The future of hard science fiction

Conventional wisdom in publishing today (numbers being awfully hard to argue with) is that the day of hard sf is gone, the readers now desiring mostly fantasy and vampire fiction. However, if the hard sf panels at Readercon on the last day of the convention are anything to judge by, there's still a lively and dauntingly well-informed readership for real science fiction. Carl Frederick's lecture on what's new in physics was packed, and then the two hard sf panels I was privileged to be part of were also well attended and vibrant with interest, questions, and a lot of answers. I confess, some of it goes over my head. But I loved it just the same.Especially fun was the listing of hard sciences we don't always see in sf--although there were some entertaining examples of things like mineralogy and climatology. My own offering, of course, was musicology, and there seems to be lots of science to support that addition. I was on these panels, so I couldn't take notes for the Bloglet, which is kind of a shame. The information flowed so fast I could barely keep up. I came home fired up to write what I love, and not worry too much about where the audience is!Readercon, in short, is added to the Don't Miss list for science fiction conventions, along with Potlatch, World Fantasy, and Armadillocon.

Readercon panel report

POLITICAL BELIEFS AND FICTION! Wonderful topic. Karen Joy Fowler, Paolo Bacigalupi, David Edelman, John Kessel, James Morrow, Lucius Shepard. Aside from the luminary names on the panel, it was a stimulating discussion. Fowler was slightly apologetic about the lack of political content in THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB, and said that she feels part of the book's success (having come out post-9/11) was because of that lack. Paolo mentioned his story "Small Offerings", one of the stories in FUTURESHOCKS that I particularly liked, which is about genetic disasters caused by pollution. John Kessel mentioned his story "A Clean Escape", which was written as a critique of the Reagan administration, and has been adapted for TV (ABC, 8/4/07) to take on the Bush administration with almost no changes.(I wish they had all read my own story, from FAST FORWARD, "Absalom's Mother", my anti-draft piece.)Audience question: can a novel succeed both as a political statement and a work of art? Answer of the panel: it must.Morrow's question: why are we not out in the streets protesting the rape of our constitution? My personal answer (kept private) is that I have been, of course, for all the good it may or may not have done.Morrow again: Great irony in what is essentially a theocratic administration, the Bush White House, trying and hoping to establish a secular government in Iraq.This was a hot panel, and I loved it.THE MEGAVERSE, THE LANDSCAPE, AND THE ANTHROPIC AND HOLOGRAPHIC PRINCIPLES. Carl Frederick, physicist.Whew. This was so dense and full of information that a good half of it just went over my head. I did learn, though, what the megaverse and those other words are, inasmuch as I was capable of understanding it. I loved hearing a physicist call string theory "lunatic", and I liked getting a handle on the idea of "pocket universes", which has to do with Gooth's (sp?) idea that different cosmological constants will exist in different universes inside the megaverse. The cosmological constant, as I understand it, is identified with the energy fluctuation int he vacuum. Without it, we won't have a universe. The anthropic principle (the idea that the universe is the very best it can possibly be, an idea propounded by creationists) says that the tiniest change in the cosmological constant would cause our universe to fail, and us not to exist. The extrapolation, by creationists, would be that the universe was created with us, human beings, in mind. Very controversial idea. It was also interesting to hear Dr. Frederick give the ages of the great physicists of the day, because it is evidently no longer the case that they're all very young.PROMISCUOUS THEORY OF STORY STRUCTURE: John Clute, John Crowley, James Morrow, and Erik Van.I couldn't possibly summarize. You had to be there!

It's all about books

Wow, these people read BOOKS. I knew I was at a different sort of con (my favorite type) when I saw that the sign outside the room we usually refer to as the Dealers' Room actually reads "Bookshop". There are so many booksellers in that room, and so very many books, it's almost overwhelming.The attendees at this convention read like a Who's Who of speculative fiction. Paul Park, Karen Joy Fowler, James Morrow, John Crowley, and on and on and on. But the most fascinating thing is that, in discussions, no one gets a free pass. Names don't matter. Ideas do.I was on a panel called "The Singularity Needs Women", with James Morrow, Kathryn Cramer, Victoria McManus, and Elizabeth Bear. Discussion ranged from gender blurring to whether or not we would want bodies after the Singularity, and simply exist in cyberspace, and somehow, strange as it sounds, it all made sense. SF struggles these days, of course, to be weird enough to even quality as speculative. It may be one reason some of us have turned to an internal rather than an external landscape.Cool, isn't it?

Report from Readercon

I'm in Burlington, Mass., for my first Readercon, which began last night with a bang--a panel which was more of a free-for-all discussion about what books have made the deepest impression on these passionate readers. It went on for an hour and a half, and was still in full swing when I (after traveling across the country) gave up and went to bed. The list includes the great science fiction and fantasy books we all have either devoured or meant to devour, and the authors read like a list of superstars: Crowley, Wolfe, Delaney, Wilhelm, and so forth. Interestingly, the list didn't include any recent books. It tended to be classics, like A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ, one of my own all-time favorites. Conclusion: Readercon is just as advertised, a convening of people, both writers and readers, who are devoted to science fiction as a field of literature. This should be a joy. More later.