home > SF > cons > Odyssey: Eastercon 2010

The 61st British National Science Fiction Convention
2-5 April 2010, Radisson Edwardian Hotel, Heathrow

GoHs: Iain M Banks • Liz Williams • Mike Carey • Carlos Ezquerra (artist) • Fran and John Dowd (fan)

Official Odyssey: Eastercon 2010 pages.

The fourth con I've attended at the "Radisson Non-Euclidean", and the geometry seems even more confusing than ever -- there seem to be even more mirrors, even longer corridors, and more implausible angles (maybe I'm just discovering more, and more impossible, regions). The main auditorium had a peculiar variable star background -- very distracting! The catering this year was excellent -- multiply-located (I think -- though maybe they were all one place with vastly different approach routes?!) and the evening buffet had great variety. The con had a wide variety of panels, and very little "repetition" from previous years.

Programme highlights

• Panel • Book Collections - How Do You Store/Index Your Library?
• Panel • Alien Archeology
• Panel • Utopia - How the Concept Has Developed in Philosophy and SF
• Panel • BSFA Survey of British SF Writers - the Conclusions
• Panel • Arthur and Merlin - Modern Interpretations
• Panel • Disability and Villains
• Panel • It's Sh*t But We Like It - Crap TV and Film

• Panel • Living Forever - Is it a Good Thing?
• Iain M Banks • GoH
• Ben Goldacre • Bad Science
• Oliver Morton • George Hay Memorial Lecture -- Geoengineering
• Steve Kilbane • Swordplay for Writers
• MD Lachlan • Bartitsu: Victorian Self-Defence with Overcoat, Wig and Parasol
• Dr Who •  introducing the 11th Doctor
• Nicholas Jackson • Non-Euclidean Geometry
• QI

• Panel • Big Biology - What Are the Biggest Biological Tropes in SF?
• Alastair Reynolds • GoH
• Jonathan Cowie • Exobiology 1.02
• Panel • Not The Clarke Awards
• Anthony Webster • Fusion Power and the Joint European Torus
• Liz Williams • GoH
• Ian Sorensen et al • Harry Potter and the Half-Cut Prince - Musical
• Panel • Stainless Steel Rats and Rogues - Why Do We Love Them?

• Panel • Fantasy and SF - Differing Attitudes to YA and Adult Readers
• Panel • Language and Dialect in Writing
• Panel • Novels, a Product of Their Time

Panel • Book Collections - How Do You Store/Index Your Library?

Nicholas Jackson (mod), Edward James, Susan Stepney

"I gave my books a room and then they took over the house." When you have a massive book collection, how do you make your collection accessible? What online or offline catalogue do you use? Access? Library Thing? Delicious?

• [unsurprisingly, I took no notes during this item! Below are some notes I made prior to the panel, and a couple of things I remember from the discussion]

• at the end of 1986, we had 4120 books; as of today it's 11802, of which about half are SF
• house design
  • all doors 9" away from corner, to allow shelves behind the doors
  • underfloor heating, so no wall space taken by radiators
  • nearly 500m of shelving currently (including CDs, DVDs, videos, magazines, archive, ...)
  • dominant cost is not the book purchase price, but the storage (house) price: divide the cost of the house by the number of books!
• databasing
  • initially - text file on a BBC micro, with BBC Basic formatting into booklist
  • March 1984: STARBASE: the first ROM-based database on BBC micro
  • July 1985: AcornSoft's VIEWSTORE
  • 100k floppys too small! -- March 1987: Bought a 28MB hard drive - for £745
    • that's ~ £1600 in today's money -- today you can get a 250GB external drive for ~£60 : that's 9000 times bigger for 1/25 the price - or a quarter of a million times cheaper!
  • next upgraded to Acorn Archimedes
  • Oct 1993, went to Windows, and Access -- also allowed proper cross-referencing of short stories
    • VB to produce formatted text output, then custom Smalltalk/V app to convert into HTML for website
  • Booklist still on paper - waiting for "perfect" handheld device - still waiting!

• others use Library Thing -- including scanning in covers where necessary
  • allows remote access for when buying
• shelving: alphabetical, acquisition order, his'n'hers, ...

Panel • Alien Archeology

Deirdre Counihan, Lee Harris, Pepper (mod), Sharon Reamer, Rob Rowntree.

What will our panel of 'experts' make of the various items they are presented with? Is it a Denebian ritual object, or simply a salt shaker?

• a kind of "call my bluff" with alien artefacts (which looked surprisingly like everyday household objects!)
• hairball
  • a coprolite that hasn't fossilised yet
  • a desiccated weapon that in water grows to engulf its victim
  • earwax from a large sea creature
• silver mesh hair clasp
  • a very fine specimen -- usually larger
  • it's a copy!
  • a tiny-alien spacecraft
  • rodent-like alien's sword and shield -- but the shield is full of holes
  • three of its legs are missing -- it's a small house robot
• yellow hair curler
  • birth control device
  • disposable lamp from a mining planet
  • food processor
  • space station for tiny-aliens
• stick with spinner and string
  • portal to a place of the dead
  • food cutter
  • toy version of the 500 x larger perpetual motion needle
• stethoscope
  • mind-reading device
  • it actually extracts the thoughts
  • swimming robot with gripper
  • rectal thermometer
• purple garter
  • creature from the rings of Saturn
  • it's been irradiated, that's why it's purple
  • rodent-alien badge of office
  • multidimensional alien, blushing
• frond
  • the female of the rodent-alien species
  • alien tree-pen, with its own ink supply
  • organic seismometer
  • kite
• blue elastic strap
  • primitive tractor beam
  • universal garbage disposal
  • prototype stretchable motorway for traffic calming
• small hotel shampoo bottle
  • distilled pheromones
  • distilled essence of panspermia
  • polywater
  • soul of a Perusian monk

Panel • Utopia - How the Concept Has Developed in Philosophy and SF

Elizabeth Counihan, Edward James, Nik Whitehead (mod), Iain M. Banks, Martin McGrath.

The idea of utopia - the ideal civilisation - dates back thousands of years and has become a staple of modern SF. Has anyone managed to write a truly utopian society, or does utopia for some automatically mean dystopia for others?

• Utopia -- Thomas More -- a British concept
  • derived from the Greek "not-place", and also a pun on Eutopia, or "good-place"
  • More used as a satire to show the corruption of Tudor England
    • usually used satirically, not to design an ideal society
  • later More became a part of that society and contributed to the misery in every way he could!
• Edward Bellamy -- Looking Backward, 2000-1887 -- a genuine attempt?
  • fans created clubs to put it into action
  • great book, some silly things, a deeply annoying character who explains everything
• practical utopia -- what we can do with current tech -- versus absolute ideal, can't get there, no finishing point
  • The Culture is a "practical" sort
  • we might need genetic engineering to cure our xenophobia
• utopias for part of the population?
  • bankers!
  • the "Hampstead novel"?
  • the people would make it into a dystopia -- loads of money, but miserable as sin! -- making problems because they always want more
  • people in utopias think they have the rational answer, so everyone else is irrational, or a threat
    • exclude others, or lock them away
    • isolation: Himalayan village, island
• William Morris -- News from Nowhere -- have to destroy the society that was there before -- all that's left is the House of Commons, a big building to store the manure
• utopias have no friction, no excitement -- boring -- don't want to live there!
  • The Culture -- write "around the edges"
  • a utopia is a great place to live, but rubbish to write about
    • may you live in interesting times
    • may you come to the attention of people in high places
    • may the gods notice you
• Aldous Huxley -- Brave New World -- a great dystopia
  • my USan students in the 70s thought it was a utopia!
• you can satisfy the needs of virtually everyone if you assume deeply immersive VR
• Kim Stanley Robinson -- utopian ideas -- nuts and bolts approach -- shows his working
  • society can be improved, not necessarily achieve perfection
    • More initially thought it a state of perfection, but later thought of as a journey, continual improvement, with no end
    • utopia in heaven -- continually worshipping God -- and that's supposed to be fun!
  • Blue Mars -- utopia as a constitution -- Mars is a blank slate -- easier morally -- don't have to destroy society
• American utopias are glossy -- British ones have pubs!
  • American: libertarian, frontier, individual freedom -- British: "cosy"
  • early American utopias were quite happy to be socialist
• Paul McAuley -- The Quiet War -- a recent attempt -- quite libertarian -- free from the drag of Old Earth
• Arthur C Clarke, Ken McLeod, John Barnes, Sherri Tepper, Ursula Le Guin
• there was a state when Interzone would have 12 stories of different dystopias, sometimes two in the same story!
  • writing is about conflict, dramatic tension -- so, dystopias
  • some dystopias are more optimistic, showing people struggling on, small victories -- in utopia, what's left to achieve? the only way to go is down -- no chance of transcendence
  • Joanna Russ -- The Female Man -- can have fun on Whileaway!
• Samuel Delany -- Triton -- most can find fulfilment -- huge range of choices/freedoms
• only need one individual to destabilise a utopia?
  • no, has to be robust -- people would fight for it
• can have small utopias -- hundreds in the US -- average lifespan of 18 months -- some Polish aristocrats set one up, but had a row about the washing up on day one!
• in Thomas More's Utopia , every household had two slaves
  • can develop in technological terms
  • an awful lot of utopias take a step back, are anti-tech -- modern Green utopias, "at one" with Nature -- based on a lie -- also requires killing billions
  • Blood Music is at one with nature!

Panel • BSFA Survey of British SF Writers - the Conclusions

John Jarrold, Claire Brialey, Caroline Mullan, David Hebblethwaite, Niall Harrison (mod).

Over eighty British writers were asked questions such as, 'How British do you think your work is?', 'How is it received elsewhere?', and 'Do you consider your work to be SF or fantasy, and if so why?' A panel of readers discuss the results

• there is a "sense of confidence" now, a change over the last 20 years
• fantasy is much broader than 20 years ago
• in the '89 survey, authors felt bound into a place, that they had no choice. The '09 survey, they felt confident they could write from a wider sphere of choice -- could do what they wanted -- although the feeling is that only space opera makes money!
• the '89 survey has 44 responses -- and I've read 35 off them -- the '09 survey has 84 responses from 148 asked -- and I've read 37 of them -- there are 9 overlaps -- enormous growth of the field
• in '89, a feeling that the genre is a prison -- in '09, much less so
  • it's no longer possible to read everything in the genre published in a year -- it's no longer even possible to get an overview of all the subgenres -- have become a specialist reader
• the 10,000 books I read in my youth -- I wore out most genres (war, crime, romance, ...) in about 200 books, then nothing new was said -- SF was the only genre that could still surprise after 3000 books -- those other genres would wear out as quickly today?
• Charlie Stross , Richard Morgan , move around a fair bit in the genre -- not easy in mainstream
• Smiths, Waterstones perceive SF and fantasy as two completely separate genres -- Waterstones even now have separate "Urban Fantasy"
  • Paranormal Romance / Dark Romance / Dark Fantasy / Horror / ... all separate!
  • publishers publish books they love and that they think will make money -- bookshops just in it for the money -- far fewer people working in bookshops who love books today
  • as a reader, I'm not interested in who the publisher/bookshop is -- I'm more guided by "intelligent conversation" on blogs than scanning bookshelves
• appreciate a strong sense of place -- and respond to a place that I know -- but I'm also looking for something genuinely novel and where I don't know if it's a real place or not
  • Bruce Sterling -- Holy Fire -- travel around Europe - less successful than Distraction -- works better "in his own place"
  • when I encounter London in fiction, I respond because it's where I live, but I also respond to places like Jon Courtenay Grimwood 's Bay Area
  • Ken MacLeod 's stuff in Britain works
    • Learning the World -- some thought the ageing human was the hero -- others know the the aliens are!
• you publish the author, not the book -- "word of mouth" is now online
  • once you've written a "big one", can't go back and write little ones any more
  • John Brunner and his Big Four ( Stand on Zanzibar , The Jagged Orbit , The Sheep Look Up , The Shockwave Rider ) -- couldn't then retreat into something else
• 20 years is a v short timespan in the History of Story
  • '89 writers think writing SF has a value in itself -- '09 writers seem to have lost that
  • '89 feeling of ghetto -- '09 anger that "SF" is still a term of abuse
• Harry Potter , Dr Who -- the popular end, it's how many come to the genre -- entry level SF
  • China Mieville , Iain M Banks , ... -- not entry level -- Masters level?
  • Radio 4 series "I've Never Seen Star Wars " -- episode on "I've Never Read Terry Pratchett " -- he's not entry level either -- some can't read it cold
    • also writers entry level -- writing from knowledge of the genre, or not
  • Do you need to have read The Count of Monte Cristo to "get" Gwyneth Jones ' The Spirit ?
    • no -- if you know the context, it's all obvious!
    • a novel has to work on its own basis -- but it can have additional levels
• SF: "See the World, plus something else"
  • Samuel Delany taught us about poststructuralism and Seeing the World, by writing stories -- after reading, we looked up and saw the world differently
  • in SF, it is possible for a book to do this without being a "great" book!
  • "SF makes me go wow! and makes me think"
• next generation readers, brought up reading Le Guin , Manga, the Koran -- will you recognise them?

Panel • Arthur and Merlin - Modern Interpretations

Liz Williams, Kari Sperring (mod), Nickey Barnard, Edward James, Raven Dane

How do modern versions of the Arthurian stories compare with earlier ones? Books, films and TV have all created new strands to the legends. Is this a bad thing, or simply the natural progression of folklore?

• no, he didn't exist, and, no, I can't prove that from the mediaeval literature
• legendarily, he'd not dead -- Arthur is sleeping -- he might come back!
  • Frederick Barbarossa is also not dead -- we don't write about him
    • the Germans do!
      • but not as much
• Arthur belongs to all of us -- roots so deep
  • but he spends his whole time fighting the Saxons -- he's not one of us!
  • I'm a Celt!
  • how did he become an English hero?
  • Henry II had an insecure throne, was French -- Arthur was a useful ally -- Geoffrey of Monmouth (1100's)
    • then Thomas Malory (1400's)
    • then Tennyson reinvented him again (1800s)
  • has everything except cats! horses, dogs, boars, women, ...
    • he kills a huge cat early on!
• it's depressing -- a story of failure -- not at all uplifting/inspiring -- everyone dies
  • very English!
• the modern TV Merlin -- reinterpreted as a "buddy cop"
  • early teens -- but has a darkness giving it depth, because of the disaster they're hurtling towards
• " And did those feet in ancient time ...?" -- no , they didn't !
• Merlin is quite peripheral in the Arthur legend
  • Mary Stewart 's influential series -- a more potent force
    • BBC TV "Merlin of the Crystal Cave" with Robert Powell [as Ambrosius]
  • Merlin is entirely benevolent, with added magic
  • The Mists of Avalon -- appalling travesty! -- myth of the Celtic Woman -- problem is, it requires them to lose!
  • the legend keeps reinventing
• in the Odyssey/Arthur/... women represented as strong figures in the context of what was allowed at the time
  • 20th century reimagining makes them evil, or weak, or ...
  • Excalibur (film) -- the women were great!
• every generation should have its reinterpretation
  • but the new BBC TV series strips everything good/deep ... it's Arthur-lite, Twilight , so PC it's ridiculous
  • no! it's a reinterpretation of their early life -- hinting at horrible things to come -- pulls you in -- "don't do it!"
    • the fact that it's in a Victorian castle is neither here nor there -- they didn't have tomatoes either ! [ a common problem, it seems ]
• the legend is enormous -- loads of bits there are no retellings of
  • the TV series is at least playing with it
  • there are versions where Guinivere defends Britain while Arthur is off fighting the Romans -- why do we cling to some bits but not others?
    • it's all that Tennyson's fault!
• T.H. White -- The Once and Future King -- Philip Reeve -- Here Lies Arthur -- these are both great Merlin stories

• everyone knows Arthur is going to fail and it will all end badly -- isn't that the British culture?
  • the glorious death -- it's a good ending -- although not so popular now, often too PC nowadays
• why do Americans like it?
  • desperate desire to belong/have roots
  • if you grow up in the Appalachians, you're told from birth that your heritage is English/Irish/Scots
  • I'm mostly Welsh, but when I lived in Dublin, I felt more English than I've ever done, even though I loved being in Dublin
    • if you're ever in Dublin, ask a taxi driver what they tell the Americans
• Camelot 3000
  • in the 14th century there was Lancelot's close relationship with another knight
  • in Camelot 3000 Tristan and Isolde are both women
• Merlin was quite a sinister figure until The Sword in the Stone made him funny
  • tendency in legends -- sinister figures become "nice"
  • Merlin/Morgan Le Fey are more flexible than Lancelot -- who's there to be "the best knight"
    • Lancelot is the perfect knight, son of a Lady and a King -- in the (American) First Knight film, he's a peasant
• we seem to be talking as if the right way to do it is like Malory -- castles, knights, class system of the 14th-15th century -- but really from 5th century -- very different
• First Knight is the worst interpretation
  • no, the TV Merlin !
  • no -- Peter David 's Sir Apropos of Nothing/Knight Life -- the Lady in the Lake in Central Park!
• Irish legends are harder for the modern mind to understand -- a three-party romance is easy to get
• I love those who take the Arthurian legends and blend them into something else
  • Susan Cooper
  • George RR Martin -- Dying of the Light -- is the best
  • an American Football team is sent back into the past, and become Arthur and the Knights of the round Table
• Victorian anthropologist reworkings -- popular but not scholarly
  • rediscovered in 60s -- more fluid society -- reworking
  • Marion Zimmer Bradley redid this -- knew what she was doing
  • later, it became "fact"
  • some historians become so enamoured, they lose their professionalism
• Rosemary Sutcliffe -- a novelist who does an excellent reconstructions
• there's the excellent and very accurate Monty Python and the Holy Grail
  • Grail usually left out, to avoid offending religious types -- the Grail frightens people
    • Indiana Jones
  • very weird B5 season 3 episode "A Late Delivery from Avalon"
  • Merlin is an alien in Stargate SG-1 , several season 9 and 10 episodes
  • Dr Who "Battlefield" [with strong hints that Brigadier Bambera is Guinivere!]

Panel • Disability and Villains

Pat Reynolds, PinkDormouse, Paul F Cockburn, Heather (mod), Roger Octon, Al Davison.

Dr. Strangelove, Travis, Richard III. Why are villains so often portrayed as as having a disability? Are these fictional stereotypes a thing of the past? Do disabled actors have more choice of role in the present day?

• AD: born with spina bifida -- father was blamed, for not having enough faith in God -- suffered exorcisms up to the age of 4
• have to add something to men to make them evil -- a grotesque or a disability -- idea of evil woman is so abhorrent, it's enough on its own
• nowadays, lazy option to use disability -- showing all disabled as perfect good people is just the same problem
• films can show physical disability easily -- books can also easily(ish) show mental problems
• James Bond villains, Davros, etc -- have an impairment , but are not disabled -- they can do what they want! Someone is disabled is they are in a wheelchair and there are steps in the way -- Daleks can now fly!
• in films -- disabled always shown able to get better
  • Beauty and the Beast -- Beast only acceptable when not the Beast any more
• when Batgirl became Oracle in a wheelchair -- got put behind a desk
  • AD: had a story in which she could fight/abseil, etc, using specialised wheelchairs -- all things I've done in a wheelchair -- but the editors wanted her drawn with shapely legs, not atrophied legs
• Wild Wild West -- seemed like they had a disabled villain just so they could tell distasteful wheelchair jokes
• so easy to equate sight with vision -- all sight problems are being completely blind (not just reduced), but with some form of "vision" instead as compensation
  • Daredevil film -- the idea he has magical sight in the rain -- blind people are screwed in the rain -- they can't hear anything!
• associating impairment disability with the "other"
  • a lot of people don't know anyone disabled
  • also all this PC may stop people getting involved
  • some think disabled people are fragile (so hesitate to help them up if they've fallen, ...)
  • some won't employ you because you are "ill" so they can't get insurance
• Extras episode -- laughing at the able bodied characters inability to cope with the disabled character, not laughing at the disabled character
• "Does he take sugar?"
  • a guide dog walker asked directions -- people replied to the dog !
  • having a guide dog can be an icebreaker
• impairments that disable you in the Mesolithic are not the same as those that disable you today (or in other places) -- so could have fiction examining a futuristic society by what is disabling in that society
• sexy disabled heroes -- Miles Vorkosigan
• was Deanna Troi disabled as an empath in a society of telepaths?
• TV series based on Tanya Huff 's Blood series -- detective with a form of blindness -- done really well -- lots of research
• My Left Foot -- boycotted it -- wouldn't allow anyone disabled to audition
• Gattaca -- genetically flawed versus genetically perfect but disabled
• what about waxing/waning (eg, ME) or "invisible" disabilities?
• Monk -- OCD -- we laugh, but it isn't funny

Panel • It's Sh*t But We Like It - Crap TV and Film

Tony Lee, David L Clements, Steve Rogerson (mod), Fiona Scarlett, John Coxon.

The regular confessional for those cheesy things you know you shouldn't like... (Buck Rogers, anyone?)

• Chuck ... stone him!
• Battlestar Galactica ... hang him!
• made for TV movie - Island City -- post-apocalyptic, nearly all had elixir of youth drug -- regressed to Neanderthals -- small high-tech cities breeding out the problems -- excellent tat!
• The Champions , Joe 90 , Space 1999 -- are lurking in my hindbrain
• UFO -- a lot more interesting than just blowing up spaceships -- even if it did introduce the idea of "hereditary sterility"!
• Speed Racer --- dreadful live action "cartoon" film -- quite enjoyed it the 2nd time
• Battlestar Galactica -- is it shittier than the original?
  • the original -- remember the Ice Planet episode with the Abba clones?
  • what about Galactica 1980 ? -- Noooooooooo!
• recent BBC TV Day of the Triffids
  • how does making one plant sterile spread spores to the others?
• Dr Who ? Sometimes?
  • Sylvester McCoy -- no, some of the Ace episodes were great
  • why the Bertie Bassett costume?
• the Blake's 7 episode "Killer" used a Michelin Man-like costume
• Star Maidens
• Raumschiffes Orion -- German answer to Star Trek -- surely inspired some of Galaxy Quest
• Lost in Space -- the giant carrot episode! [" The Great Vegetable Rebellion "]
• first season of Lexx was good -- got rubbish later
• Bonekickers was awful but compelling -- kept wanting to see if it could get worse! what piece of history will they dance on the grave of this time?
• Demons -- unbearable -- appalling -- nothing original at all
• Primaeval -- at least it's original shit -- bonkers shit!
• Blake's 7 season 4
• Highlander 2 was shit -- Highlander: The Source was worse -- pathetic
  • Highlander -- insane elevator pitch: "sword fights in New York, with explosions" --- but done with gusto
• Flash Gordon -- drinking game elevates it from shit to a masterpiece
• Golan Globus films -- don't watch them sober!
  • Lifeforce -- based on Space Vampires by Colin Wilson -- the queen vampire wanders London naked -- glories in the destruction of London -- death and destruction in St Paul's
• Land of the Giants -- Time Tunnel
• scenes in a London Underground station -- An American Werewolf in London -- Split Second -- Death Line
• Legend of the Seeker -- I gave up after 6 episodes -- it gets better
• Prince of Darkness -- John Carpenter -- superb! Lovecraftian!
• Lesbian Vampire Killers -- just shit
• Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter -- the part where he converts atheists using kung fu -- "If I'm not back in 5 minutes, call the Pope"
• Cleopatra 2525 -- absolutely crap, but I love it! -- real WTF TV
• Glen Larson
• The A-Team -- The Man From Atlantis -- The Fantastic Journey -- with Roddy McDowell As Usual
• Godzilla [1998 film] -- it would have been better if it had been filmed in Japanese then badly dubbed
• Seaquest DSV -- they had a dolphin on board! -- ITV showed the seasons out of order
• the new Knight Rider -- worst I've seen -- I could not stop
• Airwolf
• Space Precinct
• Invasion: Earth -- they could tell it was going badly wrong -- producer called in Stephen Baxter -- got better for one episode, then dived again
• V -- "sweet and sour ants, anyone?" -- the new one is not shit enough to be good
• Star Wars 1-3 -- and Star Wars 4-6 are not as good as we remember
• Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
• Battle Beyond the Stars
• Alien Nation -- movie was good -- TV series was shit
• Starcrash -- with David Hasselhoff
• Kinvig
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- the movie
• True Blood
• Twilight -- no, the panel is "shit, but we like it"
• Harry Potter
• Moonbase 3 -- doing it wrong for the right reasons -- trying to make it hard SF -- it's boring!
• Terrahawks -- Zelda scared the crap out of me as a kid
• Defying Gravity -- timelag, what timelag? -- people writing it couldn't find the plot with two hands and a flashlight -- Heroes in Space -- so sloooooow
• B5 -- how did he also produce The Legend of the Rangers ? [not as bad as the dire Crusade ]
• Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone -- good, or not?
• Transformers : 1 good, 2 shit
• Star Trek: Enterprise
• Seven Days was good!
• 2012 -- disaster porn! -- most improbable set of circumstances ever -- Independence Day x 20 million!
• Dragon Wars [ D-War ] -- helicopters fighting dragons!
• the key ingredients: really really pretty people, and explosions

Panel • Living Forever - Is it a Good Thing?

Mike Cobley (mod), Julian Headlong, Paul McAuley, Martin McGrath.

Many SF writers, e.g. Moon, Morgan, Heinlein, Banks, have speculated about rejuvenation or other possibilities for extending life for 100 years or even longer. Scientists and others discuss whether it can be done, and whether it would be ethical/desirable if it could be done.

• Gilgamesh, because of Enkidu
• Orpheus -- lived forever as a head
• Journey the the West -- Monkey King -- Garden of Immortal Peaches
• Tree of immortality in Garden of Eden
• but we are not interested in the immortality of the past -- we want immortality now
• the traditional Easter story of the character who dies and rises again -- Dr Who
• by living you are killing something else -- by living forever you shut down even more possibilities
• in ancient myths, immortality is often a curse
  • Sisyphus, Prometheus, Loki, ...
• is there a difference between wanting to live forever, and not wanting to die?
  • what do you have to be like to pursue this relentlessly -- and what will you be like if you achieve it?
  • don't count yourself immortal until you've been through the Big Crunch ... many times
• strong longevity -- immortality
  • physical
    • strongly godlike -- Q
    • weakly godlike -- Jack of Shadows , ...And Call Me Conrad , demons/vampires/strong nanotech
    • regeneration -- including transporter accidents
    • personality transfer
  • genetic
    • breed for longevity
      • works for fruit flies
      • Greg Benford trying it with nematodes
        • he's an identical twin -- he knows clones are different people!
      • if you find someone breeding elephants for longevity, you've probably found an immortal
    • extend telomere groups
      • using nanoengineering -- or, as we used to call it, "chemistry"
  • just in time medical advances -- forever
    • immortality drugs
    • get an interesting cancer -- Henrietta Lacks -- HeLa cells -- currently weighs about 60,000 lbs
  • lie about your age!
  • go slooooow
    • there are lichens in Antarctica with cells that divide every 100 years
• but what are you going to do with it?
  • in the East, wisdom and age are equated -- in the West, cult of the young/new
• what is the driver for continuous innovation?
  • manufacturers
    • fashion (US cars) v falling to bits (UK cars)
    • is this relentless change good?
    • the East brings you a Toyota that lasts forever
      • until you accelerate into a wall!
  • I don't agree that you can't innovate after a certain age
    • but serious problem if true
    • investment in building up an hypothesis
    • it's tough being the giant whose shoulders are stood on
    • but some inertia useful -- stops science hareing off in every direction -- self-correcting
• always unforeseen consequences
• lots of SF on immortality are cautionary tales
  • Lord of Light -- personality transfer -- need a body to transfer into
  • downloading is the only non-murderous personality transfer
    • but do you have any effect on the real world?
    • who maintains the computers?
• there might be lots of options , but no one answer -- then what?
  • Betamax immortality sucks!
  • Open Source Linux immortality!
• physical immortality -- either we stop breeding, or there's massive expansion
• would we become v cautious, v long term in our planning?
  • non-immortals of no consequence?
  • ungrateful children!
• would anyone offered it turn it down?
  • some people would turn anything down!
  • I wouldn't -- I'm nosey -- I want to know what happens next
• memory capacity limits?
• if it's not available to all, how do we select?
  • money!!
• I only want immortality if I can retire at 65 -- I don't want to be doing 9-to-5 the day before the Big Crunch
  • tough
  • 20 years on, 20 years off?
  • pensions rely on most of the rest working -- who are they?
    • legions of robot slaves
    • uplifted monkeys
      • what happens when they want to download?
      • it's monkeys all the way down!
• what about all your stuff ? -- become a curator of your own life?
  • hmmm ... need some kind of box that's bigger on the inside...
• resources?
  • I plan on extracting energy from the ergosphere of a spinning black hole
• would we keep putting things off?
  • keep retraining? new careers?
• killing an immortal? so many more (infinite!) potential years gone
  • swine flu -- measured in "lost years" rather than in deaths (kills in the 30s, not the 70s like seasonal flu) -- looks much worse
  • Drinking Sapphire Wine -- suicide as an art form
  • To Your Scattered Bodies Go -- suicide as express transport

Ben Goldacre • Bad Science

Dr Ben Goldacre is a medical doctor and journalist, best known for his 'Bad Science' column. He campaigns against biased research, fraudulent claims (from both makers of nutritional supplements and the pharmaceutical industry) and poor media reporting of scientific research.

• "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that…"

Oliver Morton • George Hay Memorial Lecture

Geoengineering

Geoengineering - the use of technology to cool the planet - is often taken as an alternative to the more conventional approaches to global warming: emitting fewer greenhouse gases and adapting to the changing climate. Framing geoengineering this way allows advocates to sell it as a quick fix, and opponents to see it as a dangerous, possibly disastrous, distraction. Oliver Morton will be arguing that this way of thinking is a blind alley. "We are not dealing with either/or, but with both/and. It is time to explore geoengineering's potential not as an alternative to other approaches, but as a tool to improve their chances of success."

Steve Kilbane • Swordplay for Writers

Steve Kilbane explains how to describe realistic fights using rapiers, longswords, and other weapons.

• the culture defines who fights when (common ... rare) and where, which then constrains the style (duel ... brawl), and the form of the sword
  • duel is regulated, eg to first blow, sword not designed to kill -- may be restricted in eg length -- taxed?
  • brawl -- free for all -- use anything to hand
  • military -- trained/drilled -- mass produced -- style v simple
  • knight/noble -- part of their upbringing/culture
  • civilian -- individual style, more detailed -- get what you pay for
  • mounted -- mind your horse, not theirs -- curved swords (sabres) for slicing
• pommel fastens handle onto blade -- acts as a balance
  • two handed sword: second hand on the pommel
• cut and thrust -- two main styles -- affect the style of sword
  • cut -- sword balances for falling -- move in nice big circles -- use its energy -- swing can attack a lot of opponents at once
  • thrust comes straight at you -- no swinging -- can't block: push it out of the way
  • thrust that connects more dangerous than cut -- will kill, but not immediately
• sidesword -> rapier -> smallsword
  • mainly thrusting
  • rapier -- mainly civilian weapon -- if you wear it, willing to use it, eg willing to respond to challenges
  • smallsword -- no edge, short, easier to control point
  • foil originally training sword for smallsword
• sidesword -> back/broadsword
  • cutting
  • basket to cover/protect hand -- difficult to swap hands!
• Donald McBane, The Expert Swordsman's Companion, or the True Art of Self Defence , 1728
• mismatched weapons/styles
  • less predictable -- blade can do things you don't expect
  • can exploit it, if you train for it
  • changes how each sword is used
• first lessons are in basics, building up
  • training swords -- wooden -- padding
    • you hit yourself a lot
  • drill v instinct -- fencing is not a natural action
  • second sword in other hand -- can forget how to use first sword! -- different context

MD Lachlan • Bartitsu: Victorian Self-Defence with Overcoat, Wig and Parasol

Sherlock Holmes' martial art - called Baritsu by Doyle but Bartitsu in reality. The first line of defence is to look the ruffian in the eye and say 'do you know who I am?' The second is to utterly annihilate him!

• violent crime in Victorian period different from today
  • throwing nitric acid in faces
    • making a comeback -- squeezy bottle of ammonia -- lower sentence than knife crime
  • garrotting -- towel or cloth, not piano wire
• bare knuckle boxing -- can't hit as hard as with padded glove -- v difficult to hit hard with bare hand
  • modern bare hand tends to use open hand
• Barton-Wright -- 1898 self-defence -- brings a fighting style back from Japan -- bartitsu -- "combines the best of styles" -- plus a load of European styles -- based on strength -- most street-fights don't last long
• Metropolitan Police get better, and violence decreases in the late 1800s
  • education for all also helps
• four ranges of fighting
  • kicking distance
  • fists
  • grappling -- short work
  • ground work -- on the floor -- bad idea in a street fight! -- his mate will kick your head in
• disturb equilibrium of opponent -- keep him off balance -- subject joints to strain they are anatomically/mechanically unable to resist
• lady's umbrella -- helps compensate for lack of strength/weight/skill -- it's a bayonet

Nicholas Jackson • Non-Euclidean Geometry

'The geometry of the place was all wrong' - A mathematical talk on spaces unlike our own, taking in Lovecraft, Lobachevsky and Escher along the way.

Panel • Big Biology - What Are the Biggest Biological Tropes in SF?

Paul McAuley, Michael Owen, Sharon Reamer (mod), Gary Stratmann, Stephen Gaskell

What biological ideas are being explored in current SF? Are there any important themes that are being overlooked?

• big question: does life occur anywhere else?
• hard to define life -- ah, but what about viruses, micro-RNAs, ...
  • and what about other kinds of life? here, elsewhere
  • extreme cases are difficult
• "biologically-based" life probably follows patterns
  • carbon-based, limited number of possible ways of making long chain complex molecules
• Drake's equation -- getting a better handle on the value of some of the terms
  • eg, Earth -- looking for evidence of prior/other origins
  • I work in risk management -- we try not to make up numbers and multiply them together!
• Europa and Enceladus have liquid water -- hydrothermal vent extremophiles?
  • even Charon may have liquid water!
  • solar system much more dynamic than we thought
• Sagan -- Mars is old, Earth is us, Venus has clouds -- theory of dinosaurs on Venus because: "can't see what's going on -- so it's dinosaurs!"
• we have good theories, but could be wrong -- there may be things needed for creation of life we haven't even thought of yet
  • shadow biosphere
    • arsenic based? so not immediately devoured by main life
  • extremophiles, archeobacteria -- a lot more complicated than it used to be!
  • South Africa goldmine bacteria -- use radioactivity as power source -- don't need rest of biosphere
  • "our kind of life" can do pretty much anything -- can exploit virtually any energy source, without a rich complex biosphere
• intelligence?
  • universe is old -- chances it happened long ago...
  • but how do we get to know about it?
  • when is ALife life?
  • has been important to us to believe we are special -- still like to say humans are intelligent, nothing else is -- but it's all gradations, no step change
  • once AI solves a problem, it becomes a "trick" -- if we did a whole artificial mind, would it be a "trick"?
  • not just processing power/memory
  • fMRI shows everyone's brain is slightly different
    • [just like modern computers, with their varying hardware, applications, drivers, patches, fonts, ... how much further to go?]
  • our intelligence is embodied -- may be a requirement?
    • also learning, development, growth needed?
• The Quiet War -- colonies of nanomachines -- "monads" -- are they alive?
• biology is a lot more complicated than we thought
  • we're simpler -- fewer genes than we thought
    • complexity of our genome is less than that of all out gut bacteria -- "2nd genome"
  • but everything is far more complicated than we thought
    • viruses in our genome
    • one gene -- one protein -- one function -- completely wrong
      • so old SFnal ideas of genetic engineering don't work
      • except for some v simple things, like firefly genes for glowing
• Carl Zimmer -- Microcosm -- bacteria book
  • E.coli -- can drive evolution is the lab -- in a year, get a new genome that never before existed
  • bacteria "species" hard to define -- they swap genes [horizontal transfer], engineer themselves -- fabulously complicated
• it's difficult to explain "complicated" to people who don't have the background -- one reason for rise of creationism is the simple answer -- even if there is a god, "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that…"
• mitochondria/chloroplasts were originally separate organisms -- originally a crazy, fringe idea, now established
• what's our next evolutionary step?
  • GE rather than slower "natural" evolutionary pressure
  • we have evolved quickly -- ability to digest milk is recent -- not all have it
  • only recently -- more people in cities than not -- a real driver
    • one species of ants lives "naturally" in small colonies: 20 workers plus queen -- but in a city, there are millions linked, many queens -- "urban lifestyle" changes ants
• tendency to think of evolution as something "big", giving new species -- but small changes are also evolution
  • resistance to diseases
  • incremental changes
  • things are changing, but we probably don't notice most of it
    • technology dependence -- mobile phones!
    • augmentation
• octopus -- can we judge how really intelligent it is, because it's so different -- they are tool users (coconuts)
  • crows make tools
• difference between intelligence (hard to define) and sentience (self-awareness -- easier to establish -- eg, mirror test)
• silicon-based, gas clouds, ...?
  • silicon is "similar" to carbon, but as far as we know currently, can't get long enough chains -- but can get Si nearly as complicated as RNA-world
  • silicon life doesn't need to be hard and rock-like -- think breast implants! (and some carbon is hard -- think diamonds!)
• dolphins are not as intelligent as a 5 year old -- based on idea they behave like humans -- they behave like dolphins!

Alastair Reynolds • GoH

Into the Great Wide Open: Science Fiction and the Modern Cosmos.

• our changing knowledge of the solar system has changed the stories we write in it

Jonathan Cowie • Exobiology 1.02

Jonathan Cowie is an environmental scientist who was for 15 years with the Institute of Biology and now works in (bio)science communications. He has had a lifelong interest in SF and a curiosity about the possibility of alien life. His original probability of alien life talk has been given at over a dozen conventions (and also to biologists at a couple of universities). This talk very quickly recaps part 1 and then goes on to new material in part 2.

• during a short hiatus to get an OHP and slide projector working, David Angus showed some alien globes.

• climate change -- looking at how an earth-like planet (ours) changes over geological time
• Jack Cohen -- like a fire-hose -- powerful but hard to direct -- Ian Stewart takes the fire-hose and directs it
• Flagstaff observatory was built in order to observe the Martian canals
• some claim that seasonal methane on Mars indicates life
  • methane is short-lived -- what's replenishing it, seasonally
  • on earth, northern hemisphere land dominated -- see a seasonal CO2 fluctuation -- southern hemisphere sea-dominated
• Andromeda galaxy -- naked eye smudge -- that's only the central core -- the photos from Hubble etc cover 3 degrees (the moon is half a degree) -- largest visible astronomical object
• biology often finds similar solutions to problems
  • eyes -- vertebrates, octopus, ...
  • wings -- insects, birds, bats, flying fish, sycamore seeds, ...
  • Butcher's-broom - Ruscus hypoglossum -- those aren't leaves, they are flattened stems -- which is why flowers grow out from the middle
  • pentadactyl limb -- evolved only once -- but diversified enormously
  • is DNA/RNA specific or generic?
• cartoon: "the message from space asked us to stop sending any more messages into space"
• exo-life -- we may not know much about it, but we'll recognise it when we see it -- but we'll get wrong what it is
• if life on earth is represented by the length of your arm, the 6000 years of recorded human history is a couple of microns -- can scrape it off your fingernail
• Brandon Carter and W. H. McCrea, The Anthropic Principle and its Implications for Biological Evolution . Phil Trans Roy Soc A 310 :347-363 1983
  • or ... how to get from bacteria to something that scares the pants off Sigourney Weaver
  • a key steps in evolution -- assume you keep the successes
    • oxygen / multicellular / eyes / ...
  • steps get ever faster / closer together
• Alan Bond, "On the improbability of intelligent extraterrestrials", JBIS 35 :195-207 1982
• Gerry Webb: "the Fermi paradox is acute -- they would have had time to walk here by now!"
  • [Hmm, let's see. Walking at 4mph, 8 hours a day, that's ~ 50 km/day. Doing that for 15 billion years (~ the age of the universe) = 3x10^17 metres = 10 parsecs. Our Milky Way galaxy is about 30 kpc across. Maybe not.]
• Martin Rees -- Our Final Century -- technological civilisation is unsustainable
• Hitler is biology's best friend -- the Natural History Museum had a "progression of life" with "Man" at the top of the building -- got bombed off and never replaced
• how might evolution have been speeded up?
  • seasons?
  • metabolic rate -- need good energy source -- need visible light from a star?
    • chloroplasts bring 6-7 photon events together

Panel • Not The Clarke Awards

Tony Cullen, Ruth O'Reilly, Graham Sleight, Claire Brialey (mod)

Our irascible panel of ex-judges and critics offer their usual forthright take on this year's shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award

• The shortlist for the Arthur C Clarke 2010 award is
  • Marcel Theroux • Far North
  • Kim Stanley Robinson • Galileo's Dream
  • Chris Wooding • Retribution Falls
  • Gwyneth Jones • Spirit
  • China Mieville • The City and the City
  • Adam Roberts • Yellow Blue Tibia

• what's out first?

• Retribution Falls
  • it's enjoyable, but doesn't have a huge amount to it
  • doesn't stand up to the others
  • " Firefly as steampunk" -- can map the characters!
  • well done, readable, great fun
  • a certain level of misogyny -- all the women are dead/bitches/whores
  • not SF per se -- a fantasy/adventure world

• Dave Langford's report on the first Clarke ceremony -- Bob Shaw v Margaret Atwood
  • always been a tension between the literary and the SFnal, and the perception that the literary is more highly valued

• now it gets more difficult

• Far North
  • McCarthy's The Road , but with cold
  • post-apocalyptic world -- really, really cold
  • interesting things about community, society, how it falls apart, how difficult to reconstruct
  • operating in a tradition were there are lots of other books -- not convinced it adds as much to the tradition as it thinks
  • original compared to anything I've read in the last few years -- a slow apocalypse, seen from the edges
  • writing is v limpid, v clear, v powerful
  • I don't know if this is an "about" story, or if that matters
    • strong characters, setting, pace
    • ending is not classical SF -- refuses easy ending
  • it's about society and the people
  • one step ahead of environmental crisis -- not that making the story -- the event has happened, looking after that
• Yellow Blue Tibia
  • this is another Adam Roberts novel -- it's his best, an intriguing premiss
  • a bunch of SF writers are asked to concoct a plot to keep the USSR united -- then things start happening as if the plot really happened ... tricksy
  • he's writing novels about SF by using SF -- as usual
    • the metastory can get in the way of the story
  • the story kept moving -- was interesting to me -- v satisfying read
  • I felt the setting worked well -- although I know there's been commentary that it's all wrong
  • significant 1980s events woven in to the plot -- is that terribly clever, of slightly glib? undecided

• Galileo's Dream
  • primarily set in Galileo's time -- follows his life from inventing the telescope onwards -- he's taken forwards in time to the moons of Jupiter
    • v interesting detail in the historical stuff, but didn't work -- long, slow, and the main character didn't engage me enough
    • parts in the future were better, but left me feeling something was hanging -- dissatisfied
  • another book about the thing KSR has been worrying about for years -- what does science do in society and in our lives?
  • has all the things good and bad about KSR
    • dutiful -- getting it right -- but telling you everything -- feel like I'm in a classroom
    • what Galileo is doing in the future is not as sensible as it should be
  • terrific historical novel -- future bits break the flow
  • well worth reading, but not a winner
  • when you find yourself wishing you were reading the other branch, no matter which one you are reading, something's wrong
  • stands in his body of work, but maybe not alone
  • it felt slow to read
  • I know KSR can do better than this
  • this is not a novel where KSR is having fun!

• EM Forster said a novel is a prose fiction of some length with something wrong with it -- let's talk about the remaining two

• Spirit
  • reworking of The Count of Monte Cristo with a female protagonist
  • works up to two-thirds of the way through -- but then get to the revenge part, goes limp
  • any SF doing tCoMC has competition -- The Stars My Destination
  • no one is arguing for it!
    • debates happen around the books one feels more passionate about
    • the book that wins often doesn't excite these extremes
    • winning books are ones around which consensus can be formed
  • would be traditional to throw it out, because it's the most SFnal!
  • the main character pulls me in, but changes two-thirds of the way through

• The City and the City
  • never told exactly where it takes place -- about two cities co-existing in the same space -- portals link them -- there's a killing in one, but it has roots in the other -- so movement back and forth
  • superb concept -- how urban life works -- how we see what we want to see -- not seeing other people, other cultures
  • execution doesn't do it justice -- maybe would look better as a short story?
  • detective plot set up in the "normal" way, but didn't deliver on any exciting developments
  • Mieville fond of using a particular form, and then not showing you bits of it
    • in Scar , a crucial fight happens off stage and is reported -- also no climax
    • every book since Scar has been a disappointment!
  • I think this should be the winner!
  • the detective story moves he plot, it doesn't drive it
  • the only SFnal thing is the Breach Police -- the rest is two communities ignoring each other so that they don't kill each other
  • ambitious, insightful, entrancing
    • but after you finish reading, realise there are a lot of things not what they first seem
    • collection of incredibly interesting elements sun together -- make you think -- but maybe they don't quite fit together
  • is it SF?
  • I actually don't care! felt as if it was SF in the way it is presented, way it uses its setting
    • do SF and Fantasy exist in the same way as the City and the City, and what exists to enforce the separation?

• discussions demonstrate the effect of contingency on the Award -- personal dynamics, hangovers, whether something should not win, ...
• testament to the shortlist this year -- agree any one of five could be the winner!
• were Mieville to win, he'd be the first to win three times -- finest writer in the genre at the moment -- danger of concentrating on his flaws, he writes so well
• want the Mieville to win, but think Spirit will
  • if you're going to do tCoMC , have a big break point -- difficult to do well

• what else could/should have been on the shortlist?
  • loved Ursula Le Guin 's Lavinia -- but it's not SF -- so what?
  • Paul McAuley 's Gardens of the Sun -- but it's a sequel
  • Litt's Journey into Space -- like it, but flawed
    • put off by long weird sex scenes done in an unhelpfully weird way
  • Stephen Baxter's Ark -- v different from Flood -- but a sequel
  • The City and the City , Ark , Yellow Blue Tibia , Lavinia are on the BSFA shortlist [ The City and the City won]
  • there are several v good books not yet published in the UK -- limited sample

• how is tCoMC / Spirit changed by making the main character female?
  • she's more vulnerable -- raped at one point -- feel what she goes through more than the male character in tCoMC because of that
• in Yellow Blue Tibia -- female character problematic -- others are caricatures, exaggerated, weird -- her portrayal as fat made me wonder if I was reading the rest of the book in the wrong tone -- many fat jokes, figure of fun, not a character
  • jokes are a comment on the main character's perception
  • it's about falling in love with things you initially find odd
  • most of the humour is Terry and June British sitcom
  • it's the script of a Marx brothers movie
  • Shostakovich -- taking dance and turning it into something savage
    • how did we get from Terry and June to Shostakovich?

• The Award process now announces all submissions (which is not a longlist) before the shortlist
  • stops "why not shortlisted" if wasn't submitted!
  • transparency is good
• "has done better", "it's the best he's done"
  • how much does knowing "has done better" affect the process?
  • naturally comparing to other books by same author, as well as others in the field, but trying to compare to others on shortlist
  • danger of "consolation prize"?
    • has avoided this so far
• year The Sparrow won -- the discussion took five minutes!
• the second reading (the judges do) does change the perception of the book
• in a panel of n people on "the best 20 books of the last 20 years" -- the only book we all picked was Ian McDonald 's River of Gods -- which was beaten to the Clarke Award by Iron Council that year
• I'm going to read The City and the City again -- I think it will re-read the best -- Robinson and Roberts will probably suffer

[ The City and the City won the ACC Award]

Anthony Webster • Fusion Power and the Joint European Torus.

Anthony Webster, our guest speaker from JET, talks about the physics of fusion. Can you say 'magnetohydrodynamics'...

• the US uses 6-7 times the energy to produce food as it provides
• the "Optimum Population Trust" calculates the UK can support 17M
  • although it has peaked at 5-6M on 3 separate occasions
  • currently > 60M
• alternative energy sources are low density, fluctuate over time
  • need "geological scale" facilities -- mountains, forests, oceans, ...
• 1 gram of D+T has ~ 10^7 times the energy of 1 gram of coal
• efficiency measure = pressure x escape time
  • need nT t > 4.8 atmosphere-seconds to produce energy faster than it leaks out
  • currently at about 1
  • value is increasing like Moore's law, like particle accelerator energies
  • make it hotter (increase T), bigger (increase n, t)
• magnetic field keeps toroidal plasma stable
  • use current to heat it -- high energy neutral particles + EM waves
    • like an electric fire + cappuccino machine + microwave oven!
• D + T -> He + n
  • most of the energy comes out in the neutron -- catch in a thick steel "blanket" and extract energy (as heat, then to electricity)
    • has potential to make blanket radioactive
    • but some materials are safe -- "reduced activation steels" -- radioactive for 50-100 years (not the 100s of thousands of years of fission products)
    • 20 MW/m^3 deposited in blanket
    • every atom displaced from the lattice about 10 x per year -- brittle/degrade -- can develop better materials
  • D -- deuterium -- from seawater
  • T -- tritium -- half life of ~ 12.5 years -- "breed" T from Li, using n from fusion (need to multiply up the n)
• ITER -- 410 MW -- 10 times more out than in
  • coal power station 1-1.5 GW
  • large wind turbine 1MW
• 25 years from ITER to prototype power plant
  • why has it always been 30 years to fusion?
  • funding! -- if you don't do the work, nothing will happen!
  • ITER due to complete 2018-2020
    • another 5 years to full operation
• uses ~ 1kg of fuel per day -- so makes ~ 1 kg He
  • less material per unit volume than in air
• can't have "pocket fusion" reactors
  • needs to be big so the heat doesn't escape too fast, and needs a big blanket to trap the neutrons
  • but not too big, then gets too hot -- materials challenges
  • optimum size probably 4-5 GW thermal -> 1-1.5 GW electricity -- so similar to a coal station
• He a finite resource -- needed to cool superconducting magnets
• Li is not a problem -- uses very little fuel -- cost is negligible compared to the machine -- would be cost effective to extract it from sea water!

Panel • Stainless Steel Rats and Rogues - Why Do We Love Them?

Henry Gee, Anne KG Murphy (mod), Farah Mendlesohn

From Robin Hood to Han Solo, via Slippery Jim diGriz and countless others, we will always have a place in our hearts for the lovable rogue. Why are characters with a code of honour but a complete disrespect for the law so enchanting?

• very convoluted crimes
• Malcolm Reynolds -- stealing a payroll -- "it's not your money, you'll still get paid" -- still cares for the people, somewhat -- although still ruthless practicality
• Han Solo
• some are darker -- some are "childlike" -- Blake's 7 Avon v Vila -- Servalan?
• we love the SSR , but he's v forgettable - Angelina is much more ruthless -- until they restrain her/mess with her, so she never leads again
  • reminds me of Spike
  • women as villains' sidekicks
• James T Kirk in the new ST movie -- subverts authority -- rogues come up with solutions other more organised ones can't
  • no, he's just a spoiled brat -- arrogant
  • counterpointing Spock learning emotions with Kirk becoming disciplined by Star Fleet
• Unorthodox Engineers

Going Postal

• often hard to figure out the distinction -- but Moist doesn't want to be like that

• post-panel discussions
  • Lady Penelope -- sidekick Parker an even bigger rogue, and male
  • Bergerac -- Ice Maiden (Philippa Vale)
  • Marc DuQuesne in the Skylark series -- has his own morality
  • rogue is moral, Trickster amoral, villain immoral
    • hence Servalan was not a rogue

Panel• Fantasy and SF - Differing Attitudes to YA and Adult Readers

Terry Edge, Sabine Furlong (mod), Elizabeth Counihan

Many books targeted at children and young adults are fantasy or SF, and this is considered as the mainstream. So why is it less acceptable for adults to like SF and fantasy?

• attitudes to SF and Fantasy -- YA/children's fiction -- it's all class issues
• sign in shop: "If you like Harry Potter , you'll love Anne McCaffrey " -- don't see the connection
  • this is fantasy -- it has dragons -- it's much the same thing!
• JK claims she was into the third book before she realised it was fantasy
  • Terry Pratchett: wizards, flying, brooms -- weren't there some clues there?
• a lot of authors of SF/Fantasy get pushed into YA
  • can only write imaginative fiction for children because adults only want Hampstead dons bonking
• Rowling's books are fantasy in the same way Star Wars is SF
  • Rowling's are boarding school with fantasy trappings
  • Star Wars is fantasy with SF trappings
• Enid Blyton used to fill the mass market, but she was sidelined
  • JK instinctively filled that gap
  • first 3 are highly edited -- fast read -- later ones, after success, fatter, more detail -- could be edited, though
• I like YA -- mostly focus on a story, "a bit of a yarn" -- can't do an Umberto Eco
  • linear story, clarity, lack of pretension
    • dealing with a serious story
    • authors don't thrash out their personal angst (eg Anne Rice)
    • Heinlein's juveniles, like Have Space Suit Will Travel , are better written than the later adult
• learned how to write from YA writers -- used to be a constraint on length -- get a lot into a small space
  • allowed to be v imaginative
  • don't get so clever they disappear up their own fundament!
  • all the adult steamy sex scenes get in the way of the plot
• how can publishers say "adults don't want to read fantasy" when Terry Pratchett goes straight to number one
  • Twilight -- they probably didn't realise it was going to sell
    • next gen probably haven't read all the vampire books yet
• Harry Potter also published with "adult" covers -- and they were more expensive!
  • kids who had never read before had their parents queuing overnight!
    • all word of mouth
    • but the other stuff pushed with it doesn't work -- word of mouth will kill it
• Ladybird Book of Computers -- used on an army training course -- wanted a plain cover -- publishers refused
  • children's encyclopedias are a good source
• LoTR was "acceptable" because written by a university professor
  • class issue -- literary fiction, upper middle class, "proper" fiction -- SF&F, working class -- unless it makes you a lot of money!
  • but surely the whole tradition is middle class -- Nesbit , Carroll , ...
    • popular fantasy is working class!
  • I'd say it's the other way round -- everyone in this room have higher degrees, are middle class (not representative?) -- whereas crime fiction is the lowest of the low
  • perception and reality don't always match
  • regional accents perceived to be lower class, irrespective of education
• forms much of the new "family" TV pre-watershed
  • Dr Who, Merlin, Robin Hood, ...
  • no sex, but quite a lot of horror of "what's behind the door..."
• when Philip Pullman won the Whitbread, had to be taken seriously
• Mark Lawson, radio series on US fiction, didn't mention SF until the last breath
• challenging writing
  • literary -- the writing itself -- new styles, forms
  • SF -- making you think -- your small life in this big changing world
• okay behind the Iron Curtain -- it was the only way to tell the story you wanted to tell
• cultural stigma in the media doesn't translate to the book-buying public
  • people into SF are a bit braver -- will immerse in a new world -- with literary fiction can keep more of an emotional distance
• is it a problem that adult SF is not v accessible unless you have read a lot?
  • mainstream can only access though YA
  • huge split between TV/media SF and "hard core literary" SF
    • split is between literary/commercial, not mainstream/SF
• is there a difference between adult/YA?
  • marketing! -- Ben Jeaps book written as adult, marketed as YA
  • age of protagonist
  • weight!
  • technically, YA is for 13-18, no adult protagonist -- but younger kids read it
  • about sensibility -- about a stage in people's lives -- not having a clue what to do with their life

Panel • Language and Dialect in Writing

Iain M. Banks, Ken MacLeod, Gary Couzens, Jude Roberts, Cheryl Morgan (mod).

Use of language can be a very effective way of creating an atmosphere. Writers use languages and dialects, both real (eg. Glaswegian) and constructed, phonetics (eg. Feersum Endjinn), and archaic or invented words. Does using language in these ways make the reader's experience more immersive, or does it serve as a bar to understanding? How interdependent are language and culture?

• JR: I'm doing a PhD on the Culture , and am painfully aware that Iain is writing faster than I am!
• Feersum Endjinn -- not everything is in dialect -- when I'm writing and everything goes okay, I get a bit bored -- want to mix things up -- wanted to make a relatively short read longer! -- also a feeling of alienness/strangeness
  • for a small nation, Scotland has an awful lot of dialects -- even some I don't get -- in a bar near Aberdeen, heard a couple of old guys talking talking a strange Scandinavian language ... after a while (a few pints), realised they were talking English -- Doric dialect
  • The New Testament in Scots -- a different dialect for the different Gospels/Epistles/Revelations
    • Appendix of spuria (not used) -- temptation on the mountain, the Devil is in standard English!
  • Feersum Endjinn is phonetic rather than dialect -- "I always heard it in Cockney"
• I never try to pronounce names, I use the "shape" of the word to recognise it
  • Clute tries to pronounce every word
  • Feersum Endjinn -- I wasn't hearing it in my head, I was seeing it on the page
• does writing come after speech?
  • IMB : yes, I write in sentences, I don't talk in sentences -- Ken MacLeod talks in sentences -- he has this weird thing, he thinks before he speaks -- what's that about?
• when speech recognition software conquers Scotland, it will be really good!
• Clockwork Orange -- Russian-influenced street slang -- takes a while to get used to it
  • if I can read it out loud and get into the rhythm, it's fine
  • bounced off Midnight Robber until I heard Nalo Hopkinson reading it out loud, then got the feel of it
  • a case for audio books, to get a feel?
  • KMcL : I was startled to hear The Highway Men read -- it's not a dialect but a Highland accent -- the style is as if they are translating Gaelic to English in their heads -- it was read by someone with an English accent -- a bizarre listening experience for me
• use dialect to show a difference?
  • aliens all seem to speak standard English
  • use of Mummerset to indicate a yokel
• mangling the language is enormous fun! -- have to be careful
  • Culture novels have been translated into English from the original Marain
  • if you do it right, can get alienness -- language opens a window onto thought processes
• use typeface to indicate language/accent
• how hard can you ask your readers to work?
• Radio Plays on BBC translated for other languages
  • often use particular dialects, based on current social significance -- probably lost on US audiences?
• Newton's Wake -- some characters speak in Scots -- superficially inconsistent because main viewpoint character thinks in Scots whenever she gets agitated
  • looking back, I wouldn't do it again
  • editor of French translation -- there is no French equivalent of class dialects, only area dialects
  • English -- everyone has an excuse to despise everyone when they open their mouths
  • L'Academie francaise has a homogenising effect
• US regions much bigger -- Texas is the size of France -- can't distinguish north and south Texas
  • US class isn't as strongly related to dialect
  • in the UK we pick up flags from accents in US imports -- are we overinterpreting?
  • US often uses Spanish/Latino slang
• in Tudor English (Shakespeare), everyone had regional accents, didn't signify class -- word choice, etc, did
• Clute claims he can tell to within six months when an SF novel was written (not published) -- dates faster than use of dialect
  • I've learned a lot about the 1960s from reading Stand on Zanzibar
    • we're now in the year it was set, learn nothing about now, but a lot about the late 1960s
• Jar Jar Binks -- offensive use of dialect

Panel • Novels, a Product of Their Time

Caroline Mullan, Graham Sleight, Jetse de Vries, Ellen Datlow (mod)

Each novel is a story for its time. Many excellent SF stories are of no interest at all to the next generation, while others seem to stay perennially popular. Technology, science, social attitudes and even writing styles change over time. Which factors are most likely to make an old book popular or unpopular with new readers? What should new novels reflect?

• not true of only SF, but of all fiction
• "of its time" depends on where you start -- as a child, everything is contemporary, contemporaneous -- forcing children to read predigested pap written in the last 5 years is a disservice
• Lawrence Miles' Doctor Who review -- I disagreed with almost every word, but it does give you xenophilia -- realise there are other cultural frames, and they are not therefore bad
• missed a lot reading PKD when young, but still lots of cool stuff -- saturated with markers of time and space (60s Berkley)
• classics of the past are filtered down as children's classics
  • Dickens -- hated it in junior high, couldn't relate to it at all -- SF I could!
• some historical assumptions are "comfortable" now -- eg surveillance state -- some less so -- Kipling 's treatment of race/women is difficult to read
  • Justine Larbalestier -- The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction -- letters in Astounding 1938/9 -- including Asimov -- saying "remove all these women authors, they're diluting the SFness"
  • New Wave, Cyberpunk, ... SF catching up with the present -- might need a wave of SF to catch up with minorities/women
• SF picked on the wrong story "when we go into space" instead of "information"
• xenophilia -- encounter with the alien -- not other planets, but other cultures
• Stand on Zanzibar -- set in 2010, written in late 60s
  • John Brunner accumulated sacks of cuttings, wrote a book about the worries of his own time -- overpopulation/urban riots/colonial relations/spread of technology/marijuana
  • very much a book of its time
    • green roof on an Indonesian airport -- one line throwaway
  • can also read it as a commentary on now
• Jack Finney -- Invasion of the Body Snatchers -- 1954
  • got filmed a couple of times
  • set in a cute California town -- narrator is the doctor
  • alien takeover by replication
    • taken as a parable of Communism at the time
    • can also read that it's about community -- and how you think you know people, but find out that you don't
    • enough commonalities that it can speak to us now
  • 1970s edition updated for second film
    • place names, cars updated
    • smoking references removed! -- surprisingly early
    • in children's books revisions -- now nobody smokes, nobody makes rude remarks about race, and all currency is decimal
• River of Gods -- a modern response to Stand on Zanzibar
  • how much will it resonate in 50 years?
  • probably a lot
• a lot of what is still read now from 120-150 years ago is fantasy -- Dracula , The Man Who Was Thursday , ...
• even when the tech/science in SF become outdated, can still be a powerful novel
  • continual conversation with itself about the future
  • lots of SF responds not to the world, but the world as filtered through earlier SF
    • the conversation becomes about the conversation , not its subject
• fiction inevitably assumes things are easier than they turn out to be
  • secondary/tertiary tools, and their consequences/response
  • space rockets -> weapons -> control -> Arpanet -> the Web!
  • climate change -- huge, complex -- difficult to embed in a story
    • systems understanding beginning to come into the culture
• literature shows us life from the underside -- but we already experience that
  • SF focusses, explains -- makes it easier to see what's being said or what it's about
• as we grow older, we have to decide what to grow, what to discard -- personally, and as a culture
  • present day SF stands in relation to past SF wearing Ben Goldacre's T-shirt "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that…"
    • as will the future to us!
• Greg Egan -- Diaspora -- a huge numbers of adventures about every single kind of communication failure known to man
• even if we can't solve a problem now, because we don't have the tools, we don't debar our grandchildren from trying
  • need to understand interaction at multiple levels of a system simultaneously
  • scientist needs to know a lot in depth -- "everything about nothing"
  • engineer needs a broader view, necessarily less depth -- "nothing about everything"
• Newton didn't believe his attempts to discover the age of the Earth through biblical analysis to be any different from his work on optics, etc -- his work led to Usher -- which tried to block geology