Gillian Polack's Blog, page 59

How to Avoid Gillian at Loncon

It's easier to avoid me at Loncon than at any other SF convention I've ever been to. Loncon is so big that you can find other things to do, easily. Awesome other things. The programme is totally amazing and is here: http://guide.loncon3.org/

Now for the nitty-gritty of avoidance. First up, you might have to skip the Opening Ceremony and the Hugos. I'm only a miniscule part of both, but I *am* a miniscule part. Bring your mobile along, maybe, and carefully tweet about other things to blot me out? For the rest of it, this is my programme. I'm sorry that you'll have to skip hearing some of my favourite writers, but it's the only way to avoid me. Also to avoid the usual stuff I bring, like books and toffees. Speaking of books, there will be a very limited number of advance copies of Langue[dot]doc 1305 at the Ticonderoga stall in the dealer's room, and I don't even have to be bribed to sign them! I do have to be bribed if you want me to sign them legibly. I have to be bribed enormously if you want me to sing you a Medieval song* while I sign. None of this qualifies as Gillian-avoidance, however.

As for the rest of it, this is me, I am here:

Thursday, August 14 7pm
YA Books Set in London Capital Suite 8 (ExCeL)
Tom Pollock, Edward James, Ian McDonald, Gillian Polack, Liesel Schwarz
Dark alleys, cocky cockneys, a stewpot of cultures from every corner of the globe and layer upon layer of history... London is the perfect setting for adventures of every sort. What are the best YA books that London has inspired? Have any of them added to the city's mystique? What can the viewpoint of a YA protagonist bring to the reader's perception of this magnificent city that an adult viewpoint couldn't?

Friday, August 15 11am
Feeding the Imagination: Food in SF/F Capital Suite 3 (ExCeL)
Shana Worthen, Aliette de Bodard, Gillian Polack, Jo Walton, Fran Wilde
The food in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series is described in such detail that cookbooks have been published in response. What other genre works have focused heavily on food to develop the world and characters? What does food say about an invented society? Are stories that lack an exploration of the diet of their characters lacking something?

Friday, August 15 1:30pm
Fantasy and Medievalism Capital Suite 7+12 (ExCeL), 1:30pm - 3pm
Kathryn (Kate) Laity, Robin Hobb, Marieke Nijkamp, Lynda Rucker, Gillian Polack
High fantasy is almost invariably set in invented worlds inspired by medieval Europe. Can we put this down to the legacy of Tolkien and to genre works being in close conversation with each other? Or is there something about the place that medieval Europe occupies in our imagination that makes it a perfect companion for tales of epic striving and larger-than-life Good versus Evil? Either way, does this help or hinder the genre?


Saturday, August 16 12pm
Representing Indigenous Cultures in Speculative Fiction Capital Suite 6 (ExCeL), 12pm - 1:30pm
Ronald Meyers, Christopher Kastensmidt, Maureen Kincaid Speller, Gillian Polack
Three academics each give a presentation followed by a jointly held 30 minute discussion and Q&A with the audience.
Christopher Kastensmidt, "Simone Saueressig and the Indigenous Epic"
Maureen Kincaid Speller, "The Silence of the Indian: Representations of Indigenous North Americans in Science Fiction and Fantasy"
Gillian Polack, "Old cultures, new fictions: introducing three Indigenous Australian writers of speculative fiction"

Saturday, August 16 8pm
Free Trips To Foreign Parts Capital Suite 2 (ExCeL)
Curt Phillips, Gillian Polack, Rob Hansen, James Shields, Kylie Ding
The Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund was the first of the fan funds and was created in 1953 for the purpose of providing funds to bring well-known and popular [science fiction] fans familiar to those on both sides of the ocean across the Atlantic. How can you get fans to pay for you to jet off to exotic foreign locations? Come along to meet our knowledgeable panelists to find out how to compete for and win a fan fund.

Saturday, August 16 10pm
Fan Funds Casino Fan Activity Tent (ExCeL), 10pm - 2am
Jim Mowatt, Justin Ackroyd, Kylie Ding, Janice Gelb, Jerry A. Kaufman, Patrick McMurray, G. Patrick Molloy, Carrie Mowatt, Maree Pavletich, Mihaela Marija Perkovic, Curt Phillips, Alan Stewart, Gillian Polack
There'll be spinning roulette wheels, Blackjack and gambling galore in the Fan Funds Casino. It'll all be just for fun but there will be plenty of opportunities for you to contribute to the various fan funds who raise money to send fans on cultural exchange trips to far flung corners of the world. The croupiers are nearly all fan fund winners and this gathering is almost certainly the largest collection of fan fund winners ever gathered in one place. Come join in our own Vegas style fun and be there at this historic occasion.

Sunday, August 17 12pm
Fan Funds Auction Capital Suite 9 (ExCeL), 12pm - 1:30pm
Jim Mowatt, Justin Ackroyd, Carrie Mowatt, Curt Phillips, Gillian Polack
Fans from around the world have sent in all manner of delightful items for your bidding pleasure. There'll be rare books. There'll be weird and wonderful action figures. There will almost certainly be Tim Tams. Come bid on these items and marvel at our wild cavorting auctioneers who strut and fret their hour upon the stage. Come buy these marvellous goodies and in so doing support some of the fan funds such as TAFF that raises money for the cultural transfer between Europe and North America and GUFF which raises money for the exchange between Australia and Europe.

Monday, August 18 11am
How To Read Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: Coping With Time Travel Narratives
Capital Suite 4 (ExCeL)
Geoffrey Landis, Joe Haldeman, Gillian Polack, Suzanne Palmer, Ian Watson
In their introduction to The Time Traveller's Almanac, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer note that "time travel stories are devious narratives." Part of this deviousness lies in their variety: they can be mazes or messages, experiments or adventures. What are the challenges for the writer in composing such deviousness – and for the reader in unravelling it? What are the literary effects of building a story around (semi)-credible science versus entirely invented fantasy?



ETA (for I didn't have any footnotes!!) *The song you are most likely to be forced to endure if you bribe me sufficiently is from the first Robin Hood musical. I can sing it in several dialects, if I'm drunk enough.

gillpolack @ 2014-07-24T01:57:00

I wrote a terribly boring draft post earlier, and then I deleted it. Somewhere between teaching and 10 pm I lost my way, developed a cold and became rather scatty. Since then I've done a bunch of work. A whole heap of much-delayed things are all happening at once. This means that the things that were meant to happen tonight are now happening tomorrow, unless I get a whole heap more delayed things happening at once...

I was going to tell you all kinds of interesting things: about why my inbox keeps filling up, about what my wonderful students did today, about loads of things. But if I write for much longer, someone will email me something desperately important that I will take me 2 hours to sort and will have to be done tonight and I have a bit of a cold and think that sleep is a desirable occupation. I'm not very good at sleep, after all, and need practice. I'm very well rehearsed in answering emails.

I do need to say "Watch this space" for news. Of course for news. You wouldn't be watching it for scintillating wit. Or sarcasm. Only it's not news of a novel, or a job, or even another SF convention I can attend*.

One of my students said I could sing, today. That my voice is nice. They disputed my understanding of my own capacity. I shall contemplate this while I sleep. I think my world has just been turned inside out, for it's common knowledge that I can't sing.



*Which is just as well, really. I'm apparently going to six in five months. Or five and a half in five months, really, because of Yom Kippur running interference.

gillpolack @ 2014-07-22T19:02:00

Today I spent 2/3 of a George RR Martin in waiting rooms*. These were all follow-ups and checks and the news is that the big things are now 100% stable. Given the last year, this is all excellent. Also excellent is that I'm now re-immunised against measles, mumps and rubella. In fact, I've had half my booster shots, with the other half next week.

As a bonus, I'm less behind on Game of Thrones than I was. Martin's less stylish in this volume and I needed the long slow time to read the 500+ pages I finished today. I'm interested to know if he's less stylish because he's now a bit bored with the whole thing, or if he's less stylish because he's more engrossed in the world, or if he's less stylish because he outpaced his sources and is developing along different lines, or if it's another reason entirely. His writing is closer to a sword and sorcery world in A Feast of Crows than it was in the first book. That first book I recently re-read to write about, whereas, for some reason, I never actually read A Feast of Crows when it came out, so these are fresh comparisons.

What this means is that Martin validates my theory of wourldbuilding more intensely and has the writing style play a more active role in the world build early on, for that's when readers need it most. As a sister told me about wine, "Save the plonk for the third glass, for you won't be able to taste the good stuff then."

Not everyone writes using this principle (intentionally or not) but enough do to make it worth explaining. I usually turn to the beginning and to the middle of the book with new writers, to find out if they're in this number. And for along time I've considered that some writers of epic fantasy conceive of the work as one book, which means one can have hundreds of pages of scene-setting, with its more exactly intellectual toll and more precise writing style.

What I meant to write about today was the way different people interpret different spaces. Also, that not a single one of the people waiting to see the specialist this morning drink Fosters. "We export it," was the explanation. It used to be the beer of choice for adult Australians and now it's something you find in a grog shop on Vanuatu. How are the mighty fallen. Not that I'm in mourning - I've never liked it. If I want bitter, I will eat a blood orange, not drink hops.



*My new way of measuring long periods of time. Was it 1/4 of a Martin, 2/3 of a Martin? For those who would rather measure in a Hobb, a Martin averages out (in my mind at least) at about 850 pages. A Martin is, I think four Le Guins or ten Bradburys, though Bradburys are a little more variable.

gillpolack @ 2014-07-21T15:22:00

Today is again about the little things and tomorrow morning will be all about the medical things. The more little things I can grind into the dust and the more medical things I can finish with, the easier my-rest-of-week will be.

It turns out that Schroedinger's Gillian lives in a box with several compartments. One has been investigated very thoroughly and it is now beyond doubt that I'm a writer of fiction. It's not only time time travel novel: my cursed novel will also see light of day. I should have more news soon on the fiction front, in fact. Or you could ask Satalyte, who is the publisher of my next novel. Events are outpacing announcements at this stage.

The box is still closed for my academic and teaching self. Not hermetically sealed - I have articles coming out - but it's not possible to see much except those duck feet madly paddling.

My metaphor is, in fact, falling to pieces, for I expected to have that box open and my future determined all at once. Too ambitious, that's me. Still, I've very chuffed (very, very chuffed) to have novels coming out. When I know details, I'll let you know. There will definitely be a small number of pre-release copies available at Loncon, at Liburnicon and possibly at Shamrokon, but the numbers are very limited. Then there will be Announcments and the full extent of my fictionalty will be known.

And now, back to dealing with the small but necessary tasks of the afternoon.

gillpolack @ 2014-07-20T09:15:00

My day keeps being rearranged, but so far that's worked to my advantage. I've just demonstrated the difference between how writers consider marketability when they create and that there are no simple answers and that the whole notion of where writers fit in the industry and how their work is seen is less intuitive than it appears. Well, I've done this for one small (but crucial) aspect of the fiction world. Anything more than this small (but crucial) aspect would take me into a whole new study, so that's one notion done and dusted for this year. I think it is, anyhow. For the moment. I suspect that in the not-so-distant future I'm going to want to do a study that looks at how genre operates in terms of what fiction gets out into the market. Is it like shoe sizes, or unique and strange and fun and, if so, do we lay classifications over the whole thing to create something comprehensible. Or is it 'none of the above.' My research so far simply demonstrates that we don't know, and that we're privileging some sayers-of-wisdom without necessarily knowing why. That's not going to be made explicit in my current project, though.

I have an hour and a half on this writing. The rest of the day will be meeting deadlines (one of which is at the cutting-fine stage) so you will excuse me if I go work.

BTW, if anyone's seen my missing sleep, please send it home.

gillpolack @ 2014-07-19T10:16:00

Things are busy. I want to say that they're spiralling gently out of control but this comment only applies to some aspects of my life. Some aspects are very wonderful, in fact, like the fact that (if I'm not too jetlagged) I start off my trip with meeting people in a pub in London and end it with meeting people in a pub in Helsinki. I do suspect I'm not going to get renditions of Australian rock by Finnish fans, but at least I get to meet Finnish fans in a pub!

And now I have to do some editing. This weekend is pretty-much about catching up on the things I couldn't do because I had to do other things. This will, I suspect, be the pattern of my next two weeks.

Not a single book has arrived for the Aurealis awards yet. This ought to be a concern, because we have less than 6 months to read and last year there were 87 books in my category. It also ought to be a concern because shortly I will lose most of my reading time for a couple of months. In reality, I'm glad not to have to handle one more thing right now. I might have to read 15 books a week during peak teaching period to make up, though, around the time my own novel is being launched, and around the time my next set of deadlines catches up. These things will test my reading *and* organisational skills and will be very good for me.

Seriously, if I don't get books for the Aurealis until September, then I shall spend my travel time reading 17th century stuff for the novel, so that I don't have to read 30 books a week. I realised this a few days ago and have done more work on the reading that must be done for this, so all is well. A bit busy, but well. That's why I'm not quite in control for a couple of tasks, though, because I had to trouble-shoot for when I get back.

gillpolack @ 2014-07-17T03:27:00

I'm up a bit late because I was looking for missing files. The ones I needed are now safely located and I've worked out work for tomorrow/today. I also found, however, the list of proposed banquets that Conflux had to play with at one stage during the Great Banquet Sequence. I had the resources to research and create menus for all of these. Read it and mourn what might have been (the one that actually happened from this list was the Prohibition Banquet):

At the court of the Borgias
Stories from the heptameron
La vie en Boheme
Prohibition
Frontier food (US late 19th century)
Cyrano de Bergerac goes to the moon (1647)
Metropolis (New York, 1927 )
Belle Epoque
Rebellious minds 1968 (Ursula Le Guin Left Hand of Darkness published 1969 also Stanislaw Lem)
Little England dreams (Edwardian or a bit later)
Escaping to the adventure (golden age SF)
The truth behind white picket fences (Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, 1950s)
Apocalypse Australia (1950s Melbourne)
At the Court of the Fairy Queen (Elizabeth I and her writers)

gillpolack @ 2014-07-16T23:57:00

I was hunting for a reference, so Sharyn and I between us found the old archives for Flycon. I hadn't forgotten it (it was a *lot* of work) but I had forgotten how much fun it was. The panels were fine and like panels in most places, but the chats were abnormally and splendidly alive. Writers were relaxed and fans were comfortable and inquisitive. I've been reading (instead of working) for a bit and discussion covered knitting, Maine Coons, were-platypi, whether questions *had* to be in Latin, how babies changed writing deadlines ( kateelliott - this was you - I was not online at that time and I'm very glad to have the record now). The classic conversation was between desperance and Geoff Ryman, but there were so many others.

I thought I enjoyed it at the time because it was so novel. Even now, though, after some years and much more experience of online SF conventions, those Flycon chats are special. Thank you eneit and sartorias for that amazing experience!


PS sartorias , more than one BVC member was involved. If BVC want those chatlogs, I'll email them right over! There are so many insights into writers and the work of writers in them, along with the raccoons and the Khazars.

gillpolack @ 2014-07-16T15:08:00

My brain is in hiding. I don't know what it's hiding from, for it won't tell me. I've fed it roast chestnuts and boiled eggs and cups of tea and it still won't tell me. I'll report in when I find it and persuaded it to talk. I won't tell you why my brain went into hiding (for obviously that's secret) but I might be tempted to do a proper blogpost with its assistance.

gillpolack @ 2014-07-14T15:44:00

I've done so much small, necessary stuff over the past few weeks that I've forgotten what it's like to do my everyday research and writing. I keep going back to it for a few hours, to remind myself. This means (inevitably) that I go back to what appeals to me, rather than the projects that have deadlines attached. I know much more about the London my characters will be visiting for my seventeenth century novel, for instance, and I'm so pleased I chose Restoration London, for it has meaning on so many levels for this story. It will be my New Science location, perhaps. I did not, however finish the last hour of work on the chapter for someone else's book, nor did I make headway on the article I promised. They're neither overdue yet, but one is near due and the other has to be finished before I leave (it's due while I'm away). I also haven't made more than fractional headway on my academic book. Only a few weeks and I'll have a first complete draft. I've been saying this for months, now. I wasn't expect GUFF, though, nor a novel to be released, nor any of the thousand other things that have happened. I shall comfort myself that I'm not past deadline yet. And that I will finish these things before I go, and that I really haven't wasted time, even though I keep assuming I have.

I have permission to handsell pre-release copies of my Medievalish time-travelish novel during Loncon, BTW. This means that if you want to see it, you may want to find me before they're gone. There aren't that many available, you see. (I know I said this the other day, but the only person who responded was someone who wants to wait for the final version in any case, and people keep saying they don't know things when I've blogged them, so I'm hedging my bets.)

Everything else is serious today. So much serious stuff that I don't think I want to go onto it here. It's the usual. This is one of those not-so-easy times for being Jewish.