This was
my 4th MarsCon, 2nd as an invited guest, and it remains one of my favorite
regional conventions. A terrific new hotel this year, with real convention
space collected in one wing, rather than walking back and forth endless long
halls at the previous hotel (although I didn't get as many steps in, so there's
that).
Parking
had been a serious problem at the previous hotel the past couple of years,
leading me to decide to drive in Thursday night and plan to spend Friday as a
writing day before the con spun up. I was glad for the "down" time,
although as usual, distractions kept me from getting as much writing done as I
had hoped.
Unfortunately,
I missed one of the very first panels that I'd wanted to attend on
"Writing in Shared Worlds". That's always the way - more programming
than one person can handle.
For me,
Marscon began, appropriately enough, with the Opening Ceremonies. A little
loose, a little rambly, lots of well-deserved recognition for many very
hard-working people.
Oh, whee,
a fire drill! Glad we got *that* out of the way early…We all stood around for a
moment, wondering whether to take it seriously. Just about the time the
con-runners started to tell us to head outside, the siren stopped (though the
strobes continued flashing for quite a while).
What can
follow that? Mikey Mason, of course, a high-energy performer who sang an
obvious crowd-favorite, "Best Game Ever" <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M60zW_Mfm58>.
Next up,
new-to-me, the charming S.J. ("sooj") Tucker, sang and played guitar
well. But of more note (sorry, I couldn't help myself), was her very sweet and
earnest entreaty to the audience, "If no one has told you that it's ok to
be you…it's all good. I'll write you a note."
Someone
(I really was not yet in note-taking mode--sorry!) put together a lovely
memorial video of genre luminaries who died in 2015..and even included Davie
Bowie and Alan Rickman, both gone earlier in the week.
There was
a champagne & sparkling cider toast to absent friends, and to the best
weekend of the year, MarsCon!
Afterward,
I hustled over to the hall where I will be for all of my weekend's panels (they
are all in the same two rooms), for the Writing Guest of Honor (GOH) interviews
with Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, and Alethea Kontiss. The interviewer, Mike
Pederson of RavenCon was there, and a good audience…but no GOHs! They were all
in the Opening Ceremonies…
Then this
happened…
@MarsCon Rushed from Opening ceremonies to GOH Interviews...but the GOHs are still at the OC! @EllenKushner @AletheaKontis @deliasherman
— Margaret McGraw (@MargaretSMcGraw) January 16, 2016
Because we Knew. RT @MargaretSMcGraw: @MarsCon Rushed from Opening ceremonies to GOH Interviews...but the GOHs are still at the OC!
— Ellen Kushner (@EllenKushner) January 16, 2016
~~~
So once they arrived
and settled, Mike invited them to introduce themselves -- three talented women
in a genre historically dominated by men, both creators and creations. After
fun introductions, Mike asked each woman about their thoughts on the weekend's
theme of women in science fiction.
Ellen
Kushner talked about starting her career around the same time as genre
powerhouses Shawna McCarthy and Ellen Datlow. There was a rise of women in
publishing about the same time that there was a rise in fantasy of SF -- there
wasn't much fantasy other than Lord of the Rings until Terry Brooks' Sword of Shannara. Most
"fantasy" was loosely called "sword and planet" -- falling
under the science fiction umbrella, but clearly "sword and sorcery"
set offworld. Anne McCaffrey's Pern, Marian Zimmer Bradley, and other women rose to prominence in this
period. A lot of fantasy was published as children's books, such as Madeleine
L'Engle, C. S. Lewis, Roald Dahl, Lloyd Alexander, and Susan
Cooper. [Almost as an aside, Ellen observed that now,
YA has overtaken fantasy!]
Ellen spoke briefly
about some of the negative patterns that she has seen over time. Women are
still "ghetto-ized." White hetero male is the default assumption
about a character in the absence of description. In the business arena of
writing and publishing in the genre, the "big deal" women tend to be
"honorary men"--one of the boys.
Delia Sherman said
she considered herself very lucky, and she was pleased by the growing diversity
of the genre and community: more diversity, more women, more women of color.
Now there's the Octavia Butler scholarship to Clarion…things are changing. And
to be honest, most of the old guys who don't know women are literate are
retiring…the younger men rising to fill their places are more appreciative,
more open-minded.
Alethea asked for
her comments to be off the record. Truly, she didn't say anything scandalous,
just blunt honesty about her early experiences in the publishing industry. But
in truth, you're doing yourself a disservice if you've never seen the beautiful,
effervescent "Princess" in person.
Mike asked, "Do
women still have to write under pseudonyms or gender neutral names?"
All three agreed
that people still think differently about material when they know the writer is
a women or know/think the writer is a man. This is not to say that women are
not excelling in areas of the genre still predominantly male, such as Louis
McMaster Bujold or Elizabeth Moon in military SF. Alethea observes that
publishing houses are often essentially run by women, with a man in charge.
Mike asks about
their most recent projects…
Dehlia is writing
book about boy who runs away from home in Maine and runs into an evil wizard.
She says Maine feels very much like you've just stepped back half a century or
more, and magical things live out in the forest. She has a steampunk story coming
out from Tor next month, in a series of novellas.
Ellen has been
happily absorbed in Tremontaine, a shared-world anthology,
structured like a tv series, each episode is a short, Ellen wrote the
"pilot" to set the stage. She loved the Bordertown
series--so did Holly Black--so they've revived it.
Malinda Lo kicks
butt w/plot, Ellen does really great w/character studies, [?] brought in whole
new culture… Ellen wrote the "finale"--she said it felt like writing
fanfic for her own world - lots of sex! She's also working on a new novel.
Mike asked Ellen,
"What's it like, turning over control of your world for a shared
world?"
Ellen tried to back
off and let the writers develop their own stories--in fact, she went too far
and wasn't as involved as the writers wanted. They're working on a 2nd
"season" now. And there is the original Riverside series of novels
that began with Swordspoint!
So there's lots of material for the authors to run with.
A question from the
audience:
"Do you think
that women tend to write men better than men write women?"
All three agree
absolutely. Ellen elaborates: we grew up reading books about boys having
adventures; we had to push ourselves into male POV to get into the stories and
imagine ourselves in their roles. So we as women are used to putting ourselves
into a male context, whereas men haven't had the same impetus to do so. She
wonders whether the next generation of women writers will have the same
ability, as they have a greater variety of characters to dive into. At the same
time, she says there are some men who write terrific women!
Delia says you
really have to look at individual authors, because there are "the
worst" of both women and men writers. Women are trained by our culture to
understand underlying contexts/subtexts - "why would you do that?"
We're trained to interact with people,
not humans with one set of genitalia or another. But our culture still defaults
to male. Men generally aren't as interested in what motivates women and what
they're thinking--they haven't had to be.
Mike adds that he
finds the men who don't wrote good women tend not to write good secondaries in
general - all their focus is on their main characters. They don't know how to
bring depth to the people they're not interested in.
Consensus: Peter
Dickinson writes fantastic women!
~~~
Time for me to earn
my keep! I was moderator for the panel "Social Media Etiquette for
Authors". The panelists were Kim Headlee, Alethea Kontiss, Gail Z. Martin,
and Will McIntosh.
We talked about a
range of topics, including handling criticism on social media, negative reviews
on websites like Goodreads or Amazon, as well as providing "content"
rather than a constant barrage of "Buy my stuff!" messaging. Panelists
discussed their preferred mediums, including Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter,
Tumblr, Pinterest, and a few of the youth-targeted sites such as Instagram or
SnapChat.
Will said that he's
working closely with media publicists now that some of his books have been
optioned for films, and they are pushing him toward Twitter. We talked about
keeping up a flow of messages, and managing this time demand with other
behind-the-scenes demands of a writer.
Sadly, I did not
manage to take notes during this first panel--the commentary was lively, and I
was trying to herd the cats! ;-)
My panels done for
the evening, I enjoyed some time catching up with friends before diving into a
full day tomorrow!
#
And so, with a loving heart, I offer you
Namaste
I’ve heard many translations. Here’s my favorite:
The light of the universe that shines within me recognizes
the light of the universe that shines within you.
#