The Eaton Conference: Day Three — Idea Overload B
(You can read about Day One and Day Two here and here.) Day Three The third day of the Conference (technically the second and last day of the event, which only ran from Friday to Saturday) proved to be both intellectually exciting and terrifying. We first attended a panel called “Neocolonialism, Global Capitalism, and Monstrous Subalterns,” which included a presentation by Steven Shaviro on hyperbolic futures and a paper on River of Gods and Cyberabad Days (both interesting books I think you folks would enjoy reading). After that, we attended a panel on Polish SF, which I have some familiarity with through an undergraduate cyberpunk course I took at UC Santa Cruz (we read Imaginary Magnitudes by Stanislaw Lem). Both panels were interesting, though I suspect their early placement and my pending presentation impacted my note taking, as most of my notes for these panels are quite empty (I did find them interesting, but I didn’t see a need to take too many notes). The third panel we attended was actually mine. Most of you know that I was pegged to present a paper on the work of Nalo Hopkinson and Tobias S. Buckell. Nalo was present for the presentation (there were two of us, since the third person apparently couldn’t make it), which was quite alarming, but was also expected (thank you Twitter!). I didn’t get as many questions as I had hoped, but so be it. The person who presented alongside me talked a great deal about the cultural elements of Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber, which didn’t figure as prominently in my discussion (I was largely focused on the broader picture and how that imagined outer space as liberative of the postcolonial condition). I took a lot of notes during the panel, which may prove useful when I put the next batch of changes into my Master’s thesis. This is Loopdilou’s WTF face… After that I had the pleasure of meeting Hopkinson (again) and having her sign my beat-up copy of Midnight Robber and the new one I bought specifically for her to sign. We had a nice, but brief discussion about her work, my paper, and Tobias S. Buckell. She told me that she was quite pleased that I was talking about Buckell’s work, since very few people are. That’s pretty much all the validation one needs, to be honest! Also, she is a coward. Following lunch, we attended the last panel of the day, which, oddly enough, happens to be a topic we intend to discuss on The Skiffy and Fanty Show. The panel was called “Religion, SF, and Otherness” and included a paper by one of the professors in the English department at UF (my reader for my thesis had to read the paper because she had an unexpected illness). Her paper discussed the Catholic legacies and allegories in Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow and The Children of God. The other paper was actually quite funny. The author discussed at length the problems of religious representation in SF film–specifically, the representation of non-Christian/Catholic religion. The shortened version of his paper would read: they don’t represent them very well at all! We ended up having a good discussion with him after and hope to bring him onto to the show alongside John Ottinger. The “WTF, I’m coming out the public bathroom, jerk!” pose. The final event was the keynote, Mike Davis, and a discussion panel including Nalo Hopkinson, Karen Tei Yamashita, China Mieville, and Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. Overall, the speech was interesting, although it was not as focused on SF/F as I had expected it to be. Still, his discussion of Ward Moore was amusing and I suspect I will do some research on what he called “counterfactual historiography.” The panel, however, was riveting. One of the issues I am interested in right now is the problem of access to publication and translation (there have been a few discussions already in the last month or so which have highlighted this issue). Peoples from outside of the western sphere of influence often have difficulty accessing the literary voice either because publishers don’t publisher foreign writers all that frequently or because publishers aren’t willing to shell out tens of thousands of dollars to translate works not originally written in English. While the panel didn’t come to any absolute conclusion, it was still awesome to see professional writers and critics tackling the issue of translation and Global SF in general. I may attempt to write about this issue for my U.S. Imperialism course. The Panel of Awesome! And then it was all over. They gave everybody wine, cheesecake, and other nibbly bits and we had one last riveting public gathering before we all disappeared into the night, never to be seen again until at least the following morning or the next conference. Before signing off (and recording the second half of the special Eaton Editions of The Skiffy and Fanty Show), I did have one rather embarrassing moment in which I asked China Mieville a rather silly question. I won’t tell you what it is, but I’m pretty sure he knew it was a silly question too. There will be one more edition of this series, but it won’t have much to do with the conference. Instead, it will deal briefly with other things that occurred on the following Sunday and Monday. For now, that’s all I’ve got. Now I will leave you with a page from my notes, which has nothing directly to do with anything we saw at the conference: Click for larger image. If you can figure out what we were talking about, I will give you an imaginary present.
The Eaton Conference: Day Two — Idea Overload A
As promised, here are my notes/thoughts about the Eaton Conference (part one). Day Two should go up tomorrow or the day after. Here goes: Day One The theme of the Eaton Conference this year (Global SF) proved to be an immensely informative one, not simply because I had the opportunity to be exposed to all kinds of non-Western literatures, but also because I have a fascination with SF from elsewhere, SF from diverse perspectives, and so on. Eaton, as such, was a perfect venue for my intellectual curiosities. The first panel we attended (my friend Loopdilou and I attended the same panels because we, oddly enough, were interested in the same things) was on China Mieville called “Politics, Aesthetics, and Post-Humanism.” It was not the first panel of the event, but as I mentioned here, we arrived quite late and decided that we could either get up for the first panel and fall asleep through it, or sleep in a little more and remain awake. In any case, the Mieville panel proved to be quite interesting, delving into trope-ological patterns in Kraken (Easterbrook), anti-utopianism and political economy in The City and the City (Carl Freedman), and amborgs — a.k.a. human/animal hybrids — and post-human identity in Perdido Street Station (Gordon). I took quite a lot of notes during this panel and expect the ideas presented will be very useful for any future work I write on Mieville or other New Weird-ies. The second panel we attended was called “Orientalism in SF and the Pulps,” which proved to be one of the few panels that exposed me to a whole range of fiction I had never heard of before. The second paper dealt with what is called “yellow peril fiction,” but from a completely different perspective: within the Orient itself. Apparently there is a wealth of literature from places like India, China, etc. where other Asian nationalities, races, etc. are presented as the bad guys in much the same way as Western literature tends to portray people from the Orient. The other papers were also interesting, dealing with Philip K. Dick’s orientalism and peripheral orientalism in Ted Chiang’s “The Merchant and the Alchemist Gate.” We decided to keep things foreign throughout much of the conference. The third panel for the first day was on South African and Taiwanese SF, which was an odd mix, but proved interesting in terms of thickening up my future bibliography. The fourth panel was called “Labor, Transnationalism, and Trauma in SF Film,” which dealt primarily with Alex River’s Sleep Dealer and the fascinating African film called Pumzi, the latter of which we had the opportunity to see (and it’s quite good considering the financial limitations; I’m hoping that someone will do the same for Pumzi as was done for District 9). The last event of day one was actually a screening of Dreams With Sharp Teeth, a documentary on the infamous Harlan Ellison. It is, first of all, a hilarious film, but it is also a rather deep character study of Ellison: his attitudes, his motivations, etc. I recommend seeing it if you can, primarily because I think Ellison is an important writer (genre and otherwise) and because I think it’s important to learn who he actually is rather than relying on snippets from blogs and so on. That does it for day one. To conclude, I give you my “reading list” (i.e., stuff I discovered from these papers that I want to read, etc.): The City and the City by China Mieville Kraken by China Mieville Philip K. Dick on ethics and alterity Gramsci The Scar by China Mieville 50 Key Figures in Science Fiction Ursula K. Le Guin on fantastic literature Present Past: Modernity and the Crisis (pretty sure that’s the title) Interview w/ China Mieville by Rick Kleffel of The Agony Column (listened to it before, but I need to go back to it) Michael Moorcock on String Theory Raymond Chandler (crime novels) Empire by Hardt and Negi Donna Haraway on cyborgs The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick Descarte Ezra Pound Derrida on Chinese language as ideographic “The Merchant and the Alcehmist Gate” by Ted Chiang Derrida on “the future can only be predicted in terms of a danger” Richard Rive Alex Le Guma Can Themba Inherit the Earth, Recoil, and The Sky Trapeze by Claude Nunes State of Emergency by Jan Rabie Waiting for the Barbarians by Coetzee The Life and Times of Michael K by Coetzee Spiral of Fire by Michael Cope Probe (magazine of the SFSA) Welcome to Our Hillbrow by Phaswane Mpe Souvenir by Jane Rosenthal Horrelpoot/Trencherman by Eben Venter Poison by Henrietta Rose-Innes The Book of the Dead by Kgebetli Something Wicked (magazine) Summer’s End by Peter Wilhelm The Slayer of Shadows by Bregin The Heart of Redness and The Whale Caller (already read) by Zakes Mda Zoolin Vale and Chalice Ringtar by Craig Smith Deadlands by Heme Light Across Time by Learmont The Mall by S. L. Grey Science Fiction in South Africa by Deirdre Byrne Moxyland by Lauren Beukes The Literature Police by MacDonald The Uncanny The A.I. Chronicles “The Science Fictionalization of Trauma” by Luckhurst Borderlands by Anzaldua Third Cinema (film manifesto) Nnedi Okorafor And there you go. Will I read all of these things? Probably not, but I offer these things up in case you find something of interest in them. That’s all for now. One to the next piece…
The Eaton Conference: Day One — American Airlines Sucks
Packing is (usually) easy enough, unless you forget something. I suppose you can guess where this is going: I forgot something. And not just any something. It’s the kind of something that isn’t exactly easy to replace, especially if you are traveling through Miami to Los Angeles. What did I forget? My cell phone. I didn’t discover this until my friend had dropped me off at the airport and left, which is wonderfully ironic. It also turns out that the wireless Internet at the Gainesville airport was on the fritz, despite having been quite reliable in the past. Without any way to get back to my house in time, I was left with the daunting task of relaying my predicament to my other friend on the other end of the journey in Los Angeles. This is the story of how Barnes & Noble and Facebook saved the day. With no cell phone and no memory of the numbers of the various people I would have called in that moment (I have terrible memory to begin with, so a cell phone makes it quite easy to avoid memorizing long strings of numbers), it came to me to figure out how to get a message to the appropriate party. In comes the Nook. For some reason, the wireless worked remarkably well on my Nook, but not on my laptop. Anyone who has a Nook knows that the device has a little browser. It’s not very good in terms of its ease of use (the Nook is an eReader, not an iPad, after all), but I managed to get on Facebook and relay a message to my friend. Wonderful. Having averted that crisis, I got on the plane and headed towards Miami, where I would catch a flight to Los Angeles. I should mention that during this flight, which was on a plane with propellers for some stupid reason, the Captain decided that it would be a lovely idea to intentionally fly through a storm. On top of that, he actually announced it to us, which was a tad annoying. He could have easily gone around it. In any case, for a good five minutes the plane was doing the equivalent of skidding back and forth, along with huge drops and other terrifying things. Planes should not have propellers anymore. It’s insanity. Thankfully, we made it to Miami in one piece, but not without a little soiling on my part… The sea of white fluffy things… I realized when we landed that I only had about 20 minutes to get to my next flight, though, and so scrambled out and went to the giant board…only to discover that my flight had been cancelled and I had been moved to a flight that wasn’t leaving for another three hours. Lovely! Nobody warned me when I checked in, and I highly doubt that American Airlines cancelled the flight between check-in and arrival. And, of course, I didn’t have a cell phone and the free wireless Internet in MIA wasn’t working. Convenient? I think so. It was a grand plot by airports against me, I think. Worse still was that my Nook couldn’t get into the wireless, so I was left with either paying a ridiculous amount of money for a few hours of Internet service, or leaving my friend hanging in the wind on the other end (oddly enough, there are no AT&T stores in MIA, which meant that trying to get numbers or a new phone were out of the question). This is how I calm my nerves: Häagen–Dazs So, I paid for the Internet. It sucked. I’m not happy. But that’s how life is. From there I went to Facebook and finally had to get a friend I met at another conference to call my other friend to give her the new flight information. It was insanity. The plane, boss, get in the plane! In any case, I managed to get the information to the appropriate parties, got some food, wandered around like a chicken with its head cut off, and eventually made it to Los Angeles and had a wonderful two hours talking to my friend while we ate at a Denny’s, drove the hour and a half to Riverside, and so on. Needless to say, the trip over was a long one, and we ended up missing the entire introductory greet-and-meet at the conference (to be fair, this might have been a good thing, since I spent half the conference bumbling like a moron). Look, it’s a Loopdilou Monster! So that was the first day of my trip to the Eaton Conference. More to come soon!
The Eaton Conference: My Weekend Begins
In case you don’t follow me on Twitter or don’t know me personally, I thought I should let you all know that I will be in Riverside, California (near Los Angeles) for an academic conference this weekend (and won’t return until Tuesday). This isn’t just any old conference though. Eaton is a science fiction (and, I imagine, fantastic literature) conference where writers, academics, and those who flirt with both sides of the aisle come together to share research (which I will be doing in my scary mailman voice), chat (which I won’t be doing, because I’m afraid of some of the authors who will be there, since I sort of idolize them), and otherwise discuss the wonderful thing that is SF, specfic, fantasy, and whatever other names you want to call such things. What will I be presenting? A paper entitled “The Interstellar Initiative: Space and Identity in Caribbean Expatriate Science Fiction.” Who am I talking about? Tobias S. Buckell and Nalo Hopkinson. Which books? Ragamuffin by Buckell and Midnight Robber by Hopkinson (Crystal Rain and Sly Mongoose will be mentioned, though). I’ll also reference various theorists and writers in reference to such wonderful topics as the Frontier vs. the Final Frontier, issues of identity in postcolonial spaces, empire, colonialism, and a few random things thrown in because I think they’re amusing. I may have posted the abstract on my blog before, but I’m going to give it to you all again for the heck of it. Here goes: Caribbean speculative fiction has historically been primarily occupied with the fantastic—magical realism, folklore, and fantasy—with traditional elements of science fiction—advanced technology, space travel, etc.—mostly left to developed and developing nations, such as the United States, India, China, and some nations of the Latin American mainland. Careful study will show that this has little to do with disinterest on the part of Caribbeans in matters of technology or space; in fact, a great number of Caribbean governments have played a part in the ratification of a number of United Nations amendments related to the space industry. There are exceptions, most notably in Cuba, which has a strong science fiction community that has gone largely unnoticed by Western mainstream audiences. Yet the Caribbean has found a strong voice in the science fiction works of Tobias S. Buckell and Nalo Hopkinson, both Caribbean-born writers who have secured their places in a now rising multicultural shift in Western science fiction—a movement split between the increased mainstream interest in “World SF” and the inclusion of non-Western settings and characters within mainstream SF itself. What is most striking about the inclusion of Caribbean views within Western SF is that many of the authors are expatriates, and this is particularly relevant when discussing the works of Buckell and Hopkinson. Both authors have imagined futures in which the Caribbean not only has a presence in space, but is also an active participant in the colonization of other planets. These futures reflect a modern Caribbean consciousness in which identity is complicated by the postcolonial situation, the problematic nature of expatriation, and the fracturing (or merging/creolization) of cultures; this reflection, however, is relayed through a space-oriented setting where Caribbean characters and cultures have coalesced and established themselves outside of the traditional postcolonial situation, and outer space itself becomes an object through which postcolonialism and its predecessor are combated or rendered mute, thus allowing for the formation of an identity that is not predicated upon an un-chosen past. In this paper I will analyze and discuss how Tobias S. Buckell’s trilogy of science fiction novels and Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robbers, along with some of her short stories, present outer space as an answer to the issue of “space” and cultural ownership within the Caribbean context. These writers, I will argue, imagine futures in which outer space is both an answer to the postcolonial situation in the Caribbean and a “space,” in the general sense, that is part liberatory and part identity-forming. All of this means you can expect to see a few things from me in the next few days: Blog posts about my experiences at Eaton. Links to special Eaton editions of The Skiffy and Fanty Show, which will largely be unedited and sort of discussion-oriented. Whether we’ll bring anyone else into the show is up to the limits of technology at this point. We’ll see. Pictures (because I have things that I think are worth showing, though you likely will find them dull). You also might see some blog posts unrelated to Eaton or posts related to discussions I had at Eaton and my extended thoughts on whatever occurred. It’s all up in the air at this point. So that’s that. Day One will show up tomorrow at some point. Look forward to it. It will be crazy!
Hugo Nominations? They’re Not the Only Ones
Everyone seems to be in plug mode for the Hugos, and so I’m going to join the game and let you all know a few of the things I’ve done in the last year that one can nominate for a Hugo: I am apparently eligible for Best Fan Writer for the work I have done on this blog. My short story, “To Paint the Kingdom Red” (Part One and Part Two), is eligible for the Best Short Story. The Skiffy and Fanty Show is eligible for Best Fanzine, since it is a podcast, and such things are now a-ok in the Hugos. (The second season starts this Sunday, by the way.) Crimethink: Politics and Speculative Fiction is eligible for the Best Related Work category. My essay, “Political Allegory: Receptions and Their Implications in V and District 9,” was published there alongside essays by Nisi Shawl, Jay Lake, Gary Westfahl, and others. It’s a damn fine collection that deserves a nomination. If you’d like to nominate me (or anyone else, for that matter), you can do so here. P.S.: This is the first year I’ve ever been eligible for a Hugo, by the way, with the exception of the Best Fan Writer category, which I’ve been eligible for since 2007 (I feel like this year I might actually be deserving of it, though, since last year was a very intense year for WISB). Overall, though, it feels good.
Top 10 Blog Posts in 2010 and from 2010 (Because They’re Different)
I’ve been tweeting my top ten most popular posts in 2010 and it occurred to me that maybe I should put that list here, along with a list of the most popular posts written in 2010, since the lists are actually quite different. So, here goes: Top 10 Blog Posts in 2010 Top 8 Most Ridiculous Moments in Science Fiction and Fantasy Film in the 21st Century Werewolves and Misconceptions About Science Fiction Top 10 Cats in Science Fiction and Fantasy Top Ten Fantasy Movies Misconceptions About Star Wars Movie Review: Star Trek (Why It Sucks and Why Abrams Needs to Stop) Top 10 Most Ridiculous Moments in Science Fiction and Fantasy Film in the 90s What If Dragons Were Real? Top 7 Fiercest Dragons J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek: An Addendum (to my review) I suspect that a lot of these views have been from old links or images, since a great deal of the posts above are at least a year old. Still, it’s interesting to see what is getting the most attention this year. Top 10 Blog Post from 2010 (Note: Google Analytics stopped working at around the time that I updated the blog, so the list below is based on post statistics that I have available to me–half from Google Analytics and half from Blogger’s new Stats feature, which doesn’t let me see deep enough to focus on content written in 2010. Some of my selections are guesses based on data I have and the number of comments received.) Top 8 Most Ridiculous Moments in Science Fiction and Fantasy Film in the 21st Century Top 10 Most Ridiculous Moments in Science Fiction and Fantasy Film in the 90s J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek: An Addendum (to my review) Fiction Narratives: The Forgotten Strand? A Brief Linking to the Manifesto of No-Consequence Why Science Fiction is Important to the Third World (Part One) The Book Habits Meme (Reboot) Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part One) Haiti and Pat Robertson: Slavery is A-OK Self-Publishing Lies and Myths: Deception and Unethical Practices The differences between these two lists are pretty obvious. The former is largely comprised of lists, which seems to prove that such things are traffic producers (which I’ve read is true, but have never done for the purposes of getting traffic, with the exception of #2 in list two). I don’t know what to make of that. I only do top # lists because they’re fun, and it’s starting to feel as though I’ve covered most of the topics that are reasonable enough to do. But maybe new idea will spring up in 2011? Who knows? Now the big question is this: what are your favorite posts of 2010?