Panels:

• Reassessing Heinlein. You know something’s gone a bit pear-shaped when the panel starts debating, “which is morally superior: Starship Troopers or Ender’s Game?”
• With Friends Like These, aka the “is fandom too aggresively hegemonising” panel. I was moderating, and John Jarrold, Christopher Priest, Caroline Mullan and Chris Garcia were the panellists. I think it went pretty well: Caroline Mullan talked about the nature of literary conversations, Chris Garcia talked about differences he saw in the US market, Christopher Priest talked about pressures on writers, and John Jarrold utterly failed to rise to the bait to re-iterate his objections to this year’s Clarke shortlist, and instead made useful comments about how the UK market worked. So it was all very civil, and we agreed (I think) that it would be nice if Jeanette Winterson et al were generous (per Le Guin) about their sources, but that we should recognise they’re in their own conversation.
• When it Changed. Five women writers discuss their experiences. Lots of interesting ground covered, and certainly a better panel than last year’s “is SF publishing overly masculine?” effort, but I did sometimes feel the panellists didn’t delve as deeply into some of the issues they raised as they might have done. (Oh, and yes, Jaine Fenn was on the panel, and yes, she talked a bit about the marketing of her book.)
• The UK Short Fiction Market. Another panel that I thought might be a bit controversial but wasn’t; I wasn’t moderating this time, but I was on it, with Jetse de Vries, Colin Harvey, Gary Couzens, and John Meaney (who, while entertaining, did tend to run away with the discussion a bit at times). There was one conversation about the technical/economic aspects of the market — where we agreed that markets will probably Find A Way, even if we can’t quite see what it is yet — and another about the creative aspects of the market — where we agreed, to my surprise, that British short fiction is in something of a creative slump, relative to say fifteen years ago. New writers aren’t coming in through short fiction, and short fiction is in no way setting the agenda. But having more or less agreed on this, we didn’t really have anywhere to take the conversation.

Book haul:

What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction by Paul Kincaid
The Reef by Mark Charan Newton
The Coyote Kings o the Space Age Bachelor Pad by Minister Faust
A Tour Guide in Utopia by Lucy Sussex
The Girl in the Glass by Jeffrey Ford
The Patron Saint of Plagues by Barth Anderson

Notes:

• I would have bought a copy of Celebration, the BSFA 50th anthology, but they ran out of hardback copies at the launch party before I got to the front of the queue. So an early trip to the dealer’s room is in order today.
• The hotel is labyrinthine! And there’s no second floor, which is confusing. But I do like the atrium area.
• I saw someone wandering around with badge number 1243. This is a big Eastercon.
• Went out for a Friday Curry with a large contingent of third row and hangers-on, which was thoroughly pleasant, except for the walk from the hotel, which was bloody cold.
• Geoff Ryman is still taller than me, the bastard.
• The Independent’s view: “Orbital 2008, Britain’s 59th annual National Science Fiction Convention, which started yesterday, is dominated by the death of Clarke last week. And that has meant a hastily re-arranged programme to celebrate the legendary figure’s achievements with a series of talks and lectures. So, there is no place in this year’s programme for Klingon language seminars…” and then they talk about the bondage workshop and the slash panels.

Yesterday I went to Picocon 25. I think this was my eighth Picocon; I know my first was in 1999, and I think I’ve missed one since then. In the past few years it’s been a sort of marker for the peak period of activity in British fandom, which runs through Eastercon and Sci-Fi London to the BSFA/SFF AGM event, so 2008 now feels like it’s really started.

It was neither the best nor the worst Picocon I’ve been to, but it was a pretty good one. Notable bits: Paul Cornell’s perhaps slightly disorganised but very entertaining talk on “doing it all” as a writer (ie working in tv and comics and prose and etc); lunch at what I fondly think of as the Princess Diana Memorial Pizza Restaurant; much good conversation in the bar with too many people to mention; very briefly meeting one of the Whogasm girls; and, along with Paul, Paul, Liz, Alex, Nick, Andrew, Tom, Simon, and a guy called Matt who none of us knew but seemed to be a decent chap, winning the annual Picocon quiz, thus gaining copious amounts of Lindt and a signed proof of Cory Doctorow’s new novel, Little Brother. (This will now be slowly passed around the members of the winning team. What we do once we’ve all read it I’m not sure, unless only one of us likes it.)

The afternoon panel — traditionally Picocon has one programme item for each Guest, then a panel with all the Guests on it in the afternoon — was not terribly well structured. The topic was “Futurism Sucks!”, which seems to have been suggested by Cory Doctorow based on an impromptu talk he gave at some other event and not discussed by the panelists beforehand such that before long there were several competing definitions of futurism in play, never mind the question of whether they each sucked or not. As a result, the discussion had a habit of touching on (to me) an interesting question, and then wandering off again, although a large part of the time it circled around environmentalism and portrayals of global warming (or not) in sf. And there are a couple of points that were raised that I just want to note down.

1. Kim Stanley Robinson aside, there are not many major works of science fiction written in the last decade that have climate change as a central subject. There are dozens of novels where global warming is mentioned as a background detail; it’s just not treated as a part of the world the protagonists will be engaging with.
2. Someone suggested that climate change was a more common subject in YA sf, suggesting Julie Bertagna’s Exodus as an example. I haven’t read Exodus, so I don’t know how it tackles climate change, and I haven’t read enough YA to know whether the assertion is true in general. (I have to say that from reading The Inter-Galactic Playground it is not true, but I’d be happy to hear of other examples.)
3. Personal assumption: the scarcity of climate change sf is both noteworthy and significant. This is something sf should be dealing with.
4. Caroline Mullan suggested a possible reason: that climate change has rapidly moved from being a scientific problem to a political one. Sf writers are (in general) still more interested in the former kind of problem than the latter, not least because it tends to be easier to make stories from them, which is why we don’t see much climate change sf, and the stuff we do see comes from writers who (like KSR) are interested in politics. Possible counter to this: we’re seeing a lot of political sf dealing with the War on Terror, its rationale and consequences, so we do have plenty of political sf writers.
5. Final observation: when Paul Cornell suggested that it is still possible to imagine a future in which humanity comes to terms with climate change, most of the audience laughed. That, to me, suggests another reason why we don’t see much climate change sf: people don’t believe it can be dealt with, and don’t want to read about it being coped with. Which is a bit depressing, really. It seems to me it should be possible to think about meaningfully dealing with climate change in a way that isn’t wish-fulfillment. I’m reminded again of the quote from the LRB article on this topic about needing “pessimism of the intellect combined with optimism of the will.”

In honour of the draft programme for this year’s Eastercon being released, here are the panels I’ll be on:

With Friends Like These …
Friday, 15:00. Fandom often criticises authors who publish SF novels outside the genre. Are the authors really to blame, or should we admit that perhaps we can’t claim everything just because we like it? (Moderator)

The UK short fiction market
Friday, 21:00. We’re far from the heyday of Interzone and the British Boom, SF short fiction mags in the US have declining subscriptions, Hub tried to launch and ended up internet-only. Is the short fiction market dying, and what can be done to revitalise it? Do we want to? (Panellist)

Everyone’s a Critic
Sunday, 19.00. Everyone can post their own reviews online. How does this affect more professional websites and magazines? Are reviews posted on your blog “proper” reviews? (Panellist)

It was ten years ago today (BSFA 50)
Monday, 11.00. One of five linked panels exploring what it was like to be an SF fan during the different eras since the BSFA was established, in this case 1998. The other items will be based around 1958, 1968, 1978 and 1988. (Moderator.)