home > SF > cons > Seacon'03: Eastercon 2003

The 54th British Easter Science Fiction Convention
18--21 April 2003, Hanover International Hotel, Hinckley

GoHs: Mary Gentle (unable to attend due to work commitments), Chris Evans , Fangorn (Chris Baker).

The second Eastercon in the bizarre, but friendly, Hanover Hinckley . The facilities were again excellent: good function room space, friendly staff, and continuous food: the lunch and dinner menu this time varied from day to day, and even had some surprising items [the graffiti reads: I know we all watch Buffy, but this is ridiculous! ]. The mushrooms were again in plentiful supply. What is it with Eastercons and breakfast mushrooms? One speculation: "I'm eating as far from my species as possible".

One of the serendipitous moments was catching a bunch of Dr Who clips brilliantly edited together to Bonnie Tyler's rendition of Total Eclipse of the Heart .

Programme highlights

• Nigel Furlong -- Thunderbirds are Go
• Panel -- Milestones in 20th Century TV and film
• Peter Weston -- Eastercon Anecdotes
• Alan Kobayashi -- From Star Fleet to Earth Force
• Dave O'Neill -- Technobabble Quiz -- some new questions, some old ones
• Julian Headlong -- I Am Spike's Liver
• Panel -- Milestones in 20th Century comics
• Simon Conway Morris -- George Hay Memorial Lecture -- Meeting the Aliens
• Justina Robson -- Interview
• Chris Baker -- GoH talk -- Fangorn on Art
• Panel -- Not Just the Bookjackets: the wider use of SF art
• M. J. Simpson -- Simo with "Building Tracy Island" and "Death Star Health and Safety Report"
• Ian Sorenson and Reductio ad Absurdum -- Matrix Remaindered -- as investigated by the Men in Black
• Quiz -- I'm sorry I haven't an SFing clue
• Panel -- SF as It is Writ
• Panel -- 100 TB is enough
• Panel -- Not the Clarke Awards
• Chris Evans -- GoH talk
• Comic Character Balloon Debate -- which superhero to evict next from the balloon?
• Duncan Steel -- God's Longitude
• Panel -- Milestones in 20th Century science and technology
• Masquerade
• Filk Concert
• Panel -- Back into Space?

Nigel Furlong -- Thunderbirds are Go!

On disaster management and the real International Rescue

• International Rescue Corps
  • A UN registered disaster charity
    • rescue people from earthquakes, flooding, ...
    • in tropical countries, have only 24 hours to rescue people, because of heat dehydration
    • Colchester was flattened by an earthquake 150 years ago
  • US 9/11 disaster
    • there are 258 urban search and rescue teams in the US, all but one ended up in NY -- what if something else had happened at the same time?
    • US constitution forbids calling in help from "foreign powers" -- EU and UN will not send help unless invited -- required creative memo drafting
• UK firefighters also help
• Lowland search and rescue teams -- look for missing people -- descended form disbanded civil defence units
• Disaster management
  • what's the worst thing that you could do -- sabotage/terrorism
    • business continuity
    • nuclear industry has plans for being hit by a 767 -- used to be thought too low a risk for skyscraper plans
  • US "flew" an F4 phantom with a full bomb load into a block of concrete the same thickness as a nuclear containment
    • the plane disintegrated, the wall had to be repainted
  • nuclear reactor have very deep foundations, because of earthquake risk
    • Rutherford Appleton laser synchrotron, ~2000m foundations, for stability
  • nuclear sites have annual "level 1 incident" practice exercises
    • the best everyday manager is not necessarily the best disaster manager

• What about a bio-disaster, eg SARS?
  • Smallpox -- the last UK outbreak, more people died from the vaccine (a few) than from the disease
    • kills less than a third of the people who get it
    • trace and vaccinate contacts -- trace train passengers via credit cards
    • medics have more power than police to put people away
  • a pinhead of ricin could kill everyone in this room -- but only if I put it on a pin and stab everyone! -- diluted it's harmless
  • The Japanese nerve gas attack
    • the group had previously dropped 5kg of anthrax-contaminated powder -- no-one got sick
    • they has also sprayed a US base with botulinus -- no-one got sick
    • all the showering and handwashing nowadays helps stop the spread
  • so its not a massive risk -- the risk analysis has been done

• the most dangerous part of a "dirty bomb" is the explosive
• building a nuclear weapon -- it's not the science, it's the engineering
  • most of the nuclear transactions in the ex-SU are customs officers and journalists, with not a criminal in sight!

Panel -- Milestones in 20th Century TV and film

Steve Green, Tony Berry, Judith Proctor, Dave Lally

[This panel worked well, because the discipline of keeping to the decades stopped it degenerating too quickly into "name your favorite show"]

• 1903 -- Le Voyage dans la Lune -- Georges Méliès
  • most films then were 2--3 minutes -- it was 20 minutes, with a plot
  • many early films were SF/fantasy, playing with a new medium
  • Edison made pirate copies
• 1925 -- Metropolis -- Fritz Lang
  • political SF -- visually superb -- crap script
  • new DVD has longest existing cut -- not necessarily the best cut
  • Hitler was so impressed he asked Lang to direct propaganda films -- Lang instead went to the US
• 1936 -- Things to Come -- Alexander Korda
  • probably a better film than the book -- but H. G. Wells did have a big input
  • science versus humankind -- all wearing bathrobes in the future!
  • many things became instant cliches
• 1940s -- nothing! -- well, there was a war on
  • many Saturday morning series, but no major films
  • comic strip spinoffs, lots of horror films
  • 1942 -- Went the Day Well?
    • Graham Greene script
    • remarkable propaganda film -- set in context of a flashback after the war had been won
  • 1946 -- A Matter of Life and Death -- Powell and Pressburger
• 1950 -- Destination Moon -- George Pal
  • from a Heinlein story -- in a ponderous documentary style
  • rocket looks like a V2 -- used Hermann Oberth as a consultant
  • Chesley Bonestall did the moon scenes
  • didn't have a big effect on Hollywood
• 1951 -- The Day the Earth Stood Still
  • there were many Red Scare films, like Them!
  • this had a peaceful message -- the Korean War was still on
  • also a resurrection story
  • Farewell to the Master -- Gort (the robot) was the boss
• 1956 -- Forbidden Planet
  • (semi-)serious -- starred Walter Pidgeon as Morbius
  • cost $2M -- a huge amount of money
  • the big machine was ripped off by B5 -- lots of homages in B5
  • Robbie the Robot -- the beginning of the friendly cuddly robots
  • plot nicked from Shakespeare -- The Tempest
• 1956 -- Invasion of the Body Snatchers
  • rampant paranoia
• 1968 -- 2001 -- Stanley Kubrick
  • same year as Planet of the Apes , and Night of the Living Dead
  • travesty -- PotA got the SFX Oscar for its apes, but 2001 's apes are better
  • bomb/takeover films
    • Fail Safe (1964), Dr Strangelove (1963), Seven Days in May (1964)
    • The Manchurian Candidate (1962) -- political SF
    • The Birds (1963)
    • The Wargame -- TV film commissioned by BBC, then banned because so shocking
• 1977 -- Star Wars -- George Lucas
  • an SF classic -- blatant application of classical myths
  • the big difference between the first and second trilogies is the target audience
    • episodes IV--VI : late teens
    • episodes I--III : 8-9 year olds who want to buy the merchandising
      • merchandising is a milestone in itself -- it can come out before the film
  • very little early 1970s SF
    • Logan's Run (1976)
    • Michael Crichton : The Andromeda Strain (1970), Westworld (1973), ...
    • 1971 -- A Clockwork Orange , Silent Running , The Omega Man
    • No Blade of Grass (1970), Death Line -- "mind the gap"!
    • Soylent Green (1973), The Stepford Wives (1974)
    • Zardoz (1973) -- Sean Connery in an nappy!
    • Dark Star (1974) -- $6000 -- very young John Carpenter
    • The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) -- very close to the Walter Tevis book
    • CE3K -- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
• 1980s
  • 1982 -- E.T. -- Steven Spielberg
    • ugh
  • 1982 -- Bladerunner -- Ridley Scott
    • very impressive film -- directors cut, not the "happy ending" one
    • has influenced look of films and adverts ever since
  • Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986)
    • after that, Sigourney Weaver was getting paid more and more for worse and worse episodes
  • Mad Max (1979), Mad Max 2 (1981)
    • all these films are influential in the wrong way
  • 1985 -- Brazil -- Terry Gilliam
  • Cocoon (1985) -- it's so nice! -- The Terminator (1984)
• 1990s
  • 12 Monkeys (1995)
  • what's so new is the SFX -- a major part of the film in Terminator 2 (1991), X-Men (2000), etc
    • superb, but often at the expense of the script -- Independence Day (1996)
  • Galaxy Quest (1999) -- a wonderful spoof
  • The Matrix (1999)
    • influenced fight scenes -- especially later Buffy -- wire work hadn't been so well known in the west before
  • Being John Malkovich

• Radio
  • 1930s -- War of the Worlds
  • 1950s -- Journey into Space
  • 1970s -- Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy

• 1950s TV
  • 1953--59 -- Quatermass series -- Nigel Kneale
    • proper SF -- taken seriously -- very scary -- everyone watched it
  • 1954 -- 1984 -- Peter Cushing -- caused questions in the House, it was so brutal
  • 1949--55 -- Captain Video
  • 1959--64 -- The Twilight Zone
  • Flash Gordon
• 1960s
  • 1960 -- Pathfinders
  • 1961 -- A for Andromeda -- the BBC wiped most of it
  • Irene Shubik -- 1962 -- Out of this World -- commissioned series of one hour plays -- then 1965--71 -- Out of the Unknown
  • 1965--68 -- Lost in Space
  • 1966--69 (1969--71 in UK) -- Star Trek -- seriously groundbreaking, but not successful until syndication
  • 1968 -- The Year of the Sex Olympics -- Nigel Kneale
• 1970s
  • 1970--72 -- Doomwatch -- primetime adult show
  • 1972 -- The Stone Tape -- Nigel Kneale
  • Clangers / Dr Who crossover moment -- in "Sea Devils" the Master is watching an episode of the Clangers!
  • 1973 -- Moonbase 3
• Gerry Anderson
  • 1961--62 -- Supercar , 1962--63 -- Fireball XL-5
  • 1967--68 -- Captain Scarlet -- very violent -- every show someone had to die
  • Supermarionation was a milestone -- write to the Honors Committee, for a knighthood for Gerry Anderson
  • 1970--73 -- UFO -- superb shows -- some episodes dealt with such adult themes they had only late night airings
    • was replaced by the awful Space 1999 (1975--77) -- a landmark for putting people off!
  • 1975--77 -- Survivors -- Terry Nation
    • typically British -- bleak, pessimist -- until it because "Life on the Farm"
    • today we have SARS -- the common cold with attitude
• 1980s
  • 1980 -- The Flipside of Dominick Hyde
  • 1981 -- The Day of the Triffids
  • 1985 -- Edge of Darkness
  • 1987 -- Star Cops -- nice little show -- solutions to the crimes required knowledge of science
  • 1988--93 -- Red Dwarf -- SF or sit com? -- it got more SFnal as it went on
  • 1989 (UK terrestrial TV, 1995) -- Alien Nation -- Rockne O'Bannon
  • Crime Traveller -- the nadir of TV SF
• 1990s
  • 10th anniversary of Babylon 5
    • much harder and dirtier than the ST universe
    • influenced by C. J. Cherryh 's Downbelow Station
    • JMS put in lots of in-jokes -- like the "be seeing you" Prisoner hand sign
  • 1998 -- Ultraviolet -- a cracking show
  • 1998 -- Invasion: Earth -- in one sitting it made some kind of sense -- it could have been saved by good writing
  • 1999 -- The Last Train -- it's not SF, it's a realistic train journey!
  • Gormenghast -- after watching it, I know why I found it unreadable

Eastercon Anecdotes

Pat McMurray, Peter Weston

• 1964 -- my first Eastercon, and Rog Peyton's -- in Peterborough -- it had no name until a month later, when someone realised that, as it was the 2nd Peterborough con, it should be called Repetercon!
  • small hotel -- the Bull -- ~ 150 fans
  • one stream program -- when it stopped, Ken opened the bookroom, and we all bought books off Ken -- when he said stop, we all went to the bar
• PMcM -- 1993 -- Helicon -- my first con
  • I didn't know anyone, so I volunteered -- been downhill ever since!

• Ted Tubb
  • was a split personality -- on the one hand he was this author -- on the other he was this lunatic -- he was manic depressive -- when he was down you would want to slit your wrists -- but he was always high at cons
  • at one con he was going to sacrifice all the virgins at a "Hum and Sway" party
    • you sit in concentric circles, link arms, have a swig of drink, put out the lights, be quiet (the Americans find this bit hard), then all hum and sway!

• 1994 : Sou'wester -- was to be in Bristol -- but the hotel manager found out -- so ended up in Liverpool
  • In 1971 I told the manager it was a literary convention
  • 1996 : Evolution -- was going to be in Brighton, but ended up at the Radison
• 1975 -- original Seacon -- were sure we could get a hotel by the sea -- ended up in Coventry -- as soon as you call a con Seacon, it will automatically be as far from the sea as possible [except in 1984 ]
  • so this is Seacon'03, because we are as far from the sea as you can get!
  • the 1975 bid was put together the night before the bid session, because the only other alternative was Manchester, and Manchester is always a disaster!
  • but in 1975 they put another Manchester bid together for 1976 -- a travesty of a con
    • Owen's Park Halls of Residence -- horrible, like a refugee camp!
    • The bar had iron tables and steel chairs -- built to be hosed out
    • communal bathrooms
    • like a terrible Greyhound Bus station -- cheap, miserable, shambolic
      • it could have been worse -- one gang wanted to do it in tents!
    • Robert Silverberg was GoH -- they drove him up from Heathrow in the back of a plumber's van

• 1970 -- the only con to rival Owen's Park for real disaster
  • run by George Hay -- nice chap, but created new projects every fortnight -- attention span of a gnat -- "well meaning" -- SF Foundation only real success
  • Royal Hotel, Bloomsbury -- demolished 3 months after the con -- under sentence of death at the time -- staff couldn't give a damn -- manager wasn't aware the con would happen
  • no SF on the program!
  • the film screen was pieces of paper tacked to the wall
  • bar closed at 10pm -- after which had to queue at the "trapdoor", for warm brown ale
  • so hideous that Rog Peyton and PW knew could do better -- bid for 1971
  • but it makes for good stories!

• PMcM -- it's a really bad idea to try to run a con on your own -- I tried it for 1996 Evolution with a very inexperienced crew
  • [the audience agreed it was a good con -- if opinion on the hotel was spilt]

• 1991 : Speculation -- Glasgow -- Hospitality Inn -- soon redubbed "Hostility Inn"
  • you must get the right hotel
    • they are used to dealing with businessmen in suits swigging G&Ts, not scruffy fen drinking beer -- businessmen behave worse
    • you shouldn't try to kid the management -- tell them fen look funny, but spend a lot on drink, and won't smash the place up
• Reconvene -- Adelphi -- black and gold name badges, each with a different motto -- too complex -- Keep it Simple -- and use a large font
  • horrible tradition in the 1980s of con security squads checking name badges
    • that's why nowadays calling it "security" is frowned on
    • anyone who wants to work in security shouldn't be allowed to
    • The 1963 Eastercon Programme Book explained things : "badges aren't about security, they're about friendship" -- enabling fen to recognise one other
• 1991 Speculation -- the two main programme rooms had the same name ... but never at the same time, you understand...
• As well as a good hotel, you need a good programme -- even though not everyone goes to it, it creates intellectual churn -- that was 2Kon 's key failure. [Well, I liked it...]

• 1966: Yarmouth -- crummy hotel -- large manager dubbed "Landeburger Gessler" (from William Tell ) -- non-fannish guests -- Ted Tubb in manic phase formed a conga line of chanting fans clinking bottles -- was chased by the manager, up onto the roof, chucking bricks down chimneys belonging to fans rooms
  • can't do this now -- the roofs are hermetically sealed -- we're in the future now
    • but where are the flying cars?

• SF fandom is an anarchy, no central organisation, lurching from disaster to disaster -- no-one learns form the past -- but every Easter we have a good time -- almost every Easter for the last 40 years, I can remember where I've been!

Alan Kobayashi -- From Star Fleet to Earth Force

• worked on
  • ST:NG , Generations
  • B5 seasons 3,4,5, In the Beginning , Third Space
  • The X Files after it moved to LA, seasons 8,9
  • Enterprise season 2 -- like "going back home"
• In B5, there weren't many closeups of hands, etc so a lot of the graphic design details got lost
• got a chance to meet Majel Barrett -- she was very nice, and please to be working on B5
• B5 was willing to put a lot of people in background shots -- sometimes up to ~100
• there were lots of posters and things on the walls, but most shots were along the corridors -- so most were never in shot
• B5 was shot in an old warehouse -- very low ceiling -- the air conditioning could cool only one of three sets at a time, so setting up was always very hot
• riot police uniforms -- used surplus East German police helmets
• lots of WWII-style posters -- SF is what you can get from war surplus catalogues!
• lots of props are hired from prop companies, and do the rounds -- a prop from Buckeroo Banzai shows up in one B5 shot

• X Files is so complex, it has two art directors, working on alternate shows

• Macintosh, Adobe Illustrator, PhotoShop
  • no graphics table, just a mouse -- I'm very old-fashioned!

Julian Headlong -- I Am Spike's Liver

On haematopoiesis and poetry, Vampire biochemistry and quantum wibble

• previous talks
  • I am Spock's Liver -- Vulcan biochemistry
  • How the Black Hole at the centre of the galaxy caused the Russian Revolution
  • Torturing Babies for Fun and Profit
  • so, for a talk on how Vampires work -- the title wrote itself!

• vampires made fashionable Victorian stories -- spread of incurable diseases, and rabies
  • drawing on older legends, folklore of exotic diseases
    • acute intermittent porphyria -- George III -- hereditary
    • congenital erythropoietic porphyria -- Gunther's disease -- 1 in 30 million -- mutation that can occur anywhere -- so everyone has vampire legends
    • other disease subsumed -- rabies
    • vampire bats
  • resurgence in recent times parallels new incurable STDs, AIDS

• classification system
  • UK -- by physiology
  • US -- by firepower
  • Europe -- by style
  • China -- hopping or non-hopping
  • they are all poikilotherms -- cold-blooded killers
• type I -- humans with a quirk -- Goths -- wannabes
• type II -- biological -- subspecies living with humans
  • drink blood -- strong hypnotic gaze -- don't like sunlight -- allergic to silver or garlic
• type III -- technical creations -- nanotech, etc
  • shapeshift with conservation of mass -- super powers -- can infect others to produce new vampires -- fall into dust as nanites lose cohesion
• type IV -- strong quantum wibble
  • no body at all, appear in perception of humans -- don't appear in mirrors, photos, telephones -- feed off psychic energy -- an energy state that can be destroyed by UV and ¹³ C
• type V -- weird demon shit
  • magical -- made by being bitten, or a rite -- variants include the Stoker, the Rice, the Somtow, and the Whedon -- need blood -- some need to sleep in their coffin -- don't like holy water, silver bullets, depleted uranium anti-tank rounds, ... -- some can turn into bats, and to hell with conservation of mass -- need to be invited in the first time -- can heal from any wound except decapitation or staking -- don't need to breathe

• Whedon subspecies
  • can't shapeshift apart from the scary face (except for one episode of a Stoker crossover )
  • strong, fast, super senses
  • can survive on stored animal blood
  • don't breathe, but can give mouth to mouth -- the one who said it's impossible was lying, because he didn't know how to do it
  • they bleed when cut, so their blood must circulate -- but their heart doesn't beat -- the demon moves the blood!
  • too much iron from drinking all that blood would lead to haemochromatosis [bronze diabetes] and liver failure
  • can become intoxicated and hungover, so dehydrated, so kidneys still work
  • powered by demon-catalysed very very old fusion of the Deuterium in the blood -- explains overclocked muscles

• question and answer session -- remember, I have to make this up as I go along!

• cold fusion -- where does all the He go -- why no squeaky voices?
  • it goes into very bad English and Irish accents
• is this how the floating/flying vampires work?
• small fusion explosions explain the hopping vampires

• what is the effect of vampires on global warming?
  • they don't breathe, so don't produce CO ₂ -- they're a carbon sink -- with enough of them, could reverse global warming
  • but when you dust one, all the carbon is released again -- Buffy is causing global warming!

• a FTL comms system based on instant transmission of Slayerhood
  • set up array of future Slayers, encoded as 1s and 0s, and kill them in the right order for the message

Panel -- Milestones in 20th Century comics

Steve Lawson, Fangorn, Julian Headlong, Gary Wilkinson, Malcolm Davies

• started in the 1940s
  • before that, was really only things like Little Nemo -- very little fantasy of SFnal comics
  • then it was the Golden Age, followed by the Silver Age, and has been downhill ever since!
  • Look and Learn had the Trigan Empire
• My favorite is Sandman -- it's sophisticated -- incorporates a lot of DC heroes in very odd ways
• My favorite author is Don McGregor
  • I used to buy about 16 titles a month -- kids couldn't afford to do that now
• I don't buy comics for the characters any more, but for the authors -- my favorite is Alan Moore -- or the artists -- so I have lots of broken runs!
• We read all the girls' comics, too -- Bunty , Judy , etc -- there wasn't enough to read!
  • Misty was all supernatural stuff
• A new comic would get more sales -- so lots of new releases -- merge titles once sales started dropping off
• There's a lot more choice now -- don't run out of stuff to read
  • 90% crap -- used to read it all , because not enough stuff -- now can pick and choose, especially if you go by author/artist
  • I still manage a book a day, but there are 3000 SF/fantasy titles published per year in the US
• for the price of a couple of comics, I can buy a book -- can read a comic in ~10 minutes -- books last longer
  • if I want to read, I'll buy a book -- I'll buy a comic for the way it looks
  • they're ideal for taking to the loo!
• Everyone draws the same now
  • used to be able to identify artists by their style
  • it's less distinctive -- like pop music!
  • more distinctive at the highbrow end
  • more of a manufatured commodity -- more commercial pressure -- have to draw more
    • a good artist can do ~ a page a day
• We're in a recession after the 90s boom -- there were 100s of X-Men titles a month
• French/Belgian comics are a very separate market
  • publishing cycle -- one large book every year or so -- doesn't translate to US marketing style
  • Asterix in Italian has better jokes than in French!
  • in Europe, comic books are intermingled with novels on the shop shelves -- also available in libraries
• Internet comics -- are they really comics?
  • Scott McCloud
  • can get more adventurous formats -- can do things you couldn't (or shouldn't!) do if published
  • I can't follow it on the screen
  • can't make it pay
• There is nothing being done today that Herriman didn't do with Krazy Kat in the 1920s -- drugs, animation, noir, ...
  • It doesn't need to be innovative, it just needs to be good
  • Watchman has very simple layout -- but it's good
• the movie of the graphic novel of the card game of the toy of the...

Simon Conway Morris -- Meeting the Aliens

The 4th Science Fiction Foundation George Hay Memorial Science Lecture

• my approach is tediously conservative, but leads to some exciting possibilities
• outer space could be teeming with life -- all the basic chemistry is available -- but there may be some major difficulties
• almost everything I will say is controversial -- and is wrong!
• what are the basic building blocks?
  • carbon is the only alternative
  • silicon looks like an alternative -- but is actually deeply unfavorable
• let's look at our own life -- it's very peculiar in ways we are only beginning to realise
  • DNA double helix -- one of the most peculiar, bizarre molecules -- alternatives to DNA are mostly disasters
  • leads to idea there are no alternatives -- may be a universal biochemistry
  • what about rerunning the tape of life (as in Wonderful Life ) -- it would be very different -- or would it?
    • we can rerun the tape on bacteria in the lab -- suggests there are real trajectories to life
  • it's difficult to imagine any major design in biology that hasn't evolved
  • Fortey -- Life: an Unauthorised Biography
    • suggests an unexploited eco-role, in the stratosphere, of large floating bladders -- bladders are uncontraversial, they exist -- making hydrogen is simple -- but they don't exist, because there is nothing for them to eat, on an Earth-like planet
• evolutionary convergence -- a constraint on aliens
  • two kinds of sabre-toothed cat -- one a placental mammal, one a marsupial -- more closely related to hedgehogs and wombats than each other!
    • some kind of "sabre-tooth space" in which evolution navigates? are there other kinds of spaces?
• eyes
  • transparent tissue and conversion of light to electricity both evolved billions of years before eyes -- why didn't eyes evolve earlier ?
  • our eye -- camera construction -- squid eye almost indistinguishable -- most famous convergence -- also there are important differences, which show they came from different trajectories
    • camera eye evolved independently ~ 7 times, along with agility, intelligence, predation
  • compound eyes of insects -- pack many lenses together to collect lots of light, so arranged in a hemisphere -- minimum size to a lens means upper limit to total size
    • we would need a compound eye more than a metre across to have the same acuity
    • so aliens will have camera eyes , not compound eyes
• star-nosed mole
  • tentacles very sensitive to touch -- but neurobiology produces an equivalent of vision
  • different sense modalities arrive at similar mental maps
  • electric fields used by fish to navigate and communicate
    • several unrelated fish have virtually identical systems -- large brains to process its electrical world -- strange sensory modalities, but deeper seated commonalities
• hearing, smell -- convergent in invertebrates and vertebrates
• what if, 65M years ago, there had been no asteroid impact?
  • Ice Ages are inevitable -- so 20M years ago the ice would have favoured warm blooded birds and mammals -- the dinosaurs would have lived only in the tropics -- then hunting would have wiped them out -- so climate has no effect in the long term
    • some reptiles don't lay eggs -- give birth to live young -- some even have placentas! -- when it gets cold
• birds -- vocalisation, tool making
  • New Caledonian Crow tool making is in advance of chimps
  • New Zealand -- devoid of natural mammals, but has birds
    • Kiwi -- honorary mammal -- feathers turning to fur, lives in burrows, nocturnal, ...
    • is there a trajectory called "mammalness"?
• human brain -- trajectory that lead to it over 5M years is astonishing -- but not unique
  • there are dolphin parallels -- humans overtook dolphins only 1M years ago -- dolphin brain size increased ~20M years ago
    • radically different brains -- but strangely convergent -- rich social life
  • dolphins live in fission/fusion societies of ~100 -- similar to chimps
  • sperm whales -- intensely social matriarchal lines -- similar to elephants
• so basic structures likely to emerge here -- why not elsewhere?
  • once you've reached a certain level of complexity, things that might seem impossible become almost inevitable
    • Neanderthals -- cultural efflorescence -- necklaces, etc

• Fermi paradox
  • we may be alone
  • if not -- we should be very careful
    • honey bee and stingless bee -- convergent social systems -- there were other systems, possibly driven to extinction by this more efficient one -- could happen to us!
• Extra-solar planets -- many of them
  • Ward, Brownlee: Rare Earth -- need a planet of just about the right size, with a large moon, volatiles initially resupplied by comets, which later diminish because of Jupiter
• we are inevitable , but Earth may be the only place we could evolve
• implications of being alone
  • advanced animal societies -- esp communication and singing -- need more study -- may be underlying universal music
  • take animal mentalities more seriously -- there are large groups of animals on the threshold of humanity
  • we are fouling up the world -- this is biologically as well as morally wrong
• So -- if the telephone rings, we shouldn't pick it up. But in my view, it will never ring.

• to what extent would different environments put different constraints on animals?
  • if you make the Earth even only slightly bigger, get substantially higher gravity -- and it's already cripplingly high -- make it smaller -- lose the atmosphere
  • some people argue that the big birds/flying dinos could not have evolved unless gravity was weaker -- but the physicists don't like this
  • fourth power law on fluid flow, viscosity at low Reynolds number, act as invariants
  • maybe a failure of imagination -- but these parameters do box in the possibilities
• what's your view of the Drake equation?
  • Drake and SETI are driven by a "religious conviction" in the existence of aliens -- they know they are there -- nothing wrong with that -- there should be several hundred civilisations
  • Webb: Where Is Everybody?: Fifty Solutions to Fermi's Paradox -- but none of them really add up
• is there a curiosity factor missing from the equation?
  • many animals, even ants, are capable of building a mental model of their environment -- curiosity/playfulness seems to be recurrent
• Jack Cohen 's universals?
  • I'm starting from the same place, but saying that things that have evolved more than once are the only things that are possible -- you tell me something that is genuinely unique -- I mean general biological properties, not nitty gritty disectional details
  • the wheel -- it's evolved in bacterial, and there are strong arguments against large ones
  • lots of differences in details, but general principles are convergent
  • could we do a nervous system any other way? it must be electrical to be fast enough -- potassium and calcium are already taken up, so that leaves sodium -- sodium channels have evolved more than once
• what about bipeds?
  • we need hands, or tentacles
  • bipedality is relatively unusual -- about 6M years ago the Tuscany ape became bipedal -- on an island with no predators
• you're assuming tetrapods?
  • don't have an answer to that -- necks evolved independently -- there is a group moving towards limbs independently of the ones that did get limbs
  • there may be unique bottlenecks, entirely contingent on some event -- but there are lots of convergences
• are there any convergences that "stop", that don't go all the way?
  • specialists get uptight about the difference between parallel and convergent evolution -- depends on the common ancestor, but it's not really important
  • in any one diversification, convergence is rampant
    • cladists regard convergence as an offence to their system!
    • as soon as you find an adaptive zone, it is explored extensively
    • get waves of diversification, run out of things to do -- homoplasty [similar structure without common origin] becomes an increasing problem -- there do seem to be trajectories/regions to explore
• what are your views on artificial life?
  • I can answer from an area of invincible ignorance!
  • AI to date is a stunning failure-- asking the wrong questions
  • finding the Easter Island of possible life in an ocean of maladaptiveness
    • how to produce that complexity in such a short time, ~ 10 ¹⁸⁰ proteins
    • need to get the underlying framework to manifest, else will never find it -- phase space too vast
    • navigation metaphor
  • the people doing this are very intelligent, and far from the biologists
    • in comparison with the beauty and fluidity of living organisms, it's very sterile -- there's no magic
    • there may be deep properties of biological organisms that only become apparent from such studies
• with convergent evolution, to what extent are the genetic similar?
  • there is a good deal of molecular convergence -- molecular toolkits
  • the eye isn't convergent merely because all use PAK6 -- that is also used for noses, brains, pancreas -- and sometimes something else is used for eyes
    • genes are switches -- they don't "do" anything
  • what is similar, what is different? -- story is just taking off

Interview

Justina Robson , Roz Kaveney

• third novel, Natural History , published yesterday
• Silver Screen is the least bleak one -- people do get out of it alive!
  • I'm not longer sure AI is possible -- in SS I imagined it would have to evolve itself -- it might have to decide to delete some of its memories -- how to make artificial experiences meaningful, know the significance of events
• when I'm writing, I consciously think about these things
  • but talking about it here, it's as if I'm thinking about them for the first time -- it's the first time I've talked about these things
• when you see an apple, how do you recognise it as an apple? -- it depends on who you are, its significance to you, your senses, being an animal, ...
• I like to imagine what it would be like to be somewhere so very different, what it would do to you
  • before he got into fixed wing flight, ??? was thinking of "individual Zeppelins " (a precursor to flying cars!) -- he had one himself -- that's a future that can now never happen, because it didn't happen.
  • I can see ashtrays outliving smoking, because they are useful -- little pots to put things in
  • antimacassars survived macassar hair oil by a century -- and now hair gel has come back!
• Mappa Mundi is a technothriller -- I didn't intend that structure -- first person view didn't work, it had to be a thriller to work
  • my entire experience of journalists/secret agents is from fiction -- even real life ones get filtered through fictional cliches
• Can literature affect you? If you've decided to be a powerful person, can you read Jude the Obscure and not just say "what a waster"? Can you ever understand someone like that?
• I love the West Wing -- if only real politicians could be so educated and erudite -- I'd love to have a job like that -- I think WW should stay, because people would think that's what it should be like, and then we'd get people like that.
  • but my mother had a fantasy about university life -- wonderful and mind expanding -- she was disillusioned when she got there and found it wasn't like that
  • writers can't be held responsible, because what people take from the work isn't what the writer wanted, or even put in
• I wanted to explain the science in Mappa Mundi , but it would have taken reams, and been dull
  • technology has an ethical dimension -- but often the ethical dimension comes down to saying "no, don't do that"
  • my grandmother has a lobotomy -- done to her by people who really believed it was in her best interest
• Natural History -- I set out to write all those fun bits of SF I'd never done before -- but then some other things became inevitable -- ended up a deeply sad novel -- all the characters are very lonely -- use VR as a crutch, totally necessary, to be a social animal
  • there's a lot of circular reasoning about -- inability to think critically, to think things through -- I came across a lot of that at university -- it put me off politics entirely
  • now working on something in the future of NH -- same aliens -- not so much of a romp, though

• are you going to continue writing short stories?
  • I write them on request, mainly -- they are quite hard to do
• how do you plan the structure?
  • I write a first draft without a plan, then see what it looks like, and impose a structure
  • the grammar of the story tells you what's going to happen -- the only reason to continue reading, esp in short stories, it to find out the particular route taken -- the more structure, the harder to break out, and when you do, you end up disappointing the reader -- I find it easier to break out with long stories than short
  • M. John Harrison wrote Light so that no-one can read The Ship Who Sang with a clear conscious -- when I read tSwS , at 14, I thought it was great -- I've never read it since, because I don't want to change that feeling
  • I'm shaped by Anne McCaffrey, Asimov 's robots, and Tanith Lee
  • Dragonflight was girls and horses, and I waned it to be darker -- it became a domestic soap opera -- also huge denial of the fact that the relationship with the dragons is sexual -- dodges the ball -- I found it difficult to read Light -- all the characters are so horrible -- but Mike doesn't dodge the ball -- but deeply uncomfortable -- maybe that's why McCaffrey didn't go there -- she wanted the innocence, wanted it to last forever
• why "I, Robot"?
  • I chose it because of the cover and title -- I was an only child -- I came to identify with the robots -- I was becoming aware of how little you know of others' internal lives -- humans are very good readers, and also very good liars -- it's rare you are ever so genuinely interested in someone that you can pay attention to what they are really about -- it's much easier in fiction

GoH talk -- Fangorn on Art

Chris Baker

• mostly book covers
  • Myth series, Red Wall series
  • 2 graphic novels -- which gave the film contact
  • haven't done much painting since the films
• I stopped the cute dragons after I overheard a comment at an Art Auction
• don't do much computer art
  • acrylics are like painting with jam
• I like doing wings, and mice
  • pre-Raphelite inspiration

• all your characters are white; do you have a preference?
  • green!
• how much do you plan a picture?
  • I usually just wing it -- I don't have a problem with "over doing" a picture; I'm too lazy! -- I don't put in as much detail as I used to; the brushwork now flows more freely

Panel -- Not Just the Bookjackets: the wider use of SF art

Pete Young, Steve Jeffrey, Colin Langeveld, Dave Hardy

• "Uncle Saddam's Shag Palace" -- article in the Times -- loads of SF/fantasy paintings and book covers discovered
  • Iraqi Minister for Acquisition of Fantasy Art arrested by US
  • new report rather disparaging to art world -- "juvenile", "kitsch", ...
  • would the same comments have been made if these had been discovered in Paul Getty's attic? (probably yes)
  • but if you copy them and paint by numbers, you get a Turner Prize! (of Glen Brown's version of a Tony Roberts cover)
  • some people think a sheep with its arse ripped out is art
• if the art was separate from the literature, would it get the same "juvenile" comments -- or would it be seen as a descendent of pre-Raphelite, of technical illustration, etc?
  • Chesley Bonestall etc were doing art in magazines in the 50s -- influenced American moon race -- dream that the engineers built on
  • pulp cover image -- being rediscovered ironically by small presses
  • the literature has improved over the decades -- has the art been raised in the same way?
    • CL -- one of my pictures is in the art show, and Mr Hardy gave me a good bollocking -- that moon can't look like that!
• have the materials made a difference?
  • we have digital art -- thank goodness for Poser, Brice, Photoshop
  • at the last Eastercon I sold one painting -- 80% of stuff there was digital
  • takes time to paint a picture -- is the labour worth it?
  • digital is just another tool -- need to learn knowledge for shadowing, etc
    • some people say the airbrush isn't really art
    • it really speeds up the process
    • I really enjoy it -- it's a whole new way of working -- I love the Mac
  • I've dabbled with Brice/Photoshop and I find it really hard -- it's harder than using a pencil
    • you should use a tablet, then it's just like drawing
    • no, because you're not looking at your hand, but at the screen
• can you tell what's digital?
  • yes -- digital is unemotional -- not like pastels
  • people said that about the airbrush
  • can use an airbrush then add in jitter -- can be subtle with it
  • perspective is a pain -- digitally it's done for you
  • increases productivity
  • still need artistic ability -- most people can produce something "acceptable" in Brice, but not saleable, because it's not artistic
• AARON

Panel -- SF as It is Writ , or, The Aesthetics and the Ecstasy

Farah Mendlesohn, Jon Courtenay Grimwood , Chris Evans, M. John Harrison , Paul Kincaid

• this panel is about the way SF uses and plays with language
  • it's a reaction to all those "I don't write the story, it tells itself to me, and I write it down"
  • we think writing is a craft, not something that just comes naturally
• parts proceed from inspiration, but should then be grasped in the vise of technique
  • there needs to be something to write -- a weird silkworm that produces stuff, then you work it out -- some days are completely technically based
• not particularly conscious of the first draft -- in a foggy swamp, see a tuft, then another, ...
  • later, the conscious shaping happens -- the conscious craft -- not entirely linear
• first draft is getting something down -- like a bricklayer, putting down the foundation, then building wall, furnishing the rooms

• FM -- okay, let's forget the content -- just think of the sensibility
• JCG -- Pashazade is a murder mystery, but doesn't read like one
  • structure is of a crime novel -- but there's what's taken for granted, not explained, in that world, that's not in this world
  • to describe like that -- you take it for granted, then describe it
• MJH -- good example is travel writing -- same act as moving a reader through a SFnal world
  • do it as subtly as possible -- taking it for granted is one way
  • look for deliberate slippage between content and prose
    • talking of one thing in terms of another, paying with expectations of readers
• PK -- upsetting expectations
  • people look for certain things in a crime novel -- purpose is to find whodunit -- but in Pashazade that's not the purpose
  • there's a Paul Benjamin murder mystery -- it was a suicide -- the investigator is the only one who doesn't know that
• MJH -- techniques used to assemble sentences into paragraphs, into sections
  • rhythm is one technique, to work against content, to create unease, intrusion -- author isn't talking about the things you think they are talking about
  • in Light -- dinner party sequence, feels horrific -- then main character kills someone, feels normal
    • like Mary Poppins and that terrifying nursery
    • the dinner party is a less safe space than the room where the killing happens
    • I took out all the markers that make it a safe space -- warmth, feeling of having a good time -- alienate the reader -- take out the clinking of glasses, the "no, after you", and made it competitive -- unpleasant middle class intellectual competition -- tones of voice too sharp for the material
    • then the murder is "thrown away" -- can do this because of expectations of murder -- do it in a sentence, by describing changing expression in her eyes
• CE -- very difficult to talk in the abstract -- Mike could talk about that specific example
  • a lot of time I spend is making something difficult to write look easy -- I may have sweated blood, but I don't want that blood all over the page
  • the technique is slave to the story
  • I don't see SF as any different from other literature
    • read lots of stuff
    • I like SF, but I don't like the way a lot of it is written -- I just want to keep the reader interested
    • it's too easy to set up a straw man, invent stuff, crude social aspect -- I find myself rewriting Logan's Run !
• Shards of Honour could have been set on a desert island -- Space Gypsy could have lost the romance but not the SF
  • a prop is part of the fabric
  • a gimmick is something that could be removed
    • a car pushed on stage in Romeo and Juliet, for characters to fight over, then rolled off again, is a gimmick
• let's forget "reader response", and go into a world where the author is god
  • these are not necessarily contradictory
  • JCG -- comes down to the indices you use -- willing suspension of disbelief very hard to maintain as you push the car on stage -- need higher level if indices to make it "real" -- look at travel/engineering texts/biographies -- mimetic genres -- techniques to tell people that this is the real world
  • you don't have pages of description on how a machine works -- just a couple of sentences about "the new model" -- ground it in (false) reality
    • say "I think that X because Y" -- then take out the "I think that" to give an argumentative sentence not in the first person
• MJH -- mainstream "they went to the cinema then had tea" -- don't explain either cinema or tea -- "The Gap" -- write SF the same way
• PK -- take it for granted
  • travel writing -- it is strange -- the making real of the strange
    • Maxine Hong Kingston : The Warrior Woman -- 2nd generation Chinese in San Francisco -- perfectly straightforward account -- yet full of ghosts -- the white people are ghosts -- real, solid, grounded, and like nothing you've ever experienced before
• CE -- mainstream "the chap in the bowler hat got into the Rolls" -- has a whole freight of meaning -- wealth, status, etc -- don't have same cultural baggage in SF -- do you ignore it, or build in the resonances?
• MJH -- what techniques perform this function, in the absence of "The Gap", without knowing what a bowler hat is? -- not info-dumps!
• FM -- when the language itself is SFnal -- seem to be SF because of the way they are written
  • The Ballad of Lost C'Mell -- has a metre to the story -- there in a lot of SF
  • Appleseed -- very simple plot, but lots of pages
  • JCG -- you need to write a lot more than you use, then strip it down to get the rhythm
  • PK -- it's all about what's not there -- the words, the sentences
  • MJH -- but that's what all authors do!
• FM -- rarely see the same level of playfulness in the use of language as in SF -- Appleseed is an extreme
  • JCG -- the choice is defined by the character
  • FM -- still a baroqueness in SF -- enjoyment in the use of words to paint pictures
    • MJH -- can use simple words with lots of meanings-- control their meaning with surrounding words
    • joy in language may be the difference between SF and (some) mainstream
  • The Ballad of Lost C'Mell -- celebrating the fat that words have no meaning at all
    • arms race with readers expectation that it will have meaning
    • using the prose against the reader
• PK -- use the words the reader expects, but force them to read them in a different way -- Heinlein 's "The door dilated" forces you to rethink "door"
  • there is no safe understanding of the language
  • CE -- SFnal jargon give visual impact, rhythm -- much better than using a description
  • then Delany says " The door deliquesced " -- can't visualise that at all! -- much more considered phrase
• FM -- some recent, especially British, SF, I simply can't visualise
  • some scenes in Excession , the ships are simply too big -- being unable to visualise it is part of the wonder of the book
  • similar in Light with the mathematics
• MJH -- can say things like "they steered whole solar systems into new places, and then lost them" -- the SF reader works hard to make meaning of it -- but it is a label without a referent

• A lot of really good SF steals from good mainstream
  • John Brunner could not have written Stand on Zanzibar if ??? hadn't written USA???
  • David Lindsay : A Voyage to Arcturus -- written in three different styles -- gives very strange effect
    • seance scenes like Conan Doyle
    • weird drifty stuff out of Pilgrim's Progress
    • conversations like hard boiled detective novel
• linguistic philosophy -- individual words have a meaning, but sentences don't -- "colourless green ideas sleep furiously"
  • "steered whole solar systems" -- it is important that it's not a metaphor, but literal
• Romea and Juliet -- to someone who doesn't know the Shakespeare reference, would think it was set in an alternate universe
• some SF writers do info-dump
  • there are different styles, neither right nor wrong
  • KSR has info-dumps in The Years of Rice and Salt -- but does skip over lots of stuff -- it's undigested in places
  • consider Chris Priest's ??? -- huge amounts of info-dump, intensely detailed, but digested well
  • lots of SF readers like non-fiction, too, so like info-dumps undigested
• when mainstream writers start playing with language, they are quick to be classified as "magical realism", or "slipstream", or ...
  • James Joyce, Virginia Woolfe , were inventive
    • SF writers use the invention to do something different, to create different expectations
  • plain prose used in story-telling mode -- detective, western, romance, SF, genre -- more exotic language became identified with "literature" -- critics can't see past the plain prose
• early SF criticism -- focussed on new ideas, rather than how it was written
  • Nightfall -- planet with no night -- that's not the idea -- that's a notion, a conceit -- the idea is how rationality is better than superstition
    • most SF ideas are actually conceits
• MJH -- part of the con of language is appearing to be writing simple language, and not
  • ever since Katherine Mansfield
  • "this is how it is" -- then go on to explain precisely how it isn't
  • simple language can be wickedly entrapping

Panel -- 100 TB is enough

Dave O'Neill, Martin Easterbrook, Robert Sneddon

• we'll soon have 100 Terabytes, 100 x 10 ¹² bytes, of personal storage
  • today 1 TB fills a shoebox and costs ~£1000
  • 1 TB ~ 200 DVDs (single sided)
• I remember when 64k was enough, 1MB was enough, I'll never fill this 20GB hard drive
  • everything expands to fill the available space
• what to do with 100 TB? a good answer could make a lot of money
  • lots of new things become possible
  • the Web was invented without people noticing -- it was there, then people started using it
• index rule -- 30% of the space is used by the index
• things I never expected to do with my computer a few years ago
  • download Buffy episodes
  • internet newsgroups
  • I would pay for a proper archive system I could download at 1MB/s
• one day my iPod will talk to yours
  • what episode of Buffy you're up to
  • what style of music you like
  • what books you have read that I would like
  • need avatars -- and a language to describe tastes
    • its the AI problem
  • Tivo -- some people are now watching stuff they would never have thought of
  • Amazon's "people who bought this also bought that" works!
    • were teasing Jo Walton at another con -- we said we'd all buy her latest book and Battlefield Earth !
  • Schazam -- use to identify a tune you heard on the radio
  • need an appropriate standard for metadata -- semantic data
• BBC indexing all their video
  • sometimes discussion go back to "and Plato said..." -- we haven't come much further
  • how to show in the database that Ankh-Morpork is different from London -- and refs to Roman London are different from modern London? -- we are good at this
• ability to turn up at a con, not with a stack of VHS tapes, but a couple of DVDs
  • some Japanese Anime cons -- one PC, all the data, timer/schedule + program to add fillers in the gaps -- download shows via pen or small flash card
  • new phones have slots -- 1 GB cards available
    • at PDA resolution, can carry a whole season of shows, to watch while travelling
    • L. Neil Smith -- parallel Libertarian world -- scene with a data crystal with all of Marion Morrison's film career -- 20 years ago: "no way" -- now quite possible with off-the-shelf kit
• 4 levels of tech -- each separated by about 18 months
  • Blue Sky Bullshit
  • Sate of the Art
  • Off the Shelf
  • Obsolete
• places are moving from tape, to disc, to solid state, to get the access times, and reliability
  • can change order of news items during the 30s countdown
• Tivo
  • BBC like the idea it may be the collapse of advert supported TV
  • but worried they are losing editorial control over what people watch, especially news
    • Royal charter to "educate, entertain and inform" -- want their news to produce and informed public
• Google.news -- all the world's newspapers
  • KGB plc as a world newsbroker -- free tidbits, then have to pay for full story -- they are very good at finding out things!
  • GRU had a website on the Iraqi war
• digital rights management
  • how to pay for it? music/TV industry in denial
  • there's a US soap opera where you can download an episode for $1.99 -- but then there's no incentive to buy the DVD -- and can lend to friends
  • result: somewhere between being illegal to lend books, up to data becomes free
  • EFF -- fair use laws
• Firefly was cancelled for low ratings, but was the 2nd most popular choice on Tivo
  • Tivo has a huge viewing pattern DB
  • can build a version from Open Source material, that doesn't report back
    • it's in your own best interest to report back reliably, because then people will produce the material you want
    • both Amazon and Tivo will eventually detect if you are gay
• data is valuable -- archives, security -- data mining old data
  • A Deepness in the Sky -- data archaeologists -- if someone wants something, bound to exist
  • NASA has a load of 1/4" tapes they can't read, in an old format
  • Domesday book on laser disc -- 10 years later couldn't read it -- could still read the original
  • medical imagery -- hospitals required to keep images for longer than the tech exists
  • the hole in a CD is the size of a Dutch 10c coin -- because that's what they used at Philips to design the original spindle!
  • modern DVDs can read old 1980s CDs (which were 74 mins, so that Beethoven's 9th would fit) -- lot of effort to be back-compatible
  • can put a vinyl disc on an optical scanner an it can tell you the music!
  • can read a DVD with an electron microscope
• old wax cylinder music recordings -- take two recorded on opposite sides of the room -- process to make stereo and remove crackles (with three cylinders could get the entire room space) -- now have digitally remastered jazz from the early 1900s !
• librarians -- the best way to shelve books is by size and acquisition date, if you have a good catalogue -- a coding system privileges one particular classification
  • BBC merging classification systems -- Chinese system thinks pandas are cats -- we know they are bears -- no they're not! they're weasels! [no they're not! they're racoons!]
  • classification systems are a 19th century tech -- they're obsolete
• one paper copy of Cyteen cost its purchaser £30k -- when they got it home, they had no more shelf space, and had to move!

Panel -- Not The Clarke Awards

Paul Billinger, Jon Courtenay Grimwood , Claire Brialey, Steve Jeffrey, Farah Mendlesohn

A discussion of this year's Arthur C Clarke shortlist.

• The shortlist for the Arthur C Clarke 2003 award is:
  • Kim Stanley Robinson -- The Years of Rice and Salt
    • 13th Century Europe wiped out by the plague -- episodic history of the next several hundred years, following the same reincarnated characters
  • Elizabeth Moon -- Speed of Dark
    • novel of an autistic who sees patterns in data -- the shadow of Flowers for Algernon hangs over it, because there is a treatment promised, but it doesn't go that way -- can almost be read as a metaphor for being alien
  • David Brin -- Kiln People
    • people can make temporary clones that last a day, then memories downloaded into original -- deals with dilemma of not having enough time -- part detective novel, part philosophical treatise on personality, soul, and identity
  • Christopher Priest -- The Separation
    • beautifully written tale of an alternate history -- twin brothers whose lives diverge in WWII, on a pacifist, one a fighter pilot -- about how people change history
  • China Miéville -- The Scar
    • an escape from the city of Perdido Street Station -- interwoven with other characters' tales -- baroque feel -- set on the seas, it's a pirate novel, too
  • M. John Harrison -- Light
    • three timelines: near future with FTL travel, far future with a woman as a space ship, then it gets complicated! -- tangled, complex, does nothing you expect -- about disappointment, and being human
• other books that could have been on the shortlist
  • Jon Courtenay Grimwood -- Effendi
    • it's infinitely superior to at least two books on this list!
  • Jeff Noon -- Falling out of Cars
    • a "cosy catastrophe" that subverts the whole trope
  • Gwyneth Jones -- Castles made of Sand
    • but second books in series often don't get to the Clarke's (like Effendi )

• Kil'n People
  • I vote to throw out Kil'n People -- I'm a David Brin fan, I enjoy his work, but this is ordinary, a "futuristic thriller" -- no belief in science, it's something dangerous you have to defeat -- then he gets religion at the end
  • it doesn't raise enough questions -- I enjoyed it, but I didn't keep thinking about it
  • it's a better idea than it is a story -- looks for a religious conclusion -- unsatisfying that there's no answer in SF terms
  • the end is completely grafted on
  • Kil'n People is gone
• The Years of Rice and Salt
  • I'd throw out The Years of Rice and Salt first
  • me too -- I didn't like it at all -- I didn't get to the end!
  • neither did Robinson: there is no ending!
  • all these have some merit, I can see why they are on the shortlist -- Rice and Salt is a series of linked novellas -- some succeed quite well -- the alternative history is a better idea than story
  • the alternative history doesn't work -- culture is tied to geography and landscape -- this is very deterministic, there's no chaos theory -- the future is very recognisable -- astonishingly monolithic -- the alternative Islam would probably have fragmented without a Christianity to defend against
  • I love the idea of wiping out Europe! -- but he has to cheat to get all the analogues -- it's written so you can recognise the analogues
  • The Years of Rice and Salt is gone
• Speed of Dark
  • would anyone accept Speed of Dark above the others?
  • the central character is very well conveyed -- but the rest doesn't match up
  • everyone else is too nice, or too one-dimensionally nasty, especially the boss
  • I had problems with the main character -- an autist who is a genius -- in the end he chooses to give up who he is, all to be "normal" -- Geoff Ryman points out that if you substitute "gay" for "autist", it's very disturbing -- I don't think Moon understands what she's done
  • that's the question she puts forward, and doesn't answer
  • that's one of the strengths -- you sympathise with the character, and are then confronted with the idea he would chose to be "normal" -- she's taken the harder option, of showing what the impact would be -- but there's an overwhelming sense of agenda
  • my problem is that the central character is nicer and everything than all the others -- good job, good relationships, good friends -- yet we're invited to believe he gives this up
  • it cuts across the analysis he gives -- the "thinking and language versus mimicking" scene -- his analysis of that would leave you to think he would refuse treatment -- his friends are horrified -- there's a death at the end
  • I'm very pleased to have read it
  • it's just not as strong as the others -- there are good bits, but it's unsatisfying
  • but the audience should go out and read it
  • you really can judge the Clarke Awards by the strength of the shortlist
  • Speed of Dark is gone
• The Scar
  • I would like to remove The Scar -- I love this book -- it's a quest fantasy, but we keep being wrong-footed -- I love the way he uses a character we don't really like -- but it isn't original in the way the other two are -- it's "more of the same" Perdido Street Station
  • I agree -- if I hadn't seen PSS this would be incredibly powerful and original -- it's a refusal to pander to the adulation of PSS , to have more of the same characters -- there a continual refusal to do what the reader expects -- it's frustrating!
  • I'm not sure I agree, but it's hard given the other two -- this is more sophisticated, better than PSS , but has less burning imagination -- the twists and turns keep wrong-footing the reader -- the characters are extremely strong
  • it's an almost impossible call, but I want to keep it in -- I like the way China messes with the reader -- irritating, but I liked it
  • The Scar remains for now
• Light
  • I would remove Light -- it worked beautifully in paragraphs, strong intense imagery, but not as a novel
  • How much MJH do you bring to the book when you read Light ? I've read almost everything of his, I read Light in proof, the reread all his previous work -- it had that effect
  • it's staggering -- it works as a coherent whole -- brilliant -- insidious -- it stays with you afterwards
  • I can't remember the last time lines of a book stuck in my head
  • there's absolutely exquisite writing, and sensawunda, about the further future -- but I found I couldn't bring it together -- someone said it's like a fractal jigsaw, a pattern of patterns -- a work of art, but I can't see it as the best SFnal book of the year -- maybe I can't comprehend it
  • I promise I won't mention the word "gender"! -- it lacks unities, the plots don't meet at the end -- why do I like this? -- it's gosh-wow space opera -- the very fragmentation is what works -- things fit and don't fit -- what's at stake is the universe, getting your life wrong -- summation of 70 years of SF -- a closure, and a jumping off point -- I have now read everything of Mike's, and I can't stand about half of it! -- but this book seems to come together -- there are no red jerseys, everyone counts -- when she says "I'm not doing this for you, I'm doing it for me "
  • wonderfully affirming moment right at the middle of the book
  • apart from Annie, the characters don't like themselves or one another
  • Light remains
• The Separation
  • The Separation is my favorite -- the writing is beautiful, very distinct strong voice
  • I didn't get this book -- I respect and admire it -- the writing is stunning -- the use of history, in comparison Rice and Salt is an amateur kid's essay, this book understands history -- but emotionally I couldn't ever warm to it -- I'm torn -- it didn't quite work, even though I recognise it as a tour de force.
  • I got lost -- were there two brothers split, or one?
  • I liked that aspect -- I'm still not sure
  • I didn't get lost, but I did check after that it did work -- this is very Chris Priest -- all the duality, questions about what's real, excellent research, right voice for each part of the narrative
  • It's an astonishing novel -- in complete control of his craft, stunning technical authority -- I did get lost
  • The Separation and Light are polysemic -- capable of multiple interpretations -- unlike The Scar
  • I'm persuaded by these arguments -- they are both so multistranded -- I'm persuaded The Scar is not doing this
  • The Scar is the heaviest book, there must be some penalty for that! -- it's not so fundamentally interested in stretching the bounds of SF
  • The Scar is gone -- but predict it will win in reality
• The two remaining are Light and The Separation
  • these are extremes of the field
  • is chocolate better than cheese?
  • I've never seen the panel this stuck!
  • it would be unprecedented to have a tie -- they are both extremely good -- excellent SF
  • it could be worse -- we could be doing this for real!
  • Light is definitely SF -- is The Separation an SF novel?
  • I have a really hard-line definition, as an alternative history nut -- but this is parallel worlds -- and the jury has said it is SF
  • I really liked it -- so it must be SF!
  • are alternative histories really SF?
  • mine certainly are!
  • our decision is basically one of preference -- normally at this point we try to predict what the jury will do -- but I don't think we can!
• vote -- Light : 3 -- The Separation : 2
• the audience should rush to the Dealers' Room!

[ The Separation later won the ACC Award]

Duncan Steel -- God's Longitude: the secret astronomical reason why the British colonised North America

• I'm one of those people worried about asteroids and comets hitting the Earth
• but this talk is about my hobby horse -- and it's all about Easter
• John Brockman -- The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2000 Years
  • most of the usual suspects
  • Freeman Dyson nominates hay -- ability to keep horses and cows all year round
  • mine: The (non-implemented) 33 year English Protestant calendar
    • Simon Cassidy got me started on this
• I've no religious axe to grind -- but this is about a religious war between the Protestants and Catholics
  • God's Longitude -- Calendrical Meridian -- 77°W
• in 2000 there was Millennial Fever -- lots of supplements on calendars
  • the Gregorian calendar we currently use is corrupt and inaccurate -- there were lots of pronouncements from astronomers that "it runs 26 seconds slow" -- this is incorrect -- the current calendar is set up for religious regions, to calculate Easter
• I'll explain how the British colonisation of north America was part of that religious war
  • why Jamestown? -- it is a very hostile and strange place -- mosquitoes, natives, etc -- Pocohontas was important because she was the daughter of a local chief, so helped stop the fighting
  • Bill Bryson , in Lost Continent and Made in America , puzzles over the Pilgrim Fathers -- they were not well-prepared as colonists -- no farming gear, but astronomers, sundials, telescopes -- that's because people have misunderstood the purpose of the trip
• John Dee was a strange man
  • Dr John Dee -- The Hieroglyphic Monad
  • Robert Hooke, a rival of Newton, 100 years later suggested Dee's writings about angels were merely coded messages
  • Dee possibly invented the telescope -- kept secret because of military applications -- there's evidence Francis Drake used something like a telescope
  • he made recommendations on calendrical reform -- a secret calender
  • over 900 years ago Omar Khayam introduced a calendar more accurate than the one we use today
• problem: lengths of the seasons (between equinoxes and solstices) are not the same -- non-circular orbit
  • perihelion is currently ~ 4 January, and moves by 1 day every ~ 60 years -- precession of the equinoxes -- 110,000 years for a complete cycle
  • time between perihelions is 365.259635 days -- current calender has year length of 365.26 days -- leap year every four years except on some centuries -- to keep the perihelion on the same day
  • want to keep seasons in step, and Easter in spring -- year as one vernal (spring) equinox to the next
• definition of Easter: first Sunday after first full moon after vernal equinox (unless it falls on the vernal equinox)
  • but this is based on the ecclesiastical definitions of full moon and vernal equinox (21 March), not the astronomical definitions (sun crossing equator, which can vary from 21 March by a day or so)
  • our watches follow the mean sun , which can be up to 8 solar diameters away from the true sun
  • it all depends on what you want to use as the reference -- the church wants to use the vernal equinox year -- 365.2424 days -- not the tropical year
    • Julian calendar -- 4 year cycle -- leap year every 4 years -- 365+1/4 = 365.2500 days
    • Gregorian calendar -- 400 year cycle -- leap year every 4 years, except every century, except every 4th century (1900 and 2100 are not leap years, but 2000 is) -- 365+97/400 = 365.2425
    • Omar Khayam -- 33 year cycle of 8 leap years -- 365+8/33 = 365.242424... -- a better approximation to the vernal year than the Gregorian calendar, and with a much shorter cycle!
  • however, nothing is constant -- the day is getting longer, etc
• UK and its colonies use the Western Calendar -- based in 1751 Act of Parliament -- keeps equinoxes constant
  • the Act is wrong in its definition of Easter -- because it didn't want to use Catholic or Jewish definitions
• calculation of Easter
  • golden numbers, epacts, dominical letters -- it's complicated!
  • the epact has to be increased whenever there's a century year that isn't a leap year -- but it's more complicated still -- depends on the length of the month -- 19 tropical years ~ 235 synodic months (where the golden numbers come from) -- discrepancy of 100 minutes over 189 years, or 1 day over 308 years -- epacts decrease because of this
  • 33 year cycle with 8 leap years is much simpler
• John Dee and the Anni Domini calendar -- the Year s of the Lord -- 33 years is traditional length of Jesus' life!
  • 1585 was the beginning of the 48th 33-year cycle -- if the English Protestants were to start using the superior 33 year calendar then, it wouldn't be visibly different from the Catholic one until 1620
  • with the Gregorian calendar, the difference between the (astronomical) vernal equinoxes wanders by up to 53 hours
  • 33 year calendar -- wanders less than a day -- and can get it to stay on the same day by picking the right meridian: 77°W
  • so, with a colony in the right place, the English could claim 77°W as the prime meridian, could claim a superior calendar, and convert the Holy Roman Empire to Protestantism!
  • explains some obscure passages in Dee -- a date mentioned is precisely when the astronomical equinox would no longer be on 21 March
  • in 1584 the first "lost" colony, Roanoke Island, went to measure a total lunar eclipse -- in order to find its longitude
    • they realise it was 50 miles too far east -- colony left a note saying they were going 50 miles inland -- but it's all swamp there
    • 1607 -- that's why later colony went north, up the James River to Jamestown -- all named after King James I [who was, of course, Catholic...] -- on the claimed meridian
    • 1620 came -- the Pilgrim Fathers were actually trying to reach Jamestown, with their astronomers and telescopes -- but landed too far north -- 1620 went, and the 77°W meridian hadn't been claimed -- so the 33 year cycle calendar was never introduced
• this is the reason that Americans speak English! -- it's been a secret for more than 400 years

• why didn't the Catholics try to murder the English monarch? blackmailed by the Protestants that they would reveal the more accurate calendar!
• French revolutionary calendar based on autumnal equinox -- Lobster Thermidor is the only remnant of that calendar (Thermidor was one of the months)
• Christmas, 25 Dec, originally coincident with Saturnalia -- also 8 days before 1 January -- circumcision date
  • Christmas doesn't move seasonally, because it is based on Easter, which is based on Passover, which is based on the Hebrew calendar -- which is even more complicated!
  • The year used to start on 25 March -- tax year still does, after calendrical reform of 11 days moved in to 6 April
• Synod of Whitby brought 7 fiefdoms together because of arguments over Easter (the older Celtic calculations from the north clashed with the new calculations coming from Rome)
  • England exists only because of Easter!
• there was an Act in the 1920s saying Easter would be fixed once every one agrees (!)
• some of this forms a chapter of my book Marking Time (available in the US only)

Panel -- Milestones in 20th Century science and technology

Duncan Steel, Julian Headlong, Gary Wilkinson, Simon Bradshaw

• the pn junction -- the heart of the transistor -- an application of quantum mechanics
• cracking the atom -- Turing universal computer -- chaos theory
• John Brockman -- The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2000 Years
  • Oliver Morton -- recombinant DNA
  • Douglas Rushkoff -- the eraser
  • Susan Blackmore and Colin Blakemore -- each nominated the Pill
• the TV and its effect on human mating patterns -- the number of children conceived on a Saturday night since Match of the Day is greatly reduced
• digital ecosystems -- idea of consciousness -- healthcare -- space travel and GPS
• GPS is totally amazing -- it ties up so many technology fields -- need relativity -- two frequencies used because of the different speed of radio waves in air -- accurate to within a foot
  • GPS + Good Beer Guide -- navigates you to the pub, then home again afterwards -- killer app!
• penicillin -- people will say: "there was this 50 year period when we had antibiotics -- before the bacteria out-evolved it" -- Fleming discovered it, but it was Florey who developed the necessary technology
• physics was the science of the 20th century -- biology is the science of the 21st
• 1953 -- DNA
• management theory -- moved on from "scummy proletariat will only work when flogged into doing so" -- how we engineer, and how we motivate people, has changed out of all recognition -- TQM, JIT, ...
• there's too much science now to be able to know all of what's going on
• people worried about the bomb and what happens to infrastructure when it hits -- so they built distributed infrastructure -- and we got the Internet
  • even 10 years ago, the idea we could find out potentially any information through the computer -- Google has changed the way people do research -- it's also revolutionised mating patterns -- people put their new date's name into Google
• Hubble red shift and the expansion of the universe -- the final dethroning of our central place in the universe -- even our galaxy is only one of many
• why does the public fund research into astronomy
  • cultural? -- but at rather a higher level than opera!
  • education? -- astronomy is maths and physics "in disguise"
  • entertainment? -- newspaper articles, etc
  • useful? -- but when did astronomy last turn up anything useful?
    • 250 years ago -- Longitude -- the GPS, the SDI, of its day -- navigation and timekeeping -- they are now well out of the astronomical arena
    • asteroids and comets are dangerous -- that's come out of astronomy in the last few decades -- UK government has spent nothing on this hazard -- why?

• discovery that the Earth has a history -- dating rocks, plate tectonics
• 19th century -- importance of clean water for public health -- bigger effect on mortality than all of modern medicine
• 20th century -- the idea that the understanding of world can be used to make changes to society -- dispute about what is better
  • there's a bad meme that science is a unified whole with a single answer -- there is actually immense dispute and query
• every 5-10 years we look back and say how naive our understanding of genetics was then
• the "Tipler point" -- when scientists lose it!
• fluid mechanics -- aircraft, turbines (all our power), turbulence
• most of the physics that has an effect on us today was invented before WWII
• we now know how old the earth is, how old the universe is -- more an more bits of science have gone that way -- the error bars have got quite small
  • [how they can say that when the current best theory of the universe has it that ~5% of the universe is made of matter (we know what it is), ~25% is made of "dark matter" (we don't know what it is) and ~70% is made of "dark energy" (we really don't know what it is)!]
• biology -- understanding the fundamentals doesn't mean we understand the consequences, how it pans out

Masquerade

Nearly all the entrants were chaos costumes, to an amazingly high standard.

• Ringwraith
• Flying creature
• T'Pol
• The Legend of Orion
• Captain Ireland and Easter Squirrel versus Evil Clown
• Chaos Samurai
• Best Novice -- "Forward Momentum" -- Karen Furlong as Miles, Sabine Furlong as Cordelia, Nigel Furlong as Aral
• Self Proclaimed Best in Show -- "Mother of all Entries"
• Best in Show -- "Silent Order of the Giggling Sisters" -- no-one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

• Not forgetting the M.C. -- Not Sue Mason

Panel -- Back into Space?

After Columbia, what happens next? Should we even try?

Gerry Webb, Colin Jack, Dave O'Neill, Simon Bradshaw

• I've forked out a lot for one of the last Concorde tickets, because I think that's the highest and fastest I'll ever go
• there is some alternative space technology funded by the EU, if only €60k for a 1m ² solar sail, but I have bigger ambitions
• Commercial Space Tehnology -- the time in Russia is very good -- by 2005 we will have launched 20 satellites from Russia
• aerospace projects tend to be expensive because engineers like to be paid -- design programmes tend to take a lot of people

• Shuttle Columbia
  • NASA may have got back into the bad habits of Challenger -- accepting problems that haven't yet caused a disaster -- launch damage -- insulation peeled off and hit a wing leading edge
  • I expect it to fly again early next year -- under limitations, such as only to the Space Station, where the shuttle can be inspected externally, and house the entire crew to wait for a rescue -- may mean no more Hubble missions
  • can NASA replace the shuttle in 10 years??
  • I bet the Chinese will make their first crewed launch before the Americans get back into space
• I think the shuttle may fly again -- but it shouldn't -- intrinsically unsafe technology -- rocketry is an accident, a side-effect of the Bomb
  • we need to go up, and come back down
  • very low wing loading designs, very large wings that heat up to only hypersonic temperatures -- or very big parachute -- "tepid" re-entry
  • rotating space tethers to lower the speed of re-entry
  • possible to streamline so that doesn't burn up on re-entry -- could also launch this (shades of Jules Verne) with most of the engineering on the ground -- 10g accelerations
  • we should invest a few billion dollars on non-rocket space travel, not kill more people
• NASA budget is $13.8bn this year
• the shuttle risk factors were given as 1-2% -- they're bang on target -- space travel is supposed to be exploratory
  • rockets are derived from missiles, developed as artillery -- but are probably the only sensible way of getting into space
  • we've done 5 of the 10 necessary steps to gain control of the solar system -- proof of concept, satellite, manned flight, man on the moon, space tourist -- next need baby born on space, permanent colonisation, ...
• lower density does help
  • Alan Bond, HOTOL -- incorporates fuel tank, so lower density, so controllable re-entry heat
  • rockets are expensive because the Americans make them expensive
  • $20M charged for space tourist -- covers cost of whole mission
    • Americans aren't admit how cheap the Russian launches are -- $1/2bn/launch is ridiculous
    • tourism controversy -- go-getting capitalist Russians versus socialistic hierarchy of NASA!
  • the Russians have an emotional commitment and pride in space travel
  • they are developing fly-back boosters, for environmental reasons (currently "littering" down-launch areas)
• I'm not convinced the ISS is a permanent presence, and more than Mir was
  • prediction of $2.5trillion space tourism industry by 2040 -- venture capitalists don't like time-scales like that, and also prefer to have a product -- they're not in it for the long haul
• I would put the shuttle back into flight, with a 10year certificate, after which it goes in the Smithsonian
  • work out what are you doing-- are you putting people or cargo into space? -- shuttle is a basard compromise -- does all jobs, badly
  • space station exists to have somewhere for the shuttle to go
  • expensive because shaving that last drop of performance
  • X prize is interesting -- $10M to launch a person 100km into space, get them back, and launch again within two weeks
  • small low-cost vehicles are commercially feasible
• I'm skeptical that rockets are going to get miraculously cheaper -- we've been stuck for ~50 years!
  • in an ideal world, could get the price down by a factor of several -- but that's still very expensive -- looking for a few $10s/kg -- not going to do that with incremental rocket improvements
  • new technology will take billions of investment
  • ISS has no scientific use -- like the moon landing, it isn't leading anywhere
• don't get too sold on EM rail gun launces
  • you have to use what you've got, and you have to think commercial
  • tourism is best for human space flight -- have to get safety level to that of air flight
    • there are billionaires willing to pay $10M while it's still exclusive
  • need a recoverable vehicle, including fly-back boosters
  • I'm talking about steps, not the whole road
    • we should use the Russian facilities while they are available -- American politics is holding things up -- the Chinese launces will stir things up
    • not sustainable, but a way to prove it can be done
• NASA has forgotten -- if you are doing test and development and you don't have failures, you are not learning anything

• Rotary Rocket -- classic example of hope over reality -- only works with similarly dense fuels, like kerosene
• 5 years ago, launch capacity swamped, because of massive market for mobile phone satellites -- then that market collapsed
• environmental problems are dominant now -- especially for new launch sites
• Russian rockets are cheap -- modular design, so no expensive development costs -- existing very good production facilities -- rocketry does not have to cost what the Americans say it does
• next space race will be between China and India -- battle for prestige -- Algeria wanted to launch a satellite, for prestige -- space development is turning into a Ken MacLeod novel!
• we need to look at new tech before we get locked into rocketry
  • clever space tether still requires too-strong materials
  • beamed power -- chemical energy is not good enough -- send power from the ground -- microwaves, lasers -- tech still not mature enough
  • nuclear power -- there's that environmental impact statement!
  • linear accelerators -- for 10g, need 100-200 km evacuated tube -- trivial compared to a raliroad
    • rail guns probably don't work
    • coil guns -- no physical contact between payload and tube -- need 10-20GW, small power station-- scalable, can start small with 1000g "smart shell" tech -- Sandia wanted to build a commercial launch facility on Hawaii, using a high volcano
• space tourism opportunities -- burials in space -- we have launched ashes -- not into LEO, because of debris problems, but to escape speeds -- ashes, photos, CD of genome, ...
• mixed mode linear accelerator + rocket?
  • not as simple as it sounds -- mix of jet + rocket has optimal balance at 0% jet + 100% rocket!
• when will we have a permanent space presence?
  • at this rate, the singularity will have happened, and uploading will be practical, before we get a permanent space presence!
  • it's almost inconceivable we won't have a permanent presence, but when? -- I hope I live long enough to see it -- I think it will be 50 years
  • I think 10-20 years if we go about it the right way -- hopefully not for prestige
  • only motives I see for funding it are religious, and tax write-offs!