Today was the busiest of the convention. I gave blood; saw Mercedes Lackey and others hold forth on building fantasy worlds; participated in a discussion on financial crises in sci fi; participated (sort of) in the Masquerade after all; caught about half of a surprisingly good 1940 adventure film; and caught all of a not-at-all surprisingly bad 1979 space adventure film.
Since I’m not able to donate during the Hun School blood drives, I decided to sign up today. (The New York Blood Center had a bloodmobile outside the Hilton.) It took an entirely ludicrous 2.5 hours to do so … and only 16 minutes of that was spent actually giving blood. Most of it was just waiting for an open table. Having been on the organizing side of things I know how it can get backed up, but I arrived 15 minutes after the drive began… it was like they arrived backed-up. I’m happy to have helped save up to 3 lives, but it cost me a session on “The Economics of Fantasy” and one on (ironically) “Life Extension Technologies”. I was concerned about donating, since my weight program means I can’t eat a hearty breakfast; but in fact I felt fine during and after the donation. Well, except that the nurse couldn’t get a solid fix on the vein in my right arm (which now looks a frightful mess, by the way), though things went smoothly on the left arm.
“Financial Meltdowns in SFF” attempted to deal with the depiction of real economics in science fiction. Not a lot of books include functioning, or even dys-functioning, economies. Many authors view them as externalities: The Galaxy is in the middle of a great depression but no one says why. The topic of the session was more interesting than the execution, perhaps because so many are basically not clued into macroeconomics (and I include myself in that).
I was looking forward to “Building a Fantasy World”. The panel included two published authors (including Lackey, whose resume is truly impressive) and two professional editors. Getting the view from “inside the biz” was pretty cool. Alas, it also meant that the discussion focused on the marketability angles: What type of fantasy worlds offer the potential for lucrative sales of multiple novels? I am much more interested in the craft of building worlds: How much detail to work out ahead of time, how to adapt real examples without ripping off history, and so on. Truth be told, I found the focus on selling lots of copies to be a little crass.
Ironically, they kept referring back to Tolkein — whose books did not sell well during his lifetime but which have become truly foundational in large part (I would argue) because he had a theme in mind when he wrote them. He sold well because he built a fantastic world, rather than building that sort of world to sell well. I think the key to successful world building is to build a world in which you can tell a story (or hopefully many stories) — and that just didn’t seem to be central to the panel.
The editor at Baen Books made a distinction that I like but not fully. He offered up a choice between a Star Trek model (many standalone stories in a common framework) versus a Babylon 5 model (a grand story arc). Good insight but I think he got it wrong, because B5 was not a vast and overwhelming epic. It was many episodes which, taken together, moved a larger story along. You could ease into the series, rather than committing to a five-year journey at the outset. I haven’t really encountered that in the fantasy market, though the panelists and the audience offered examples.
I think book publishers shoot themselves in the foot by not being explicit about where a book falls in a series or that it’s a series at all — and I think they’re salting the fields by focusing so heavily on long, multivolume epics. I know that I read less than I used to, just because I hate wandering in partway and because almost everything on the shelves is a continuation of something from before.
I volunteered an hour or so and was a “stage ninja” for the Masquerade costume competition. (At least I didn’t have to change…) My oh-so-crucial job was “human handrail”: I had to help guide people down the steps at the end of the stage. I did alright — no one fell 🙂 — but it wasn’t particularly engaging. I had wanted to volunteer, though, and it felt nice giving a little time back. After the competition, they had a “Trailer Park” wherein someone showed 8 or 9 previews of upcoming movies.
Following that, I slipped upstairs (after chatting with Annie for a little while) and caught the second half of Thief of Baghdad, a fairly standard Thousand and One Arabian Nights adventure flick. In fact, it bears a lot of resemblance to Aladin, even though Disney apparently maintains the fiction that the two are independent. Thief is actually quite good (even if the FX are dated) and the thief himself is surprisingly charming. (I usually despise cute kids.) It was a bit of a shock to see that the evil counselor is played by none other than Major Strasser — and indeed, by the end, “Major Strasser has been shot”.
Following Thief, I slipped over to “Bad Movies with Bob Eggleton”. We only watched one bad movie, but believe me, it was enough. Starcrash is an extremely poor Star Wars rip-off starring Caroline Munro (of James Bond fame), Christopher Plummer (I kid you not!) and the screen debut of David Hasslehoff. It’s exactly as good as it sounds… that is, horrible. The FX are cheesy, the acting execrable, the writing worse, and the plot virtually incomprehensible. Although I’m sure Bob Eggleton didn’t intend this, it did serve to remind us how little the “outside world” understands sci fi fandom or what makes a movie resonate.
After that assault on my frontal cortex, I decided to call it a night, ending up back in my room, writing this blog entry. Which is now done.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.