ommadawn.dk - Imagicon2

The con, the economy and NoFF

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Tags: Imagicon2, Me, Science fiction

The planning of Imagicon 2 was in many ways remarkable. Everything seemed well planned in advance, also as a panel participant, where I got many details in advance about what the panel would be about. One of the panels I participated in had a really good moderator (on the other hand this moderator hadn't prepared questions to go with my prepared answers ...). There were fine microfones, and great name tags, and the panels started and ended on time. And it was a fine detail, that the program had time and place for the dead dog party. I can't see it being much better than that.

(One of the planners was Sten Thaning. His coordinator-for-con-career started with the choice between to different committees, to plan the next con. One committee had time, place, guest of honor and all the rest. The other committee had Sten, and he thought, well, we'll find a time. And a place. And a guest of honor. The committee of Sten won the right to do the con! Then Sten went back to Italy, where he was working that year, and left it others to actually make the con happen, and a very fine con it was apparently. We need more people like that in Denmark! :-) )

On the other hand the con was hit by all the big and small changes, that big an event necessarily is hit by, and there wasn't a plan for how to handle these changes. So. I sat for an hour waiting for the doors of the con to open -- only to discover I sat by the wrong doors. How the heck could I have visited the home page a few days before I left, and missed that big a change? overall it would have been a good idea if big info (like the program) had been given a date, and if you got info with a newer date, you knew the other info was outdated. The supplement could have been a board at the con, where the last changes were put up.

But how important is it? We're amateurs, and a real con has a few glitches. Right?

During the con I had some thoughts. If you place the guest of honor in a panel with a fan, that fan has to be able to talk a lot. If you place the moderator in front of the panel (on the 1st row), instead of next to, the panel will look at the audience all the time. (But then again, should you expect panel-fans and moderators to be treated like "fans like everybody else", and again stick to the amateur spirit?)

One of the panels didn't work for me. The panel about SF on TV ended up being a long recital (these 30 shows are good), where it was hard to follow, if you'd never heard about any of them. These could have been corrected easily, if somebody had stuck to: say 10 words about what this show is about.

Finally I noticed some funny details, I don't think we have in Denmark. An award from fans so a fan -- Alvarpriset. And that the con was opened/closed by a bottle being opened/closed -- this bottle apparently held the spirit of Swecon. (Imagicon 2 is the name of this con, and to a certain degree the group of people planning it, while Swecon is a name wandering between different cons, being held in Sweden.)

176 participants showed up.

Before I'm completely done talking about Imagicon 2, let me also talk about what this con cost me. I didn't really know what to expect before I left. The train ticket to/from Stockholm was about 1150 DKK. I bought 5 books, that have something to do with this, and for me is a part of the con experience, in all 140 DKK. I traveled by bus and train in Stockholm for about 200 DKK, plus a ride in a cab (not planned) for 70 DKK. The dead dog party was at a restaurant, and therefore cost me 170 DKK. All in all about 1830 DKK. Plus you know. On the other hand I was treated like royalty and given free drinks. Swedes are nice people.

(Johan Anglemark and yours truly at dead dog party.
Picture taken by Liftarn.)

Some of my reasons for finding this account important is, that I got 1950 DKK as compensation for being a NoFF.

Yeah? So what's a NoFF?

NoFF is short for Nordic Fan Fund, meaning a fund with the purpose of doing something good for Nordic fans. You get a trip to a Nordic con financed (a con not held in your own country, like), in return for writing a report and collecting the money for next years trip. I am in fact writing a report for Himmelskibet, Novum and Subspace.

How do you become NoFF next year? E.g. by participating here: the Danish NoFF page.

And how do you contribute to next years NoFF? By visiting this page.

Before I am done, let me also mention the books I took home, but haven't read yet:

Sven Christer Swahn, is he the only Swede writing Sf short stories? 7 x framtiden, Ljuset fr�n Alfa Centauri, Tagning: Framtid
Memoirs of a master forger (incl. autograf from Graham Joyce)

Star Trek

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Tags: Events, Imagicon2, Science fiction, Star Trek

I know a lot of good gossip. But as we have a tape recorder on, let me just say: George Takei is an honorable man: he comes on time, knows his lines, and welcomes guest actors. He is obliging, so the episode finishes on time and within budget. Yes, he is a joy, a God!

David Lally

I imagine you can't go to big SF-con like Imagicon 2, wihtout Stat Trek being mentioned here and there and everythere. That's what happened this time anyway. So let me give you a few quotes.

Classically a story needs a conflict. As the federation is perfect, Enterprise has to travel to some other, non-perfect place, and find some fools to have a conflict with.

Hard SF is to have a certain relationship to science. Technobabble isn't enough, therefore ST isn't hard SF.

What if you've never seen SF on TV before? Where to begin? Star Trek! In part because this series inspired so many others, in part because it's not so complicated.

(Karolina Bj�llerstedt Mickos brought some toys along.)

Fannic finns

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Tags: Finncon, Imagicon2, Me, Science fiction

Why aren't we fragmented? No, you've got the question turned around. Why are you so fragmented?

Finnish fan

Of course some parts of a big con like Imagicon 2 can't just be put into a category. This time there was a very interesting talk about the very succesful fandom in Finland, plus a few other details.

(And why was I the only Dane at the con, but there were lots from Finland?)

At the last Finncon, there were 10,000 visitors! What did they do, and can we learn from it? Well. Let's hear what they did, and then steal what we can.

The primary focus of the con is books, but there's a little of everything. A little about roleplaying games, a little about anim�, all sorts of fantastic literature, a litte about TV etc. -- even though some of these topics have their own con as well. For unknown reasons Finnish fandom (fannish findom?) isn't fragmented, maybe because it evolved without knowing the model used in other countries. So trekkies can attend book panels and vice versa.

Finncon is both fandom and marketing. You can get in for free, and there's lots of stuff for new fans. This is obtained by having 1/3 of the financing come not from ticket sales, but public funds (who like giving to free events with a wide audience). And yes, it took 10 years of stubborn applying, before the money from this source started coming in, but now there's something every year.

The con is in the summer holiday, so people have time to do it, you can rent rooms at the university cheaply etc.

The con enjoys having connections. The con has good press via contacts there, 1 page articles in the paper, TV spots etc. And when held at a university, you can offer science tracks, that students can follow, write an essay about and get merit! Like there can a language track.

Finncon changes between 4 cities, all easy to travel to.

Fandom also enjoys having many entry points. Some have found regular fandom via the Tolkien society, created in 1992. Others find their way through the fanzines at the libraries. And others again are personally invited to a pub meeting, e.g. when they just start at their studies.

Like fanzines in Finland are collaborations, more than an expression of big egoes, there's also team work to do the con from year to year. Both formally (a yearly meeting) and informally it's easy to get to talk with those who did the con last year, hear what they did, and learn from it.

At the next Finncon 2000 visitors are hoped for.

It wouldn't harm to learn something from this model!

(Per Chr. J�rgensen looks nervously at Jukka Halme from Finland.)

Writing the alien

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Tags: Graham Joyce, Imagicon2, Me, Science fiction, �sa Schwarz

Should you fight the fantastic, like many books portray: hero kills ghost. Or should you accept it, live with it, see it as an extra spise to life? Like my grandmother did.

Graham Joyce

If you go to a con in Sweden, you also have to live with about 7 others, foreign nationalities being present, including Swedes who do speak Danish, Swedes who don't speak Danish, and Swedes who think they speak Danish. You feel very alien. But, joking aside.

If you write in the fantastic genres, you also have to choose how you will write about the alien/foreign, whether it's the country Transylvania, the person Dracula or the language spoken in foreign places by foreign people. This was one of the great topics, you had plenty of time to discuss at Imagicon 2.

The panel "From a foreign perspective" looked at the foreign place. Putting yourself in other's shoes. And immediately realized: it will never succeed 100%. But you have to try. You can and must use research. You also have to use your imagination, so you can write about stuff you don't know. You have to write more than you actually use, in an effort to make the described world plausible -- whether you're writing about real people or not. You also have to remember, that even though you're writing about something alien, you yourself is "local". Maybe you're writing to learn more about the foreign. Maybe you're an explorer, who doesn't know the language yet. Or maybe you interpret for the reader. It's important to describe the foreign as it is -- instead of describing your prejudices. It's also important to describe what the alien looks like. And remember, your own past is also foreign to a certain degree, even to yourself. And do your job! It's distracting when e.g. the names is a strange mix of welsh and indian.

"Goblins in the backyard" on the other hand was about the foreign, that's loose in known surroundings. How do you get away with saying, that the neighbour is a vampire? And a lot of the answer is: the readers want the neighbour to be a vampire! It gives some new, interesting possibilities. And if you look at a place deeply enough, you will find the existing history of the place, with a little magic down in one corner. If you want to write an X story in Y, the X characteristics of Y will jump out at you. This is especially strong, if the place is where you grew up -- because your childhood has an element of magic. Another element that's very effective is to mix the realistic and the fantastic -- claiming that a known politician knows a vampire, or recycling names from a real source, like the Bible. Until now I've used vampires as an example, but would this work if the neighbour was a robot or alien? Yes, it would. The finished story would highlight a different part of me, because goblins and vampires are super dark, while robots are super rational, and I would end up writing a story demonstrating the difference between me and the neighbour. Above I talked about the importance of research -- but how do I research a goblin? Easy, try googling him! Or do what writers do: have a little chat with him.

The panel "Kr�ver fantasy ett eget spr�kbruk?" (Does fantasy require its own language?) was about the language we let the characters in our fantastic stories use. And some times it takes so little. A character using about 8 foreign (Scottish) words, thereby becoming foreign (Scottish). Hagrid has lines, that if you read them aloud turn into regular English! And for those more interested in that kind of thing, From Elfland to Poughkeepsie by Ursula K le Guin is recommended.

It wasn't just writing the alien, that was debated on the panels. With so many writers in the house, there was talk about everything.

Guest of honor no. 2, Graham Joyce in his interview talked about why and how he writes. His route to being a writer has been the dream-come-true: quitting in frustration, moving to Greece, writing, writing, writing, and actually selling the novel! (There were also 10 years before that of writing.) He writes fantastic literature, because this requires more of the plot -- you have to have "the narrative", and can't settle for good style. (In his opinion many mainstream writers have a lot of style but aren't worth reading.) Recently he wrote Memoirs of a Master Forger, the autobiography of a non-existing person. Everybody else can get away with writing memoirs not true, autobiographies they didn't write themselves, and novel-by-celeb really written by another person, then why not invent a person and write the memoirs of that person. On top of that this "writer" has a blog, and "his" book outsold Joyce! (Much rejoicing on the blog, when that fact was discovered!)

(Graham Joyce, Johan Anglemark.)

Another visiting writer, �sa Schwarz talked about "Att ber�tta en bok p� Facebook" (Telling a book on Facebook). You hire an actress to play the lead of your new book (Nova Bakarel), and create a suitable profile on Facebook. Then you make sure that person has 1000 friends, and you begin retelling what happens in the book. You have to tell the story quite differently: you repeat and summarize for those who weren't there in the beginning or just missed a day. And the readers have to accept, that suddenly it says "Now he's pointing a gun at me" -- would she really be updating her status at the same time? But other than that you lean back and await the reaction when the friends discover, they'be lived a book and not reality. And that reaction was big, because this was the first time something like this happened in Sweden, and maybe because Facebook is interactive -- the friends has actually spoken to Nova!

Finally I want to mention, that yet another panel talked about what the writer owes his audience, and for stange reasons we arrived at: a good weapon against pirates would be, that those who pay also get a little extra: extra content, access to the writer etc.

Liz Williams

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Tags: Imagicon2, Liz Williams, Me, Science fiction

When you look at what the Earth has actually been through in terms of climate changes what we're doing to it is a minor blip; if you look at huge vulcanic eruptions, they are far worse than anything we could do to the ozone layer. This isn't to say that we should carry on going as we are going, or we'll end in disaster for us and for any species unfortunate enough to share the planet with us, but we're not going to damage the Earth particularly -- is's a planet.

Vestiges of empire, Interzone, May 2002 -- interview

The primary guest of honor at Imagicon 2 was Liz Willaism. In preparation to meeting her in real life, I've both read some of her short stories and an interview. At the con itself she participated in several panels, including an interview and a speach. In this I draw from all these sources.

Liz Williams grew up with the fact that you wrote books while doing your day job. So, she's taken an exam in knowledge theory (epistemology, a branch of philosophy), and today works in a store (selling supplies to witches), while she's had a traditional writer career: write short stories, have them rejected, get better and finally get in print. While she has a strict scientific education, she's also pagan, a well defined religion. She describes it this way: where New Age people believe in peace, love and light, a pagan has a more realistic and nuanced view of relationship with nature.

Among her short stories and novels there's both 100% SF, 95% SF ("Ikiryoh" uses the term good/evil, but is straight SF otherwise) and ghosts and other good stuff. She doesn't like categories, and she doesn't like to be put into categories. On the other hand she calls her own fiction "gothic fiction" overall. The style/language is always very important. Some topics show up regularly: the tension between relativ(istic) and absolut(istic), the failed wish to believe in something, and colonization.

The stories are written in the breaks -- i.e. while there's no one in the shop. A typical procedure is to start by drawing the map of the world, that will be pictured in the text. There's also research to do, and Liz does not believe in "write what you know" -- rather "learn something new, and then write about it". A lot of stories started with the knowledge she gained of the world by living so many different places. She also has a few other hints for writers. The message shouldn't be too loud. And it's important to separate "story", the emotional involvement, and plot, the logic that makes us believe the text logically.

As an example of these techniques she talked about the series showing detective Chen, in Singapore-III. Singapore-III is meant to be a franchise, where a new city gets to use some of the plan of Singapore, the name of the city etc. In real life it's also based on Hongkong, which she's visited. So she's heard about e.g. the real feng shui wars, where e.g. one bank wards off bad feng shui from another bank with mirrors, the other bank replies with mirrors of its own, and before you know the whole city is covered in mirrors, cars drive off the road and the mayor has to intervene. All this knowledge was gained from real life and used in fiction.

Imagicon 2 report

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Tags: Imagicon2, Me, Science fiction

Imagicon 2, October 16-18 2009, Stockholm.

The next few days I'll report from this con. Hope you enjoy it!