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Helicon 2: Eastercon 2002
Helicon 2: Eastercon 2002
The 53rd British Easter Science Fiction Convention
29 March--1 April 2002, Hotel de France, Jersey
GoHs:
Brian Stableford
, Harry
Turtledove, (fan) Peter Weston.
This was my first trip to Jersey, and both the
Hotel de France
(including
indoor trees and clouds
, and
alien table decorations
) and the
weather were splendid -- but the ferry trip was an exercise in sleep
deprivation, in both directions. If there's another Jersey Eastercon, I'll
be back, but I'll fly!
The theme of the con was "Alternative History" (AH)
Programme highlights
Panel --
What is Fandom that Thou Art Mindful of it?
Eve Harvey, John Harvey, Tobes, Mike Scott
-
A way of making friends -- where you don't have to
explain
-
A mutual appreciation society
-
Communication with other fans -- you can be a "fan" without
liking SF, and an SF-lover without being a fan
-
Rose fans talk about roses, dog fans about dogs, but SF fans don't
talk about SF very much, especially when they've been in fandom for
years --
old
friends
-
SF reading is essentially solitary -- don't
need
to meet
fandom -- with other interest clubs, you essentially have to be part of
a group
-
Fans are less judgmental?
-
but what about the way we feel about media fans?
-
some SF fans came in via media fandom
-
media has made it a more acceptable hobby for women
-
growth in media fandom paralleled by growth in strong women
characters in SF
-
many come through university fandom, and the university sex
balance is shifting
-
so SF fandom is a branch of intellectualism?
-
well, it is explicitly a hobby about thinking about
things
-
Would a stamp con have a panel on "stamp fans, why do we need
them?" -- are we basically insecure?
-
How many people here admitted they were going to Jersey
for an SF
con
? [most people had!]
-
What makes someone a fan?
-
just going to an SF con? -- It costs money, it is an effort to go
-
engaging with the fannish culture at the con?
-
Someone had £200 stolen at the Adelphi -- there was a
whip-round and it was replaced -- fandom is a support group
-
coming to see the people, rather than go to the panels
-
implies it has to be at least your second convention
-
or you met after Internet newsgroup contact (in the past it
was more fanzine / letter writing contact) -- it can be a
terrible shock when you finally meet someone!
-
Fandom is still incredibly macho
-
we talk about how late we stay up, and how drunk we get
-
can a group that includes
Teddy
be macho?
-
US and Australian fans don't tend to drink so much
-
Brian Aldiss claims it is a tribal gathering
-
so is there a tribal chief? We don't have "leaders" in
fandom. SMoFs?
-
We couldn't have fandom without books/authors -- they define us
-
even if all SF publishing stopped tomorrow, Eastercons would go
on for a least a few more years
-
cons don't revolve around authors
-
ZZ9 required the existence of Douglas Adams and HHGTTG to get
started, but not any more
-
Eastercons are a subgroup of fandom
-
there's a lot of overlap with other groups, like folk,
re-enactment, ...
Panel --
Easy Fusion -- here we go again
Simon Bradshaw, John Bray, Steve Rothman, John Dallman
The original Cold Fusion story broke at Contrivance. 13 years on
Science
is prepared to publish articles on it again.
-
the original debacle, March 1989
-
everyone wanted to
believe
Fleischmann & Pons, but
suspected
it was all bollocks
-
extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs
-
"this result hasn't been replicated by a university that
hasn't got a major league football team"
-
what happened to F&P? -- they went off the Japan, the
disappeared
-
Frank Close,
Too Hot
to Handle
-- documents the events
-
In 1993 Utah still had a cold fusion centre
-
what if? -- imagine if it had worked, 13 years ago
-
small scale steam turbines
-
good small scale heat source -- but lots of neutrons
-
"if they were getting the reaction they claim, and the
neutron flux they claim, then standing that close to the
experiment, they'd be dead!"
-
would F&P be rich -- that's a different set of skills
-
big effect on global warming arguments and plans
-
It was bad science, procedurally
-
lots of new science seems odd when first demonstrated
-
but this was science by press conference
-
"doing bad science can end you up in hot water, or, in the
case of Fleischmann & Pons, rather tepid water"
-
Irving Langmuir,
Pathological Science
(reprinted in
Physics
Today
42, pp36-48, Oct 1989):
-
he studied properties of bad science, such as N-rays, Rhine's
ESP. More recent example: polywater
-
isolated several common features
-
scientists working outside primary area of expertise
-
results on the threshold of detection
-
difficulties with others reproducing the results (within
weeks of the high temperature superconductor announcements,
everybody was doing it, and finding new ways)
-
polarisation of the community, especially along
national/ideological grounds (eg French homeopathy, Russian
Lysenkoism)
-
F&P cold fusion matched a lot of Langmuir's criteria
-
what about the latest cold fusion claims?
-
R. P. Taleyarkhan
et al
., Evidence for Nuclear Emissions
During Acoustic Cavitation,
Science
295
, 1868 (2002)
-
based on
sonoluminescence
-
sound waves in water can cause bubbles in synch with the
sound -- the bubbles contract, get hot, and can emit flashes of
light
-
(one of the few known ways of converting sound to light)
-
can these bubbles get hot enough for fusion? -- yes, but at a
predicted reaction rate of one neutron every few seconds
-
a new setup uses neutrons to initiate the bubbles, giving much
hotter bubbles
-
using deuterated acetone as the liquid, and ordinary acetone as
the control
-
there is a discrepancy of a factor of ten between the tritium and
the number of neutron observed
-
the key authors are experts in sonar luminescence, not fusion
-
is it
possible
to be expert in enough areas to get
interesting cross-disciplinary results?
-
it's difficult to do a literature search if you don't even know
the name of the effect -- reinventing the wheel is depressingly
common
-
another key problem indicator --
working in isolation
and
springing the results on the world
-
should discuss with other scientists first, using traditional
networking
-
if you announce a result and it is later shown to be wrong, not a
big problem
provided
you use the right procedure (eg the
6.00 month period planet around a pulsar)
-
problem is that today these things are financially too important
-
easy cold fusion would make the small cold fusion bomb easy, too
-
so
should you publish
?
-
if you discover it, someone else will, too
-
if you publish, can make it easier to stop the supply of the
necessary raw materials
-
the Australian scientists who inadvertently produced a super
strain of mouse-pox -- which might have made a super smallpox
possible -- decided to publish so that NIH etc could research it
-
cold fusion is a bug in the aliens' VR cage around us!
-
Such bugs get fixed very quickly, which is why the effects can't
be reproduced
-
(a sort of inverse of Sheldrake's "morphic resonance")
-
the universe is being subject to "continual process
improvement"
-
there is also
bad
theoretical
science
-
contradicts observations (new theories explain all that the old
ones do, and more)
-
accumulating get-out clauses (adding epicylces)
Panel --
Is Nit-Picking a Legitimate Critical Technique in SF?
Ian Watson,
Justina Robson
, Dave
O'Neill, Chris Amies
In a genre based on extrapolation, to what extent does the artist have
to "show the workings" in the margin?
-
[Merriman-Webster:
nit-picking
,
n
: minute and usually
unjustified criticism]
-
[OED2:
nit-picker
: A
pedantic
critic; one who searches for and over-emphasizes trivial errors]
-
Common in films and TV
-
Comets in
Star Trek
with trailing tails, instead of pointing away from the sun.
-
Jon Brunner suggested, unsuccessfully, to
Space 1999
that
he be their SF consultant -- as they obviously needed one --
watching laser beams coming towards you, ...
-
Space would be dull if it were silent
-
Armageddon
has
rocks flying around like leaves in a gale -- much more interesting
than reality
-
Nit-picking this film is a compulsive addiction -- but if
they weren't there it would be a dull story. [You mean, it isn't
already?]
-
The Matrix
, with
people being batteries -- it's infuriating!
-
IW
-- six months before Sept 11 I had a short story "Hijack
Holiday" in
Interzone
, about flying a passenger jet into
the Eiffel Tower.
-
Films and TV may need them, to be interesting, but books don't?
-
Mary Doria Russell,
The
Sparrow
-
a BSFA award story, with awful science
-
many of the problems could have been fixed without losing the
story
-
it wasn't her interest, so why should she bother?
-
I didn't read it, because I knew in advance it would annoy
me. It's a rehash of James Blish's
A Case of Conscience
.
-
not everybody can get everything right
-
are we imposing stronger requirements than are placed on
mainstream novels?
-
a story set in the near future that becomes invalid, just becomes
an AH!
-
all this research is bad --
just make it up
!
-
They are there because of the demands of the story, a need for drama,
to supplement reality
-
that's lazy -- it's because the author can't be bothered to think
of a valid reason for doing something
-
constraints of reality can result in better tension
-
There's also character nit-picking -- they wouldn't
do
that.
-
Then there are the italicised full stops
.
-
American authors set their stories in London and mess with the
geography -- they think their readers won't notice.
-
Reign of Fire
, a film set in Norfolk, but filmed in Ireland,
complete with mountain-dwelling dragons! [Norfolk is notoriously flat,
and has no mountains. (Or dragons for that matter, but no-one is
complaining about
that
....)]
-
Inspector Morse teleports around Oxford -- but that doesn't bother me
as much as the 75 murders a year! -- And what about the murder rate in
Midsomer village?
-
I don't mind if the plot isn't affected by it. But if they change the
laws of physics to solve a problem...
-
As long as it doesn't break my
willing suspension of
disbelief
-- it's hard to get that back
-
Water-worn caves in granite, abandoned farms not reverting to forest
-- none of these bothered me until I learnt enough
-
is it just because we are specialists?
-
IW
-- you need a
pompous but fictional page of thanks
to your advisors -- either to make people accept the book, or so they
can blame someone else for the mistakes!
-
Some people do use the 1932
Britannica
for their science
research
-
authors have a responsibility, as some people learn from reading
-
The Moral Duty of Authors
-
they should learn not to believe what they read in SF!
-
even SF authors put other authors' mistakes in their own books
-
you can't learn everything you need
-
I need some maths for a couple of paragraphs -- how much effort
should I put into it?
-
Analogy to software bugs:
-
"show stopper bugs" should be caught by the editor, who
shouldn't even buy the book
-
that leaves the 1000s of small tedious bugs and infelicities --
they don't immediately kill the use of the software -- but they add
up to making you stop reading the book
-
You can lose confidence in the writer
-
It may not be an error -- you may have misunderstood the author's
intent -- Geoffrey of Monmouth may have been writing a deeper story,
of England's soul
-
internal consistency is important --
don't change the rules
-
Science changes rapidly -- Hawking announced micro black holes --
which led to a period of micro black hole stories -- then a little later
he said they evaporated in 10
-35
seconds!
-
All progress depends on the nit-pickers pointing out what is wrong
-
Larry Niven
-- Ringworld is
unstable -- he corrected it in the next volume, with stabilising rockets
(he also fixed the problem with the Earth rotating the wrong way!)
-
Frank Herbert -- there are well-known problems in
Dune
-
Star Trek
-- all the
senior officers constantly beaming down into danger is worse than any
physics error -- fixed to some degree in
Next Generation
-
teaches us that "nice guys have the best adventures"?
-
People in the future seem to get steadily dumber -- because natural
selection has favoured the genes of Hollywood superstars?
-
Red Dwarf
is inconsistent -- but it's trying to make you
laugh, so that's okay.
-
Wargames
is clearly written by people who know nothing about
computers
-
Agatha Christie once described the effects of a poison so accurately
that a reader recognised the symptoms of someone's death, leading to
someone being convicted of their murder
-
If you tell absolute lies, will people try to achieve them? Is it a
way to "bootstrap" ourselves? Life imitates Art. People
consciously or unconsciously use such templates, but you probably can't
manipulate it consciously and cynically
-
Everything will be believed by somebody
-
Nit-picking is
a form of mutual grooming
!
-
it shows that the thing is worthy of attention
-
IW
-- even hostile reviews? -- a wonderful insight!
-
fanfic authors often send stories to each other to nitpick out
the bugs
-
"Nit-picking is something I do to justify to myself watching bad
SF TV"
Panel --
Alternative History: Choosing a Point of Departure
Jon Courtenay Grimwood
, Mary
Branscombe, Harry Turtledove, Peter Garratt
-
JCG
-- I've used a turning point where Napoleon wins the
Franco-Prussian war, yet set 40 years in our future -- so there are big
changes.
-
Also, one in 1915, where the US President brokers a deal between
Berlin and London, so WWI reduces to the Third Balkan Conflict
-
MB
-- my favorite idea for a turning point is to do with
harmonising the date of Easter -- English (Roman) christian church
versus the Celtic christian church -- Synod of Whitby 664 AD -- going
with the Celtic date instead would have weakened links with Rome --
maybe no crusades, so a different relationship between Europe and Arabia
-
HT
-- The change has to plausible, something interesting must
spring from it, and (not quite so crucial) the audience must have some
interest in it.
-
in the US, books based on the American Civil War sell better than
those based on Byzantine history!
-
PG
-- the first short story I wrote was to do with 1830s
rick-burnings -- protesting laborers burnt hay ricks, a hanging offence.
-
One where England won the 100 Years War -- France dominated by
England -- I Anglicised the spelling of various Paris placenames -- the
editor corrected the "spelling mistakes"!
-
Sprague de Camp,
Lest Darkness Fall
-- AH plus time travel,
6th century Rome ruled by the Goths -- time traveller has no idea how to
make gunpowder, etc -- can't use 20th century tech -- changes history by
introducing double entry book-keeping!
-
HT
-- I bought
LDF
when 15 -- without it, I would
not have got interested in history, would not have got same degree,
or wife, or children -- AH on a "microhistorical scale" --
we all have stories like this
-
PG
-- At 16 I started A-level English -- was introduced
to "the canon" -- stopped reading SF for a while --
crashed a party -- asked a girl why she was standing behind the door
-- "because then people take notice of me" -- she
introduced me to SF readers -- I ended up reading Chris Priest's
Inverted World
with a hangover -- if I hadn't crashed that
party I wouldn't a got back into SF, or know three quarters of the
people I know today
-
HT
--
Guns of the South
was an accident -- I didn't
intend to write it. Judith Tarr was complaining about the cover art on
one of her books -- said it was as anachronistic as "Robert E Lee
with an Uzi" -- I wondered, who gives him the Uzi? -- time
travelling South Africans? -- thence the book
-
You make the change, then need to follow through the consequences --
do the same bands exist? -- are there different car manufacturers?
-
A long way from the change, things can be almost unrecognisable
-
If the breakpoint is far in the past -- how to tell the reader
without breaking the narrative flow?
-
guide books -- faces on coins
-
someone studying history asking what would have happened it the
3rd Balkan Conflict had become a larger war
-
having a story asking what if set
in
an AH is powerful
-
Sir Edward Creasey,
15 Decisive Battles of the World
, 1851 --
good starting points
-
The Battle of Marathon, BC 490
-
Defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse, BC 413
-
The Battle of Arbela, BC 331 -- Alexander's victory
-
The Battle of the Metaurus, BC 207 -- Hannibal's brother defeated
while bringing him siege equipment
-
Victory of Arminius over the Roman Legions under Varus, AD 9 --
driving the Romans out of Germany
-
The Battle of Chalons, AD 451 -- defeat of Attila the Hun
-
The Battle of Tours, AD 732 -- defeat of Arabs by the Franks
-
The Battle of Hastings, 1066 -- the Norman conquest
-
Joan of Arc's Victory over the English at Orleans, 1429
-
The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 1588
-
The Battle of Blenheim, 1704
-
The Battle of Pultowa, 1709 -- Russian defeat of the Swedes
-
Victory of the Americans over Burgoyne at Saratoga, 1777
-
The Battle of Valmy, 1792 -- French Revolutionary Victory
-
The Battle of Waterloo, 1815 -- defeat of Napoleon
-
Not only battles -- changes to do with technology are also
interesting
-
Kim Stanley Robinson,
The Years of Rice and Salt
-- Black
Death devastates Europe, leaving the future to the Arabs and the Chinese
-
L Neil Smith
--
The
Crystal Empire
: Moslems rule the world after a more extreme Black
Death -- the North American Confederacy novels: hinge on a single word
change: "the
unanimous
consent of the people"
-
Robert Sobel,
For Want of a Nail
-- a college history text of
an AH world where Burgoyne won at Saratoga, affecting the outcome of the
American Revolution
-
A German invasion of England -- with battles described in great
detail -- was serialised in the Daily Sketch
-
In the UK there are a lot of stories of defeat of UK by Germany
-
there are
lots
of AH WWIIs
-
But are HT's WWII lizards
plausible
changes? -- they're
no worse than time travelling South Africans! -- "I have no
idea what's at Tau Ceti 2!"
-
Do you have back histories of notes?
-
HT
-- I carry it in my head, but I could write it down
-
JCG
-- I have a notebook for each novel -- street plans,
timelines -- it's a great excuse to buy old Victorian prints -- I've
got a fantastic cookery book: you name an endangered species, it's
in there!
-
Irish famine -- drove Irish immigrants to the US -- was based on a
single
species
of potato
-
China goes to NA, instead of turning inwards
-
Stirrup developed at a different time/place
-
Romans with the Hindu-Arabic number system
-
Freud never existed
-
Religion doesn't happen, or happens very differently
-
Poul Anderson
, "The
House of Sorrows" -- monotheism never happened
-
change natural boundaries, domesticatable species
-
HT
-- "Down in the Bottomlands" -- the
Mediterranean never filled up again, affecting world climate
-
IBM had their PC project, but were working in parallel on project
Eagle -- 68000/Unix
-
Gibson and Sterling
,
The
Difference Engine
-- Babbage's engine worked -- needed a slight
strengthening of brass so that the gears didn't wear
-
Napoleon goes to college, has a wonderful time, and isn't derided as
a Corsican buffoon
-
Vladimir Lenin's elder brother was hanged by the Czarists -- so he
had a grudge -- remove the grudge in a
subtractive
personality
change -- Trotsky led the revolution?
-
Ward Moore,
Bring the Jubilee
-- another American Civil War
change, resulting in backward agrarian North and industrial South -- but
would
it have been like that?
-
Alexander the Great -- if his father Philip of Macedonia hadn't been
assassinated -- very different relationship between Greeks and Persians
-
Athenians didn't discover the silver mines at Laurion, or
Themistocles didn't argue to use the money to build a fleet of triremes
-- so the Persians conquer the Greeks
-
What kinds of change wouldn't show up until a
lot
later?
-
Medicine takes a long time to filter through -- introduction of
the bread mould poultice
Panel --
Shifting the Paradigms: How Science Changes
Julian Headlong, Judith Proctor, Roy Gray
-
Examples of scientific paradigm shifts
-
chemiosmotic theory
-- biochemistry in cells -- atomic
level reaction descriptions give way to concentration gradients -- a
more concrete paradigm
-
the geosyncline concept gives way to
plate tectonics
as
an explanation of mountains -- mid-Atlantic ridge and the symmetric
magnetism reversals -- Brazil/Africa coincidences in coastline shape
and fossils
-
intellectual property rights
-- copyright, patents,
trademarks, brands, ...
-
the concept didn't exist a few hundred years ago -- it wasn't
possible to find out if your book had been copied far away
-
part of the recent boom/bust because people overvalued IPR
-
technology is changing again -- easier to copy/counterfeit --
harder to protect -- need to change the business model -- a
second paradigm shift?
-
with nanotechnology, virtually the only thing of value is IPR
-
intellectual fix, like copyleft -- make money from training /
consultancy / manuals
-
A genuine paradigm shift can occur only by the old believers dying
-
A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still
-
When a new theory starts to be popular, initially the experiments are
still close to the old theory, then gradually move towards the new
-
A paradigm shift must overcome an existing entrenched view
-
The earth the centre of the universe was a paradigm
-
Was the overthrow of communism a paradigm shift?
-
Is the idea of "paradigm shift" itself a paradigm
shift? -- Kuhn overthrew Popper
-
Doctors listening to and learning from their patients who have
researched their symptoms on the Web may well become a paradigm
shift -- but many old doctors will have to die first!
-
I wouldn't rely on anything on the Internet
-
Shayler's book, etc -- I wouldn't ban it, I would bury it in
lots of lies, variant copies, etc -- disinformation -- "the
Web of lies"
-
Cases like
Lorenzo's Oil
-- where the parents find a
cure to a rare disease -- become much more possible given the
Internet
-
Darwin -- had massive social implications too
-
some places even tried to ban the teaching of evolution in
schools
-
"of course, nothing like that would ever happen today"
(heavy sarcasm)
-
did it affect the way we view primates?
-
fed into other paradigms -- evolutionary computer programs --
memetics -- social evolution
-
Clockwork mechanical Newtonian universe, music of the spheres,
etc -- given way to more biological metaphors
-
Animal rights -- partly driven by evolution ideas, partly by mass
extinctions -- not fully shifted
-
Punctuated equilibrium -- not a shift -- two schools fighting
-
Feminism -- fairly substantial change
-
SF -- before 1950s, the problem story -- inventions, physics,
engineering -- after 1960s, the social story -- character-based, biology
-
Aliens are viewed differently -- initially monsters -- then exploring
their cultures
-
Better astronomy has removed aliens from the solar system
-
Nanotechnology will have a big effect -- economic shift, from
manufacturing to intangible services
-
George Kelly -- Personal Construct Psychology -- ways of looking at
the world -- looking at incomplete conflicting data needs a range of
paradigms, not a rigid construct system -- multiple mental models
-
Articles in
New Scientist
try to get in a reference to
Star
Trek
-
previous generation of scientists grew up with
Heinlein
-- and have built
all that technology!
-
current scientists grew up with
Star Trek
-- so they want
that
science
-
a shift from the R.A.H school of science to the Gene Rodenberry
school of science
Panel --
Points of Departure: the Reformation
Laura Turtledove, Vincent Docherty, Richard Stephenson, Peter Garratt
If the American Civil War is the twist of choice for USan AHs, then the
Reformation is for ours. Would the continuation of the Roman Church here
have meant the suppression of science?
-
The Reformation was a rather arcane theological dispute
-
it started in Germany
-
1517 -- Martin Luther's "95 theses"
-
1536 -- Geneva -- Calvin's Puritanical Republic
-
the traditions affected North America -- there were
some
non-Puritans
-
The RC church, after 1000 years of entrenched power, were finally
successfully challenged on parts of dogma they had already moved
away from
-
Augustus: faith in JC -- Pelagius: good works sufficient --
Augustus won, but by the time of the Reformation, could get
brownie points for contributing money to the church, buying
indulgences, etc
-
Calvin believed in salvation by faith alone, and
predestination
-
So the Reformation was a shift from a corrupt hierarchy that
could nevertheless accommodate human frailty, to people who got
their idea from the bible, not from authority
-
The Reformation changed the control of money -- previously many wills
made in favour of monasteries
-
The RC church would have lost control eventually -- printing presses
-- bibles in native tongues
-
The church controlled by bringing scientific orthodoxy within itself
-
chose some parts of Greek/Roman science as orthodoxy, rejected
others -- controlled ideas of how the universe worked
-
Islamic scholars were the link from antiquity through the Dark
Ages to the medieval church
-
difficult to know how much is about power, and how much is about
trying to reconcile observations with theology
-
the breakup helped bring in new scientific ideas
-
Keith Roberts,
Pavanne
-- Elizabeth I killed, Spanish
win, RC church up to modern day, suppressing science
-
Four main effects
-
royal supremacy over the church
-
dissolution of religious houses -- huge transfers of wealth
-
rejecting saint cults, relics, etc
-
bible in English
-
The Lollards, a century earlier, 1380s--1410s, starting in England,
were put down by force -- there were other attempts too -- so this was "the
successful Reformation", where people lived to tell the tale
-
1558 -- Elizabeth returned England to Protestantism, but being a
Catholic wasn't a capital offence (only denying the Trinity) -- this
compromise meant the Reformation was peaceful and relatively tolerant
(in England)
-
1633 -- Galileo recanted that the Earth went round the Sun, and that
Jupiter had four moons
-
Berthold Brecht says Galileo recanted because
he didn't
regard it as an ultimate article of faith
-- that's just the way
it is, no matter what anyone
says
-
1600 -- Bruno did go to the stake
-
these incidents give the RC church a reputation for being
anti-science
-
1643 -- Toricelli discovered vacuum -- RC decided it couldn't
exist, because a vacuum wouldn't have God in it
-
Newton's theories might have been acceptable
-
The real world is there, and will eventually, inevitably be
discovered
-
even if England had remained RC, its distance from Rome would
have made it easier for discoveries to be made and not suppressed
-
Compare China -- huge, but relatively stable
-
movable type printing press had a big effect in Europe
-
China developed it earlier -- but their vastly bigger
alphabet made it less practical
-
Koreans also had it, along with a simplified version of their
alphabet for printing, but it didn't go anywhere
-
European success partly dependent on ships that could
reliably
travel long distances
-
Colonial period was very competitive -- rivalry between Catholics and
Protestants -- might not have been so intense if all of Europe had
remained under Rome
-
great voyages of discovery happened before the Reformation
-
geography of Europe encourages small states, hence competition
-
In ancient times, a philosopher / craftsman divide -- the former was
abstract -- the latter made the advances
-
science as the
basis
of advances is a much more modern
idea
-
commerce was the catalyst that brought them together, and the RC
world would not have been able to stop this
-
Increasing education -- Jesuit Universities, focused on inquiry --
the education included ancient Greek masters, under the guise of
religion
-
If Reformation had failed, would the Jesuits have become more
Inquisitional, to suppress the burgeoning changes?
-
Dominicans were the core of the Inquisition -- Jesuits founded
later, 1540, as part of counter-reformation -- partly to weed out
the more unacceptable parts of Catholicism
-
Nobles could gain money
only
by rent from land, or by war
-
a new class who lived by trade, not by rent -- these people sent
their sons to university, to "improve" their families
-
Why do we say the Reformation encouraged science, when most science
came from Italy/France?
-
France was much less Catholic than it had been -- it held Reason
in high regard
-
At the same time -- the readmission of Jews into Europe
-
skills in finance etc helped to make use of the new capital
-
1655 -- Cromwell readmitted the Jews to England
-
Hotel de France used to be a Jesuit college / meteorological
study / naval academy
-
having an influx of any new people often has a good effect on new
ideas
-
Harry Turtledove,
Ruled Britannia
-- AH set 10 years after
the success of the Spanish Armada -- English seething with resentment
under their Spanish rulers -- Shakespeare as a revolutionary playwright
-
S. M. Stirling
, Draka novels
-- Keith Roberts,
Pavanne
-- Kim Stanley Robinson,
The Years
of Rice and Salt
-- all very well researched
-
conclusion
:
scientific revolution was inevitable
--
lack of Reformation may have delayed it 100 years, but no more -- what
could have changed is who got there first
Panel --
If We Knew Then What We Know Now: Futures that are Past it
What is the value of SF that has been overtaken by events? Are the old
books still readable, the old shows still watchable?
-
SB
-- computers get very dated -- Moore's Law is still in
action after 35 years -- people did have computers getting more
powerful, but not exponentially more so, and not that today's big
expensive machine becomes tomorrow's cheap household toy
-
AR
-- a lot of old SF has a patina of datedness, a lack of
complexity -- a book like Frank Herbert's
Dune
is strangely
undated, because it is so far in the future we can think of ways to get
there
-
SB
--
spaceships with oak panels
-- why don't they
make spaceships like that any more?
-
The film
Aliens
, in the
80s the tech looked futuristic, in the 90s it looked contemporary, soon
it will look dated
-
JP -- the problem with
Enterprise
is that they need something
that looks older than
ST:ToS
, but still looks futuristic
-
PH
--
Arthur C. Clarke
has spacesuits you can smoke in -- and a British atomic powered space
fleet, with vacuum tubes.
-
Don't explain how something works -- put it in a box
-
Robert Heinlein
's
Methusalah's
Children
has "parastatic technology" with no moving parts
-- he didn't explain it so it works -- but he also had slide-rules
-
SB
-- Gadgets used to have mechanisms, and so you explained
how they worked -- now we have black boxes and we don't know how they
work -- that's an advantage for the SF writer
-
The solar system has changed
-
Brian Aldiss'
Farewell Fantastic Venus
says goodbye to it
-
Edgar Rice Burrough's
Mars
books are still read -- it's
now fantasy [it's now Barsoom]
-
We don't have jungles on Venus, but now we have oceans on Europa
-
Stanley G Weinbaum
's
series of short stories -- he didn't get it wrong, it's just that
reality has failed to live up to expectations!
-
1984
hasn't dated, but it's obsolete
-
If you write stories set in the near future, by the time you've sold
them, they can be obsolete
-
You just can't keep up with the progress of science
-
hard science dates worse than fantasy
-
most of
Larry Niven
's 1960s
stuff stands up well on the science -- what's dated are the
Californian social values!
-
everyday stories of future folk, translated back for us
-
The diaries of the Commander of the Space Station
-
they spend
most of their time trying to debug the LAN
,
not patching up meteor holes
-
if we'd stayed on the moon, it wouldn't be like 1970s TV shows --
they'd be trying to get MS XP to stay up!
-
Vernor Vinge,
A Deepness
in the Sky
-- thousands of years in the future, while
debugging code, find some system code based on the Unix timestamp --
have a profession of "programmer archaeologist"
-
TCP/IP will still be valid a 1000 years from now!
-
Forbidden Planet
looks dated, but still works
-
Robert Heinlein,
The
Door into Summer
, 1957 -- set in the 1970s, jumps to 2000
-
a technical drawing machine is all levers and gears
-
there were lots of ideas that automation would be done by robots
replacing people, rather than, eg, the way dishwashers work
-
Some SF gets in wrong in the other direction -- especially with space
exploration -- atomic rockets -- "it's all the fault of the
Russians for collapsing" [but see the
Space Launches
talk]
-
Mass transport is different
-
it's not all SSTs/Concorde -- we're still chugging around in
747s, with nothing better on the horizon
-
in the 1960s, people thought if it was technically possible, it
would happen -- now we know it doesn't happen unless it makes
economic sense, too
-
the green movement has been a huge force stopping the SST in the
US
-
H. G. Wells is one of the earliest who predicted the backlash
against technology
-
the dystopias are guilty of
overenthusiastic extrapolation of
a trend
-- once things get very bad, other things change --
dystopias neglect the counter-trends
-
Peter Hamilton,
Watching
Trees Grow
-- a novella with a long-lived person trying to
solve a murder, as forensic science gets steadily better -- will be able
to solve it eventually -- set in an AH to get the long-lived protagonist
starting today
-
Can view dated books as "inadvertent AH" -- most are still
eminently readable
-
Mobiles phones
-
"40 years ago, I would keep getting lost, and I would think
'I wish there were mobile phones already'!"
-
yet few writers nowadays give there characters these -- too easy
to get out of a corner
-
they should have killed the slasher movie of "running away
from a slow moving man with a chain saw"
-
Star Trek
got it
right!
-
Robert Heinlein
,
Between
Planets
, 1951 -- a boy pulls out a mobile phone, but then says "I'm
sorry Dad, I can't speak now, I'm in a crowd"!
-
often unanticipated social changes to technology
-
If you need to know something in the future, it will be available,
via the Internet
-
no-one realised the main use of computers/Internet would be
pornography
-
although genealogy may just have overtaken it
-
Isaac Asimov
, "Trends"
-- about a flight to the moon during a Puritanical backlash -- building
the rocket in the back yard
-
the idea that governments would fund spaceflight was missed
-
it's only recently that private enterprise space travel is
resurging
-
we live in a bizarre AH where space travel happened too early --
cf, Amundsen and Scott got to the South Pole in 1911/12, then no-one
went back until
1956
, when the tech had caught up (they flew
in!)
-
Isaac Asimov
short story about a
guy who couldn't get any work done, because of the constant
interruptions of all his comms devices
-
Greg Bear
,
Eon
, 1985 --
written just before the end of the Cold War, it's structured around a
nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union -- but the whole thing is about
alternate timelines anyway
-
terrorists aren't nearly as good as the SU as baddies in movies
-
Fantasy writers get it better -- they look at what people
want
,
not how it works!
-
1960s SF had an assumption of unlimited energy -- nothing needs to be
charged up or plugged in
-
PH
-- I read Doc Smith's
Lensman
series in the early
70s -- there's a failed assassination attempt -- they lay the victim on
the floor and ask the ladies to stand round him -- it took me ages to
work out why!
-
Arthur C. Clarke
predicted that
the Pill plus DNA fingerprinting would lead to a completely free love
society -- human nature is not as flexible as some SF authors would like
to think
-
PH
-- I 'm always conscious of looking at the effect of tech
on social change -- at the moment we seem to be changed by technology
not ideology -- in the UK the two main parties are fighting for the
middle ground
-
SB
-- AH allows you to experiment with
decoupling the
effects of technology and social change
-- eg Harry Turtledove's
novels where WWI/WWII never happened -- you have a slightly Victorian
technical culture with 1960s-ish sexual liberation
-
PH
-- one mistake we can make is assuming technology is
available to all, rather than restricted to a social elite
-
SB
-- Neal Stephenson's
The
Diamond Age
-- everyone has access to replicators -- your
social standard depends on the stuff you can replicate
-
RG
-- when new tech comes out, you need to sell as much as
possible as soon as possible, because there will be something new next
year -- don't take enough notice of this in SF
Panel --
Points of Departure: the American Civil War, 1861--1865
???, Peter Weston, Eddie Cochrane, Harry Turtledove, ???
This is the big turning point in American history -- if you don't count
the Revolutionary war.
-
The book
Gone With the Wind
is of a fascinating alien culture
-
HT
-- fascinating because one learns about it, in the US
-
Bruce Catton, various histories of the Civil War
-
Doing homework for
Guns of the South
got me into it
-
If I'm writing on the Byzantine period, I can be confident I know
more about it than my readers -- for the Civil War, I really
have
to get it right -- there are lots of detailed people -- the upside
is that your target audience has the background
-
National Geographic has a Hundred Years since This-n-That series --
so in 1963 I read about Gettysburg
-
I've been learning to call it "The War of Northern Aggression",
having married a Southerner
-
The whole war is a SFnal war
-
Both sides are "us", not alien or foreign -- and there are
photographs
-
So many tantalising turning points
-
A different outcome would have had a big effect -- NA would have
been a very different place, and later, so would the rest of the
world
-
Its the first "modern" war
-
lots of gadgets -- machine guns, submarines, aerial
reconnaissance, rifled infantry, ironclads, ...
-
lots of parallels between last 2 years of Civil War, and WWI
-
first 2 years, still amateurs
-
by the end, both sides knew what they were doing with the new
tech, and could have wiped the floor with anyone else
-
Ward Moore,
Bring the Jubilee
, 1953
-
very influential, but a bit of a fake -- very little about the
AH, only the first few pages
-
turning point is Battle of Gettysburg, but Moore seems to know
nothing about that battle!
-
Winston Churchill, "If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg",
1930 -- also written in a world where the South had won
-
The Civil War, like WWII, offers a relatively clear moral choice
about right and wrong
-
modern Southerners minimise how much it was about slavery
-
if you postulate a Southern victory -- what are they going to do
with it in a world that despises what they do?
-
would Britain's dependence on the cotton trade led to them
supporting the South?
-
opinion in Britain was split -- Britain abolished slavery in
1833 -- Lancashire mill workers protested against slavery
-
it would have required the North to do something stupid (eg,
boarding a British ship...), so that Britain would joint against
the North, rather than for the South
-
1862 -- Battle of Antietam -- Union victory allowed Lincoln to
issue the emancipation proclamation from a position of strength --
made it virtually certain the South would not get help from Britain
or France
-
Lee's marching orders, discovered wrapped around some cigars
-- a major turning point
-
validated because the handwriting was recognised -- the
officers on both sides knew each other -- had all been to West
Point
-
even with that advantage, McClelland only just won
-
The South could have won its independence very easily, by not firing
the first shot -- the North might have been happy to see the South go --
Lincoln could not have rallied support -- it would have been a
de
facto
independence that would eventually be recognised -- Fort
Sumter was a
big
mistake
-
Grant was a modern soldier -- he wasn't just a butcher -- Vicksburg
(1863) is still taught at US military academies
-
the South could put an army in the field, or supply it, but not both
-
the North built entire depots and railroads
-
the South complained that the North's engineers carried tunnels with
them!
-
marvellous logistics -- both sides moved entire armies to Chattanooga
(1863)
-
Guns of the South
gives the Confederates a victory
after
the time when they could not have won by normal means -- so that they
could see that many of the attitudes for which they had seceded were not
there
-
Gettysburg (1863) is such an obvious turning point that you want to
avoid it -- everyone knows it so well
-
If Johnson hadn't got wounded, so that the South had to put Lee in
charge
-
Post Gettysburg, Meade should have attacked and pushed Lee into the
Potomac
-
That Braxtan Bragg won a battle (Chickamauga) is
prima facie
evidence of time travel!
-
"the winners write history" -- disproved by the Civil War!
-- all those memoirs of Southern generals -- except Lee, but there are
volumes of his letters
-
Grant's memoirs are the best military memoirs since Ceaser's
-
Even if the South had won, slavery wouldn't have lasted -- but there
might have been something like South African apartheid.
-
the generals were all incompetent because
-
they were using Napoleonic tactics for muskets, against longer
range rifles -- they were still fighting the Mexican War -- but they
had trench warfare by the end
-
the US had had a standing army of only 15,000 men -- no-one had
commanded anything bigger than a regiment
-
many were political appointees
-
If the North had won the war, but much faster, what would have been
different?
-
it wouldn't have been so messy afterwards
-
North wanted vengeance for all their suffering -- the South had
great bitterness
-
maybe there wouldn't have been such great polarisation -- which
didn't really end until WWII -- up til then, real bitterness -- now,
more nostalgic bitterness
-
not ended up so industrialised, no experience of fighting a
modern war -- would it have affected participation in WWI?
-
If Lincoln had died earlier, and Hamilton had become President, maybe
he would have turned the South into a large restive "Northern
Ireland", which the Germans would have tried to exploit in WWII
-
muskets too so long to reload, and were so inaccurate, that if the
North had used bows and arrows, it would have had a higher and more
accurate rate of fire!
-
Repeating rifles made a big difference in fire power
-
Britain was selling rifles to both sides
Panel --
Through Poverty to the Stars! -- desperation at the root
of progress
???, ???, Eddie Cochrane, Simon Bradshaw
Are low cunning and survival instincts more useful than deep pockets?
-
A large proportion of a desired result can be achieved with lower
tech
-
Early days of English/Portuguese ship explorations were expensive --
nowadays can pick up a relatively cheap 2nd hand ship and sail around
the world
-
Space flight is difficult to do on the cheap -- need to get into
orbit
-
Recent revolution of smaller, cheaper satellites -- £100,000s
rather than millions
-
These tend to rely on being "ballast" on larger launches
-
Russians built a Soyuz assembly line -- minimise cost rather than
weight
-
They launch from Kazakhstan, which is not costal -- falling boosters
-- local cottage industry of salvaging boosters and sawing them up for
the high grade titanium -- the local crime syndicates have the rocket
recycling business sewn up
-
Vicious circle
-- want good performance -- so shave off
weight -- need to use higher tech -- so costs more -- so want even
better performance
-
Could go the other way, put up with lower performance, at much lower
cost
-
But there's a vested interested in the higher performance
-
Russians need frequent launches, because their satellites last ~ 3
years, rather than the 7-10 years in the west -- so an inferior product
results in better infrastructure!
-
Britain has the 4th largest economy in the world. How come we can't
afford a space programme, but India can?
-
Britain collaborates with US, with ESA
-
India, other smaller states and poorer countries, perceive the
need for a space programme, but don't want to be dependent on anyone
else
-
Who else will be in space in the next 20 years? Pakistan? S
Korea? Brazil?
-
China is very close to being the 3rd country to launch its own
astronauts into space
-
probably next year
-
may help to spur the US again
-
Japan has launchers for comms satellites
-
want to sell launches to others -- but for once, have not managed
to copy and do it cheaper
-
limited by agreements with squid fishers union to a 2 month/year
launch window
-
If we can do it cheaper, could we have done it sooner?
-
Lots of things kept going wrong with Mir -- the Russians coped with
it all
-
Bryan Burrough,
Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir
,
1998
-
ignore the tendency to cast goodies and baddies
-
culture clash -- NASA: contingency plans for everything --
good for 2 week missions when only so much can go wrong
-
Russia: have enough tools to fix anything -- works for longer
missions where you need flexibility
-
Snowflake
-
Huge incentive to recycle/repair in space -- it costs more to launch
a spare than its weight in platinum
-
Colin Kapp's
Unorthodox Engineers
stories -- cheaper to send
people to think/fix than specialist kit -- "
Scrapheap Challenge
ahead of its time"
-
Remember the difference between bill of parts cost and development
cost
-
By the end of Apollo, the incremental cost was relatively low
-
Was cancelled after all the expense, before the returns
-
Carl Sagan
(no fan of the
manned
space programme) complained it was like selling all your
household possessions to buy a Rolls Royce, then refusing to use it
because of the cost of the petrol.
-
It has become less acceptable to lose astronauts than it was to lose
test pilots.
-
Catastrophic failure on the launch pad can destroy infrastructure,
too
-
Old tech lasts -- it's well understood -- people know how to
build/repair/maintain it
-
cf DC7s still used in 3rd world countries
-
It's not in the US's interest to have a lot of other independent
launch capabilities that can be mistaken for ICBMs -- it you can put a
tone in space, you can put it anywhere on Earth
-
Comic book
Ministry of Space
-- The Brits get the German
rocket scientists after WWII -- "love the artwork, hate the rocket
designs!"
-
Such a pity Britain never had a space programme -- we could have had
such fun with it!
-
Atomic powered rockets
-
a lot of thinking has been done
-
"but you wouldn't want to be anywhere near it!"
-
there are two ways of building one
-
one is scary, dangerous and spectacular
-
the other (Project Orion) is very scary, incredibly dangerous,
and really spectacular!
-
Orion would work, if you really have to get a million tons
into space, but otherwise no-one is that stupid
-
some suggest the reaction plate in the Orion should be
water-cooled -- "atom punk tech"
-
Entrepreneurs in space?
-
rich enough, just buy someone else's space programme
-
new approach -- need to start small, and will take a long time
-
Space tourism?
-
If you have $20M and are fit, the Russians will take you to the
ISS for a week
-
the Russian craft has three seats: one pilot, one rotating
crew member -- and one spare!
-
the Americans are hopping mad -- their space programme is
incredibly socialistic
-
if enough people do this, the Russians may build a bigger
craft with more seats -- the cost might come down to ~ $5M
-
old market research -- price people are willing to pay
-
handful willing to pay $10M -- and we're seeing this now
-
100s willing to pay $1M
-
10,000s willing to pay $50,000 -- same price as a 5* round
the world cruise
-
there are
plenty of rich, bored Americans
out there!
-
Some private enterprise people have found others willing to give them
a desert to play in and permission to launch/fire -- unfortunately these
others are people like Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gadaffi!
-
Roving mobile phones destroyed the 1990s launch business
-
Mobile phones seemed to need
lots
of satellites -- but the
market for phone calls in remote places never took off -- if enough
people want it for it to be worthwhile serving, its cheaper to build
land based infrastructure
-
Iridium spent $3bn, and had 10,000 subscribers -- went bust and the
demand for launch capability evaporated -- overtaken by cheaper tech
-
Starting from 500mph, 30,000 ft, need only half as big a rocket --
launch from an aircraft -- but there's not enough market for small
satellites -- current market is for larger satellite launches
-
It's
annoyingly difficult to get into space
-- it would be no
trouble at all from Mars!
-
Where's that colliding asteroid when you need it!
Gerry Webb --
Space Launches
[This was originally planned to be a home movie show of various launches
-- but Gerry had forgotten to bring the films! So instead he gave a deeply
fascinating impromptu account of his involvement in the current Russian
space programme -- this is where the future of the commercial space
programme is at!]
-
Ten stages in the conquest of space
-
theoretical proof of possibility
-
artificial Earth satellite
-
manned flight
-
landing on the moon
-
commercial manned flight
-
permanent self-sustaining manned presence
-
economic growth from use of extra-terrestrial resources and
energy
-
completed extra-terrestrial human reproductive cycle (from
conception, birth, maturity, to giving birth)
-
permanent colonisation of solar bodies
-
declaration of independence of colonies from Earth
-
The first five have been achieved -- four by the Russians
-
Russians have had the first
commercial
manned flight --
Tito paid $20M
-
Russians have a family of truly reusable launchers
-
Advantages of Russian launching systems:
-
a systems approach to launcher, launch complex and operations
design
-
long production runs planned from the start
-
continuous and large (in the past) investment in engine design
and development -- efficient engines lower mass-fraction of launcher
-
no fuss approach -- railway transport, non-exotic fuels
-
standardised non-mission-specific launchers -- allows rapid
turn-round, last minute changes of payload, etc
-
very experienced launch crews
-
ex-missile launchers have very good all-weather capabilities
-
convenience and cost saving of using a horizontal orientation
build, integrate and test
-
Heuristic: cost of satellite = cost of launch
-
if the satellite costs more, it's worth going for a more
expensive, more reliable launcher
-
if the launch costs dominate, it's not worth launching
-
but today, Russian launches are cheaper than the payloads
-
Cost of the fuel, LOX/kerosene, is not that expensive, probably ~
$100,000s
Panel --
Assumptions, McGuffins, and Dei ex Machina
Is it worse to have your hero come up with just the right gadget out of
thin air, or to have him briefed on every bit of equipment he will need, in
the order in which he will use it?
-
PH
-- one of the worst examples is
You Only Live Twice
-- Bond jumps off a fishing boat, goes into Blofeld's lair, pulls out
some suction pads and walks down the wall -- how did he know he'd need
them?
-
I have in the past been accused of using a Deus ex Machina
[laughter]
-
I disapprove of them, and try to avoid at all costs
-
put the hints in early enough
-
CA
-- "you should have been listening" -- the clues
are there -- only feel cheated if there's something you couldn't
possibly
have known about, like an unknown twin brother
-
It's difficult to back your protagonist into a corner when they can
just pull out a mobile phone
-
I hate clumsy infodumpers who explain how things work -- you should
just have "it came on and started working"
-
Plot coupons are just there to show off characters' skills etc --
they usually don't advance the plot at all --
very glamorous
orienteering
!
-
McGuffin -- Hitchcock's term -- the thing that moves the plot
-
the characters care about the McGuffin, the audience cares about
the characters
-
you do need some sort of story engine
-
The Maltese Falcon does get the story going
-
Plot coupons, McGuffins, Infodumping, Deus ex Machina -- all these
are
names for tropes used incompetently
-
a quest can be done excellently, or it can be collecting plot
coupons -- need to be organic in the story -- to be a quest, there
needs to be self-discovery and growth
-
The audience knowing more than the characters can be used to create
suspense -- "don't open the door!"
-
Vanilla Sky
is well shot, but makes no sense -- the last 2
minutes were "this is what has really been happening" --
there's not enough information in the film -- so you feel cheated when
this happens
-
Unreliable narrators -- need to be skilled to pull this off --
requires audience pre-knowledge of how to read it
-
Need some sort of infodump if building a new world
-
cf -- "four paragraphs of description is erotic, four pages
is pornographic" -- well four pages of infodump is
boring
-- especially if it includes graphs!
-
need to blend the info with the narrative
-
We no longer have to explain things like "teleporters", etc
-
not all readers have a SFnal background -- but can assume
Star
Trek
!
-
SF has permeated culture enough that most people are aware of
things like teleporters -- unless you are doing something radical
with them, they can be just background, unremarkable
-
Zardoz
-- has no infodumps -- never know what it's about!
-
It's an authorial decision on how much you intend to challenge your
readers
-
Can infodump subtly -- have an outside character exploring the world
-
A.A. Attanasio,
Radix
-- the best and the worst of the genre
-- hugely imaginative -- at the back is a 15 page glossary of made-up
terms -- cannot keep up with this
-
better to use new words in context, to teach the reader what they
mean -- a glossary is the worst -- a kind of mechanical infodump
-
Terry Pratchett
-- you cannot
fault his footnotes, but they would not work in a more serious setting
-
Are infodumps needed to convince the reader?
-
no -- you use a black box -- describe
what
it does, not
how
it does it -- if you open the box, you will get it
wrong, and you
will
get letters!
-
Everyone in the future will need infodumps, because of the
fragmentation of culture
-
so its use today in fiction is merely a literary device to
project the reader into that future!
-
Maps -- infodump or necessity?
-
glancing at a map has got to be easier than reading long
descriptions of isthmuses, etc -- very useful shortcut
-
at least you know the author has one!
-
timelines are SF's equivalent of Fantasy's maps
-
The Deus ex Machina was good enough for the Greeks, and beyond --
what's wrong with it now?
-
sophistication? the coincidences in Oedipus Rex don't make it
unsophisticated
-
It depends on the register -- the spontaneous human combustion in
Dickens'
Edwin Drood
is completely against the rules up to
that point
-
H. G. Wells,
War of the Worlds
-- the Victorians were
smugly confident of their tech -- so it was deliberately set up to
be the common cold that defeated the Martians
-
Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas -- relentless infodumpers -- pay their
audience the compliment of thinking they want to know this stuff
-
Hugo used Deus ex Machina -- it indicates a world view
-
Umberto Eco,
Foucault's Pendulum
-- infodumps pages long
-
It is patronising to assume readers don't have a long enough
attention span
-
depends how well it is done -- you can have four pages of
interesting information, so well written that the reader won't even
notice it's an infodump
-
"Infodump" means it's done clumsily -- otherwise the whole
Council of Elrond
is
infodump!
-
It is important for the author to know more than the reader -- but
you don't need to tell the reader everything
-
Cultural issue? European SF has lots of interesting infodumping
-
interesting infodump is better than uninteresting plot
-
Character dumping
-- endless pages of what characters
feel
-
Kim Stanley Robinson,
Mars
trilogy -- many couldn't read it,
many thought it was brilliant
-
Anita Blake
-- there's a
lot about the clothing -- it goes on and on
-
Infodumpiing, especially on TV, often consists of telling characters
what they already know, just to inform the viewer
-
Infodumping is "telling, not showing"
Panel --
Can a Subtle Story Survive a Big Budget?
Brian Stableford, Ian Watson, Kim Campbell, Liz Counihan, Peter Garratt
-
in the
LotR
movie
,
did anyone
expect
to see Tom Bombadil?
-
The
Harry Potter
movie
-- the events are there, but the plot flow and significance of those
events are lost
-
BS
--
this panel is based on a philosophical
misconception
-- the idea that a book can be filmed!
-
it's based on the idea that both book and film are a record of a
set of events
-
but stories are
stories
, they rely on narrative/pictorial
devices, and the two have no common ground
-
movies are surface -- pictures -- we consume by watching
-
stories are in code, with narrative techniques -- an account of
what people are thinking, feeling, planning, hypothesising -- all
internal -- so we know theses characters far more intimately than we
can ever know someone in real life, or in a movie
-
film makers are relentless plagiarists -- they have no
imagination -- but they do know how to frame images
-
there is no common ground between movies and books
-
IW
-- this explains why dolphins don't like movies -- they
take in and give out in one modality, sound -- we take in pictures and
give out sounds
-
The text is not all -- the resonances that arise within us are a
large part
-
We should
suspend
disbelief
for books and movies
-
BS
-- never
ever
suspend disbelief!
-
IW
-- I got totally involved in the
Harry Potter
, and
so walked out after 15 minutes
-
LC
-- the difference between a good and not-so-good
translation, is that the director has the courage to leave the text and
do something different. Both
Dead Zone
and
The Shining
had vast differences book to file, and worked in the different art form.
-
PG
-- film making did not originate with books -- it started
with silent movies -- some think sound has ruined movies
-
Writing for film/TV -- it's a different grammar, a grammar of images
-
Books can be used to inspire films
-
Few novels can be read aloud in 2 or even 4 hours -- some things can
be shown faster, but cutting is inevitable -- TV series have the
advantage of length
-
See the film first!
-
BS -- I heard A. N. Wilson a few days after he'd lost his faith
(apparently caused by his writing a biography of Christ)
-
he said Jesus wasn't a thinker because he'd never read any novels
-- the kind of inner life we lead today is due to reading novels
-
I wasn't convinced, but it's an interesting argument
-
for the last 150 years, trying to educate ourselves about our
inner lives -- it's been mostly fiction -- either honest fiction, or
dishonest fiction like biographies and histories -- there are
strange people who insist in reading only biographies, because they
are real!
-
we are moving to a post-literate society where people will try to
get ideas for life from movies -- these don't give you a lot of
information about how to think, feel, plan, etc -- just advice on
how to pose, and how to hit people!
-
KC
-- so, before the novel, where did we get our guides for
living?
-
BS
-- religion -- an inner life created out of dogma -- the
Seven Deadly Sins
-
Books allow you to challenge these ideas
-
Some media fans write fanfic, creating an inner life for the
characters
-
(to
BS
) -- do you feel when you construct your inner life,
there's a place for compassion and humility? [laughter]
-
Whose books did Socrates read to construct his inner life?
-
BS
-- Socrates had to engage in critical dialogue to
attack these questions -- much better than panels where people mouth
empty platitudes
-
Books allow us to be different from each other, less in common, less
of a community -- is that better?
-
BS
-- books allow us to be individuals
-
IW
-- some people read books only to find similarities
-
BS
-- yes, this explains the existence of a lot of books
-- but some people do read to find different approaches, different
solutions
-
escapism
--
people who deplore it think it is an escape
from
something -- but it is actually
an escape
to
something
-
PG
-- what about people who read a lot, but no fiction?
-
BS
-- they are reading fiction, they just like to pretend
they are not!
-
IW
-- biography, history, sociology, yes -- what about
chemistry textbooks?
-
BS
-- there are some books that have more fact than others,
but they all have some fantasy, even if their sums are right! -- it is
important to read factual stuff to understand how the world works -- but
for constructing our inner lives, read fantasy
-
BS
--
most texts are blatant lies
, no-one can live
like that -- but they have a certain candour -- once you've read the
text, that's all there is -- when you read
Madame Bovary
, you
know everything there is to know about her, because all there is about
her is on the page -- you can never know real people entirely, there's
always something more
-
IW
-- what about translations?
-
BS
-- translation itself is partly creative, partly
representation -- the translations are not the same, but still have a
reality
-
IW
-- it's because he went to a Roman Catholic school! -- he
sees the text as
creed
!
-
BS
-- it could be worse, I could have been educated by
RC:
the movie
!
-
IW
-- The creed cannot be questioned
-
BS
-- the text
must
be questioned!
-
KC
- aha! Jesuits!
-
The one thing we do know for
certain
is that Madame Bovary
did not exist
-
But the character does
-
BS
-- the film is all there is, too -- but it's a different "is"
-
IW
-- but with directors' cuts, DVDs, the film isn't all
there is!
-
What about films like
The Man Who Wasn't There
, which has the
viewpoint character's voicover to signal what's going on inside his
head?
-
BS
-- an interesting cinematographic technique -- but not as
much subtlety as text
-
BS
-- if you are an historian, you should be pedantic, and
get as close to the truth as possible. Novelists should do the same
thing.
-
IW
-- Flaubert was trying to create a
style
-- yet
you chose Madame Bovary as an example of a
character
-- why
choose her as the archetypical literary character? -- Flaubert designs a
style, and out of this emerges our construct of someone we believe to be
a real character
-
If we use different parts of our brains to read books and to watch
films, what about radio adaptations?
-
18th century novelists -- people don't speak "realistically"
-- modern novels characters speak more "realistically"
-
You get fictional films "based on a true story" -- this is
less common in books
Panel --
If This Goes On: the inventing of political fiction
Paul Cray, Bridget Wilkinson, David O'Neill, Cheryl Morgan, Mike Cobley
One criticism of future SF is its failure of imagination in coming up
with new models for societies
-
We have a wider selection in current SF than we've had for a while
-
(Why is it at Eastercons we have so many panels that say "SF is
crap because ..."?)
-
Swift's
Gulliver's Travels
, More's
Utopia
, etc get
labelled as SF -- it is
the
genre of alternative political
societies -- you won't find it in any other genre -- historical fiction
occasionally tries to look at alternatives
-
Kim Stanley Robinson's
Mars
series -- good science but awful
politics
-
There were lots of attempts at different societies in the 1960s --
like Le Guin's
Left Hand
of Darkness
and
The
Dispossessed
-
This faded in the 1980s
-
But there was a resurgence in the 1990s
-
American SF has the "default libertarian future"
-
There's no longer a
debate
about what kind of society we want
-
In the past the anti-capitalists could say they were Marxists/Maoists
-- now all they can say is "we want to replace it with something
nicer
"
-
Olaf Stapleton,
Last and FirstMen
-- opened up some people's
way of thinking
-
Before 1990, SF was the
only
was people in the SU could
discuss alternatives
-
SF is one of the few places the debate
is
held, if in a
somewhat immature manner
-
Star Trek
is nominally a
society with no money -- but it's still a traditional hierarchial
society
-
TV SF is a sort of lowest common denominator
-
there was some attempt in
B5
,
getting different species to cooperate
-
Survivors
-- 99% of the population wiped out by a plague
-- the survivors trying to set up new societies -- mostly feudal
-
Blake's 7
-- rebellion against a restrictive Federation
-
The Prisoner
-
Wilfred Greatorex's
1990
-- shown in 1970s -- dictatorial
Britain
-
Books have more space to look at the ideas
-
Politics as process
-
Kim Stanley Robinson's endless meetings
-
Politics as ideology
-
B5
, where we were
conned into believing it was overthrowing a fascist dictatorship --
but replacing it with a president-for-life -- conned into thinking
it was good because it was replacing something so bad
-
There are some interesting societies portrayed by Joanna Russ, Suzie
McKee Charnas, Sherri Tepper (but sadly she has recently gone completely
off the rails)
-
Micropolitics
-
Kim Stanley Robinson very good at describing boring meetings --
local government style
-
Ken MacLeod
-- like student
political meetings in the bar -- let's take a set of current
political beliefs and set a society in it
-
Many are aware of the utopian tradition, but think it has run out of
steam -- so we get dystopias
-
Poul Anderson
-- 100s of
organised nations, some occupying the same territory -- nationality
entirely voluntary, and changeable
-
Neal Stephenson,
The
Diamond Age
-- can choose your nation
-
Ken MacLeod
's very heavily
Balkanised Britain -- London is about 50 different countries
-
Star Trek
is a single
monolithic fascist democracy
-
Is there a middle ground?
-
SF is bad at middle ground -- good at throwing up ideas
-
middle grounds are boring
-- a hellish dystopia makes
more interesting reading
-
exploring extremes may make it more possible to choose which
middle ground you want
-
Le Guin,
The
Dispossessed
-- shows both societies with good and bad points
-
Adam Roberts,
Salt
-- same sort of thing, but two utterly repulsive societies with no
redeeming points
-
Iain M. Banks
,
Culture
novels -- explores moneyless society -- but all the stories are about
where it clashes with the outside -- because the interior is a utopia
and therefore boring?
-
Peter Hamilton
,
Night's
Dawn
trilogy -- lots of different political systems -- usually per
planet
-
even if you set up a whole planet with a single society -- give
them a couple of generations and they'll have just as many different
systems
-
Some social systems are constrained by limited resources -- power,
water, food, air (in space), land -- if there is
any
shortage,
there will be people at the bottom of the pile for that resource --
competition for resources gives economics gives politics
-
There are
advantages to having an underclass
, no matter how
rich the society (so no matter how rich that underclass) -- it is in the
interest of the people in charge to have an underclass, to keep the
majority in their place through fear of losing that place
-
What kind of society would you want to live in?
-
one that handles change well
-
New Mars
-- all power to David Reid!
-
either the upper Paleolithic, or now -- evidence that in the Late
Stone Age (
not
the mesolithic) that people lived a long time
-
a nanotech society, like
The Culture
-
there's a concern that
unanticipated consequences of
abundance
could lead to Orwellian monitoring, or
bioterrorism, or ...
-
absolute freedom might require absolute dictatorship
-
does nobody else want to be a
Brave New World
Beta?
-
Joanna Russ's
Whileaway
-
if this panel had been in the US, half the audience would have
said
Starship Troopers
!
-
Vernor Vinge,
A
Deepness in the Sky
-- has great societies, that collapse
in a generation
-
John Barnes
,
Thousand
Cultures
universe -- loads of societies that, faced with change,
collapse
-
It's a matter of taste -- many people would like
to live in
University for ever
-
Utopias are boring and homogeneous
-
you can find a small utopia in hell, and find hell in utopia
Panel --
Checking Universal Constants: build your own reality
detector
Simon Bradshaw, Michael Spiller, John Bray, John Dallman
What do you need to determine the rules of physics in whatever reality
you find yourself in?
-
JD
-- an impression of what happens if the laws of the
universe are significantly different: [falls over]
-
Different kinds of differences
-
mathematical constants -- values of π,
e
, 2, ... -- very difficult to see how these could change
-
physical constants,
G
, μ
0
, ε
0