Aliette de Bodard » anticipation

Worldcon Report on Elbakin.net

aliette — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 10:43:44 +0000

For any French-speakers who might happen to be around…

My report on the Worldcon in French is up on Elbakin:

Reportage au coeur de la World Con avec Aliette de Bodard

Again, thanks to the staff for the opportunity–especially to Emmanuel Chastellière for the time and patience.

Worldcon report: day 6, wrap-up

aliette — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:25:50 +0000

Table of contents for Worldcon 2009 Report

Monday
Well, this one is going to be short, since it was only half a day of con. I started off by getting up for a 8:30 breakfast with Sheila Williams (unfortunately, this was the only time where our schedules were empty). Ouch. Rolling out of bed when the alarm clock sounded was extra-hard.

Breakfast was great, though. The Holiday Inn was on the border between the convention centre and Chinatown, which meant it looked like a big pagoda, and the breakfast room looked like a Chinese garden (a bit tacky, but awesome). Sheila Williams was very nice, and had tons of interesting anecdotes (and we even got to mentioning friend and frequent contributor to Asimov’s Sara Genge, which was a surreal moment).
I was again sorry to have to scarper off for a panel, although it seems to be a common theme of my worldcon. The panel was my last French one, and was supposed to be about outlets abroad for writers of French fiction (something for which I was singurlarly unqualified, since I’ve never written anything in French). We had barely more audience members than panelists (seemed to be the theme of the worldcon), and one of the panelists didn’t turn up, leaving translator Lionel Davoust to change gears and become part of the panel. The other two were the editor of Galaxies (whose name I unfortunately can’t remember) and Joël Champetier, editor of Solaris, a big French and French-Canadian magazine respectively. They had an interesting discussion on the logistics of publishing a magazine, finding authors, and finding translations; I wisely shut up, sat and listened.
And then, unfortunately, it was time to leave: we checked out of the hotel and moved to another smaller hotel a little further away (the Delta is nice, but not affordable outside of con rates), where we started doing all the tourist stuff
Well, ok. I started by sleeping for 4 hours, but that’s the idea….
That’s all, folks.
(on a sidenote, please remind me not to start doing detailed, day-by-day con reports in the middle of a holiday where I have limited internet access…)

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Worldcon report: day 5

aliette — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:56:11 +0000

Table of contents for Worldcon 2009 Report

Sunday
Ah, Sunday. Aka the big day, and not only because of the Hugos, but also because this particular day had me programmed on 2 panels, a reading, and a Hugo rehearsal–in addition to the pre-Hugos reception, the Hugos and the Hugo Losers party.

Eek, as they say. I started out by having a somewhat unexpected breakfast with Elizabeth Bear and two of her friends, in the park next to the con centre–being regaled with fun anecdotes about awards ceremonies and other writers. It was almost a disappointment to have to leave for my first panel of the day.

This one involved my showing a powerpoint to supplement Alter Reiss’s display of pottery shards (another case of “I don’t really know much about this but have to come up with something”). It went over–reasonably well, given the circumstances, I suppose. It did remind me of why I love archaelogy, and Alter was full of insights: the amount of stuff you can learn from a small shard is truly fascinating.

The next panel was on Writing in the Language of Others, and in French, which meant a total attendance close to the number of panelists–though M.D Benoit, Claude Lalumière and I had a brief talk on bilinguism before deciding to break up out of a common agreement, Claude having tons of things to do in preparation for the Hugo ceremony.

Traci, Matthieu and I then decided to go for a big lunch in a Turkish restaurant–awesome meat skewers, pitta and saffron rice–before heading back up for the rehearsals. The rehearsal itself mostly consisted of my being shown where to climb in the event of a win, and where to exit without falling over. I did get to hold a Hugo made out of a Pepsi bottle, which was hands-down the funniest moment of the afternoon.

It took more time than I’d have thought, leaving me little pause before my reading. This was another first exercise for me, and the con had very nicely given me a whole 25 minutes to enthral the crowd–shared with previous Campbell nominees David D. Levine and Karin Lowachee. I’d done a couple of test runs, read Mary Robinette Kowal’s awesome advice on the matter, and come to the conclusion that, making allowances for an enforced slow reading speed, 25 minutes should run to about 5000-5500 words.

I had no story within that range, and it did seem a little premature to read from the novel at this stage, so I just went for “Blighted Heart”, my Aztec-y zombie story published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. (I hesitated over whether to read “Golden Lilies”, but decided that, given the high unease content of that one, I’d end up making half the audience run away).

OK, for a first time, it went well. I lost count of the horrible mistakes I was making when reading (including a rather embarrassing closing-up of my throat one sentence from the end), but I just plodded on, and dearly hoped it was still understandable in spite of my mangling. Good thing David had gone out for drinking glasses to go with the water they’d provided us, or I’d never have made it to the end. It came to 15 minutes; I had this feeling that I was going very slowly, but I suspect it was completely deceptive and that I was actually plowing through the text.

(also, I want to read Karin’s novel Gaslight Dogs, which sounds like awesome fun)

Me at my reading (courtesy of T.L. Morganfield)

After the reading was over, it was back to the hotel, to help Jenny change into party clothes, and then changing into our own clothes. We took pictures of Sandra and Howard Tayler in their evening dress, and bribed them to do the same.

Our pretty attire

Hugo reception went well, even though I was completely frazzled by then and mostly going on automatic (I think I managed to speak to Ann Vandermeer for a good ten minutes and never realise who she was, and I’m pretty sure I did the same thing two or three times to different people in the two hours of the reception).

2009 Campbell nominees: Gord Sellar, Aliette de Bodard, Tony Pi, Felix Gilman, David Anthony Durham

Previous and current Campbell nominees/winners: Jay Lake, Gord Sellar, John Scalzi, Aliette de Bodard, Cory Doctorow, Mary Robinette Kowal, David Anthony Durham, Felix Gilman, Tony Pi

Hugos themselves–well, again, good thing they started with the Campbell, since I can’t imagine what it must have been like for the poor novel nominees, who had to wait during the whole evening to know whether they’d won. I’ve mostly gone over that ceremony in another post, so I’m not going to repeat stuff.

The post-Hugos is also mostly a blur–I never realised how tense I was until the tension went away (you’d think it was when David Anthony Durham was announced as the Campbell Winner, but in reality the tension didn’t go away until Weird Tales won for best semiprozine, thus freeing me of my role as Hugo acceptor for Interzone). The whole fatigue of the con came crashing in, in one big ugly blow, and only got worse as the evening went by: I did my best to stay awake, but around midnight I had to call it quits and head back to the room for some sleep. It’s a pity, because there were lots of people milling around; and it was a way more relaxed environment than the party rooms for chatting.

Group pic at the Hugo Losers Party: Chris Kastensmidt, Tony Pi, Traci Morganfield, Aliette de Bodard and Matthieu Larque

Ah well. Another time (when someone I know is nominated for a Hugo and I can insert myself )

Next and final episode: the day after.

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Worldcon report: day 4

aliette — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:45:45 +0000

Table of contents for Worldcon 2009 Report

Saturday

I couldn’t make it to the Codexian breakfast Saturday morning because I had an early panel about medieval technology. I had expected it to be sparsely populated like my previous panels–however, no such luck, as I found when arriving that the room was packed…
After a brief introduction, the moderator suggested that my co-panelist (Phil Nanson, an expert in medieval weaponry) and I each started out by giving a 20-minute talk on the subject, and follow up with questions.

Arg.

You see, I can give a 20-minute talk on a subject I reasonably master, but the key word is “preparation”. While I had scribbled down many notes on the subject, the notes had been planned for a discussion: i.e., in a certain degree of disorder and without any unifying thread.
I think that’s what my speech ended up looking like, too…

Nevertheless, once the audience started asking questions, it went a little better–we even convinced Kari Sperring to climb up there with us and explain medieval mills, which was awesome.

One key lesson of this panel was that I’ll be wary of stuff like this next time: I’m a writer, and my job is to know enough about a time period to fake it in a book; there were plenty of people in the audience who hold PhDs in archaeology or history, and/or have an abiding interest in the subject–and I think they would have looked much better on subjects like this than I did.

I did a quick run-in in the Dealers’ room, where I found two of my fellow Campbell nominees signing their books: Felix Gilman and David Anthony Durham, sitting side by side, which made for a neat opportunity to talk to both of them

Then I had a quick and delightful interview with Carol Ann Moleti, and went on to my noon kaffeelklatch. I had no high hopes of attendance either, and was hoping for an early lunch if no one showed up. But Pat Lundrigan and stevndj had very kindly signed up, and we had a cool conversation about Heinlein and favourite SF for an hour (by far the least populated kaffeelklatch in the room, but it was a lot of fun).

T.L.Morganfield was signing at the SFWA table, so I used that opportunity to get autographs on my copy of Paradox and Shock Totem, and we headed down to grab some lunch in the Chinese district. There was this awesome place which did handmade noodles–mmmm…. Delicious. I so wish we had that in Paris.

My next panel wasn’t until 5pm, so I spent more time in the Dealers’ Room–where Tony Pi notified me that all the Campbell nominees were going to have a fight to work out who the winner was going to be. I then made a rather bad calculation mistake, and agreed to a 7pm meeting–when my 5pm panel ended at 6:30, and I was supposed to grab the LH crowd for dinner right afterwards. Of course, I didn’t realise this until long after Tony was gone…

The 5pm panel was about Researching Your World, and there were 5 of us on it, which was where I discovered one of the difficulties about panels no one had told me: getting the floor when you’re shy and when four other people also want the floor… Upshot is, I listened a lot until SM Stirling left at 6pm–with only four panelists, it made it a little easier to insert myself into the conversation. It was a very interesting panel, with a lot of different points of view on the subject; and perhaps next time I’ll work out something for putting in my bit without feeling like I’m interrupting someone and being terribly impolite…

My schedule from 6:30pm looked something like this:

6:30pm: Pick up the LH people (Rod Santos, Tom Crosshill, Michele and Miguel Marques, TL Morganfield), flounder about for a while looking for a decent restaurant, and finally settle in a nearby hotel bar
7:15pm: leave the LH people as they were ordering dinner, run to the hotel bar where the Campbell showdown was supposed to take place
7:20pm: arrive at hotel bar, find Tony Pi and Pat Lundrigan having a drink–and no trace of the nefarious Gord Sellar, instigator of the showdown
7:20-7:30pm: watch Tony make numerous fruitless attempts to get hold of Gord, cave in and order some food
7:30pm: give up and settle at a table with Jetse de Vries, Sean McMullen (my TOC-mate in Interzone 222), Daryl Gregory, Tim Akers and Mercurio Rivera
8:00pm: Gord finally shows up, is suitably chastised. No other nominees are in sight, sadly, so we end up having a 3-way paper airplane contest–which Gord wins hands-down (and which finally convinces the staff of the bar that all writers are insane). That takes care of the short fiction portion of the Campbell–now to find the other two novelists…
9:00pm: rejoin the LHers for the Masquerade–and then climb up to the 7th floor to watch the fireworks

The LH posse at the restaurant (minus me who had absconded, and Matthieu who was taking the picture)

The LH posse at the fireworks(minus I, who was taking the picture, and Rod Santos)

Fireworks!

Other than losing Rod Santos at some point in the proceedings, I finally did get to spend the evening with the LHers, which was great. It was pretty relaxing, too, for a change: no background noise, a superb backdrop in the shape of very neat fireworks, and plenty of time for conversation.
We headed back to the hotel around midnight, and decided against the parties–mostly because the following day was the Hugos.
Next episode: pottery. Reading. The Hugos!

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Worldcon report: day 3

aliette — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 12:04:19 +0000

Table of contents for Worldcon 2009 Report

Friday
Friday morning started out with a lovely Codexian breakfast in local diner Eggspectation.

Elaine Isaak, Pat Lundrigan and Matthew S Rotundo

Fellow Campbell Nominee Tony Pi, and Tom Crosshill

Howard Tayler, cartoonist (Schlock Mercenary), and wife Sandra Tayler

Traci Morganfield, Eric James Stone
The food was, er, extreme–especially in quantities (I still have trouble getting used to the servings in North America). But it was very nice to talk with everyone, and to finally put faces on names.

I had my signing in the morning–which, as expected, wasn’t the most crowded place around. Thankfully, the supporting posse included T.L. Morganfield, Chris Kastensmidt (whose red-eye from Brazil had arrived in the morning), Elizabeth Bear (complete with life-saving jug of water), and Tony Pi.

Me, Tony and Chris (picture taken by Traci)

We headed out with Chris and Traci to get some lunch, and catch up on news (for someone who hadn’t slept a lot on the trip in, Chris was remarkably alert. Clearly, having a six-month-old in the house increases your resistance).

Then I plunged into my first French panel, on colonial/post-colonial SF. Ah, well. As I was soon to discover, most French panels were under-attended, and it was a miracle to have one in which the panelists didn’t outnumber the audience. (it makes sense, when you think about it. Most French people who’ve made the trip to a Worldcon can understand English, and would rather check out the English authors they don’t have a chance to hear at their local cons; and the same goes for French Canadians). But still, it was pretty dismal to be 4 panelists and one translator to 3 members of the audience…

Still, we did have a pretty interesting discussion, so all wasn’t lost. But it didn’t bode well for my other two French panels…

In the evening, we accompanied Traci to the Sidewise Awards, for which her short story “Night Bird Soaring” was a finalist. Sadly, she didn’t win, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until she does (her One World stories are all neat alt-hist, and I’m glad they got some recognition this way).

Party time: the Angry Robot launch party had already started by the time we dropped in, but it looked like tremendous fun (and it did have Jetse de Vries as organiser, which insured the quality of the stuff to drink). They also had one of the coolest things ever: a real, bona fide robot who served as a doorkeeper.

Colin Harvey, Traci and the Angry Robot

The robot hitting on me

(Matthieu and I spent a lot of time trying to work out how they were operating the robot. You know how it goes: give a bone to two engineers…)

There was champagne (and some non-alcoholic beverages for the teatotalers like me), lots of nifty books aligned on the tables, and I had a lovely time meeting fellow AR authors Lauren Beukes and Kaaron Warren (as well as chatting with AR crew Lee Harris and Marc Gascoigne).

Unfortunately, Friday was the day on which all the neat parties were aligned, so we had to leave in order to pop into Bragelonne Party (for the unfamiliar, Bragelonne is one of the biggest genre publishers in France). It had by far the best food of the whole parties (trust the French for that ), and lots of lovely artwork from their novels on the walls.

Party #3 was the Asimov’s/Analog dessert, which was held in the SFWA suite, and which had an impressive crowd of pros in attendance. I finally found Jay Lake and got my Campbell nominee pin:

My nifty Campbell nominee pin, in the shape of a propeller (on to great things!).

It would have been a great party–save that we’d been there less than 30 minutes when we got busted by hotel security: apparently, we were having a party that was not on the designated floor (“party”, in this case, meant more than 5 people, a rather extreme view on things), and we were going to be forcibly evacuated…
Confusion ensured as they stuffed people into lifts, trying to get everyone to the 28th floor (official party floors were the 5th and 28th).
We’d had enough of crowds by then (and my brain was starting to fry), and decided to pop into the bar for a while. As the lifts were completely clogged, it turned out that we were stuck in the bar for a while… (there have been far worse fates. We had lots of drinks).
We sat with the Viable Paradise crowd, courtesy of Chris (and saw Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi arm wrestle it out for the Hugo. Cory won).
[it later turned out that local TV had run a feature on the con, and had ended it with something that basically went "there's Neil Gaiman, and parties with free booze in the Delta"--apparently started a mass migration of interested people to the hotel, which understandably panicked...]

And then it was time for bed. Which was actually far easier than going to a party: the hotel had started to form a queue for the party floors, which was stretching into the lobby and generally looking very discouraging.

Next episode: Medieval Technology. Secret Campbell initiation. Fireworks!

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Worldcon report, day 2

aliette — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 01:42:22 +0000

Table of contents for Worldcon 2009 Report

Thursday
So, Thursday morning started out pretty low-key: we had breakfast at Muffin Plus, a lovely café that does tons of differently-flavoured muffins (and they had plenty of kinds of tea, too). Then we followed on to a second breakfast with fellow Codexian Jenny Rappaport (as in, an extra set of drinks, not a second helping of muffins. That would have been bad). We also met fellow Codexian Matt Rotundo in the lobby, where he was checking in.
Traci and I went looking for a fleece in downtown Montreal, and scouted out the important places (ie, the Indigo bookstore, for future use).

Then it was time to show up at the con. I checked in at Ops, and picked up my programme package, which included a Hugo Nominee ribbon and pin (apparently, there was a little bit of a miscommunication: I later discovered that Campbell nominees were supposed to have a special ribbon and a special pin–being totally ignorant, I went around the con for the following four hours proudly wearing my rocket ship pinned to my badge. I’m viewing this as a chance to feel all important and powerful )
The rocket pin did get me grabbed by John Scalzi as I entered the Dealers’ Room, though, and I’m glad I met him and his wife (he’s awesome fun).

I just had one panel in the afternoon, a Writing 101 for teenagers. I’d been listed as moderator, but things got reshuffled a bit, and I’m very glad Derek Kunsken (whom I later identified as the author of the excellent “Beneath Sunlit Shallows” in Asimov’s, one of the most impressive stories I’d read there in 2008) stepped up to the plate and did an impressive job of running the entire workshop.

Afternoon was then followed by some hanging-out at the SFWA table in the Dealers’ Room (including grabbing fellow Angry Robot Author Colin Harvey for a drink), and some book-checking-out.

We had dinner in a lovely Thai/Vietnamese restaurant with Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Lucas Moreno (editor of French SF podcast Utopod), his wife Stephanie, and Lionel Davoust (whom Delia is publishing in Interfictions 2). Along the way, I also ran into Sheila Williams (who was having dinner at the same restaurant, and whom Ellen Kushner introduced me to).

Afterwards, it was party time. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, never having been at a worldcon: all I know is that we hit the SFWA suite, talked a bit with Lawrence M Schoen, Laura Anne Gilman and a few other SFWAns, and that John A. Pitts then disclosed to us the location of the Tor party, somewhere on the 28th floor.
Which turned out to be not only the party to be seen at, but also one of the most crowded events I’d ever been at (I didn’t yet know about Friday’s parties), in a narrow suite reconverted into a party room: stifling, noisy and generally overcrowded.

Fun fact #N: you might have heard of the cocktail party effect, which is essentially your ability to filter background noise to focus on the conversation you’re having. Well, guess what? I’ve never managed to get it to work in English. I can’t filter out background conversations, probably because I was formatted to try and understand everything as a student. It makes parties like this a little extra difficult…
But I still managed to bluff my way through the evening, getting introduced to a couple more people on the way (John Joseph Adams, Rob, Sandra and Howard Tayler). Around midnight, my ears and internal body clock both collapsed, and I decided to beat a prudent retreat back to my hotel room.
That’s all for today. Coming up next: my first French panel, the robot, and the Big Bust (and there will be pictures this time).

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Worldcon report: day 1

aliette — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 03:19:37 +0000

Table of contents for Worldcon 2009 Report

So, a little bit more in the way of actual con reporting…
(usual disclaimer applies: I have a bad memory, and it was a really busy con, so there’s probably going to be holes…)

Wednesday:
The day started pretty early on Wednesday for me and Matthieu, since the plane was leaving at 11:00 (wakeup time: 6:00am). We’d packed ahead of time: the only pause in that came when we’d finished piling up Matthieu’s suit and my evening dress, and realised no space was left in the suitcase. Ie, no space for books..
Eek. A quick re-arrangement of containers followed, in order to make sure that we’d have at least some extra space available.

Flight was pretty uneventful. Matthieu watched Wolverine; I just played Chrono Trigger (I meant to watch Wolverine as well, but every time I turned to Matthieu’s screen, I saw either a fight or an explosion, which made me doubt the movie actually had a plot). We arrived in Canada on time, zipped past immigration, and checked into the hotel.

Whereupon they gave us all three keys to the room–a tad problematic, as fellow roommate T.L. Morganfield wasn’t due to arrive for another couple of hours: we’d have to make sure we were around when she did, or she’d just find herself locked out of the room…

Being adventurous, we still decided to go for a walk in Old Montreal, doing some sightseeing and questing for some food. Had my first bagel, an eye-opening experience (I’m now addicted to the things); also ran into my first couple of people I couldn’t understand despite my absolute certainty they spoke French. (the French-Canadian accent can be pretty terrible when you’re jet-lagged).

We made it back to the hotel and settled back to wait for T.L. Morganfield–when I spotted the inimitable Jetse de Vries through the glass separating us from the bar. We swung by to say hello, and ended up sitting in the bar with him and his friends (Lou Anders, Jonathan Strahan, Ellen Klages and Roni Graff) for a couple more hours…

T.L. Morganfield‘s plane was actually running late (and she’d been detained through customs for importing SF magazines, apparently a hanging offence in those parts of Canada). When she arrived, it was several hours later (and several beers later for pretty much everyone around the table, save me and Matthieu). We checked her in, and then went out to find some food.

Said food ended up being Indian, though it was very much milder than any Indian food I’ve ever eaten. It was also twice as much food as we really needed; pity we didn’t actually have a fridge, or we’d have been seriously tempted to take it back with us…

Walked back to the hotel, and jetlag hit rather nastily. We were in bed by nine, and slept until 7 or 8 the following morning.

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