Fencon: Gregory Benford on problems facing the world

Finally, a last post from this year's Fencon.

Science fiction writer and physics professor Gregory Benford was the Guest of Honor at Fencon 2008. In his GOH speech he shared his thoughts on topics such as American dominance in the world and its role to play in the technological future. Having been in science fiction fandom for four decades, Benford is proud of American science fiction and fandom influence on the world, which he puts in such blunt terms as "We own the future". At the same time he acknowledges that the future is not all rosy, and that science fiction may be the proverbial canary in the coal mine, signaling of darker times to come. The fact that fantasy genre outsells science outsells science fiction by an order of magnitude is another sign of trouble, says Benford, because, in his opinion, all fantasy is dark.

Benford's keynote speech on Saturday was the problems facing the world and what can be done about them. Of those, global climate change was the most significant issue. He assured us that whatever is being done to counter it isn't working, because global warming is typically viewed as a moral problem (excessive consumption), when it needs to be seen as an engineering problem. To that end he proposed an unconventional -- or perhaps little known -- approach. At the end of his speech he spent some time on space travel and overpopulation.

The whole article can be found on my web site.

Fencon: Science -- fact or crap?

"Science -- fact or crap?" was a game played by a team of pros against a team of fans... I think. The most prominent pro on the team was Gregory Benford, a physics professor, science fiction writer, and Fencon guest of honor. The purpose of the game was to score points by answering science-related questions. Each question had two parts: a fact-or-crap, i.e. yes-or-no part (but you could not answer "no", you had to say "crap"! :-)), and a follow up freeform" question. The questions drew from many different sciences: anatomy, anthropology, archeology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, physics.

Tim Morgan, dressed as a cartoonish scientist in a lab coat, a propeller hat, goggles and rubber gloves, conducted the game. Team members had to share some of the same humiliation by donning rubber gloves and goggles. In addition they were given very cool plastic hand-shaped rattlers, so as to announce their readiness to answer a question.

Examples of questions

Here are the examples of questions. Most of them were not very hard.

A cow's second stomach chamber is called the reticulum. Fact or crap? (Fact.)

A cow has how many stomachs? Four. Can you name them? Nobody could.

Currently there are only 2 functioning human made satellites in orbit around Mars. Fact or crap? Crap. There are 3 of them.

Name the 3 functioning spacecraft orbiting Mars. Mars Oddyssey, Mars Express, and Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter.

A modern archeological project begins with 1 or more surveys. Fact or crap? (Fact.)

Name two types of archeological surveys. Aerial survey, geophysical survey, region survey.

Carbon dioxide will dissolve in water. Fact or crap? Fact. It's called soda.

The property of a substance to dissolve in water is called what? Solubility.

Climate is usually defined in terms of temperature and rainfall. Fact or crap? Fact.

Climate of a particular place is often summarized by an annual diagram called what? The climate graph.

Among the more difficult questions were "Calcium occurs most commonly in the sedimentary rocks. Name 1 of the 3 minerals that contain calcium." It was answered correctly by Gregory Benford: carbonate. Or: "A hydrate is a crystal that has water molecules trapped inside: fact or crap? (Fact.) Heating hydrates will drive the water out of crystals. It's called what?" Benford tried "water sublimation". Tim Morgan said he had "water crytallization", but deferred to Benford since he has a PhD. Actually, a quick look at Wikipedia does not give me a definite answer one way or the other.

Funny questions

Not all questions were dull and geeky. :-) Tim made sure to put some funny questions into the mix. Some of them were funny mostly because the people were so confident in their knowledge that they did not even wait for Tim to finish the question before jumping in with an answer. This lead to some moments of hilarity.

"The supercontinent that existed before the continents separated into their current configuration was called..." People started waving their rattlers hands without waiting to hear the end. "You're sure you want to answer before you heard the question?" Tim asked. "OK, go ahead." Fact! yelled one person. Crap! answered Tim. It's not Sangria. It's Pangaea.

"Fact or crap?" was the one and only science track event I attended at Fencon 2008. Yay to Fencon for having a science track. Maybe next year, if hotel fairies grant me some sleep, I'll be able to stay till the end and attend more of them.

Pictures from this game and from the rest of Fencon are available in my photo gallery.

Throughout Fencon Gregory Benford shared his thoughts on such topics as American dominance in the world and its role to play in the technological future, and how geoengineering can save the Earth's climate. Read more about it on my web site.

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Fencon: costumers

The Unseelie Court. More pictures of Fencon 2008 costumes can be found in my photo gallery.

The queen and king of the Unseelie Court. More pictures of Fencon 2008 costumes can be found in my photo gallery.

While I did not stay for the Fencon masquerade, I got to see some of the spectacular costumes on the Catwalk. It was a pre-masquarade event where the costumers discussed their creations with those who wanted to know the what, why and how behind a costume.

The Unseelie court were truly stunning. The level of detail in those costumes was jawdropping. But these people are not amateurs. The queen and the king of the Unseelie court are professional performers who appear in Renaissance faires and other such events where elaborately costumed persons are desired. At the Catwalk they told us more about what it takes to produce such a spectacular costume. One by one, starting with the queen, the costumers climbed on a chair and showed off their creations. The queen asked the audience to take a guess at how much just the fabric of her costume costs. To spare you the guessing, it was a jaw-dropping 800 dollars. And if you wanted her to make you a dress of that level of complexity, it would add up to ~ $1500, the other half of the sum being labor. Sooo, she pointed out, those of you who are dreaming to quit your boring job, take heart: it is possible to make a living off costuming, if that happens to be your hobby.

The Unseelies are "not the good guys", as the queen said; accordingly, their court contains an assortment of assassins, including Rose, or this young girl, whose tender age causes people to underestimate her, making her job as an assassin easier. They also contain mischief-makers, such as this Spriggin (behind Rose in the picture. Click on the image to see a bigger version). One of her contacts is opaque, causing her to see out of one eye only. During long appearances at Ren Faires she has to occasionally switch the opaque contact to the other eye, or it becomes too uncomfortable.

Rose, an assassin from the Unseelie Court	A teenage assassin from the Unseelie Court

This gargoyle was also part of the court, though I would have sworn gargoyles are of French, not Celtic, origin. :-) As one may note, this gargoyle did not have wings. His costume, like those of others, was incomplete when he showed it off on Catwalk. Yes, it's hard to believe that any of these splendid costumes was lacking something. But they were: I guess the costumers were saving the best for the Masquerade. The queen, for example, was only 2/3rds dressed! I can't imagine what else she was going to put on, or just as importantly, how was she able to walk under all that weight. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see the full costumes: one of the disadvantages of leaving early.

Dach the Barbarian Scottsman	Dach gives a demo on how to put on a kilt

A barbarian-Scottsman named Dach demonstrated the process of taking a kilt off and putting it on. Well, no, he did not remove his kilt completely. True to the tradition, he wore nothing underneath (or so he said. The audience was spared a demonstration ;-)) so he just showed us how to arrange the kilt fabric around the upper body. Like a sari, kilt is just another very long strip of fabric, hence takes some skill to turn it into a garment.

Not all the characters were Celtic or even European: an exception was Skinwalker, a Native American mythological figure with powers of shapeshifting. She seemed to be friendly with the Unseelie court; I guess they could always put her murderous powers to good use. This confirms that Columbus certainly wasn't the first European to discover America. :-)

The last people on the Catwalk were these Klingon women, who I already met a year ago at ApolloCon 2007. Their tag line was "doncha wish your girlfriend was hot like us!" sung with a belligerent growl.

All these and more pictures of Fencon costumes are available in my photo gallery.

Fencon chatter

Just heard a knock-knock joke about Harlan Ellison in the Fencon Consuite. The joke was rather straightforward, hence not very funny. Also heard a story about Harlan Ellison taking part in a dating game (a reality show). The highlight: Harlan's answer about his ideal first date involved taking a woman to a dump and shooting rats' eyes out. The tape never aired (big surprise :-))

Here's a funny term I heard at Jay Lake's "Slush pile live" panel. Rejectomancy: trying to figure out from a rejection slip what the rejection meant. For example, if you get a rejection from Realms of Fantasy, it is simple. If you get a blue slip, it means the first reader rejected it witout passing it up. If you get a yellow slip, it means it was passed up to the editor and she rejected it without giving it much thought. If you get a letter of rejection, it means the editor considered it before rejecting. With most other magazines, it's not that clear.

In "Slush pile live" Jay Lake talked about the nuts and bolts of how short story anthologies are created. Some of the considerations that go into putting together an anthology are amusing. For one thing, the stories must be ordered in such a way that they would vary in length, so that the reader could read some 2000-word-long story as a breather between 5000-world-long stories. Among the less obvious considerations, story titles should not accidentally make up a bizarre poem in the table of contents. Also, the editor must take care to not put together stories in such a way that the beginning of one story ties into the end of the previous story in an unintentionally humorous way. As an example, he used the stories from the writers' workshop he taught at this convention. One of them ends with "He took a deep breath and rang the doorbell." There is another one that starts with "The house was awake." Imagine how weird it would look to the reader if story B immediately followed story A. Especially if the end of A and the beginning of B were on facing pages.

It's little moments like that that make conventions fun.

Some pictures from the writers' workshop and from Fencon in general can be found in my photo gallery.

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Fencon opening ceremonies: somber and cheeky

There was a rather striking fact mentioned by the woman who represented FenCon's charity for this year. It is Reading & Radio Resource: an organization that records audiobooks for the blind and for kids with learning disabilities. Many kids drop out of high school because of learning disabilities that make them unable to follow written text, and not because they are dumb. They never learn how to read, and end up at a much higher risk than average population to be unemployed and to turn to crime. Here is what she said: future prison capacity is planned based on the number of third-graders who can't read.

That was the somber part of the opening ceremonies. The rest was, of course, humorous. The two toastmasters, who shall be referred to as BD and DLA, paid homage to (read: shamelessly riffed about) a certain well-known writer who could not come to Fencon, as he's still recovering from heart surgery. To avoid search engines' prying eyes, the missing writer shall be referred to as So-And-So. :-)

BD was talking about So-And-So's works. Then he asked DLA: what's your favorite So-And-So's story? DLA answered: my favorite So-And-So's story is how cheap he is. With that response he set the theme for the opening ceremonies. BD and DLA traded a few embarrassing stories about the So-And-So. When So-And-So had heart surgery, it was discovered that he had a silent "coronary event" in the past -- a heart attack with no symptoms. When So-And-So was telling BD this, he added: "it probably happened during vigorous sex." BD responded: "yes, and since you were alone, nobody noticed". BD added: this was one of maybe two times in my life I made So-And-So laugh. He laughed so hard he probably busted a stitch! DLA responded: "and that was before his surgery. That's how cheap he is!"

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Fencon writers' workshop

It is amazing how people who write stories I can't relate to at all, also are able to give useful critique on my story, as different as it is from theirs. It makes me feel that much worse when the only critique I can give them is a polite version of "this story sounds like a recount of Dungeons & Dragons adventure. Could you put an original idea or two into it?" It's even worse when it turns out the majority of the group loved the story, and I'm the only one there who found it "bla". I still don't know how to critique a story not based on my personal taste, but looking at it through the eyes of potential audience. I.e. if it is a run-of-the-mill fantasy, how do I put myself in the shoes of an audience who can't get enough of run-of-the-mill fantasy, instead of counting its strict adherence to the genre against it?

Then again, I am capable of finding merits of stories in the genre I don't like, and having an interesting, complex character would be one of them. Such a story could potentially interest me despite being not my genre. However, just like there are people who read science fiction not for characters, but for the inner workings of the science-fictional world, there are probably people who read fantasy not for characters, but for the mechanics of the fantasy world. Those people would probably satisfied with a garden-variety fantasy plot. I just can't put myself in their shoes.

Some pictures from the writers' workshop and from Fencon in general can be found in my photo gallery.

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