You know how it goes. Some old-timers have a good thing going, something they've worked the kinks out of over the course of, say, 30 years or so, and then some whippersnapper pops in and acts like they turned over a rock and discovered it just lying there and put in for the patent on its genome. So, yeah, I'm trying to use this post to get that impulse out of my system regarding WisCon. Let's be clear: some friends have been trying to get me to go for at least three years, so just picture me saying "you told me so" every few sentences.
With chess, neophytes make up variants. With religion, it's heresies. Physics? Perpetual motion machines. For cons, I'm going to go with proposing panel topics.
Let's get my idea out of the way and be done with. There were three awards given out at this year's WisCon: the Tiptree Award for Geoff Ryman's Air and the two from the Carl Brandon Society, the Parallax Award for Walter Mosely's 47 and the Kindred Award for Susan Vaught's Stormwitch. How about having an Awards Book Club meeting when WisCon reconvenes in a year and everyone's had a chance to read them? How do they relate to each other, and what do they say on their own?
Okay, I lied, I have two ideas. I would also like to see a panel or workshop on how to moderate a panel. I can think of at least one person who would be ideal for this, but in the interest of not causing her embarrassment and/or hassle, I'll keep quiet. Some topics I'd like to see that workshop cover:
- Identifying, settling, and then avoiding foundational questions.
- Since most audience questions tend to be "more of a comment"(tm), how to embrace the value in that and use audience observations as launching pads for panelists.
- More generally, how to keep the focus on investigating what's surprising-yet-topical in a group conversation.
Another interesting discussion that came up after WisCon was how to negotiate personal space -- especially relevant for "mountaintop experience" occasions like this where the usual social conventions aren't necessarily dominant. Some other people were talking about this, what? a month ago. I don't have much to add, yet, though I think it would take a careful hand writing the panel description to avoid falling into either a meaningless "it depends" or other such panel-killers. Maybe a how-to for low-stakes social-physical calibration?
There's a couple of panels that people have already suggested (at the handy WisCon 31 programming survey page) that interest me. "Let's You and Her Fight" would be useful for me, considering the odd experience I had with people whose conversation styles were much more confrontational than mine (coming up, slowly, in part 2). The one I really want to go to, though, is this one, suggested by Cheryl Morgan:
Outreach to Non-ReadersI have so many people I would like to introduce to feminist F/SF, but I always seem to flub my openings by mis-gauging what works an outsider to the genre might be receptive towards. I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who I think would get a great deal out of WisCon who expressed a general alienation from science fiction per se -- it's given her the impression that you have to be a particular kind of brainy in order to get it. So, yeah, I don't think that always has to be the case, but more to the point, I need to be ready to respond to that with (f'rex) some classics or new stars of feminist fantasy, a genre that I don't end up reading quite as much (in novel format, at least) as science fiction.
Panel after panel has noted that feminist SF seems of limited value to young women today because the sort of people who read SF are the sort of people who (mistakenly) believe the gender war to have been won. How can feminist SF be of help to those for whom feminism is still a vital issue, but who are unlikely to read our books?
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...Which brings me to the other characteristic flaw of the new recruit: the gleeful desire to recruit others. I was going to start characterizing everyone I thought would get something out of going, but, eh, with the amount of detail I'm providing, I'm guessing anyone who hasn't already formed an opinion has enough material to decide without explicit invitation. I'm a horrible evangelist.
If anyone decides out of the blue that they might want to go next year, though, I'll be needing a roommate or three. Contact me. It's not too early to book a room...
(Oh, yeah, and I took the liberty of creating a WisCon group radio station on last.fm. If 14 other people join up and install the audioscrobbler plugin in their media player (iTunes/WinAmp/Windows Media/whatever), it'll compile charts and stream a radio station made up of what the members listen to. A more modest goal: if two other people join up relatively soon, it won't get deleted for lack of membership.)
