Worldcon 2019: It's Friday, Friday, gotta get books on Friday!

[spindizzy]

Friday

• Day started with ALL of the breakfast and also bumping into Ira and their humans, and an imyril and I'm pretty sure I blurted out "Oh my god, I forgot what you looked like apart from pretty and brown hair," because this is who I am as a person. *FACEPALMS*


• I went to the short fiction panel, because I wanted some good recs to take away to bookgazing and forestofglory, who always bring me the finest short fiction recs!
  
  • Things that panellists noticed in 2018: more non-US/non-UK authors in traditionally American zines, lots of high profile stories, lots of excellent stuff that isn't being recognised by awards, lots of environmentally themed stories, which makes sense considering that the world's on fire. (There was a whole side-discussion of that, so if anyone wants the notes on that I have them.) SFF stories published in non-traditional places (e.g. Medium, Slate, NYT, MIT). Jonathan Strahan said that there was a lot of diversity, but also "crisis of craft" in the background, where works are being pushed forward before they're ready, and I'm not gonna lie, I don't know enough about his lists to say whether that was him being a snob about marginalised authors or not.
  
  
  • I just have "print mag = paywall" written in my notes, which I assume made perfect sense at the time.
  
  
  • The panellists were asked about whether or not their approach to acceptances has changed (because Sheila Williams has been accepting feminist dystopias that she would have rejected before 2016 as over the top), and the conclusion seemed to be "Not really?" But also that their definition of "wanting something different" is skewed by their reading THOUSANDS of short stories each year.
  
  
  • Objectively, I'm sure that I knew that publishing works far enough in advance that everyone at the panel would be thinking about 2020 stuff, but I think I was still a little surprised to hear it! The other thing that I liked was the question (I think from the audience?) about whether, as anthologists, if they start to see a theme developing in one year's fiction, do they lean into it? The answer appeared to be no, because it takes a few years for it to actually percolate.
  
  
  • I had a mild anxiety during it, because you know how I started doing a dedicated short fiction column at ladybusiness? One of the panelists described exactly what I do (review round-ups that aren't a specifically themed list or sorted by venue) and said that it doesn't drive traffic or act as effective promotion, DO NOT DO THAT, and my anxiety just went "...Oh." I don't think I'm going to act on that in any way, because changing my reviewing habits means actually looking at and analysing what I'm trying to accomplish as a reviewer, and I've tried that, there was too much to unpack so I just threw away the whole suitcase. But I guess it's useful to know?
  
  
  • Recommendations: Mother Tongues by S. Qiouyi Lu. When The Rains Came Back by Caldwell Turnbull. A Series of Steaks by Vina Jie-Min Prasad. Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson. The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington by P. Djèlí Clark. Martha Well's Murderbot. Dale Bailey, although I didn't catch the title of the story. Twelve Tomorrows. Okay Glory by Elizabeth Bear (Which I didn't actually like!). The Woman Who Destroyed Us by S. L. Huang, available in Twelve Tomorrows or The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume Thirteen. The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday by Saad Hossain. There were more, but I didn't manage to write down enough details that I could google them, I'm sorry!


• I can't remember what it was that I was going to after that, because I went NO, SHAN'T, and ran away to the dealer's room while it was quieter and I had hit points. SOMEONE HAD 3D PRINTED AN ARTICULATED DRAGON, THAT'S AMAZING! I also bought a some art prints because CHECK OUT THOSE AWESOME POKÉMON, acquired a D20 necklace as a warning to my other dice, chatted to an author who was just like "WHY DO YOU NOT HAVE BUSINESS CARDS?!", chatted to a publisher about the difficulties of promoting small press books, and GOT A HARDCOPY OF THE TEA MASTER AND THE DETECTIVE!!!!!!!!!


• Me: *stops by the Angry Robot booth to check out their signing stand*
  Author: Hi! You look like a woman who's ready to hear a spiel!
  Me: I DEFINITELY am! *looks at books on display* Okay, I am ready for the spiel, but I've actually had your books on my buy list for a while, so do you just wanna take my money?


• (The Angry Robots lady was REALLY NICE and liked my bag and took a whole bunch of Lady Business ribbons! She was LOVELY!)


• I didn't know that Twelfth Planet Press sold non-SFF-related books! I mean, I do NOW, I have two of their mysteries, but THINGS I DIDN'T KNOW!


• I went to signings! I got Martha Wells to sign a Murderbot ARC for me, and Seanan McGuire to sign a copy of Feed for splend. (Seriously, that was probably the book I took the most care of that entire trip. Ziplock bag and everything, because it wasn't mine and I didn't want to wreck it!) I felt kinda bad for everyone else in the same signing slot, because... Seriously, the queues for Martha Wells and Seanan McGuire went around the room. It hurt my feelings and I wasn't even at a table. BUT I got to meet Fran Wilde again! She was lovely and gracious and I got to thank her for Clearly Labelled In A Mostly Steady Hand, and she reminded me that Ninth Step Station was a thing, and it was just really nice! And I'm glad that apparently there was a lot of buzz about Clearly Lettered at the Nothing Without Us panel that morning!


• Sana Takeda was doing a signing that afternoon and oh my god I made such an UTTER FOOL OF MYSELF but she shook my hand and she signed my copy of issue 15 of Monstress (I don't have any of the trade paperbacks, but I LOVE that art of Kippa so that was the one I wanted to get signed) and she congratulated me on being a Hugo finalist and took a Lady Business ribbon and just! She was so lovely and kind! ;____________;


• Like, this was the point where why I cared about author signings suddenly clicked for me. It's not about the signature, it's about having thirty seconds to go "Hi, your work meant something to me," and not feel like I'm interrupting someone's day or putting them in work mode? It's a space where I am allowed and expected to be fannish and I am allowed and expected to have feelings, and that's okay!


• (Lex doesn't get why I'd care about a signing and I don't think this explanation would work for him specifically, because ew, emotions, but I know FOR ME! And that's fine!)


• ... Sana Takeda was so kind, oh my god.


• I THINK I ran into a wild runalongwomble on my way back from this, and I was the most awkward soul because I wasn't sure if he was okay with me walking to the tramstop with him and his friend so I stopped to tweet some stuff and then realised that he was waiting for me and auuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh I'm sorry Womble! You are lovely and I'm sorry I didn't see more of you!


• And then there was the Introduction to SFF Romance panel, and... HM. HMMMMMM. Thoughts are here.


• And then I went to the only thing at the other con location that I managed to get to, because they were on such a conflicting schedule: Only Happy When It Rains, which I'm not gonna lie? Just fuelled my desire for more science fiction where space is treated like the ocean. Like, the examples I could think of were A Salvaging of Ghosts and On a Sunbeam, but if anyone has more PLEASE SHARE. As for the panel: I appreciated how much of the panel was "Ugggggggggh, Boomers have ruined everything" even from the Boomers, although I can't tell how much of that was derailing. I guess there were some cool ideas too?


• (I don't think anyone had a pleasant time queueing for stuff in the cinema, btw, because everyone I heard from was just like "THIS IS AN ACCESSIBILITY NIGHTMARE AND THERE IS NO WAY OF JUDGING WHETHER YOU'RE GOING TO GET INTO THE PANEL YOU WANT UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE.")


• The Removing guilt from pleasure in SFF romance was EXACTLY what I wanted from the introduction to SFF romance panel, so I was VERY happy. Note here!
  
• I think my last panel of the night was Writing Outside Western Expectations, which was especially interesting as a contrast to the Writing From Non-Western Cultures panel? Like, two of the authors were from China and so do not give a fuck about catering to a Western market, because, y'know, the Chinese market. Which has ripple effects on stuff like writing workshops run in the West, because Joey Yu went to one and had the person running it ask him how much feedback he wanted from her, because it was so different to what she was used to that her critiques could have been unhelpful (e.g. there's cultural differences in how distance and POV are handled!), and Georgina Kamsika got SUCH MUDDLED CRITIQUES because her work didn't fit traditional Western tropes (or she got asked "Who's the hero?"). Or as Beth Meacham pointed out, Western storytelling requires a storyteller, that the story be given to someone else, which other cultures don't. (Apparently we used to have the "distant observer" narrator in Western literature, but genre fiction in the pulp era moved the fashion towards characters with agency.)


• (Can I say how FUCKING WEIRD it was to go from panels where people talked about Chinese media or publishing cultures and check twitter to see how the Hong Kong protests were going? Because bloody hellfire that was cognitive dissonance right there.)


• I then went and got SLIGHTLY LOST looking for ClaireRousseau, who was at the Titan party. I got there after the food was done and the open bar had switched to being a regular bar (booooooo), and I'm not gonna lie: I was kinda intimidated. I'm not good at crowds and places where I don't know people, and I'm even less good at them in pubs (Anxiety! ADHD! Fear of drunk people!) but I promised myself that I would stay for one drink and see Claire before she went dancing! And it worked out because I got to see Claire and give her many hugs! (Claire gives FANTASTIC hugs, and she is one of the two people I still feel safe around when they're tipsy, I love her). AND I finally got to meet bookpunks and hcor and books_pieces!!!!! (bookpunks makes music and is the Narrative Designer for Crytek's latest game, Hunt: Showdown! hcor is someone I've known since my early fandom days, and her first novel, Queen of Coin and Whispers, come out next year! books_pieces is a booktuber!) I flailed very awkwardly, everyone was very nice about it, and then I fled into the night once there stopped being people that I knew freely available! Like, it was a nice pub, the party seemed fun, it was just that I suddenly realised that I recognised a whole bunch of the people at this party but they were all like accomplished people who were famous and I do not have the chutzpah to walk up to a bunch of authors and say hi when they're clearly having a night off. No. It cannot be done.


• The thing I probably liked the MOST about Dublin was that there was always something open, because I've missed that! Manchester, Liverpool, London – they're open all hours! Nottingham, you're lucky if anything's open after 17:30. BUT, that is a sidetrack. The important thing is: first night in Dublin, I noticed a late night donut shop. I have been EXPERIMENTING, because I thought I hated donuts and it turns out that I don't, I just like the stupidly expensive ones. So I bop into the late night donut shop, and say to the guy "Ey up love, y'alright?" because that is just how I greet people. And the guy sort of looks at me, looks at his colleague, looks at me, and goes "Are you from Nottingham?" And I say yes, because I figure ten years is long enough to count, and he slaps his mate's arm and goes "I told you! I knew it!" and gives me my donut for free! I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HAPPENED THERE unless he had like a bet going on, or he saw me getting my card out and didn't wanna deal with that, but EITHER WAY: FREE DONUT!


• It was very nice apart from the nuts.


• The sum total of my haul by the end of Friday was four pairs of earrings, one necklace, a bunch of cool art, and eight books! (Mother of Invention anthology, A Trifle Dead and Drowned Vanilla by Livia Day, Shattered Echo by Alex Westmore (This was the author that told me I should have business cards! TURNS OUT SHE WAS RIGHT!), The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard, The Sisters Menderos and Fog Season by Patrice Sarath, and a copy of the Titan Tasters collection that was either freely available at the Titan party or that I accidentally nicked because I misunderstood the rules. ... I can give it back if they want!)

Comments

[renay]

This post was great!

(Also, that person talking about reviewing short fiction is not, I suspect, aware of the stats of every short fiction reviewer and is using personal anecdote. I think it has WAY MORE to do with the fact that blogs are on a downswing! YOU DO YOU, MY BEAUTIFUL SKY OTTER.)

[spindizzy]

Thank you Nayfish!

(That is what I'm hoping, and why I didn't want to react in haste! I WILL DO MY BEST, ALSO SKY OTTER IS POSSIBLY MY FAVOURITE COMPLIMENT.)

[lokifan]

Well I personally follow your ladybusiness short fiction recs when I have brainspace, if that helps :) And I just read Clearly Lettered and wow.

Yay free doughnut! My BFF who was at Worldcon ended up on this Dublin-doughnut quest, and she and her husband tried like five?? So apparently Dublin is full of good doughnut shops.