes out of the window! your diet is going to be Guinness!
• CW: and then you finally get to the restaurant and you tell them you want a table for 46 -- then someone says "they haven't got vegetarian"
• GP: just give everybody a bowl of gruel and a large brandy -- go to the convention, then subsist
• CP: I went to a con in Gloucester -- when the person who knows where the restaurant is says "it's just around the corner", you know you're in for a long walk -- I have a vivid memory of walking around every street in Gloucester with Brian Aldiss saying "it's just around the corner"
• BB: I don't want to just subsist -- eating vegetarian lasagne for lunch and dinner for four days
• CP: stay in the convention -- don't go off for some middle class encounter -- I like being in this claustrophobic environment with people I know and like -- can have so much fun with so many people -- on the other hand, I can see the other point of view -- it is claustrophobic, it's all SF fans, there's a real world out there -- but if I do go out for a meal, I keep wondering what's going on back at the con
• CW: there's always one point at a con when I feel "I must get out of this job" -- at one con, after that moment, we went out for a meal, and the conversation was so good, the waiters were hovering, listening to us -- I can't forfeit that!
• BB: Dinner Party Fandom can just go out for dinner, and leave us at the con
• [audience] when we got to the restaurant, we found the whole block had burned down! -- in Boston

• CP: James Audsley , the American writer who has changed his name to Christopher Priest -- he did it deliberately -- when asked why, he said he thought it was cool -- it's not like Equity, with rules about names -- for a long time I didn't take it seriously -- but he writes comics, one called XERO, after a fanzine
• CW: it's stealing -- it's ethically wrong even if not legally wrong -- I could change my name to Jane Austen , my sales would just ...
• CP: I rang up DC Comics, spoke to Brian Augustin[?} his editor, and he said "what do you want?" "I want him to change his name back -- what he really needs is a new name -- I propose Harlan Ellison !" -- when you're a writer, all you have is your name -- at best, it causes confusion -- but he's actually damaging my career now
• BB: in the vault

• CW: The Panel From Hell II -- the blowhard, where one person talks for 45 minutes, then it's opened up for questions -- but the worst is with crackpots -- at Wiscon, called Gender -- I thought it would be about gender in SF -- turned out it was about how women would love their period if the male hierarchy hadn't indoctrinated them into thinking it a curse -- I became more alarmed and confused and finally said " what ?!" -- they told me I was brainwashed and I wasn't writing about women's issues but the Blitz! -- I thought the Blitz was a women's issue! -- so I then wrote "Even the Queen", and haven't mentioned it since
• CP: you don't know what The Panel From Hell is -- European con panel on "SF and God" -- first says "I don't know why I'm on this panel, because I'm and atheist, and I have no views on God" and then proceeds to tell you his views on God -- as do the rest
• CW: a schools talk on "Art and Education" -- first says "there is no place for Art in schools, blah, blah", we two in the middle give our spiel, then fourth says "it's clear that the first panellist's comments were directed at me ..."
• BB: into room 101

Panel -- You Can't Copyright My DNA, Can You?

Genome, appearance, personality -- what happens when you CC licence them? Can you assert moral rights over your DNA?

Alastair Reynolds , Andrew Adams, Carolina Gómez Lagerlöf, Ken MacLeod , Richard Morgan

• will the laws of publishing become the ethical rules of society?
• copyright is the wrong form of Intellectual Property -- should use patents
  • if you can prove you came up with something independently, can't be sued for copyright infringement
  • patenting -- can't come up with idea independently -- have a state-granted monopoly on the thing, not just the expression of it
• when you patent a gene, it's not just the gene, but what you are going to do with it
  • have to sequence it, can't just patent something in the body
  • EU law -- can't patent a clone
• can you patent the same gene for different purposes?
  • patent law is trying to adapt its legislation for new technology
  • can patent a molecule as a product, then patent for use -- so can patent for new use
• also some limitations to non-human use -- but tendencies are "this law for sale" -- subject to lobbying -- law is very complicated, politicians don't understand it, say "it's about commerce" and come up with a compromise of lobbyists -- but who speaks for the average citizen?
  • Information Federation : Drake and Braithwaite
  • plants -- can't sell on the seed, maybe can't even grow own seed
  • we will see a whittling away of safeguards in current laws
• artificial chromosomes -- build a chromosome platform and shoot what you want into it -- loaded with augmentation, put into child at birth
  • inevitable will be huge abuses and mayhem -- but not imminent
• can't patent a discovery -- need to do something inventive -- eg, say a plant has medical activity, but we don't know which component -- find it, extract it, purify it, can patent that
• can't patent if published - -needs to be new -- so can't patent human genome -- just looking at something and saying how it works doesn't get a patent
  • human genome is some kind of average -- what if I find a weird thing, can I patent that?
  • yes, if you say the protein can be used for this -- can still research it
• in the US, Myriad Genetics have patented breast cancer genes, and have monopoly on testing -- costs $3000 a test -- not true in UK
  • this is totally unethical -- often found as the result of large amount of collaboration
• many genes in a chimp are the same as human
  • these sequences may be easily duplicable
  • worry if the little bastards have Napstered you all over the planet?
• in US -- cell line patented from a patient -- court case said he had no rights, even though it was his genome -- all rights went to the people who had extracted and purified cell line
  • also other v bad precedents in existence
• in US, can patent anything with utility -- in EU law has to have "technical effect"
  • in US, can patent method of treatment -- in EU, use of compound to be used in treatment
  • breast cancer -- patent for test methods
  • cannot patent human gene in living organism, but can patent it in a lab setting for a particular purpose
• we've seen how these laws can be influenced by corporate lobbyists -- Disney, American recording industry -- what could happen like this for the genome?
  • Dawkins -- people who grew up before the digital age worry about putting fish genes in tomato: will it taste fishy? -- those grown up later are happy to pull a piece of code from somewhere and use it somewhere else without "contamination"
• our IPR laws are already creaking
  • Napster
  • Gibson : the street will find its own use for tech
  • not confined to genetics -- increasingly finding laws we have are not sufficient for tech
  • corporations are v good at controlling what the have
    • new Harry Potter books on the Internet in China because of the demand
  • law is what you can get people to obey
  • the War on Drugs is how I see the future of this stuff
• as long as it takes big resources to invent something, need patents to protect it
• if everyone patents trivial things, or kills off new areas, may result in political pressure
• strong and knowledgable hacker community -- as gene sequencing gets cheaper, how to control the gene hackers?
  • fully annotated sequences available online -- v hopeful thing
    • patented processes, but details of gene not made available
    • almost all software to process it is Open Source
• some big companies make more money out of suing for patent infringement than for new patents
  • patents stopping research, eg on breast cancer genes
  • need a lot more than the sequence
• Al Reynolds: Pushing Ice is a near future story of comet mining -- find an alien artefact -- ship sent to investigate -- owned by huge conglomerate -- assessing feasibility of hydroponics -- all copy-protected plants, so they're screwed
• Iterated multi-person Prisoner's Dilemma -- too many defectors, especially in Universities -- so it will all crash and burn
• it patent things, have to publish -- can do research on it -- but maybe companies won't, because can't then make money on it
• I don't go for collapse view -- we'll find ways to deal with this stuff -- your computer is full of licensed sw, but what you create with it is yours -- don't worry about the tech, but who controls it -- there will be a balancing human ethics dimension

Panel -- The Military: Making it Authentic

Does it matter if we don't get the equipment right? Is there a military ethic that we have a duty to get right? What matters to readers in uniform?

Richard Morgan , Paul Chafe, Simon Bradshaw, Karen Traviss, Scott Westerfeld

• get technical details wrong -- it's SF, so that's okay -- but miss plot opportunities
• get mindset wrong -- I despise MilPorn -- "it's fun, done by mindless grunts" -- insulting
  • just speak to people in uniform -- what goes through their minds, the stresses they are under
• there are many different kinds of soldiers -- writing about human beings
  • Vietnam Vets -- some have gone insane from trauma, some are extremely successful businessmen
• I'm continually amazed at what infantry soldiers think, and how they can have possibly thought that was a good idea
• I work hard to make it authentic to my own experience , because that makes a realistic character, more impact
• the military is a unique social environment -- lots of common experiences -- whether motivated by beer or vodka
• always hardest to get humans right in SFX -- not because we're hard to do, but because we're good at looking at them -- same is true of characters -- we all have a good idea about the way hierarchies work, and motivations
  • hierarchies are like trees full of koalas -- from the top looking down it's all smiling faces -- from the bottom looking up, it's an endless stream of arseholes
  • in most militaries, not allowed to argue with the boss
  • some elements of the mindset are alien to civvies -- including following orders-- eg, Order 66 in Revenge of the Sith : some say they wouldn't do it -- when you sign up, agree that orders may not fit in with what you want to be as an individual
  • I'm surprised by people who say "I wouldn't follow orders" -- people do it v easily -- Milgram experiment -- and if you're in a mindset that says you will, it's not so simple
• British cavalry units in the past -- class concerns -- sub officer could be from higher social class -- politics in the army
• big difference now -- so much more comms -- takes away responsibility when person not cut off
  • "long screwdriver" effect -- Aliens : Lieutenant controlling team form half mile away -- all goes pear-shaped
  • Black Hawk Down -- v similar scene -- no coincidence
  • if you give the General the option to micro-manage, there's a great temptation to do so!
    • also happens in Police, Fire, etc -- they feel helpless, it's exciting -- they screw up v badly
  • Navy have got used to this -- Captain always there, had to learn not to micro-manage
• military orders: "we're here to defend democracy, not to practice it"
  • need to say this, because a lot of questioning of orders
  • also, since WWII, consideration of ethics of "just following orders"
• professional v conscripted military -- short term v long term soldiers -- war, occupiers, peacekeepers, ...
• different armies have different cultures -- eg US army has not been through 30 years in Ulster
• will always have need for tribalism/bonding -- training together as infantry
• sometimes ability to obey orders saves our life
• army often gets chain of command and support tactics wrong -- so it's no surprise SF gets it wrong -- the army is a machine that keeps working even when you pour sand in it -- devolve responsibility to lower level -- "strategic corporal" -- have to make decisions in three seconds while scared shitless -- then dissected for months on CNN
• Starship Troopers -- History and Moral Philosophy classes -- today's military training in what constitutes a lawful order -- especially after Nuremberg -- difference between an order you don't see the point of or would do differently, and one that is just wrong -- not only have to understand, has to become second nature
• new Battlestar Galactica gets military culture v right -- also maintenance tech is v good

Panel -- You've Plugged What into It?

Hardware Hacking is an increasingly popular pastime. Also the advent of computer control has revolutionised many hobbies, e.g. amateur astrophotography.

Jordin Kare, Martin Hoare, Cory Doctorow

• EFF is resisting constraints on end-user mods
• JK: I write SF&F, where the SF is called a "technical proposal", the F is called a "budget proposal"
• I've got 1860s calculators, germanium transistor computers, 7 or 8 photocopiers in my garage -- I had a PDP-IX for a while, and several gems of MIT student mods
• I'm mostly involved in viewgraph engineering nowadays
• I built a computer from telephone relays and selectors -- a bit slow, but it worked
• today I have a giddy exultation -- what can we do with all this power ?
• I like core because it keeps its memory -- you could swap cores when no-one was looking
• there's a convergence between hw and bio hacking
  • genome is not 2D -- it's a 3D configuration -- something changing here affects something there
  • self-modifying code on FPGAs -- nearby transistors affect each other
• certain components are so cheap, they are in everything -- laser pointer, camera, ...
• I bought a disposable cell phone for this conference (weird idea even of itself) -- and it has games, calculator, alarm, even a flashlight
• Bluetooth hw in a Bell handset, interface to a cell phone -- interface the rotary dial pulse generator -- a chip to count pulses and convert to binary
  • need a load of relays with little levers to hit the buttons!
• plugging into Google Maps
  • cell phone power locations -- know why it's stopped working!
  • high yield explosives hack -- 50kTonne blast radius
• PVR [personal video recorder = HD recorder]
  • record the entire British free to air signal for 31 days
  • a frozen moment in time -- watch up and down the dial -- events as they happen
  • this is exactly the tech that legislation was supposed to stop -- it happened a month after we killed the legislation
• some copy protection is giant steel doors on cardboard boxes
• manual says: it is illegal to receive cell phone bands, so do not remove diode D14...
• access control systems make certain reverse engineering illegal -- this is really dangerous
• the people who build these use-restriction things have grown up modding everything
  • building cat's whisker radios was what made me an engineer -- and the purpose of this meeting is to stop people building on digital TV -- we are engineering the last generation of engineering!
• playing a synthesiser by soldering and unsoldering contacts -- on the stage!
• trying to restrict A to D converters to block the "analog hole" -- inconceivable
• FPGAs -- don't need to build so many -- will have boutique designers for everything with logic in it
• paper construction -- can now generate hi-res PDF designs for download
  • CAD to paper craft output designs -- including a steam engine!
• building real world things is becoming easier -- laser cutters etc becoming v cheap
  • connecting 1930s milling machines to computers
  • 3D printers
  • will be able to manufacture any physical object as easily as sw
  • low cost inkjet that die cuts paper
• origami experts showing how to fold your metal with as few folds as possible
• home automation
  • you use your home so much you don't want it not working
  • do you want 1990s tech permanently built into your home?
• hacking the human genome -- don't want Apple II tech in the baby -- when it grows up, it will have 20 year old tech hardwired into its genome!

Panel -- Character vs. Science in Hard SF

It is sometimes said that in hard SF, the science is a character too. What does this mean, and can or should it be reconciled with a traditional understanding of character?

James P. Hogan , Justina Robson , Stanley Schmidt , Patrick J. Gyger, Greg Bear

• characters have always been important in SF
  • lower class blue collar, unlike "literature" characters who can choose their fates
  • these people also say that Kipling and Dickens have no characters -- it's a slur
• Jules Verne characters don't change through the novel -- not transformative
• Analog definition: science integral to the story -- but are still interested in the characters -- but sometimes they don't need to change, don't need to psychological messes!
• it's as if SF can't handle science and characters all in one go -- but also SF's misconstrual of literature -- if you are putting in lots of science and social change, there's not enough room for fully intimate portraits -- but that's not the point
• they sneer, until they try to write one -- the results can be quite hilarious
• in mainstream, the world is provided for you -- get bogged down easily
• Judy Lynn del Rey : "a novel is a story about people that we care about solving problems that matter"
• science as a character in its own right -- a good guy
• Poul Anderson -- great interaction between characters and science -- good characters, but they grow out of the nature of their world
• "I read mainstream because I care about people" -- that's a dangerously anthropocentric viewpoint!
• "The winter of our discontent" has no meaning on a world without seasons -- even mainstream literature is dominated by the world we we evolved on and live in
• JR: I think of the science first -- we all do our little scientific thought experiments
• Candide doesn't evolve -- Don Quixote doesn't evolve -- they are types
  • we evolve, and don't like it -- comfort literature doesn't change
• Dickens -- one or two characters evolve, the rest are types, and fling vegetable marrows over the wall every time you see them
• the Universe is a character you can't argue with -- you can't violate its rules -- but you can learn to use its rules
• mainstream novels nowadays have to take cell phones into account
• Cronenberg's "The Fly" -- classical literary tragic story -- his knowledge destroys him -- like a film about a character dying on Everest
• science is what scientists do
  • it's more than that -- it affects everyone -- it gets out of control
• I consider it a reliable indicator that a book is doing well if the characters have taken over -- they are doing things in their world for their reasons
• SS: I had two characters who took over -- I just wrote down what they did -- but they were constrained by the physics I had invented -- so that bit drove the plot
• when I get stuck, I invent characters smarter than me, and let them solve it!

• in movies, scientists have a higher death rate than gunslingers
  • gunslingers are bad shots! -- being blown up, being caught in big gas clouds, it's hard to avoid that
  • they bring change but must be punished for it -- Prometheus
• science is the one human activity that seeks to remove character by being objective and finding the underlying way of the world
  • science is also biology, sociology, geology -- which affects people more?
  • science is a world view -- characters use this world view to give moral /ethical views
    • The Cold Equations
  • Jane Austen beats against walls of social structures -- SF beats against walls of reality

Panel -- Aesthetics of SF

How do we write the sense of wonder?

Ian McDonald, Robert Silverberg , Ian Watson , John Clute

• Appleseed is SF, using the theory and aesthetic of fantasy -- I wanted to write SF Space Opera, but without having to do the science -- there are no mandatory rules
• that's a harsh definition of fantasy -- I'd rather say SF is fantasy with nuts and bolts, but still undermines reality
• SF is a part of the fantastic, but I like to divide this into SF, fantasy, and something we have been calling horror but ought to call something else -- SF is an arguable case, which may or may not be demonstrably true
• I like to play games with the genre -- eg, basing on an Indian underwear ad!
• SF has now hardwired a lot of things into the cultural consciousness -- aliens, transporters -- in a way that, eg, the crime genre hasn't
• I'm accused of ripping off stuff I've never read -- it's part of our general consciousness
• H.G. Wells gave birth to many of the modern sub-genres of SF regarded as entirely fantasy with no basis in reality
• River of Gods -- I wanted to write about about significance of events of characters
• Watson's Postulate: first thing for nanotech is immortality, second is resurrection of the dead -- due to a throwaway line at a dinner conversation!
• The Time Machine is an archetypical sense of wonder story -- political statements not relevant to me -- vision of very far future, end of time, bloated red sun, crab-like creature on a miserable forlorn beach -- one of my great goals is to recapture and reconstruct what Wells did to me, internalise it, and do it to everyone else -- how is it done?
  • it makes you see things that you have never seen -- social criticism, satire, extrapolation are secondary
  • Wells believed that the world could be made better -- but in his best sense of wonder work, this was not so -- pessimism
• Ian MacDonald describes himself as a bricoleur -- I think rather a Hegelian engaged in dialogue with earlier writers
• Stapledon -- one way journey into the future -- when something out-bleaks itself, it evolves into something else, transcends itself
• much of SF fails to realise that it is more than one thing -- not just the future but the past -- dialogues between ruins and future -- what we have lost
• pessimistic transcendence is part of the sense of wonder -- takes us beyond our mortality -- there is a future beyond our deaths, but it too comes to an end -- with no mortality, there is no sense of wonder, just a sense of endless novelty
  • Ozymandius
• 90% of SF are artefacts designed to deny the truth
  • we are all going to die -- our civilisation will crumble and be forgotten
  • transcendence: yes, that's true, and what then?
• images of ruined Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge
  • all architects should build the ruin they wish to survive, then add the rest on
  • Tolkien -- a very profound angry statement of refusal -- that the 20th Century is wrong
  • " Do not go gentle into that good night "

Panel -- How Mediocre Movies Can Become Good TV Shows

What do Stargate SG-1 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer have in common? They were both mediocre movies that became good TV shows. Poor TV shows get remade as good ones e.g. Battlestar Galactica. How can this happen?

Cindy (Huckle) Mohareb, James Swallow, Jim Mann, Chris O'Shea

• can also make good movies into better TV
• Mission Impossible, Charley's Angels, Dukes of Hazard -- bad movies, better TV
• in Hollywood, the idea, the franchise, the name is the hook that draws people in -- which is why it is the New Battlestar Galactica, rather than just a new show
• for years I didn't watch Buffy, because I'd seen the movie
• Time Cop is a good movie, and the TV show is completely awful
• why was Buffy better?
  • continuing story on TV -- a hook to get the audience back
  • by the end of the first episode, had a good idea about the characters -- in the movie, just a stereotypical California girl
  • Joss Whedon -- the film was not what he wanted to make, but all he could do
• Stargate -- different people involved in the movie and TV show -- movie people didn't like TV, want two more movies in a completely different direction
• continuity of characters -- I've come to really like the characters in the TV series -- I didn't care about the ones in the movie -- even annoying characters grow into something interesting
• Battlestar Galactica -- 1st series didn't care about the characters -- 2nd series, I was hooked from the first episode
• Highlander TV series, Nikita -- they are more than just late night TV
  • Highlander attempts to tie back to the continuity of the movies, if not very well
  • Nikita is a parallel version -- same source material
  • There's a Highlander cartoon show! -- "There should be only one!"
• TV to films:
  • Serenity -- very good TV into ... a 2 hour episode
  • Superman, Batman, Spiderman -- went back to the comic book sources, not the TV shows
  • Lost in Space -- nearly became a TV show again
    • John Wu directed a pilot we will never get to see -- "Thanks be to ghod!"
  • Wrath of Khan -- better than the 3rd season TOS -- but best TV episodes probably better
• Alien Nation -- mediocre movie, good TV show
• X-Files -- what was going on? -- pretty good series, then okay movie, then series slid off the edge
• Stargate -- Michael Shanks does a wonderful portrayal of James Spader, actually acting -- and Anderson not being Kurt Russell!
  • O'Neill, Kirk, John Crichton -- I'd love to go the pub with them
• TV allows more creativity because there's more time to build up the characters
  • in SF films, 2 hours are taken up with SFX, don't have time for characters
  • aliens, etc, are far rarer
  • can have half an episode of back story for each character in 22 episodes
  • ensemble casts
  • ST:NG -- first few episodes, could tell the actors didn't know who the characters were
• movies -- so many people get to mess around with it, because of the money
  • also the reason for the reverse -- good TV into bad movies -- film by committee
  • not always true, but when it is...
• Firefly -- Whedon had two other series on air -- but Fox insisted on certain things, showed episodes out of order, etc
• on TV shows, the producer is often an ex-writer
• it's easier to get control if the movie failed
• have any good movies made good TV?
  • M.A.S.H. -- Dixon of Dock Green
• released the Battlestar Galactica pilot into cinemas
• the market is now a lot more competitive -- shows aren't allowed time to get going -- and going to more mainstream channels -- demand even bigger audiences
• lots of SF elements are creeping into mainstream shows -- Lost, Joan of Arcadia, Six Feet Under, Tru Calling -- not presented as genre shows
• second season doesn't need to be so safe -- then later, the musical episodes!
• watch Battlestar Galactica -- can see West Wing and other mainstream effects creeping in
  • not just action-adventure, more "realism" -- can now have ideas and characters -- more like SF literature
• Farscape reached the point where it couldn't get new audience -- no way could you enter during season 4!
• Even Stargate needs a 5 minute montage of "previously, on Stargate"
• not true of Odyssey 5 -- and it still got cancelled
• there are more CSI fans than Buffy fans in the US -- the Nielsens are so important
• X-Files wouldn't make it today -- more competition -- also depends on who is on top -- if you have a backer, you get the chance
• let's not forget the pilots we never even get to see -- eg, Global Frequency: "X-Files meets Mission Impossible"
• the new Dr Who is only a half season for the US
  • that's why the BBC commissioned not only a 2nd but a 3rd season
  • and the BBC is charging a lot for it
  • Christopher Lee wants to be on Dr Who -- Peter Cushing has already done it
• BBC Quatermass -- filmed by Hammer Quatermass
• Family Guy was cancelled -- the DVD sold so well they brought it back
• Firefly -- if the movie makes enough money, they will film two sequels, back to back
• showing episodes in the wrong order -- what if they did that to 24??
• a lot of people download, but then also watch on air or buy the DVD -- makes a mockery of a lot of piracy figures
  • I watched Dark Angel , then bought the DVDs -- they're still in plastic seals
• Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy was made into a movie
• Thunderbirds -- the puppets are a lot less lifelike in the recent movie!
• if you find something you like, spread the word to help keep it on air
• don't avoid a show just because you didn't like a previous version

Panel -- Is Genius Gendered?

One lone genius and an attractive assistant (fill in the genders) save the world. Our panel gives media and literary SF examples, and discuss how changing the gender might change other things.

Sean McMullen, Cory Doctorow, Connie Willis

• what do men get wrong about women, women about men, everyone about everyone?
• SF authors have a degree of Asperger's -- writing about aliens because no-one around you makes any sense!
• SMcM -- looking at a Leonardo da Vinci character who is female -- looking at flight in a system of courtly love -- flying machines with "disappointingly hard landings" -- courtier uses a trebuchet to launch a flying machine -- "I have given you an idea"
• can't just swap gender --different types of fighting etc -- need to think through changes -- not just to get it right, but to get new ideas
• I know of someone who had written a whole book, and was told to change all the genders -- she did -- I was stunned that anyone could think to do that at that stage
• some writers are proud that they have concealed the gender -- it was cool when Judith Merril did it in the 1950s -- shouldn't have done it again -- it doesn't get you anywhere -- two finger exercise
• men's heroism: kicking ass -- women's heroism: perseverance against the odds
  • gender swaps: women kick ass -- haven't seen a "man who perseveres quietly" hero
• I have a man who is interested in clothes -- not because he's gay, but because he thinks people should present themselves well
• write people who are like people in real life -- Jane Austen was so dead on -- they are types and also completely individual
• so do we get the characters wrong in ways that ring true to SF readers, because they are just as mystified too?
• I model some of my characters on my karate class -- black belt women -- some increase their femininity -- others increase confidence -- personality changes -- some accuse me of just gender swapping, but it's all true!
• sometimes you hear "a woman wouldn't..." -- what woman? -- Martha Stewart, Britney Spears, Queen Elizabeth? -- also no "man": F Scott Fitzgerald v Ernest Hemmingway
• I have no idea why anyone does anything! -- why this morning did the BBC lead with the story "how to make a perfect piece of toast"? -- what is that?
• all literature is about bewilderment, not understanding the motivations of characters
• venal characters -- if every moment of jealousy, greed, lust was made plain, even the most heroic would look vile
• we oversimplify -- not as complex as people really are -- in reality loads of other stuff happens -- stripped away in fiction -- Hamlet also probably got a C in math, but that's irrelevant -- biographers can't do it either -- can't get hung up on details
• thinking things through, motivations -- I despise historical books with 2005 attitudes in 1864 novel
  • opposite problem in "The Big Sky" by A.B. Guthrie -- in the head of a trapper, captured the mindset and so not a likeable character, because so far removed from our time -- need a middle ground between authenticity and enough to identify with
• narrative is how we make sense of what goes on around us -- what constitutes a story has changed radically over time -- so maybe 1930s SF characters were tremendously fleshed out to audiences of the day -- also their readers knew what assumptions to make
  • it's like criticising Jane Austen for writing about marriages, not careers
  • there's a whole level of books we're not getting when we read in the past
• Three Men in a Boat -- never been out of print -- it's about nothing -- but that's what makes it universal
• if you live in a time that believes in gods interfering in everyday life, then deus ex machina is a reasonable ending -- it's a cognitive change -- we can't write those stories now
• reading 11th and 12th century literature -- their minds are alien -- different mindset, different cultural values
• Fanny O'Conner?? wrote a story about schoolgirls in a 1930s French pension -- asked "how did you do that?" -- "I've been to France, I've seen a pension, I've been young"
• "Digging for Mrs Miller" -- rescue squad in the Blitz -- shows some universals -- there are moments that make total sense -- gives a way in -- but there are no excuses for the "Dr Quinn Medicine Woman" syndrome
• what new stories will we tell ourselves in a world where we have multiple copies of ourselves, or a many worlds quantum universe?
• two views: people will either fundamentally change, or stay the same

• a quietly persevering male -- quite a lot of managers -- Somerset Maughm
• 12th century relations between the sexes -- what is good/bad, right/wrong -- freedom of individual being curtailed is a good thing -- lot of upper class psychopaths in armour being able to do what they want -- changes to try to retrain them -- things we take for granted: guides to behaviour

Reductio ad Absurdum -- Lucas Back in Anger

Lucas Back In Anger is Reductio Ad Absurdum's latest epic production. Following on the huge success of their previous shows, which include The Matrix: Remaindered , A Fistful of Hobbits and Dune, or The Sand of Music , Phil Raines and Ian Sorensen present their spectacular version of the complete Star Wars saga -- all six movies in 60 minutes. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll kiss an hour goodbye!

• Episodes IV--VI rendered in typically brilliant Reductio ad Absurdum style, including having R2D2 played by a Dalek, C3PO by a Cyberman, the Jawas by Oompa Loompahs, and Lando Calrissian by Londo Mollari. Also, Han Solo kept regressing to Indiana Jones, except when he became Groucho Marx in the garbage compacter/overful ship's cabin scene...
• The audience were handed Kazoos, to provide the orchestral accompaniment for Darth Vader's theme. The "SFX" as Luke and Leia's speeder bikes zoomed through the forests of Endor were particularly inspired. And in a brilliant finale, Darth Vader ended up not being Luke's father...
• Episodes I--III were then given suitably short shrift, as the hilarious and very clever "Jabba the Musical" -- the three movies summarised in about six Abba filks by Ian and Phil, slowly peeling layers off their paper costumes (although I thought they missed a trick in the Super Trouper filk by changing the line "when I called you last night from Glasgow" -- but maybe that was too obvious)

Panel -- New British Space Opera (and Other Space Faring Cultures)

Twenty years ago, did you predict that British SF was on the verge of a long-term boom in producing large-scale exuberant space opera? You were laughed at, weren't you? And here we are, in 2005...

David Hartwell, Alastair Reynolds , Justina Robson , John Meaney

• DH -- a 1000 page anthology of Space Opera, including an historical introduction
• Interzone -- repelled and attracted me in equal measure -- it didn't seem to be what I thought of as SF -- after a while, there were some space ships -- Paul McAuley 's first story -- then Stephen Baxter -- so I started writing space ships -- hints in the 80s that it was permissible to write space ships -- emergence of Iain M. Banks
• I'd almost stopped reading SF by the mid 80s -- then I came across Consider Phlebas -- people were having so much fun, so witty, just flowed along -- the I found Peter Hamilton -- but I guess if you interviewed them, they'd say it started earlier
• An Interzone story that captured my attention -- not the dreary, I'll slit my wrists, Brit SF -- "Krash-Bangg Joe and the Pineal-Zen Equation", Eric Brown -- bonkers cyberpunk -- I realised Brit writers have an energy -- you can do this sort of thing
• we were almost waiting for permission -- Americans don't have to have permission
• David Zindel, Dan Simmons across the pond at the end of the 80s, too -- David Brin , Lois Bujold -- some more in the early 90s
• 1985-95, most Hugo nominees were Space Opera -- not so since 1995
• Brit Space Opera got off the ground with Banks -- published 3 novels before appearing in Interzone -- Peter Hamilton also not really part of Interzone -- but reaction to that from writers who had come through Interzone
• other background s non-Brit Space Opera -- very international flavour to these writers
• also huge surge of SF on TV in early 80s -- especially imported US shows, and US books
• in the late 80s there were 12 British SF lines, and an enormous influx of US SF
• critical discourse has been dominated by book reviews and critics, including Mike Harrison -- who says new Brit Space Opera is good because of the politics
  • it doesn't seem like a very tenable position
  • exuberant -- perceived as unBritish
  • Robert Reed 's stuff is also subtle -- that's the problem with massive generalisations
  • I always hated the British "going down the pub" SF -- too cosy
• Iain Banks says that his project was to rescue Space Opera for the Left
  • can still have discourse of politics within exuberant Space opera
  • US right wing Space Opera -- stories we shouldn't be telling ourselves for our own mental health
• Dune has implicit support for a hero upholding the aristocracy -- he's a "born leader"
  • so much US fantasy about finding the "rightful king"
• Bruce Sterling -- Schismatrix -- blew my mind! -- wild, almost dreamlike, hard SF underneath -- lots of biotech taken for granted
• I totally missed the beginning of cyberpunk -- picked up Count Zero -- bonkers first page!
• Sterling declared cyberpunk over in the mid 80s -- but the Golden Age of British cyberpunk was the late 80s
• massive delay on publishing in Interzone -- at least a year if accepted
• amazing lack of communication between US and UK until recently
• are we past the peak? -- Paul McAuley is not writing Space opera -- everyone is diverging along their own routes, keeping the best bits
• AR -- I'm functionally incapable of writing a book without a space ship in it
• JM -- I've rewritten Dune -- I'm currently writing Alternate History in 1960, not a space ship in sight -- then one set between To Hold Infinity and Paradox -- then a weird undead one
• I like Richard Morgan 's stuff -- including his Black Widow series for Marvel
• I'm still a huge Banks fan -- even Iain N(ormal) -- The Algebraist is great
• Alexander Jablokov -- Deep Drive -- a complex baroque colourful Space Opera

• Scottish writers are just getting started!
• did the fact that everything was changing under Thatcher help the movement?
  • we're over the post-Imperial decline -- now we can look ahead?
  • I blame Starbucks -- if I wasn't drinking 12 cappuccinos a day...
• can you determine the nationality of an unknown author by reading their work?
  • sometimes -- sometimes not

Panel -- Byzantium at our Borders in the 21st century: the Future of Europe

Would we have needed a different past to have a different future? What would be the consequences if "recognition of Europe's Christian heritage" is inserted into the constitution.

Jon Courtenay Grimwood , Patrick J. Gyger, Nicholas Whyte, Harry Turtledove , Keith Brooke

• PJG -- SF museum of Europe

• I don't think that we could have got here any other way
• looking at Europe from across the water -- it's a different scale -- complaining about the distance to Brussels -- I'm looking at cultures compressed into a v small scale
• smallness defines us and defines how we feel -- are boundaries wiggly or straight: it tells you how the country was formed
• the only boundary in Europe that makes sense on linguistic, cultural, whatever grounds is that between England and France -- all the rest are the ebb and flow of various empires
• more people voted on Big Brother than in the European elections
• how much of the history we learn in school is real -- Trafalgar, Waterloo -- how can we have a united Europe if we all have different histories?
• lots of small countries bickering -- like spoiled courtiers knifing each other in the back -- as power shifts
• what I think of as being English, and what others think, are v different things
• we ought to "recognise the Christian heritage", because it exists, but I don't want it written in, because it excludes many people now, and ignores other important heritages: Jewish, Islamic, ...
• national history gets used by politicians -- buttons can be pushed -- not history in any sense an historian would understand
• Yugoslavia -- saw the messes of the whole country replaying themselves -- is there no way off this wheel?
• prejudices remain, but nowhere near as important
  • don't need to take Sun/Mirror seriously -- but Daily Mail readers think it is a serious paper
• changing linguistic regime in Europe
  • Canadian approach -- "bilingual" -- include a paragraph in a bad version of the other language
  • European -- speak own, pretend to understand other
  • Swiss -- 4 languages -- use English as a common language to unite us in an artificial way
• JCG -- Arabesk trilogy -- liberal strand of Islam, does exist now, but not nearly as strong as it was 70 years ago -- came out of two photos from 1905, one in Croydon, one in Turkey, almost identical -- only difference was religion -- middle class families with nearly everything else in common
• Nazis make wonderful villains -- were really really evil, and they really really lost
  • alternatives: victory, or three cornered standoff
  • WWII breaking out over Sudetenland -- a year earlier, with Poland on Germany's side
• if Germany won WWI -- wouldn't have run out all scientists under the Kaiser -- would have got bomb first
• war against terrorism
• votes on European constitution -- turning away from Federal Europe
  • French no vote -- it was a rejection of the the constitution, not of the Union -- just wanted a different one -- 200 pages! -- should be three pages, a few points -- nothing written by 300 people that couldn't be written better by three
• UK pulled in two directions -- Europe: proximity, history -- North America: history, linguistic
  • European feeling increasing, because of feeling less in common with US -- so Europe needs to be stronger
• what does it mean to "feel European"? politically? culturally? ...?
  • rest of Europe is investing in English speaking culture
  • in Scotland, tradition to view England as the enemy, tradition of looking to Europe -- Auld Alliance
• I come from Belfast, which is the only place people call themselves British before anything else
• I'm Norwegian, European -- the EU is trying to steal my identity
• Ryan Air, Easy Jet -- have changed our view of Europe
• what will happen in Europe with Turkey is like US+Mexico
• in LA, two of the three radio stations are Spanish speaking -- the US is not monolingual
• in the 19th century, it made a lot of sense for a cultural or linguistic body to be a nation -- we need to tease out the relationship between culture, nation, government -- separate church and state, maybe need to separate state and culture - same currency and road signs, but own cultures
• I'd feel more European if Europe didn't define itself as "not American"
• Brits are more likely to have relatives in India/Pakistan than in Canada/Australia
• I was at a wedding in deepest Hampshire -- huge big Irish/Bengali affair -- that was my cousin, marrying an Englishman
• welcome Turkey in Europe, for getting over the Christian heritage
• Byzantium -- orthodox Christianity + Greek language -- could do what you wanted, but stay a local bum
• Islamic Spain -- three religions existing side by side
• US is a patchwork of cultures -- Europe could keep local cultures, doesn't need to be homogenised

Panel -- Hobbits, Orcs & Homo Floresiensis: Build Realistic Creatures

Hobbits were fantasy creatures until recent claims of the discovery of Homo floresiensis, an extinct metre-tall hominid. How do the creations of authors stack up against realistic biology and anthropology?

Jack Cohen , Dougal Dixon , Michael Swanwick , China Miéville

• JC -- now a professor of mathematics!

• CM -- After Man was an important book for me -- teratology, love of monsters -- plausible, plus efflorescence of joy -- my creatures are implausible, but I still have a love of monsters
• Jack and I provide scientific background -- you make it entertaining!
• After Man is much more entertaining than 99% of the SF you read
• I used to get v upset about "prehistoric monsters" (like trainspotters, toy soldiers) -- trivialisation -- but I don't get upset any more
• I was trying to write my dinosaurs as real animals -- but big ones that would eat you!
• human monsters stir us v deeply -- I've seen teratologist children -- had nightmares for two years
• floresiensis disbelieved -- not bones in clay -- clay actually much harder than the bones -- "soapy" -- had to harden them -- what they were finding was so strange, made it look like what they were doing was cheating
  • Nature sent it to six referees -- two said "this is all made up" -- four said "great! super!"
  • someone wrote in to say "there are pygmies just down the road -- this is their burial ground"
  • now convinced it is real
  • it all takes on much more importance than if it were, say, a T.Rex skeleton
• debate between Verne and Wells -- importance of accuracy and plausibility
  • Verne's more plausible, but Wells' work better as stories
• as long as a book creates its own reality, rules apply within the book -- a lot of fantasy is more "plausible" in this way than a lot of hard SF
  • "she had breakfast in London, got on a bicycle and had lunch in New York" -- it doesn't work for anyone -- a planet with an oxygen atmosphere but no plants doesn't work for me in the same way -- specialist knowledge is always a problem -- but I can love implausible books
• scientific plausibility can be corrupting for a writer -- have a "licence to lie"
• stuff that thinks of itself as v plausible has a v teleological view of evolution
  • most organisms, we don't know what most of the bits are "for"
  • many stick insects have eggs that look like seeds -- birds, ants etc prefer these to real seeds -- hmm -- then a big fire near Brisbane -- shoots covered with baby stick insects -- ants had stored the eggs with the seeds -- for everything like this, 1000s without explanations!
  • so we say "for display" or "ritual"
• there is developmental noise -- as long as a mutation does no harm, it can be sustained -- doesn't have to have a purpose
• folk genetics: we all have the same genetics, except for some mutants -- reality: on average one third of genes are different in the population -- ancient mutants -- recombined sets of these
  • a pair of starlings lay ~ 16 eggs -- of these 2 breed, 14 die, of "suffocation complicated by digestion" -- they are eaten
  • don't need to wait for occasional mutation -- constant recombining, only a few succeed to breed

• "plausible" is what con artists are -- it happens between writer and reader
  • it's implausible that Gregor Samsa woke up as a giant cockroach -- if he had, he would have died, because no lungs
  • some books rely on a particular kind of verisimilitude -- judged on what's meant
  • sometimes accuracy gets in the way
  • when they tout themselves on accuracy, and then fall down, they do so badly
  • also, ideas get superseded

• Hobbits, charming as they are, are not legitimised by Homo floresiensis
  • they are children's fantasy -- little people
    • rubber tyranosaurs are also part of children's world
  • penguins are cute -- same dimensions as a baby in a top hat
    • original Hobbits are cute little people
• other parts of mythology -- "Neanderthal's are lovely -- they put flowers on graves"
  • very nihilistic view of humans
• DD -- Greenworld -- just being published
  • start from bottom feeders, mouth on bottom, sensory organs on top, six-sided star fish -- on land, six limbs -- with bilateral symmetry, three each side -- or one at front two on each side, one at back -- but still have sensory organs at one end, feeder at other

• how do you get psychological plausibility?
  • same way as trying to create a plausible woman! -- start by imagining she's human, and work out what she wants
  • Iron Dragon's Daughter -- realised men are not central to her existence
  • just take them seriously on their own grounds
• move away from a homogeneous culture -- even people within a culture don't agree
• really alien creatures are by definition psychologically unthinkable
  • people in rubber masks
  • really alien -- can't have as viewpoint character
• cultural taboos -- but people break rules all the time
  • anthropologist told by women: "women shouldn't see men's bull roarers" -- so what do they look like? -- "well..."

Panel -- Mapping your World: Creating the Back Story

You've made the map of your fantasy world, invented a language or three, chronicled its thousand-year history, and given it a plausible postal system. Is there a danger that you'll write a book about the scenery, not the story?

Susanna Clarke, Esther Friesner , Stan Nicholls , Katherine Kurtz , Anne McCaffrey

• EF -- on some level, I write about this world -- but I can get over it -- then the bits about this world become even more glaring -- getting from A to B, I have a 21st century consciousness: it takes 15 minutes to cover 7 miles -- I have to get over that -- also, I haven't experienced particular kinds of scenery -- my first time in the Alps, I realised it's not easy to get to the top of one!
• SC -- I wanted it to read like an early 19th century novel that just happened to have wizards and magic -- in the past, people felt differently about religion, servants, place of women, etc -- different attitudes -- but can do this only so much
• KK -- we interpret the past differently at different times -- the new film of Pride and Prejudice is much more "true to life" than the recent TV series -- no makeup, shiny fresh complexions, natural hair -- realistic "feel" to period
• I've been criticised for not having women wield swords -- but they didn't do that kind of thing -- ill bred, immoral -- I modelled a character of Margaret Roper, daughter of Thomas More, as portrayed in A Man for All Seasons -- better educated than Henry VIII -- she was out of her time
• AM -- I cheated -- I made my other planet just like Earth -- with Jack Cohen's help -- " P erfect E arth, R esources N egligable" -- but I had to have reasons for fire lizards, so they could be bio-engineered into dragons -- different groups of Holders, Dragon Riders, Craftsmen -- strict behaviour in Holds, because need to know progeny, but Dragon Riders were freer -- Gordy Dickson said you have to know what's in every nook and drawer, and that certainty affects the readers
  • but shouldn't tell them everything
  • iceberg principle: I know 99% more than the readers
• people felt differently, but they were emotionally the same?
  • the social structure in P&P is very different, but can believe in it
  • SC -- writing about the historical past, or fantasy, are not v different -- I didn't notice which was which by the end!
• Cecilia Holland 's Firedrake -- wrote in the PoV of someone of the period, only noted things strange to a person of that period -- uses that trick a lot, only note things unusual to PoV character
  • I think I will steal that -- no, wait ... I think I will learn from that
• index card syndrome -- lots of research -- I suffered, you're going to suffer
  • Herman Melville, Moby Dick -- worst case
    • but wasn't writing it for whalers -- general audience wouldn't know how to flense a whale in five easy steps
    • but it gets in the way of the story -- carve everything away that isn't the story
  • but some audiences are interested -- only a problem if it's the "revenge" of the author
  • Moby Dick has a comedy scene -- the chowder scene -- Ishmael and Quequeg -- "cod, or clam?" -- for Melville, this scene is Robin Williams!
• when building imaginary worlds, they're still built on things we know -- can research that
• index card = information dump -- stops the flow of the story
  • show, not tell -- intersperse descriptions -- little tastes
• a copy editor changed "did up" to "zipped up" trousers -- before zips!
• Elf Defense has unicorns -- I smacked one across its front legs with a stick -- someone wrote in: you can't hit a horse there -- it's not a horse, it's a unicorn, an imaginary creature, and I can hit it where I want!
• SC -- details of a world tend to grow organically -- I knew it was in historical England, plus chronology of magicians imposed -- knew some of the chronology -- most of the magicians and magic events grew as I was writing -- makes it difficult as the world fills out -- restricted by things invented -- have to live with consequences
• EF -- I built a world during a class on Spanish linguistics -- incredibly detailed because the class was incredibly boring! -- when building from scratch, don't want to get trapped -- if you overbuild, can't discover new things, work out surprising puzzles -- also helps if there can suddenly be a river if you need one
• KK -- can write yourself into a corner if you nail everything down at the start -- eg, characters have to die -- eg, odd mention of St Camber in original trilogy, decided I wanted to find out more about the character -- so never wind up all the loose ends in an ongoing series -- stuff left over for next book -- also more like real life -- transfer portal that has "long been lost"
• AM -- I wrote myself into a corner -- F'Lar says he's going to get rid of the Thread if it's the last thing he does -- so had to do Dragonsdawn (with Jack Cohen) -- sets everything up for next 4-5 novels -- the fun of being an author is digging yourself out of holes -- I have a big Who's Who of Pern
• EF -- want to live in the world -- so needs decent sewage, good medicine, really nice clothes -- love Medieval/Renaissance: get all the really cool clothes (if noble!) -- but then there's the underwear, corsets -- and you're the boss as author -- dialogue is all l'esprit d'escalier : I get the perfect comeback every time! -- so lots of wish fulfilment
• SC -- I very much want to be in Jane Austen 's world -- for a while -- as an author, I want the reader to be there for a little longer than the book -- but after a while, the comforts of modern plumbing -- I'm not the boss of my characters, having spent 10 years chained to this book!
• KK -- country dancing, vintage cars -- done that -- Middle Ages, would want plumbing, washable clothes, medicine, ...
• AM -- I would like to live on Pern -- I get letters from people asking how to get there -- I also like the Talents world -- I'd visit the Killashandra world -- why write about a world you don't like?

• does it make it easier to get out of holes if you have magic?
  • no, you've got to stay with those laws, too

Panel -- Alien Anatomy

How to paint and draw fictional beings and make them look real.

Dougal Dixon , Frank Wu, Martina Pilcerova, John Picacio, David Mattingly

• scary, brainy, cuddly, grey -- the Alien exhibition at the Science Museum
  • they are all humanoid -- different bumps on foreheads
  • Burgess Shale , Cambrian explosion, 550 MYears ago
    • Marella Splendens -- bifurcated legs, gills on each set of legs -- what if we had something completely different out of our arms?
    • Wiwaxia -- no distinct body segments -- little lines on spine -- iridescent effect? sense of colour?
• I hate insects -- that's why I use them -- frightening aliens -- grasshoppers are so alien -- can become v tall -- also white colour like a bone is rather frightening
• humanoid but asymmetric
• Mike Resnick -- Starship 5 book series covers -- aliens -- got a chance to design first, but Mike writes pretty fast! -- warrior caste -- all vulnerable parts, genitalia, mouth, eyes on back, hard shell armour on front -- v functional approach
• Giger 's Alien -- our phobias
  • Gene Roddenberry -- bumps on foreheads -- practical for TV -- easily relatable to
  • when we finally see the Alien, it's disappointing -- best before we see it
• some of these well-designed evolved aliens look a bit comedic
  • Wayne Barlowe 's aliens tend not to look silly, however
• humanoid aliens in SF are a perfect example of Darwinian evolution:
  • early writers -- just words, could be anything
  • TV -- evolved to the environment of TV studio, selective pressures of production budgets
  • now CGI -- more freedom -- still to see any interesting aliens
• rarely see simple geometric shapes in organisms
• recent War of the Worlds uses CGI aliens, as do some recent Star Trek movies
  • have difficulties in looking "realistic", even looking as if they have real weight, walking properly -- scaling problem, walk of small lizard not that of big animal
• knowledge of anatomy and physics needed to design aliens
  • if it is viable, it will look good
• lower gravity planet, gas planet -- different-looking creatures
  • Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity
• "Uncanny Valley" -- slight departures from human form are okay -- then it hits you -- then it is okay as different
• Victorian -- sewing animals together -- chimera
  • didn't believe the duck-billed platypus
  • aliens look funny for the same reason -- derived from other things
• what's left in the shadows can be more powerful
  • H.P. Lovecraft -- very little description -- "most incredible horrible revolting thing ever seen" -- what does that look like? -- three paragraphs of adjectives with no description
  • Chuthulu -- squid head -- that troubles me -- we have skeletons, it's hydrostatic pressure -- what happens in the neck ?
• need to balance plausibility with need to be scary
• always some anthropomorphism, to communicate a story
• CGI movement -- with motion control -- needs a human -- or by animation, by hand
  • can use procedural models-- skeleton under gravity
  • I don't think Pixar motion-capture everything
  • Polar Express -- looked too stiff
  • Final Fantasy -- great aliens, all hand-animated
  • The Incredibles -- watch when the costume falls down from costume maker's hand -- had one guy working 6 months on that
• The Abyss -- design of the alien -- consulted more designers than astrophysicists -- in fact, didn't consult any astrophysicists!
• chimpanzees "smiling" are baring their teeth in anger
• when we contact aliens, we will each need to mask ourselves from each other because we will find each other disgusting, and there will be mistaken expressions, etc
• Contact -- alien took on form of dead father so as not to alarm her -- if an alien took on the body of my dead father, I'd be alarmed!
• Jack Cohen's universals v parochials
  • we haven't even been able to figure out how to talk to dolphins
  • I think sound comms is a parochial, not a universal
• evolution convergence -- fish and dolphins
  • can take it to an extreme -- expect Wiwaxia to evolve into something that wears a suit and tie!
  • at least we all have same ancestors, to help explain convergent evolution
  • the Star Trek "explanation" fails on so many levels it's difficult to know where to start -- including the genocide of all the other intelligences
• Jack Vance Dragon-Masters -- great cover illustrations -- Galaxy 1962 -- also great internal evolution links

Panel -- Why Should We Mind? SF/Fantasy & Consciousness

From telepathy to life-after-death, the Singularity and uploaded consciousness, and into the psychotropic, the mind fascinates SF writers.

Ian Watson , Kelly Link, Justina Robson , Connie Willis

• what research into near death experiences did you do for your novel ?
  • I do intensive research for all my novels -- I did not die -- but I asked a lot of questions, and got a lot of silly answers!
• I'm interested in the concept that we're not really conscious, that it's all an illusion
  • eg, action potential to move fires before consciously decide to do something
  • two magpies landed in front of me and walked apart -- I watched straight ahead, and they just vanished, although the grass was still there -- brain is just filling in
• Geoff Ryman, Air -- evolution of a group consciousness
• so much of what we do and think is unmodulated by consciousness -- because of all our cultural assumptions and baggage
  • I'm not only not the captain of my ship, I'm not even a very competent passenger -- I don't know why I worry so much! I don't know why I do what I do, think what I think, like what I like, ...
• I want to believe that I have some control over my body, my life -- it's a complete illusion! -- Philip K Dick has been telling us this for years
• not a mind, lots of little subminds, of different importance depending on circumstances
• we tell ourselves stories about what we are doing -- in a good light -- after a while telling what we should have done, become what we did do
• blindsight
• "raising" consciousness -- performing new wonderful feats
  • raise it from where ? some low level -- no, some are born in a yogic state
  • but enlightenment seems to be acceptance/resignation -- so why " raise "?
  • and why is " Rage, rage " not as good?
    • because raging is suffering, and acceptance is not, so it's better! -- that's all I can understand about it
• on the one hand, can change -- on the other, if you do, you won't be you any more!
• "memory" -- director's cut of Bladerunner -- looking at pictures of relations, and not convinced these memories are real
  • when we know our memories are not reliable, it's terrifying
  • constant revision, overwriting
    • reminiscing about shared events with a grown child -- events you think you agree on, remember completely differently -- no true memories
• as we talk to each other, we constantly reshape ourselves in reaction
  • group identities
  • if you are consciously aware of it, become shy and self-conscious
• go back and visit old friends -- delighted by mismatches -- acting as group memories
• it would be deeply suspicious if everyone remembered the same thing

• ubiquitous recording devices -- memory prostheses -- how would this change us?
  • even if we did that, we'd have different experiences, because we have different histories
  • like having a 1:1 map of the US in your apartment -- if you had all that info, what would you do with it?
  • when your mother says [flatly] "is that what you are wearing to Church" you are hearing the meta-text "that's totally inappropriate" -- wouldn't be in the recording
  • it could ruin marriage forever! -- you could review arguments and find that you were wrong -- no-one wants that!

• consciousness as a meme propagating itself -- identity meme -- helps other memes propagate
• self-awareness and intelligence need no coexist -- Fermi paradox -- advanced tech becomes instinctive, don't need self-awareness any more!
• in the 60s, a DJ stayed up for a week broadcasting -- after ~5 days, was in a sleep state, even though eyes open and functioning -- never recovered -- same things happened to marathon dancers in 1930s rigged contests
• Philip K Dick short stories -- each of which plays with your mind in a different and nasty way
  • Christopher Rowe -- The Voluntary State
  • Greg Egan -- peculiar perceptions of reality
  • Stewart and Cohen -- Figments of Reality
  • Dennett -- Consciousness Explained
  • Ramachandran -- Phantoms in the Brain
  • Oliver Sacks
• recovered memory syndrome -- CAT scans may be able to spot the difference -- reality in the brain, but not in the consciousness

Masquerade

• Chaos Division, Journeyman -- James Steel and The Chaos Team -- The Soldier and Death, and er DEATH, and Death by Chocolate, and ... (with Rock Robertson II in his other Chaos Novice costume, The Silence of the Lamb )
• Judges' choice for Re-creation -- Miranda Feestra -- Chiana
• Judges' choice for Chutzpah -- Pam Henschell -- Victorian Secrets
• Judges' choice for Kickass -- Phillipa Chapman -- Xena
• Best Audience Reaction -- Ken Bloom and Mary Morman -- Denver Gnomes
• Best in Show, Best Workmanship Master Division -- Miki Dennis -- The Wind Brings Music to the Earth

• While the judges conferred, we were treated to 45 minutes of "Ready Steady Sew", or "Iron Costumer", as two teams attempted to create a costume for their secret ingredients: the evening's Masters of Ceremonies, Sue Mason and Teddy.

Panel -- AI: the Aliens We Make?

Aliens and AI are both Other, but where one comes from Out There, the other lives Down Here. Are they really the same thing -- and either way, what difference does it make?

Charles Stross , Ian McDonald, Cory Doctorow

• River of Gods outsources Cyberpunk to the 3rd world -- Khyberpunk is to Cyberpunk what Bollywood is to Hollywood
• novella -- ants go through the Singularity and become post-ant ants
• corporations have gone through the Singularity and are forms of ALife -- legal entities
  • ISO 9000 procedures manual -- rules for doing a job in a corporation -- could argue that in a fully ISO 9000 compliant company, could replace anyone and it would still work
  • stupidity, cussheadedness, psychotic behaviour as emergent properties
• River of Gods -- soap opera is a purely televisual medium
  • purely computer generate soap -- AIs are characters and the actors
  • Heat -- gossip mag -- v thin line between gossip about stars and gossip about characters
  • an entire meta-soap based around "Town and Country" -- gossip about the artificial actors -- vast complexity
• intelligence is costly -- both for organisms with it (our brains use 20% of metabolic energy budget) -- and also bad for others -- stop evolving physical bodies, and evolve environment
  • hack the germ line -- no longer need to adapt environment -- intelligence no longer so necessary
• society is dumber than individuals
• we are about the most stupid species that can achieve this level of culture
  • memes -- no need to be smarter than that needed to be substrate for memes
  • aliens arrive and record planet run by satanic coalition of cats and grass
• Asimov 's Robot series -- 3 laws -- moral code, social programme for human behaviour -- abridged 10 commandments to 3 -- almost autistic yearning for handbook rules of human behaviour
  • deep down everything Asimov does is from a great fear of chaos -- Foundation v. Mule -- growing up in FDR-land -- country bootstrapped itself out of Depression not by going to was but by sitting around a table thinking how to spend out of it
• Kurzweil -- taking the Singularity seriously
  • Drexler , Morovec , ... gelled them all together into a compelling interesting vision of the next century -- environment becomes intelligent, senses augmented by sensor nets -- bionic brains -- dividing line between machines and humans becomes porous
  • but he's self-consciously being a propagandist -- for every tech he points to utopia, I can see a darker use -- eg, uploading v. secret police interrogator
• different levels of AI -- a plane can fly, rather like an insect -- intelligence is needs related, not service related
  • MIT media lab -- emotional sensors for cars -- speed as emotion of cars around it, driver's emotional engagement
  • call centre sw voice response system -- detects if you are growing angry, puts you over to a human operator -- just shout "no"! -- Kurzweil invented this
• transhumanist programme
  • Moravec -- replace each individual neuron, one by one -- people have done this to lobsters
  • reverse engineering problem -- never know if you have reverse engineered all of it -- have you captured the full set of inputs
  • anyone who thinks all consciousness lies north of the brainstem has never neutered a tom cat
  • we, SF fans, do tend to value mind over body -- disembodiment -- Rapture of the Nerds -- strong philosophical arguments against it
• I'm going to dismiss Roger Penrose 's quantum tubules
  • on the grounds that it's rubbish
  • he's a dualist -- arguing mechanism to support idea, not the other way around
  • a cure for gout clears out the tubules!
• gradually replace defective brain modules -- then increase capabilities -- descendants of human intelligence
• Dijkstra's aphorism -- "asking whether a machine can think is like asking whether a submarine can swim"
  • I want to see those 380s mating!
• would a child just starting to speak pass the Turing test? -- different levels of sentience
  • Turing test requires human effort to evaluate -- evolutionary computing -- how to scale
    • spambots attempt to pretend to be people -- appeal to 14 year old boys
    • evolve them -- whenever you say, in a chat room, are you a bot ? it pops like a bubble and reports back to the mother ship how many cycles it lasted
• how do you remerge copies into a single person -- converging holographically stored memories? -- at what point do different versions become different people?
• Djinn's Wife -- woman marries an AI -- but which copy does she marry?
• move by copy/delete cycles -- new concept of ourselves, in terms of copies, deletion
• AI might no be cost effective because there's so much real I lying around
  • Alta Vista spent a lot of time trying to use AI -- v poor
  • Google -- people make links -- computers great at counting -- aggregated I!
• A massively multiple dungeon -- hired a troupe of actors to play non-player characters -- another is holding a competition where the winner gets to play a NPC!
• Augmented intelligence -- ability of single individual greatly increased -- can do ground breaking research by standards of 50 years ago
• when I was writing my last novel, had a Google window open all the time -- "what is the currency of Bangladesh" -- used to be a trip to the library
• Spam weblogs -- Plokta.com is a fannish website -- Plotka.com is very weird -- scrape the design of the original but 100% spam! -- gets Google juice from people who've inadvertently linked
• we can't just be substrates for memes -- where do the memes/jokes/... come from? -- someone is making these up
• market finds weird local optima that are not global optima
  • eg PDAs without keyboards because everyone wants to use a pen
  • groupthink, especially when market entry is high
• if people feel proprietary about intelligence, market might work against aggregate AI
  • careful marketing needed -- eg competition, not a tax
  • meme -- standing on the shoulders of giants

Panel -- Genre Killing Ideas

"The Singularity is this enormous turd that Vernor Vinge crapped into the punchbowl of SF writing, and now nobody wanting to take a drink can ignore it". [Charlie Stross] What other ideas have had the same effect on the genre?

Alastair Reynolds , Karl Schroeder, Charles Stross , Ian McDonald

• Zombie Slasher flicks -- rendered unusable by existence of mobile phones
• fondness for nanotechnology -- magic pixie dust
• anything that makes your characters safer is bad
• Mariner IV showed that Martian Death Machines to be rather less probable than before
• in the Middle Ages, when peasants had nothing to do, they did nothing -- not even thinking -- our constant need for mindless stimulation is our kind of Singularity
• Iain Banks Dead Air -- mobile phone causes the suspense
• stealth tech in aircraft is a dead idea because of mobile phones
  • reflect away from emitter -- create a gap in the network -- cellphone companies spend a lot of effort tracking gaps
• online porn and gambling drove a lot of the Internet billing tech
• cameras on phones -- everyone is an instant journalist -- London bombing images
  • 2-2.5 THz bandwidth is about the limit
  • enough bandwidth to continuously spool everything you see to remote storage
  • on lapels of police officers? -- David Brin Kil'n People
    • billions and billions of Little Brothers!
  • Bob Shaw -- slow glass -- world suffused with dust of slow glass
• WebCam + broadband -- continuous surveillance of your house while you are away -- global neighbourhood watch
  • recently arrested a chap stealing the computer
  • burglars will start joining neighbourhood watch schemes to case the joint
  • cheap TV -- watched by unemployed, after the reward money
• some passwords are images that can't be easily harvested -- copy and use as password for hardcore porn site -- using all the untapped "intelligence"
• Larry Niven -- NASA kept blowing Known Space out of the water
• relativity makes classic space opera impossible -- but special relativity was 1905!
• cyberpunk has moved into the background
• current cognitive science -- brain as computer, mind as sw doesn't work -- new theories -- but current SF dominated by this model
  • also, biologists still talk about "modules" of brain function
  • "mind as computer" is not the final paradigm, any more than the previous was -- 1950s hard AI thesis, symbolic reasoning -- already done damage and percolated into SF -- SF writers grab the v0.1 demo of science theories!
• some people, after neurological damage, believe they are dead, and will tell you so
  • neglect, blindsight , aphasia
• Bob the Builder -- here are all these AI machines, and they have the minds of children! -- was Lofty designed to have a severe anxiety disorder?
• Temple Grandin -- high functioning autistic -- designing ways to slaughter animals more humanely
  • worried that someone is going to look at these ideas to design ways of executing people that don't worry them, or the people around them
• Star Trek sowed the seeds of its own destruction, with the transporter and holodeck
• Dr Who -- the Tardis is an impossible powerful tool
  • at the end of the Ecclestone series -- the Tardis as a literal deus ex machina
  • the Master and the Doctor each materialised their tardis inside the other's!
• anything truly magical or arbitrary, that takes away the rules, is genre killing -- need limits
  • eg vampires -- garlic, crosses, daylight
• Singularity Sky -- I'd read one Honor Harrington novel too many -- all navies at exactly the same tech level +/- five years -- why does Napoleon's fleet never meet a nuclear powered sub?
• nothing more genre killing than time travel
  • Panzer division v. Roman army -- where do they get oil, ammo?
• the genre killing idea for mainstream fiction is antidepressants!
• DNA fingerprinting -- use miniature vacuum cleaners -- vacuum top of a bus and scatter around crime scene -- countermeasures require intelligent criminals
• the perfect crime is so bizarrely cutting edge and innovative that no-one realises it's a crime
  • someone reported "I've bought this magic sword and it's not enchanted" -- bought it on eBay for a MUD -- defrauded
• I wish I'd thought of the concept of "happy slapping" -- a tech-dependent crime
  • camera phones are the next step on from mobile phones -- would have blown most of the X Files plots!
• Fermi's Paradox is a genre "stressing" idea -- actually generates lots of new ideas for stories!
• fine line between genre killing and inspiring new ideas
  • psi power idea emerges from mind/body duality philosophy
• iconic stories can nail an idea -- until someone does something brilliant with its corpse
  • problem solving fetish is still there
    • supermarket "meal solutions" -- a solution requires a problem -- what to eat? -- don't worry: we, your food engineers, have a solution
    • truck drivers deliver logistic solutions
• Singularity -- can't ignore it -- at least have to have a throwaway line saying why it didn't happen

Panel -- As It Happens, We Are Rocket Scientists

What do rocket scientists really get up to? And does being one get you a table in a busy restaurant?

Jordin Kare, Paul Chafe, Gerald David Nordley, Geoffrey Landis

• Will build satellites for food -- my mistake was going into cosmology for the money
  • that's because you didn't know about inflation
  • a good cosmologist can make as much money as many poets
• rocket scientist : dynamics -- rocket engineers : build rockets
  • mission designers
  • advanced concepts thinking -- "underground rocket scientists"
    • propellantless drives (wormholes, tethers, ...), interstellar missions, etc
• rocket science: "stuff goes in, stuff happens, stuff goes out faster"
• restaurants near where rocket scientists work typically have paper tablecloths -- and provide crayons!
• Willy Ley , Rockets, Missiles, and Men in Space -- many editions
• Sutton and Ross, Rocket Propulsion Elements -- 7th edition
• to get 10$/lb into orbit -- good economic reason for spaceflight
  • some will bear any cost -- contact lenses, $1M/kg, because v light
  • Shuttle -- $15,000/lb -- even manufacturing gold for free is not cost effective
  • chips can go up to $1G/kg
  • if there is an application that needs zero g -- if only we could find it
• we need to get down the learning curve -- but it's too expensive to get down it
• by 1920, 100,000 aircraft had been designed and flown
  • only 5th generation launch vehicles, we are at 1907 in terms of flight (1 generation/year)
• need to be able to survive a failure
• US export restrictions -- not affecting science, but causing v large problems for small companies innovating in tech
• fusion probably useful once in orbit, but not to orbit
  • bombs, or tokamaks -- enormous mass to contain magnetic fields
  • intertial confinement -- "bitty bomb"
  • antiproton catalysed fusion, laser triggered fusion
• also don't want to spew out neutrons
  • p + B ¹¹ -> 3 α -- fuel is B ¹¹ hydride
• worst possible propellant? -- oxidise a mixture of Fl and liquid O ₃
• the way to make a small fortune in the launch industry is to start with a large fortune

Panel -- Sorting SF After 200 Years

Deciding what is "SF" isn't getting any easier; neither is trying to create sub-genres. And how do we define all those terms we "know" but can't explain?

David Langford , Darren Nash, Peter Nicholls , John Clute

• just signed the contract to produce the 3rd edition of the Encyclopedia of SF -- on line edition
• two of the tree editors are stone deaf, so oral tradition is no good!
• like Blake -- 1st edn, Songs of Innocence; 13 years later, 2nd edn, Songs of Experience; 14 years later, 3rd edn, Jerusalem!
• 700,000 words -- actually, our word count program ignored numbers .... so all dates! 1,500,000 words -- lied to publisher about size
  • anything that fit our definition of SF, whether or not recognised, was going in
  • we we astonishingly naive -- we thought we could look at every book -- we didn't know the size of the field -- and we were changing the field as we went on
• can't edit an encyclopedia unless you are an obsessive nit-picker
• 1995 Grolier CD version -- corporate image more important than the text
  • I got mad enough to write the sw for a reasonable front end
  • and fix the bugs and missing text
  • now have a clean 1993+Addenda image
• 2,000,000 words in 2 years -- because we are starting with 1,500,00
• bibliographic resources sparse and incomplete in 1970s
  • huge envelope of understanding needed to surround these
  • no recognition of amount of ephemera, reviews, ...
• 1st edition, worked for hire, didn't have copyright -- bought it -- had to go into debt to revise our own book!
  • after publication, immediately outmoded -- also ways of understanding field gradually changing -- so started keeping a database
• 2nd edn -- good shape of SF at the time
• since then, things have changed -- much more diffuse
  • have been obsessively adding info/data to it ever since
  • getting sense of change of field through this
  • it's getting more and more recorded -- innocence has gone -- no more discoveries -- job is not to coordinate and organise and shape it
  • v different from the Wikipedia model -- we are making decisions/judgments -- arbiter of huge piles of jewels and shit
• anatomising a living organism, v post mortem?
  • partly archeological
  • absolute obedience to the facts
• "coded" terminology -- eg, "routine", "unexceptionable" -- rather than overcritical
  • judgment partly in terms of space given
  • choice of selection of facts
• attempted to have as few major contributors as possible
  • 4 people wrote > 80% of 2nd edition -- 4th was Stableford
  • recognisable tone -- readers can learn tone, and so understand judgments, blind-spots, etc
• all books fully ascribed in same way
  • designed v carefully to be easy to read -- obvious -- huge achievement
  • most encyclopedists have no clarity of mind
    • sign of an amateur -- include because they like it, use first name because they knew him
  • reduce decision points to a minimum
• errors, inconsistencies, etc don't have same fixity in an online book
  • default edition, 2M words in ~ 2 years time
  • monthly global update
  • needs to be friendly to scholars -- fixed iterations of what quoted
  • cross referencing, pictures, ...
  • the more we do, become self-sustaining, easier to get permissions, acquire more info, ...
• short stories -- may go in in the future -- have more space -- also more info available
  • also don't have to be complete, because of monthly iterations, so can be partial, can be corrected "immediately"
• different ways of accessing data will be provided
• it has taken on a life of its own -- become classic text partly by default
  • sense of responsibility -- what about 4th, 5th editions -- need new scholars
• the word "encyclopedia" is often misused, but I believe it must at least have head words and be alphabetical
• amateur scholarship is sometimes brilliant, inspired, eccentric, loony, ...
• we will link to other sites with further info
• ISFDB is hugely unreliable -- need to sweep the shit out of the stables

Panel -- Is The Incredibles the Best Superhero Movie Ever?

The Incredibles lived up to its name. Should other caped movie crusaders hang up their suits, or is there more life in the genre? What do other superhero movies do as well or better?

Doug Bell, Rebecca Moesta, Lawrence Person, Simon R Green

• an affection for the characters and the genre -- embraced silliness and grandeur
  • Kevin Smith -- Spider-Man scripts -- producer said: no costume, no flying, fight a giant spider
• riff on every single superhero movie story -- obvious he knew what he was doing
  • also middle aged angst -- villain is a fanboy -- depth of knowledge of genre
• Evil Overlord List -- villain knows all this, and it doesn't help him a bit (except for the carefully constructed prison)
• the joy of when they use their powers
• humorous realism -- getting bugs in face when running fast -- humour not overdone
• costume designer -- "no capes!"
• not an origin story -- v little backstory
• asked the great "what next" questions -- like coping with kids with superpowers
• just 8 months later -- get live action Fantastic Four -- why? -- Incredibles' powers are ~ same
  • represent all teenage problems -- invisible, overflow with emotion, skin peels, ...
• little throwaway lines
• love story already there -- so nothing needs to be shoehorned in -- masks don't have to come off
• a complete family, happy, but still source of dramatic tension
  • daughter's progression
• on the Web
  • Batman Dead End -- Alien Predator Joker all in one go
  • Grayson -- trailer for a film that doesn't exist -- great
• Greatest SF films never made
  • Silver Surfer
  • Before Orson Welles made Citizen Kane -- other options -- Heart of Darkness , Batman ("Citizen Wayne")
  • Shadow on radio
• Incredibles -- women superheroes treated as peers -- still a bit flaky in the X-Men
  • "Married with Children" as a superhero sitcom?
• scene where all his friends are dead -- "deceased" on screen -- great scene -- load of info, v quickly, without infodumping
• The Specials -- Rob Lowe -- world's 27th best superhero team -- what they do on their day off -- still have respect for characters
• scene on DVD -- between babysitter and JakJak -- funniest in film
  • Clark Kent's babysitter -- in huge iron cage -- escapes -- baby in microwave at end -- DC pulped whole run
• Mystery Men -- another light-hearted movie -- also v good
  • adapted well by people who respect genre and characters
  • more of a movie for fans -- crass more than funny, OTT rather than heartwarming
  • two or three different movies going on
• Incredibles -- at least two levels -- we were laughing at bits the other audience weren't, but everyone enjoyed it
• X-Men 3 has been taken over by new producer who want to put own stuff in it
• Spider-Man 3 is still Sam Raimi again
• animation doesn't have to worry about SFX
  • Pixar waits until the script is right before the first frame is rendered
• fearful of future Incredibles franchise -- Disney has rights to sequels -- direct to DVD
• Harlan Ellison worked for Disney -- lasted one morning!
  • "I didn't say she was crazy, I said she was f**king Goofy"
• I liked Unbreakable -- most people hated it!
• best character is Edna Mode -- not funny to children
  • asked the next questions -- whence the costumes? -- how to sew indestructible fabrics -- are capes useful?
  • good comics also pick up on these points -- a Watchman was killed when his cape got caught

Three Weird Sisters

{Mary Crowell, Gwen Knighton, Teresa Powell, Brenda Sutton}

• great filk concert

Hugo Awards Ceremony

• Paul McAuley and Kim Newman were the Masters of Ceremony. They set the evening off in style with a brilliant potted alternate history of the Hugos, named, as we all know, for Victor Hugo, and of the world dominant French Empire's literature of "Fiction Scientifique", or FS as it is popularly known.
• The ceremony was the shortest on record, at around 90 minutes, as the winners exercised admirable restraint in the speechmaking department.

Panel -- Finding the Fantastic in The Baroque Cycle

A much-lauded SF writer and computer scientist writes a meganovel on the emergence of the scientific method. Writes it with a fountain pen! But is The Baroque Cycle SF, or just fiction about science?

Tanya Brown, Paul Kincaid, Charles Stross

• I bought the eBook version because the hardback is so big!
• first question that comes to mind is ... why?
• it's a marvellous read -- but it's larger than Peter Hamilton 's Night's Dawn -- 1.2M words
  • it's about the way the modern system, the Enlightenment, drove out the medieval and earlier systems of looking at the world
  • also Secret History of scientific methods
• he wrote it with a pen, because he was 500 pages into a book and lost it all in a catastrophic disk failure
  • some authors go back to a pen, and then find they write more!
• it is one novel structurally -- only reasonably read on a PDA -- Mr S has not committed trilogy
• starts in Medieval Renaissance mindset, finished in Enlightenment mindset
  • many characters and a lot going on
  • I can see why he felt the need for a measured 18th century flow, digressions
  • Tristram Shandy -- apparently irrelevant bits that subsequently become relevant
  • could get a 300,000 word novel out of it, but that would be a shame
• what is the difference between SF and fiction about science?
  • Timescape -- about scientists doing research, combined with an SF element
  • similar in Baroque Cycle -- infodumps about economics of silver smithing in Europe, Royal Society, etc -- fiction with science
  • Enoch Root, Solomon Cohen, Daniel Waterhouse, Hooke's alchemical papers -- these are the SF elements
  • Quicksilver = "Danny Waterhouse and the Philosopher's Stone"
• you don't realise Enoch Root makes it SF unless you've read Cryptonomicon
  • maybe he is committing trilogy: 1 = Cryptonomicon , 2 = Baroque Cycle , 3 = 3M word novel to come!
• not just Royal Society experiments -- also uses and abuses "how the street finds uses" -- also treats economics as science
• Eliza is quite clearly a time traveller from The Diamond Age -- jarringly different mindset
• totally written from an SFnal perspective -- sense of wonder about historical events -- freshness
• plays fast and loose with history, in subtle ways, changes all the way through
  • eg nature of the Kabal in Quicksilver , completely different fro the actual Cabal in Charles II's reign
• that godawful unpronounceable island -- subverts any sense of reality
  • could take that in my stride -- but v strange SFnal worldbuilding approach to history -- eg Eliza's tale of abduction, deaths of chefs?? -- very Vance an, but spliced in seamlessly
  • based on fact that past is not just another country, it's another planet
• Waterhouse family obsession with computational organs
  • Cryptonomicon -- code breaking on an organ
  • this -- gold punched cards, compressed air
• a later novel will have Bach -- Toccata and Fugue is clearly a boot loader!
• enough rare isotope of gold to plate a ship -- that's SFnal
• so many of the loose ends take us back in time rather than forward --origins of Enoch Root?

• There's a place in Orkney very similar to the unpronounceable island -- birthplace of Washington Irving -- who wrote a similarly fanciful history
• Chip Delany 's Neveryon series -- origin of reading and writing
  • unexpected setting to explore whole notion of information
  • Stephenson's interest in Computer Science definitely comes through here
  • money as information -- value not in gold, but in economy -- degree of confidence in economy -- Isaac Newton's triumph at the Mint is making all coins worth the same amount -- hoarding heavier ones is wrecking the economy -- money is an indirection layer, comparing information about values of good
  • different ways information is transmitted between characters
    • secret messages, punched cards, binary embroidery, buttons, bible readings, ... -- ways to subvert the flow of information
    • there's probably a whole extra novel encoded steganographically in the white space!

• is it an Alternate History novel?
  • I have described it as so -- in scientific terms, no, but in political terms, it is -- I don't know why he did it -- the novel doesn't need it
  • playfulness -- I don't think he was so concerned with it
  • but history is a form of information
    • most potent political force, Cabal, in reign of Charles II -- origins of Cabinet Government -- members and their interests are totally different from real ones -- eg Puritan interests, religious differences were key

• the SFnal elements are quite a small part, but the way it looks at the world is SFnal
• Michael Marshall's more recent work is mainstream, but still feels like an SF writer
  • using the tools of SF
    • Edward de J -- an anti-Stephenson viewpoint throughout -- traditional aristocrat -- technocrats -- Daniel Waterhouse is the skeptic, questioning everything -- modern scientific outlook
  • he explains ramifications more than an historical novelist would -- describes it as if it's an alien society -- description of how it works -- rationalist rather than romantic approach -- Versaille in winter: modern palace, piles of frozen human turds -- realistic -- not "ooh, Versaille, nice frocks" -- Stephenson doesn't have much time for nice frocks, unless the embroidery encodes a secret diary
  • but the characters tend to have a modern mindset, so don't get what they would have actually felt -- not absorbed, but looking back
    • modern mindset is present, but fragmented
    • quite a few little jokes -- historical and fictional characters -- eg "Ben" is Benjamin Franklin

• Eliza is unbelievable, a representation of a viewpoint, there to present certain ideas
  • I don't find her unbelievable, but I think she has a modern mindset that wouldn't have survived or thrived
  • Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
  • time traveller with powerful tools of economics, in a time where she was a second class citizen

• something "fantastic" happens -- not understood by people -- turns out to have a rational explanation -- lots of mundane explanations -- but the most fantastic things, what happens to Newton and origins of Enoch Root, are never explained
  • trying to show what a pre-scientific mindset was like
• did he conceive of the Baroque Cycle before or after Cryptonomicon ?
  • lots of things in Cryptonomicon that make me think he had a grand idea, at least -- but difficult to tack cause and effect

• most fantastical is the connection to Cryptonomicon -- same families
  • Enoch Root pulling strings -- breeding programme!

Panel -- The Future of Malware

Viruses continue to proliferate and most email traffic is spam. Where are we going -- and is it anywhere other than down? Are phishing and similar scams mind-hacks?

Sally Mayer, Simon Bradshaw, David D. Levine, Bridget Wilkinson

• viruses -- first floppies, then the Internet
• can engineer users to do bad things -- the user is part of the system -- social engineering
  • viruses run on the human brain -- antivirus sw for them is not v good
• Trojan Horse, spyware, ...
• licence agreements -- deemed to have consented if click "yes"
  • except for ones inside shrink wrappers
• social engineering -- users will have to become more sophisticated
  • users want one big button that says "do the right thing", and they want it pre-pushed at the factory
• phishing -- cast a hook many times to get a bite
  • works over the phone, too -- you need only a few bites
  • junk mail "won a lottery"
• people who aren't yet aware of how the system is supposed to work -- if it's their 1st/2nd interaction, they haven't had time to learn the system
• if we had a a larger spread of OS, we might have less of a problem -- update your virus sw!
• totally secure => doorstop -- armour-plated greyhound
• security is a state of mind, not a technology -- defence in depth
  • sometimes some security helps, by moving problem to neighbour's computer -- (only have to be able to outrun you , not the bear)
• future -- more an more social engineering, beyond phishing
  • more devices to become vulnerable
• hove a "frozen OS" (eg BBC micro) -- relatively proof against viruses
  • it's a social problem -- technical fixes to social problems are attractive and rarely work
• the fist thing to pass the Turing test will be a spambot
• continuing spiral of evolution of legal system and computer crime
  • eg, does a DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack constitute hacking? -- just "picketing", rather than making it do something it wouldn't have done -- other arguments say it is, because it's preventing you using it as you want
  • people will find loopholes
  • more possibilities of corporate espionage
• can usually find where an email is from -- but what if it comes from a place you have no jurisdiction over -- and not enough resources to track down anyway
• in process of moving from most viruses written by bored teenagers to organised crime -- not hearing about most sever attacks on most valuable targets
• confiscate assets? ASBOs?
  • on the one hand, government is trying to make everyone use the Internet -- denying people access will be making them non-citizens

Panel -- Medical Hazards of Space

The health realities of spaceflight, and realistic diseases for other worlds.

Elizabeth Moon , Dave Clements, Jack Cohen , Roy Gray

• we're not going to catch alien bugs -- parasitology is v carefully designed
  • Alien -- not going to get something inside without it being noticed
• what's most scary medically about space? radiation? rats nibbling insulation? diarrhoea?
  • hygiene -- zero g toilets -- air flushing -- wetwipes -- how well sealed? -- the shit is supposed to hit the fan!
    • what happens when someone gets sick? enough toilets if an epidemic?
  • even in perfectly hygienic environments, allergies and radiation can cause sickness
    • raising children in a perfectly sterile environment -- they will have allergies!
      • take a package of assorted nasties, and give to young children
• this colony called "Jack Cohen" -- I'm a process, not a situation -- I have more bacterial DNA than Jack Cohen DNA
  • treat not as problems but as trajectories -- not homeostatic -- homeorhetic ["same flow", "same trajectory"] -- controlled path, not controlled place
• colonies of living things going into space
• Biosphere 2 -- lost 0.1% of the oxygen per month -- crucial and important bit of space medicine -- brought in wet plants, didn't know how much CNO in environment
  • architect pointed out that the drying concrete was absorbing CO ₂
  • but we're not losing CO ₂ , we're losing O ₂ !
  • for all of us, CO ₂ is the opposite of O ₂
    • plucking feathers -- look at bit plucked out, rather than bit left, to see how it grew
  • it's all the unexamined unknowns that frighten me -- even worse - -the things I know, that are wrong!
• we don't know what microorganisms to take with us -- we don't know the effect of the space environment on them
• soil bacteria, fungi at root hairs -- every living thing on this planet is part of something else
• don't know minimum size of viable human colony -- don't know what genes we need -- or the effect of 50 years in space on them
• trial experiment -- 5 people for 2 years -- Biosphere 2 -- learned a lot -- need a lot of experiments -- should do 100 -- costs less to do 100 than to fix the problems of not doing 100
  • but ask for 250 -- bureaucrats will feel good cutting you down to 100
• psychology -- lock 3 people in a small enclosure for 2 years and see what happens -- overwintering in Antarctica
• what problems are they having the the Space Station?
  • bone loss, no matter how much exercise -- cross connecting fibres don't grow in right directions
  • psychological problems have physiological effects -- use more O ₂ , digestion effects
  • body is a dynamic system -- zero gravity -- don't get knocks and bangs, not working against gravity -- immune system starts to deteriorate, probably due to v few challenges
• meiosis can't happen over 34°C -- testes kept cooler than 37°C -- what about ovaries? -- also work only at 34°C (discovered in 1980s) -- a protein that makes a "mini fridge" -- women are slightly warmer than men because this is a more efficient cooler
• bone loss -- used to be a "health problem" -- now "space adapted" -- doublespeak?
  • still need strong bones, to act as levers
  • also calcium from the bones in the blood -- heart problems
  • most people puff out -- also happens in the head
• long range travels -- some people will adapt better to space
  • is 1/6g no use, intermediate, almost as good as 1g?
    • eg, athlete going to high altitudes to get more haemoglobin
    • lose bone in low g -- athletes might want to go to high g to add more bone mass? -- can do this in 1g with weight training
  • space telling us how our bodies work in ways we didn't realise
• working at 14,000 ft for a week is hard -- but when you come back down, it's wonderful! -- almost don't have to breathe at all!
• linear thinking -- lose at low g => gain at high g
  • no reason to be linear -- maybe every way we change from where we've evolved we go pathological
• human variability -- what we do won't work the same on everyone -- great variation -- there is no "standard human"
• folk genetics -- the human genome is a wild population, 1/3 genes different -- ancient mutations being recombined all the time
  • only 1/3 of women have standard textbook hormone cycle
  • some women have many more androgens than some men
  • we're all different
  • when we get into a new environment, we don't know who will prosper
  • each of us has our own preferred environment, which we're not in
• every glass of water you drink in London has been through 4 people first
  • get people to spit into a beaker, then ask them to drink it (their own spit)
• sewage processing may require gravity to work
• psychological profiles -- pioneer drive v staying in same place
• seeing darkness out the window makes you want to go to bed

Jack Cohen -- Designing Aliens

Our consulting alien designer extraordinaire shows that the possible shapes and habits of life are not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine. And there's more to imagining an alien than giving it a bumpy forehead.

• for 2 1/2 years, been working with Science Museum on an alien exhibition --
  • 4 planets, different environments, designed
  • but they bought a different one
• Simon Conway Morris is Christian -- he believes any form of life must be like us
• book on how to design an alien
• lots of bad ways to evolve aliens
  • asking what humans would look life if they's evolved on Mars is like asking what fish would look life if they's evolved on the Moon
  • too anthropic
• change the parameters, it all falls to bits -- true of everything -- if change pitch of nuts and bolts a bit, don't work -- make the wheels smaller, tyres don't fit -- doesn't mean there can't be many sorts of cars
• contingency of evolution
  • universals -- four Fs -- flight, photosynthesis, fur, sex
  • parochials -- feathers, teeth, pentadactyl limbs, vertebrates, ...
    • but there are other creatures that fill the same ecological niches -- predators with eyes at the front
  • many creatures have developed intelligence -- universal
  • extelligence -- so far only once
• other nucleic acids, other proteins, other polysaccharides, other metabolic tricks, ...
• planet design exercise -- 100x150 cell spreadsheet, each an organism -- ecologies, food webs, energy budgets, biochemistry, icebergs
• never use the words "balance" or "equilibrium" when talking about life -- homeostasis = dead -- homeorhesis : life is going somewhere -- process not situation
• 4 planets -- Poseidon: water -- Gargantua: gas giant -- Snowall: "Europa" -- Nimbus: "Titan"
• there isn't just one solution -- can go many ways
  • to get a specific end pattern is difficult
  • to go somewhere from here -- lots of possibilities
    • construct the plot from the ecology
    • have the ecology and "adventure into it"
• non-carbon based ecologies?
  • some hand-waving, but we don' know enough
  • don't those sunspots look like paramecia
    • creatures in outer layers of stars?
  • other metabolisms -- P, Mo, Fe, Cu
  • other basic elements -- Si -- probably not, chemistry not interesting enough, maybe
  • other substrates? Europa? Jovian moons? Titan?
  • stellar atmospheres, sunspots, neutron stars
  • constructed creatures
• when we meet aliens, they won't be biological -- they'll be robots -- built and sent
• look forward to when we get to point of first contact -- then look at what we mean by "we" -- people will be v changed -- we won't be this primitive biological creature
• electrochemical creatures -- lots of ways of making transistors -- developing recursive systems that plate each other
• Science Museum is paying me -- they get an 8 hour day
  • writing 2 books -- sequel to Figments of Reality , etc -- takes ID apart in one chapter -- to give it more makes it more important than it is
  • to be Jewish you don't need to believe in a personal god
• four planets -- the generalisations are realistic, the specific instantiations are not
  • "rainfall", v specific pattern of raindrops on the pavement
• evolution of recombination of existing differences
• it's a game -- it is enormous fun to think of our biology as a part of a much bigger Universal Biology
• diseases for the aliens
  • Grendels eat their babies -- they use their progeny to transduce their food -- babies are algae eaters
  • in Dragons of Heorot , the Grendels get parasites
  • there's a flatworm that parasitises and ant's brain to make it climb to the top of a grass stem, where it gets eaten by a cow -- part of the flatworm's lifecycle
  • parasites make Grendels intelligent, then extelligent
  • just imagine, if we had a nasal disease that caused people to sneeze!
• Blue Planet -- life gets everywhere it can -- and everywhere it can't
  • around black smokers
  • the way you look tells you what's there -- large nets see nothing, cut the jellyfish to pieces
• we are an extelligent species -- will it be our Protectors who contact the aliens?
  • the "we" is our extelligence
  • we are part of the extelligence -- passengers