Greer Gilman's Blog, page 80

Lovers, liars and clowns

Quite a triumph by the Coast Guard cadets last night, in negothick 's production of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum.  Well-sung, swift-moving, wonderfully inventive in the staging.  The bust was a doughty living statue rising from a column on wheels like a Beckettian garbage can, who got imbrangled in one of the sword fights, and wielded an impressive gladium.  Their Miles Gloriosus was fabulous: huge, orotund, commanding, and (of course) hopelessly vain. Imagine Brian Blessed intermittently possessed by Miss Piggy. My theatre party came out hoping he'll do Beauty and the Beast next year, and sure enough, he's already put in a impassioned plea for it. He commanded the world's frilliest legionaries. They looked as if a frivolous someone had snipped them from tinfoil. They marched like slack marionettes, and made their salute to Caesar! into a demented clockwork ballet.

Cheers also for their ad-libbing Erronius, who was played by a wrily self-mocking professor emeritus, to huge cheers.

And of course, there was "Comedy Tonight," one of the world's great songs.

A magnificent Orion overlooking us all the way home: the apotheosis of Gloriosus.  I hope he's looking out for us.

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Valentine

My Boskone schedule 2012:  a tiny heart-shaped box of chocolates.

How To Build A Genius
Friday, 5pm, Harbor I
Greer Gilman, Resa Nelson (M), Charles Stross, Catherynne M. Valente

Our panel of really intelligent writers will discuss how to create characters that are even smarter than they are.

Reading: Greer Gilman
Saturday, Noon-12:25pm, Lewis

The Heroine's Path
Saturday, 2pm, Harbor II
B.A. Chepaitis, Greer Gilman, Theodora Goss (M), Margaret Ronald, Phoebe Wray

Maureen Murdock's 1990 study The Heroine's Journey served as a complement (and sometimes corrective) to Joseph Campbell's work on the Hero's Journey. Both put deep store in stories drawn from world myth. But what do working genre writers actually do with these theories or materials? Are they present at the creation, or useful for analysis afterward? Do they affect your characters or their origins, relationships, arcs, or resolutions? Which mythic or theoretic elements have you actually incorporated? What path do -- must -- your own heroines tread?

In Memoriam: Anne McCaffrey & Diana Wynne Jones
Sunday, Noon, Carlton
Greer Gilman, Bob Kuhn, Faye Ringel

A discussion of two of Boskone's previous guests, fantasy writers Anne McCaffrey (1926-2011) and Diana Wynne Jones (1934-2011).

So:  one I've never done before; a new reading; a subject close to my heart; and one in remembrance.  One for sorrow; two for joy; three for a girl; and four for a toy.

Oh, how I wish that sovay and rushthatspeaks (among other brilliant friends) could be there!

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Street cries of Cambridge

A couple of beggars with a coffee can (he: bearish, beard, watch cap; she: full skirts, British accent).

He:  "Spare change to stop the zombie apocalypse!"

She:  "Spare change to start it!"

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Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach!

Happy 200th to the boy in the blacking factory.

I've just read Great Expectations—which for some reason I'd missed all these years—and I'm re-reading Bleak House.  Damn, that one's good.  Somehow, I've slithered out of A Tale of Two Cities.  At seven or so, I got so deep into David Copperfield that I missed my bus—and came to in a deserted schoolyard, frantic with abandonment.  At thirteen, I rewrote that book as The Persecution and Assassination of Charles Dickens as Performed by the Inmates, got my English class to stage it, and played the narrator in a Sibyl's robes and sunglasses.  Nearly every year, I curl up with A Christmas Carol.  It's like eating mince pies.

Dickens works splendidly theatrically, as well he knew—and half-killed himself performing.   He did the police in different voices.  I dearly love the RSC Nicholas Nickleby; I seriously like the Christine Edzard Little Dorrit and admire David Lean's Oliver Twist (except for that appalling Fagin—O Alec Guinness, what were you thinking?) and I smiled and sniffled at the school production of Oliver! my friends' daughters were in:  London kids playing London kids.  The elder girl was channeling Helena Bonham Carter as the Widow, and there was a hell of an eleven-year-old Nancy.

What do you like?  Or is Dickens like a slab of Christmas cake for you, all garish mixed fruits and stodge and icing sugar?

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Winter candle

Brede, Brede, tar gys my thie, tar dys thie ayms noght. Foshil jee yn dorrys da Brede, as lhig da Brede cheet stiagh.

Brigid, Brigid, come to my house, come to my house tonight. Open the door to Brigid and let Brigid come in.

Emma Christian, "Vreeshey, Vreeshey"

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Come buy! Come buy!

"Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries-
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries--
All ripe together
In summer weather--
Morns that pass by,
Fair eves that fly;
Come buy, come buy;
Our grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye,
Come buy, come buy."

Just announced.  Edited by Professor fjm and Professor chilperic , with contributions by themselves, rozk , steepholm , grahamsleight , vschanoes , and yours humbly, nineweaving , amid a constellation of scholars.

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Balladry & bawdry

Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796)

Last night, some of us attended the Supper given by the Serious Burns Unit of Boston Song Sessions at the Skellig in Waltham.  You might describe it as a very strange seder.  (Clan Maccabee was much in attendance, along with the Scots and the Sassenach, and other random ethnicities.  One year I should get to Vancouver for Gung Haggis Fat Choy.)   The Haggis was borne in to the skirling of the pipes, ceremonially.  So was the Kishke.  Addresses to both were read.  There were neeps and tatties.  There was single malt, for drinking to the king over the water.  There were toasts, graceful and scurrilous.  Above all, there was balladry and bawdry.

There were songs by Burns, songs collected and remade by Burns, songs in the tradition of, inevitable parodies (it Burns us!). 

Round the room, singers and speakers stood and gave us "Westlin Winds" and Gaelic rowing songs and new-written responses.  [image error] sovay sang "Tae The Weavers Gin Ye Gang."  (Beautifully, as ever.)  There was tumbling of lassies in all manner of cereals (part of a balanced breakfast).  There was "Tam o' Shanter" and a panicked mouse. There was (saving your reverence) "Nine Inch Will Please a Lady."  And this thing, by way of a Lutheran minister.  Everyone sang of lang syne and lost causes.  (This is blasphemy, but truly, those songs and those valiant Scots deserved a better prince than Charlie.)

And O!—be still my beating heart—there was a banquet of Child ballads, magnificently done.  As I remember, we had "The Unquiet Grave" (in a rare familial variant), "Susie Cleland,"  "Leezie Lindsay," "The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry,"  "Annachie Gordon,"  "Eppie Morrie," and "Mill o' Tifty's Annie."  Bliss.

Next year in Auchtermuchty!

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Cosmogenesis

So I had ten minutes before my Diana Wynne Jones panel at Arisia, I'd gotten my mocha latte, and on some salmonid whim, I crossed back to the dealers' room, turned down an alley that I hadn't seen before, and saw Cloud being born, caught in glass. Fire and air! And I stood and I gazed. The last thing I need is more stuff. But I couldn't walk on. Out from a curtain popped a child apprentice and with perfect composure and courtesy proceeded to sell me his father's bowl by showing me everything else in the shop. It's by Josh Simpson and it's breathtakingly gorgeous.



Otherwise, it was being a lovely con already, though it took me until then to shake off the louring tooth-and-clawishness of life. By that panel and the next ("Setting as Character" on Monday morning), I felt I had my wits back and could give my colleagues and the audience a lively conversation. Not that the other panels were at all dull, thanks to my brilliant company: sovay and cucumberseed and Bob Kuhn and JoSelle Vanderhooft and teenybuffalo and Merav Hoffman, and the whole Legion of Light and Shadow. Thank you all.



After all my fret, exactly two people came to my reading, one half-asleep, plus a very late other reader with the galaxy's worst headcold. So I can't tell you how it went over. I got through it.



What went over blissfully (it was after I acquired the bowl) was the Readercon tea. A roomful of eager young persons talked with me about carrying on the great tradition and keeping it new: a Renaissance. There was tea. There were madeleines to dip in it, and five or six kinds of homebaked cookies. And only one guy in the room had ever heard me, so I got to do a set of Cloudish classics with an enraptured roomful at my feet. It doesn't get much better than that.



I loved the Post-Meriden Radio Players' witty presentation of "Red Shift: Beyond the Edge of Beyond!" I loved the Sassafrass concert with Stranger Ways: layers of Norse polyphony and folk rock. A blazing quarrel between Loki and Odin, followed by an excellent performance of "Tom o' Bedlam," with a woodblock drum: O joy!



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As dew in April

O heavens, this lifts my spirits.

The blessed Readercon folks want me to read a long piece at their Arisia tea.  What would you request, if you were there?

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Nothing that's grim! Nothing that's Greek!

In a pleasant break from the ongoing Tooth-and-Clawishness of life, here's my Arisia schedule.  Some excellent conversations to be had—I hope Nine will emerge from her foxhole.

There will be a Readercon event at 7:00 PM on Sunday, with tea-and-cookies and performance.  What would you like me to read?

400 Gender Limitations in SF/F Adams   Fri 5:30 PM  

Often, strong female characters are portrayed in such a way that seem to be a rejection not just of traditional gender roles but of all things feminine. Similarly, male characters that take on what are regarded as traditional female roles are viewed as emasculated figures incapable of pro-active action. Where are the strong warrior women that can also be compassionate or the house-husbands that have a role beyond being the punchline of a joke?

Trisha Wooldridge (Trisha J. Wooldridge) mod
Jennifer Pelland
Greer Gilman
Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert
Andrea Hairston (Andrea Hairston)


715 The Exiled Character Burroughs   Fri 7:00 PM

From the Mabinogion and the Arthurian cycle, our has used the archetype of the hidden prince. Let's focus on the notion of his exile and foreign upbringing, and more generally discuss the perspective of the outsider's perspective in F&SF. Why is it so common? What is the allure? What does this allow the author that they couldn't do otherwise? Does any of this parallel the experience and influence of the cultural outsider in today's society?

Catt Kingsgrave-Ernstein mod
Greer Gilman
Barry B. Longyear
Sonya Taaffe
Bob Kuhn

38 Language & Linguistics in SF/F Douglas   Sat 11:30 AM

From Tolkien's Elvish, to "Det. Sykes" meaning "Det. S--t-Head" to the Newcomers and the Tamarians' use of metaphor in ST:TNG episode "Darmok"; language, its use and misuse, and barriers to its understanding have provided an interesting and often illustrative backdrop to the exploration of cultures not the narrator's and/or protagonist's own. How are language and linguistics used to enrich a SF/F universe, and what can we learn from this?

Daniel Miller mod
Greer Gilman
Debra Doyle
Wil Howitt
Mark A Mandel


70 Fantasy and Horror in Shakespeare Douglas   Sat 2:30 PM

Before Brooks, Anthony, and Tolkien, there was the Bard. William Shakespeare was not the first to build the genre, but he was the first to make it marketable. This panel takes an in-depth look at the works of Shakespeare, and we reflect on Will's way through the genres of Fantasy and Horror.

JoSelle Vanderhooft mod
Greer Gilman
David Nurenberg (Ovid)
Sonya Taaffe
Bob Kuhn

764 Reading: Costello, Gilman, & Martin Quincy   Sat 7:00 PM  

Authors John Costello, Greer Gilman, and Gail Z. Martin will read selections from their works.

69 Myth and Folklore in Fantasy Douglas   Sun 11:30 AM

How do writers use myth in their stories? What are the most common myth cycles drawn from? Has traditional folklore been run out of town by urban legends? Why is the appeal of these stories so strong after millennia?

Merav Hoffman mod
Esther Friesner
Greer Gilman
Sonya Taaffe
Erik Amundsen

363 Diana Wynne Jones: In Memoriam Douglas   Sun 4:00 PM

With the passing of the enormously prolific Diane Wynne Jones, we reflect on the body of work she has left us, from the Chrestomanci series to *Howl's Moving Castle.* What is it about her work as a primarily YA fantasy author that draws even adult attention?

Bob Kuhn mod
Greer Gilman
Merav Hoffman
Frances K. Selkirk (Francie)
Sonya Taaffe

54 Food Communicating Culture in Literature   Douglas   Sun 5:30 PM

How do writers communicate things about their cultures and characters via the food they use? What can you discern about cultures based on if they get their food in pill form or if they are vegetarian/vegan, omnivores, or carnivores? How does the anatomy and physiology of your aliens or magical creatures dictate their food requirements? What about the terrain? Does the diversity of food culture--and what it communicates--on Earth get shown in literature?

Trisha Wooldridge (Trisha J. Wooldridge) mod
Greer Gilman
Stephanie Clarkson
April Grant
Tchipakkan

75 Setting as Character Burroughs   Mon 11:30 AM

In many books, the setting itself is as strong and indelible a character as the characters themselves. Let's discuss our favorite places in genre literature!  

Erik Amundsen mod
Greer Gilman
Catt Kingsgrave-Ernstein
Julia Rios

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