Old English Words, New Scottish Quotes

Two weeks ago I wrote about my family's visit to Scotland for the World Science Fiction Conference. I promised that this time I would include some of my favorite quotes from that massive event.  And I will, but first I wanted to tell you about a book.

I am not a fan of graphic novels - with one notable exception - but my daughter told me I needed to read one of the volumes nominated for the Hugo Award in that category and when she recited the first few lines I knew she was right.

Bea Wolf by Zach Weinersmith and Boulet is a retelling - no, that's not right.  It is a new story, inspired by and borrowing its form from, the oldest tale we have in what could be called English.  

If you have never encountered Beowulf it is a tale from approximately 1000 years ago about Scandanavian  warriors whose mead hall is constantly attacked by a monster named Grendel.  The creature is vanquished by a hero named, you guessed it, Beowulf.  Here are the opening lines from a translation by  JNO Lessie Hall:

Lo! the Spear-Danes’ glory through splendid achievements 
The folk-kings’ former fame we have heard of,
How princes displayed then their prowess-in-battle.
Oft Scyld the Scefing from scathers in numbers
From many a people their mead-benches tore.

Notice the rhythm and alliteration. This text was never meant to be read.  It was intended to be heard. Declaimed. Chanted even!

Now consider the first lines of Weinersmith's new text:

Hey, wait!
Listen to the lives of the long-ago kids, the world-fighters,
The unbowed bully-crushers,
The bedtime-breakers, the raspberry blowers,
Fighters of fun-killers, fearing nothing, fated for fame.

This is a tale of young children whose treehouse is attacked by their neighbor Mr. Grindle, who loathed fun and the touch of whose finger could turn a child into a teenager or (shudder) an adult, "begeezering that gathering!"

As you can  guess, a young female warrior named Bea Wolf comes to the rescue. If this book doesn't delight you then I can only say you must have already been touched by the man whose "soul was a snowbank, unsledded, a snowcone unsweetened, a snowman, unscarfed."

And now, on to my favorite quotations from the Worldcon.

"In Sunday School I asked the priest why there was a special school for Christian myths but not for Norse myths." - Ada Palmer

"Sometimes it's the wrong books that make all the difference." - Jo Walton

 'Ancient' in India is anytime before you guys came to colonize us." - Gourav Mohanty 

"Miss Piggy is the ultimate drag queen." - Robert Berg

""The story of Cinderella travelled the silk road just like silk or tea or the Bubonic Plague." - Kate Forsyth

"Even when there is only one religion there is more than one religion." - Ian R. MacLeod

"For Japan to win the U.S. high command would have had to lose their entire minds." - Liz Bourke

"I have very strong feelings about some books about King Arthur, which we won't go into. But damn you, Marian Zimmer Bradley, damn you." - Kari Sperring

"It is important to see the present in the future." - Allen Stroud

"I love history because it's always changing." - Alan  Smale

"To be punk today is to be cooperative." - Francesco Verso

"Is quantum mechanics the next deus ex machina?" - Bethany Jacobs

"You have to be able to look your characters' grandchildren in the face." - Liz Bourke

"Horror never scares me. It's real life that scares me."  - Ellen Datlow

"Academics define things so that artists can wreck them." -Nadav Almog 

 "I will defend to the death any adult's right to reread trash as often as they want, as long as they enjoy it." - Jo Walton

A Case of Scotch

Stirling Castle

 My family recently returned from a trip to Scotland, which we mostly took to attend the World Science Fiction Conference in Glasgow.  Here are some highlights of the trip.

Stirling.  We spent the first few days in Stirling, a city with about 50,000 people, and a ton of ghosts. I say that because it is one of those places where  history kept piling up.

If you happen to be in England and you want to take 

Stirling Beheading Stone. Step right up.

your  army into the Scottish highlands for a little light pillaging and looting you pretty much have to find a way past Stirling.  That's why the battles of Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn loom large in the nation's history (and are inaccurately represented in Braveheart.)

It's a fun city to visit, with an amazing castle.  Mary Queen of Scots was crowned there, to name just one event. Those of us who are crimey-minded should also visit the Old Town Jail where costumed actors give you a tour of the building built in 1847 to replace "the worst prison in Britain." 

Oh, Stirling is also home to Bloody Scotland, the International Crime Writing Festival. Unfortunately for me, it doesn't happen until September. 

Edinburgh. Truth is, we hadn't planned on visiting Stirling, instead expecting to spend a few days in the nation's capital, one of my favorite spots in the world.  Then I literally woke up in the middle of the night 

Fringe Mob

thinking: "The Fringe!" In August Edinburgh hosts five international art festivals, but they pale beside the Festival Fringe which seems to bring every comedian, musician, and drama group in the British Isles to Auld Reekie.  Rooms are famously expensive and hard to find.  So we made a day trip by train from Stirling.  We had a good time, even fighting through the crowds which seemed to consist of equal parts tourists, buskers, and people handing out pamphlets for shows.

Glasgow.  Eventually we went on to the main event.  As I have said before, Bouchercon, the biggest event in our field, could hide in one pocket of Worldcon without being noticed.  For example, you could fit ten Bouchercon dealer rooms in this year's Worldcon book room, and that doesn't even count the equally large space holding exhibits from universitiies, literary and scientific societies, and food trucks (yes, inside).

And this goes on for five days.  Even friends much younger than me said it was exhausting. So here are a few of the exhausting categories of events.

* Readings.  I attended a reading by John Scalzi who specializes in humorous science fiction.  He was nominated for the Best Novel Hugo Award this year for a book with criminal connections.  Starter Villain is about an unemployed journalist who unexpectedly inherits his uncle's business, as a James Bond-style evil genius.  It also involves talking cats. Why not?

Scalzi read from his next book, When The Moon Hits Your Eye. Halfway through  he reveals the book's insane major premise. Then he gave us a devilish smile and said "I wrote this! And I bleeping got away with it!" I look forward to reading the novel when it comes out.

I have mentioned Jo Walton before.  She wrote the best alternative history mystery novel I have ever come across.  She read part of an essay called "Why I Read," which was terrific. 

* Table Talks, At a table talk,  ten lucky attendees got to sit down for an hour chat with an author.  I put in my name for several and was selected to meet with Ellen Datlow, a major editor of science fiction and horror anthologies.  I learned a lot.

* Workshops. E.M. Faulds and T.H. Dray ran a useful  workshop on reading out loud for authors.  Everyone got to do a brief reading and get critiqued.  My favorite comment was: "Emphasize the right words. No Shatnering." 

* Panels. There were dozens, if not hundreds. Some I attended: Ancient Cultures, Religion in Science Fiction, and Alternate History,

I also saw one on Fairy Tales. This included a discussion of queer interpretations of the stories. ("The Little Mermaid" may have been inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's love for a man, for instance.)  Then there's the eastern European tale "The Girl Who Pretended to be a Boy." Let's not tell certain parents groups about that one.  

Me on the last day

They also discussed something I had heard before:  the oldest story we have any record of may be "The Seven Sisters." (Seven maidens are pursued by a hunter and escape by turning into the constellation known as the Pleiades.) This story has been found all the way from Greece to aboriginal Australia, and usually includes seven stars, although only six have been visible for tens of thousands of years.  Cool, huh?

I also attended a workshop  on  Jim Henson.   Someone pointed out that one of Henson's recurring themes is found family (think of Kermit gathering up his tribe in the Muppets Movie, for example).  

During the question period an audience member told us that she had worked at the studio that made the Muppet Show and assured us that all those people loved each other just as much as you hoped.  

She also said that she would often see a director talking about a scene with a puppeteer. Then the puppeteer would raise his arm and the director would start speaking straight to the Muppet.

By the way, some of the panels were videoed so we are still enjoying them at home.

* Volunteering. I spent an hour in a green room fetching drinks for panelists, and another handing out info packets to panelists and Hugo Award nominees.  Each volunteer hour earns you a groat, a plastic card that most of the dealers accept as two pounds.

* Parties!  Every night featured parties sponsored by committees hoping to have future Worldcons in their cities.  (Next year will be in Seattle. 2026 in Los Angeles.)

I was also invited to a party for Flame Tree Press authors.  They produce mostly horror and science fiction, plus collections of ancient legends ("Story-telling from the distant past to the future"), but I managed to sneak into their Chilling Crime Stories volume.

Okay, that's way more than enough.  Next time, as you may have guessed, I will provide some words of wisdom from the panels.

Quotable Chicago... In Space!

 

As promised last month, here are some quotations from Chicon 8, the World Science Fiction Conference which I attended in Chicago in September.  Unfortunately, all context for the quotes had be quarantined due to covid concerns.

 "Science fiction is about upsetting society.  Mystery is about restoring it."        - Roberta Rogow

"I wrote this book but in a way the book wrote me.  It was cheaper than therapy." - Shelley Parker-Chan

"Every medievalist's favorite movie is Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  It's the only accurate one." - Jo Walton

"Terrorists are political illiterates." - David Gerrold

"Neil Gaiman could write a haiku about his intestinal issues and it would be made into a hit movie about one man's struggle with colitis." - John Scazi

"Writers have a sort of Stockholm Syndrome with the protagonist." - James Patrick Kelly

"A lot of scriptwriters think of a published novel as a piece-of-shit first draft they can work from." - Meg Elison

"I can really sell integrity." - Adam Stempel

"How does time work?  Ask your grandmother.  She's seen more of it than you." - Joe Haldeman

"I have a five part answer to that.  The first part has sixteen parts. " - John Scalzi

"Rule Number One: Do not time travel to a war." - Connie Willis

"I'm a child skeptic.  Do they really exist?  They're always fuzzy in photographs." - Paul Calhoun

"Use problematic authors as a motivation to write a better book." - Suzanne Palmer

"Who among us has not wanted to be a pregnant horse?" - John Scalzi

"You hear about someone who does bad things and it turns out they had a bad childhood.  So what?" - David Gerrold

"The urge to always have novelty leads, ironically, to the oldest conspiracy theories." - Kenneth Hite

"The current scam is  cryptocurrency.  It's tulips." - Connie Willis

"My mother was a car and we lost her in a terrible space rotary accident." - Suzanne Palmer 

"I have a hard time watching Star Wars.  Those poor stormtroopers.  Did they all volunteer?" - James Patrick Kelly

"How do you write time travel stories?  With a manual typewriter." - Joe Haldeman

"You can put whatever you want in a burrito.  This is a free country." - John Scalzi

"If not us, who?  If not together, how?" - Suzanne Palmer

Outer Space and Eastern Illinois

 

A week before the mystery community headed to Minneapolis for Bouchercon, I, contrarian that I am, went to Chicago for Chicon 8.  That was the 80th World Science Fiction Conference.  As I have written before, science fiction fandom is our field's bigger and older sibling. Chicon went for five days, had about 3,400 attendees, and had 1,404 events listed.  Impressive as all heck. 

First thing to say is, they took covid VERY seriously.  Everyone had to have proof of vaccination and had to stay masked.  The photo above shows me wearing my volunteer vest, walking around looking for trouble (literally), which included reminding people to wear their masks.  (I encountered three people who needed the hint, and all complied without argument.)  In spite of this, the Con management informed us that 60 attendees reported to them testing positive within five days of the convention. That's about 1.8%.  Does anyone know the number for Bouchercon?  

Let me tell you about some highlights of a few panels I attended.

Best Science Fiction / Fantasy Murder Mysteries. I added a few titles to my Must Read list. (See the covers of some of these titles on this page.)  

Roberta Rogow made an interesting argument: It is easier to write genre-crossover novels these days because, unlike brick-and-mortar bookstores, online stores are happy to place a volume in as many places as it belongs.

Someone on the panel quoted Walter Mosley as saying mystery is simile and science fiction is metaphor.  That requires some contemplation, I think.

At the end of the panel Mark Painter said he had been trying to remember the earliest example of an SF mystery he had seen in a visual media.  He decided it was "The Conscience of the King" from the first season of Star Trek.

Someone replied: "What about the one where Scotty was accused of murder?"

"'Wolf in the Fold," said Painter.  "And the one with Elijah Cook, Jr."

"'Court-Martial,'" I called from the audience.  And added: "How do we remember this crap?"

Fortunately everyone laughed.  And speaking of Star Trek...

Remembering Nichelle Nichols.  The actress who played Lieutenant Uhura in the original series died last month and fans met up to say how much she meant to so many people.  (Whoopi Goldberg at age five: "Mommy, there's a Black woman on TV and she's not a maid!")

David Gerrold, who started his career at age nineteen by sending an unagented script to Star Trek ("The Trouble With Tribbles") was friends with Nichols for half a century and said she "moved in a bubble of charisma."

I highly recommend the documentary, Woman In Motion, which tells how NASA recruited Nichols to encourage women and people of color to apply for the space program.  Amazing story.

The Origin and Evolution of Conspiracy Theories.  Kenneth Hite says the oldest example of conspiracy theory in the West was the Roman hunt for followers of Bacchus, 2d century BC.  This same pattern was later used for persecuting the Christians, who copied it for attacking the Jews.  He also says forget about QAnon; the highwater mark of conspiracy theories in the United States was the Anti-Masonic Party, which ran candidates for president.

Time Travel.  The legendary Joe Haldeman, born in 1943, explained "I am from the past."

Connie Willis, one of my favorite SF writers, said that on a panel she once explained how she uses time travel in her books and a physicist complained "'That's wrong.  Time Travel doesn't work that way.'  I said: Has there been a breakthrough since this panel started?"

What happened After My Story Got Optioned.  John Scalzi reports that a producer once tried to option one of his books to prevent other companies from making it and competing with the producer's film based on another book. Another of his books has been optioned continually for fourteen years.  "It paid for my daughter's college education."

Meg Elison had her book optioned by a screenwriter who only heard of it because one word in the title matched the title of a TV the writer had been streaming, so Amazon suggested it.

The Middle Ages Weren't Bad.  Several historians argued that the so-called dark ages get a bum rap.  Ada Palmer, who studies the Renaissance said:  "My period  was mean to your period and I'm sorry."  She said there is a lot more Renaissance art than Medieval art because we destroyed so much of the latter.  During World War II the allied pilots were forbidden to bomb Florence, to protect all that pretty stuff, but cities with older art were fair game.

When did the Early Modern period begin?  Palmer says there is a disagreement of 400 years depending on which field you ask, because they all want to claim their favorite work as modern, not part of that tacky ol' medieval stuff.

David M. Perry said medieval people loved democracy.  They formed groups, created complicated by-laws, and voted on stuff.  They just weren't allowed to run their governments that way.

Palmer recommends historical fiction about Europe written by Asian authors, who look at things quite differently than us.  

Morally Ambiguous Characters. James Patrick Kelly invoked our field for this one, saying his favorite morally ambiguous hero is Sam Spade.

David Gerrold said the morally ambiguous character does the right thing for the situation, although in another situation he would be horrified by it.    

And just for giggles, here are the names of some panels I did not attend:

* More than Sexbots and Slaves

* If It's Not Love, Then It's The Bomb That Will Bring Us Together

* I'm Trapped Here For An Hour!  Ask Wes Anything!

* Why is the U.S. Banning and Challenging So Many Books?

* Werewolf Torts and Undead Tax Liabilities

* Abolition and Our Future: Imagining a World Without Police

* Let's Talk About Consent, Baby

Next time I will offer some of my favorite quotes from the Con.  Until then: Keep watching the skies!

All the World's a Con, Dublin Style

by Robert Lopresti

Two weeks ago I wrote about my recent trip to Ireland.  We finished up at the World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin.  Imagine 5,000 plus dedicated fans spending five days discussing books, movies, writing, science, and related issues.  Bouchercon on steroids.  So here are some highlights, and a few, uh, sidelights.

As it happened the first panel I attended was "A Portable Sort of Magic: Why We Love Books About Books."  Oddly enough, it turned out to NOT be about books.  It was mostly psalms in favor of libraries; not that I complained about that.  Genevieve Cogman writes a series of books called the Invisible Library, which (as I understood it) features people collecting books from around the universe.  A.J. Hackwith has written The Library of the Unwritten, about the place that books go if their authors never get around to writing them.  Tasha Suri, who is also a librarian, made useful distinctions between a library and an archive (briefly: an archive stores the only or original copy of something).

She also pointed out that those beloved "little libraries" that pop up on so many street corners are not libraries either.  They are book swaps.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course.  And I learned that almost every bus in Hamburg, Germany, has a book swap shelf.  What a great idea!

For some reason I wound up seeing a lot of panels featuring editors, and they were full of startling moments.  For example, one important book editor was not familiar with the phrase "Kill your darlings," which astonished me.

At one panel someone mentioned elevator pitches and editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden quoted what seemed to be a standard joke pitch for (I assume) a TV series:  "He's a chimp.  She's the Pope.  They're cops."  I'd watch that!

There was a panel of anthology editors and I asked: when they solicit stories from authors, what do they tell them about payment?  The editors seemed astonished.  "Nothing!" they declared.  Apparently science fiction authors are much less tied to petty materialistic things than mystery writers...

But the highlight for me was when I attended a panel featuring Wataru Ishigame, who edits science fiction for Tokyo Sogen.  Afterwards I went up to introduce myself and explain our connection but I never got the chance.  As soon as he saw my name tag he said "We publish your books!"  So we had a lovely chat.

I attended interesting science panels on "The Future of Food" and on DNA testing.  I won't attempt to summarize that stuff.

But honestly I didn't attend as many panels as I hoped because the Convention Centre Dublin was overwhelmed.  If you wanted to attend a session at noon you had to forgo any 11 AM session and get in line by 11:30.  It was that kind of crowding.  And the security staff was pretty unbearable, especially on the first day.  (The week before had been Comicon and I wonder if they were, in effect, fighting the last war?)

My favorite example of the problem.  My wife had been waiting in line for half an hour when a security guard came up and told her she was facing the wrong way.  Not that she was in the wrong place.  Not that she was in the wrong line.  But that she had to turn around and face the same direction as everyone else.  Daring rebel that she is, my wife said "No," and the guard backed down.  But, sheesh.

One more story.  I volunteered to work at the Registration Desk on Wednesday and Thursday morning.  During my four hour shift on Thursday my daypack vanished.  I didn't think any member of the public would have been able to steal it so I figured one of the other registration mavens had relocated it.  But no one could find it.

The good news is, it turned up on Saturday, literally minutes before I was going to leave to try to purchase a replacement.  I am very grateful to everyone who hunted for it and made an effort to get it back to me.

But, as they say in management school, it is possible to distinguish between process and product.  While the product was great (got my daypack!) the process had a few bumpy patches.  To illustrate, let me imagine a discussion that must have occurred.  I will try to refrain from sarcasm.

"Hey! Here is the daypack that charming and devilishly handsome volunteer was looking for.  I will take it across the foyer to the Lost and Found desk."  
"No, don't do that."
"Ah, I understand.  Because it is the end of the day you think I should take it directly three flights up to the Ops Office where lost objects are locked safely away for the night."
"No, don't do that either.  I happen to know that that volunteer's wife was working in the Finance Office, so take it up there."
"Are you sure she will volunteer there again?"
"No, but it stands to reason if she did one shift she will do another, doesn't it?"
"I suppose so.  Very well.  I will carry the daypack up the five flights and leave a note for her so she  knows it's there."
"Don't be silly!  No need to waste trees with paper notes. Just tell whoever is in the Finance Office about it and if/when she returns I'm sure one of the people you mention it to will happen to be there at the same time, will recognize her, remember what you mentioned, and be able to find the pack in the office, which, of course, is not set up to store missing items."
"Yes, that makes perfect sense.  But first I will stroll over to the Lost and Found Desk and tell them so they can stop looking for the pack and delete it from their database of missing objects."
"Again, why this obsession with direct communication?  I'm sure if we simply float happy thoughts in their direction they will grasp that the object has been found and make the corrections to their files."
"Thanks.  Now I understand.  I will  carry the daypack up five flights on the overcrowded escalators the nice security guards asked us not to overuse, rather than simply walking across the foyer to the Lost and Found Desk where any sensible person would expect a missing object to be returned."

Possibly a smidge of sarcasm slipped in there.  I hope you didn't notice.

To be fair, a Worldcon attendee whose opinion I greatly respect told me she would have also decided to bring the bag up to the Finance Office.  I replied: would you have told the Lost and Found folks that it had been recovered?  No, she said, but it would have been a good idea.

I think so too.

Those of you have seen my reports on other events can guess that I am about to include some quotes from panels.  There aren't so many this time because of the issues described above, but here you go...

"We can't put stuff back in Pandora's box but we can slip a warning label on the side." - Aimee Ogden

"A library is essentially a place of possibility." - A.J. Hackwith

"He's the sort of person you have to go into business with or you have to have him killed." - Patrick Nielsen Hayden

"When I originally wrote that novel I had a main character who I fired.  We had a labor dispute." - Benjamin Rosenbaum

"If your voice goes up at the end that doesn't necessarily make it a question." - Ginjer Buchanan

"I love that book.  It should not work.  It annoys me that he's that brilliant." - Laura Anne Gilman

"I am a science fiction writer and that is why I'm not having my DNA tested." -Aimee Ogden

"You have to blame something and it can't be me." - John R. Douglas