Comicpalooza 2015 and the Texas Flood

Part of being a good panelist is being a good listener. Here, K. J. Russell and I listen to K. S. O'Neill's opinions about the topic of our panel: Is Hard Science Fiction Dead? Everyone on the panel agreed that it is most definitely NOT dead. While this sort of hand-wringing title/topic can be annoying in articles and blog posts, it generated a fruitful conversation. We discussed how labels like "hard science fiction" can be difficult to pin down when they are used in ever-evolving book marketing strategies. Individual readers also have different tolerances for the amount of actual science in what they might call hard scifi. To see what I mean, check out TV Tropes' Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness. 

I tend to be pretty forgiving as far as what I can enjoy when reading science fiction. Whenever a writer is extrapolating from known facts there is going to be a parting of the ways between reality and what he or she imagines, and that's the fun of science fiction, right? As long as you tell me a good story and don't break any promises as far as scientific rigor, I'm along for the ride. A great contemporary example of a book that promises and delivers a scientifically faithful tale is Andy Weir's The Martian. Another excellent example is Nancy Kress' Beggars in Spain, which is about what would happen to our society if we could make one tiny genetic change in some people.

Science itself is a big tent, some readers tend to think of hard science fiction in terms of what I would call engineering fiction, but I tend to seek out and enjoy books that feature biology, and yes, even the social sciences, which uses math-intensive game theory to hypothesize and test ideas about human behavior.

I'll write up my other panels more thoroughly soon. I'll just note that I also moderated the panel Discussing Dystopias with Raymond Feist, and got to sit next to the lovely Diana Dru Botsford on the panel, Star Trek: Evolution of a Franchise. She's written and produced for both Star Trek and Stargate SG -1 and had all sorts of amusing tales and fascinating insights.

I got to chat with Steve Bein, traveller, philosopher, and writer, and I  had a chance to spend some time with the lovely Stina Leicht, who will be this year's Toastmaster at Armadillocon. Go to her site to read about her latest projects and adventures (including getting back to Austin from Comicpalooza)!

By returning home Sunday evening instead of Monday, I dodged a bullet - and by bullet I mean the torrential rains and flooding that hit Central Texas on Monday.

Stevie Ray Vaughan walks on water during the 2015 Memorial Day Texas Flood

WorldCon: Thursday

OK, I’m terrible at taking pictures. I don’t mean I’m a terrible photographer, just not so good at actually taking my camera out of my purse. I promise to be better over the next couple days.

Thursday 

Took the MegaBus from Austin to San Antonio and chatted with Patrice Sarath while NOT dealing with traffic, which I have to say was awesome! We hiked from the bus stop to the hotel, checked in, freshened up, and got registered. Then we checked out the vast dealers room filled with books, T-shirts, art, displays of astronaut suits, a TARDIS, and one lonely electric bull in an inflatable ring. He was decommissioned after a few hours. It seems the SFF crowd and bull riding aren’t a thing. The thought just makes me want to write a short SF story featuring a bull – Oh wait, I’ve done that with Cattle Futures, which Stupefying Stories will be publishing soon. I guess it will have to be a story featuring an animatronic bull… I know I’m talking nonsense but the poor guy just looked so lonely rolled in the corner of the dealer’s room like that.

I signed up for a “Beerklatch” with Gary K. Wolfe, which is a kind of informal roundtable with writers and editors. The ones held in the afternoon actually called “Literary Beers,” but I think Beerklatch has a much better ring. I was jazzed to let Mr. Wolfe know that I’m a fan of The CoodeStreet Podcast, which he hosts with Jonathan Strahan. Everyone at the table had something interesting to say, we talked about his American Library project, Neil Gaiman’s celebrity, and the state of the novella today.

I sat in on a talk by Sam Scheiner of the National Science Foundation titled All of Biology in One Hour or Less. He went over a kind of Grand Unified Theory of Biology, along with the major principles with the added ingredient of  “SFF Implications.” It was a fun talk and he nimbly handled all the questions the audience could throw at him.

“Why does life manage to persist?” 

                               -- biology’s core question.

One of his principles is that life requires a system to store, use and transmit info (for us it’s DNA). He noted that, yes, computers can be alive by this definition – although right now systems don’t self-replicate on their own, which is another way we define life.

He wound up with the deliciously contradictory set:

All living systems come from other living systems (SFF implication: make sure all life on a planet is related to each other in some way). And conversely, life originated from non-life. And from that a million stories were launched.

Red Bull, Marketing and the Future

Touchdown!

Like millions of others, I followed the Red Bull Stratos Jump story last week. I didn't actually watch it live as I was online with Cat Rambo taking one of her fabulous classes. I definitely logged some time on their site pursuing this story. First, I'm going to say, Wow! Awesome. That was truly a death defying jump and it was thrilling and beautiful to see him safe on the ground after spinning around like a rag doll up there in the stratosphere.

A jump from orbit, Star Trek Style

Baumgartner's jump feels like the stuff of science fiction and in many ways it is. Red Bull definitely has a knack for spectacle and an ear for story. I would have liked it better if they hadn't tried to coat the whole adventure with a veneer of science that is so thin as to be nonexistent.

Stop by Bad Astronomy and check out Phil Plait's great post where he clarifies some of the science claims around the Red Bull Stratos jump and also refutes the meme that an energy drink now has a better space program than our nation. Amy Shira Teitel over on The Crux has some excellent thoughts about the hoopla around Baumgartner's jump along with some background about Joseph Kittinger's high altitude jumps in 1959 and 1960.

 "The Air Force needed a way to stabilize a pilot from a high altitude ejection, and Francis F. Beaupre had a sequential parachute that would do just that. Kittinger jumped from 102,800 feet in 1960 as part of Project Excelsior to prove that Beaupre’s parachute would work. It did, the Air Force had data and a healthy Kittinger as evidence, and the project ended. There was no live video of his jump. He was a Captain in the Air Force, and he jumped from 102,800 feet for Captain’s pay to complete a mission."  ~Amy Shira Teitel

Even though the Air Force and NASA aren't going anywhere, the jump, with it's pretenses to scientific and engineering advances reinforces the idea (delightful to some unnerving to others) that space exploration will now simply be handed over to corporations. Of course it's a little more nuanced than that. Several corporations are already collaborating with NASA to take the next steps into space, and I think that's a great thing. They're just not Red Bull. Red Bull isn't interested in space or even in high altitude ejection safety. Red Bull is interested in selling little cans of energy drink.

Of course science fiction has been imagining corporatist futures since, well, the beginnings of science fiction. The man v. society-as-megacorporation has been meat and potatoes for the genre for many years from Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books, to Dune, to one of my personal favorites Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. Just about everybody's written something with an evil corporation: Gibson, Niven, Dick...James Cameron has made a career of it.

But it's not that Red Bull is a multi-billion dollar corporation that caught my eye. Their Stratos project did break new ground of course, and that ground was in marketing. Yahoo quoted @JMRooker's tweet: "Red Bull wins the internet for today." And it did. Within hours a Legos reenactment was posted, memes and Gifs proliferated like genetically modified crops. Janean Chun over at the Huffington Post says Red Bull Stratos May Change the Future of Marketing. Why buy commercial time when you can sell your product by making news.

"How do you cut through the clutter and do something unique? See your brand as a story. Go big, take risks. Your brand could be on the front page of global media if you do something unusual." ~Ben Sturner

How we consume media is changing by the minute and how products are advertised must change or their companies will relegated to the dust bin of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It's a sea change, and what's fascinating and a more than a little unnerving is this idea of big marketing stunts where the humans involved are simply a cog in the marketing machine. Sometimes the line between product and marketing gets a little fuzzy where the spectacle serves as a feedback loop for generating the income to undertake a big project. Like Mars One. 

Astronaut, colonist,  marketing tool or all of the above?

According to their website they will:

... take humanity to Mars in 2023, to establish the foundation of a permanent settlement from which we will prosper, learn, and grow. 

They will achieve this partly by making the whole endeavor a reality show. According to Wikipedia the show will involve astronaut selection by the public (audience) American Idol style and continue to follow the colonists' first years living on mars. Brilliant marketing plan or grim corporatist future? How much reality to you want in your fiction? 

Of course if it's going to play on the internet there will have to be cats.

Listening to Stories

I listen to about as much material as I read if not more. With two kids and their lessons, a part-time job and a dog to walk, it's the only way I stay current at all.

Listening is different from reading with your eyeballs. But once you adjust to the aural attentiveness required to take in a spoken word piece its delightful to knit or scrub or walk while someone reaches across time and space to tell you a story.

With audio there are three people involved, you the writer and the reader. I great reader can really add dimension to whatever you are listening to, and a not so great reader can make a difficult slog of a great story. It's the price you pay for the extra company.

It feels both modern - with the technology that makes audio books and podcasting so accessible - and primal to listen to a story. Put in your earbuds and join those long gone people who sat around the fire listening to the Illiad, Gilgamesh and Beowulf (all of which you can get as audiobooks by the way).

Mostly, I get audiobooks from the library and load them onto my iPod, but my queue of novels and nonfiction is getting dusty since I discovered so many great podcasts this year. Turns out the Pod-o-sphere is chock full of fantastic genre stories, news and chat. To write great short stories you have to read lots of them. Thanks to these podcasts I've listened to more stories, and to a broader range of stories within the genre, than I could have possibly read this year.

Here's what I've been listening to. It's by no means a comprehensive list, but I still say it's awesome. It's made cleaning the house, running errands and walking the dog immeasurably more pleasant.

STORIES

Podcastle

All kinds of fantasy stories from swords and socerey to slipstream.

Escape Pod

Great science fiction stories in all styles from new and established authors in the field.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

This one specializes in literary adventure fantasy that takes place on secondary worlds.

Clarkesworld

This online magazine has won the Hugo for best semipro magazine two years running. The stories are fantastic and varied. The first thing I did when I got my Kindle for Christmas was subscribe to this and to Lightspeed Magazine.

Lightspeed

A John Joseph Adams joint this magazine and podcast is combining with its sister magazine Fantasy for double the podcasts and stories.

NEWS & CHAT

SFSignal

Both the website and this podcast are a great source of news about goings on in the genre.

Coode Street Podcast

I really enjoy hearing these two friends chatting about all things science fiction and fantasy. Both Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Woolfe are award-winning anthologists and editors.

SCIENCE

(File under inspiration. keeping the "science" in science fiction.)

Groks Science Radio Show

The production values are low but the two hosts are great interviewers and often have some big names in science on their show to discuss current science topics.


ON WRITING

Odyssey

Samples of lectures from the Odyssey Writer's Workshop. They don't post very often, but I've listened through their entire catalog and there's a lot of great writing and genre advice. If you can't afford six weeks to attend this workshop, check out their podcast.

Writing Excuses

Fun and chatty with good advice too. Gotta love their motto: "Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart."

I Should Be Writing

Another great genre focused podcast. Advice and interviews mixed with writerly commiseration.

So that's what's keeping my ears happy right now. I know there's lots more out there. Tell me about your favorites in the comments and I'll add them on. Enjoy!