Another op'ning, another show
Out of the hat, it's that big first night! Here's my 2015 Arisia schedule. Some lively panels ahead (maps and dialect are so very Nine, and "Unruly Places" will be cool):
The Map and the Story Fri 7:00 PM
Maps are a familiar sight in our field, but lately a number of stories have placed maps and cartography at the core of the stories themselves. Maps serve as portals to other worlds, cartographers remake the world in a map’s image, and mapmaking itself becomes a means to discuss the distance between perception and reality, between the map and the territory. Panelists will discuss the ways in which maps and cartography have escaped from the endpapers in recent works of fiction.
Erik Amundsen, Greer Gilman, Walter H. Hunt, N. K. Jemisin, Lee Moyer (m)
Unruly Places:When the Setting Does Not Behave Sat 1:00 PM
Streets that shift in the night, pathways that change destination, hills that certainly weren’t there yesterday: some places just don’t behave. What works of genre fiction have explored these unruly places? What stories can only happen where our rules just don’t apply?
Erik Amundsen (m), Greer Gilman, Elektra Hammond, Adam Lipkin, Shira Lipkin
Dialect in SF/F Sat 7:00 PM
Classic literature and some SF have used dialect successfully, but much of our literature is written in received pronunciation. SFF use of dialect has been criticized as appropriative when done by non-native speakers, or exclusionary when stories in authentic dialect are painted as “too hard to read”. Junot Diaz wrote: “Motherfuckers will read a book that’s one third Elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and they think we’re taking over.” What modern authors are making progress here?
John Chu, Greer Gilman, Andrea Hairston (m), Daniel José Older, Nisi Shawl
Untold Tales: Fox Spirits and Golden Slippers Sun 10:00 AM
Many people are familiar with Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood, but what about Ye Xian, the oldest known “Cinderella” story from China, where a magic fish gives a girl golden slippers and a gown to win over the king? What about the tricky fox spirits that appear in Japanese folklore, the swan maidens in Russian tales, or all the pranks of Anansi from Ghana? What tales remain unfamiliar to Western audiences and where can they be found?
M. L. Brennan, Barbara Chepatis (m), Greer Gilman, Nightwing Whitehead
The Almanac of Dead Guardians,Teachers,& Mothers Sun 2:30 PM
In numerous fairy tales, Disney films, and superhero back stories, when a character’s parents die, so does a sense of security and safety regarding the world. It can also free up the main character to have adventures. Is killing off a parent (or guardian of any kind, really) helpful cultural shorthand for a story or a thin stab at character motivation? Are there some ways, reasons, and motives to kill off a parent figure that are worse than others?
Greer Gilman, Timothy Goyette, Merav Hoffman (m), Gail Z. Martin, Rebecca Slitt
The Wonderful Panel of Oz Mon 1:00 PM
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its 13 sequels constituted a truly American fairy tale, replete with mythology but without the harsh moral lessons that tales such as the Brothers Grimm had become infamous for. To this day, scholars and enthusiasts debate the great world that Baum shaped, from whether he originally intended a metaphor for early twentieth-century American Progressive Party politics, to the role of women in the series, to the seeming predictions of modern technology in its pages.
Greer Gilman, Merav Hoffman, Toni “Leigh Perry” Kelner (m), Daniel Miller, Sonya Taaffe
The Map and the Story Fri 7:00 PM
Maps are a familiar sight in our field, but lately a number of stories have placed maps and cartography at the core of the stories themselves. Maps serve as portals to other worlds, cartographers remake the world in a map’s image, and mapmaking itself becomes a means to discuss the distance between perception and reality, between the map and the territory. Panelists will discuss the ways in which maps and cartography have escaped from the endpapers in recent works of fiction.
Erik Amundsen, Greer Gilman, Walter H. Hunt, N. K. Jemisin, Lee Moyer (m)
Unruly Places:When the Setting Does Not Behave Sat 1:00 PM
Streets that shift in the night, pathways that change destination, hills that certainly weren’t there yesterday: some places just don’t behave. What works of genre fiction have explored these unruly places? What stories can only happen where our rules just don’t apply?
Erik Amundsen (m), Greer Gilman, Elektra Hammond, Adam Lipkin, Shira Lipkin
Dialect in SF/F Sat 7:00 PM
Classic literature and some SF have used dialect successfully, but much of our literature is written in received pronunciation. SFF use of dialect has been criticized as appropriative when done by non-native speakers, or exclusionary when stories in authentic dialect are painted as “too hard to read”. Junot Diaz wrote: “Motherfuckers will read a book that’s one third Elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and they think we’re taking over.” What modern authors are making progress here?
John Chu, Greer Gilman, Andrea Hairston (m), Daniel José Older, Nisi Shawl
Untold Tales: Fox Spirits and Golden Slippers Sun 10:00 AM
Many people are familiar with Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood, but what about Ye Xian, the oldest known “Cinderella” story from China, where a magic fish gives a girl golden slippers and a gown to win over the king? What about the tricky fox spirits that appear in Japanese folklore, the swan maidens in Russian tales, or all the pranks of Anansi from Ghana? What tales remain unfamiliar to Western audiences and where can they be found?
M. L. Brennan, Barbara Chepatis (m), Greer Gilman, Nightwing Whitehead
The Almanac of Dead Guardians,Teachers,& Mothers Sun 2:30 PM
In numerous fairy tales, Disney films, and superhero back stories, when a character’s parents die, so does a sense of security and safety regarding the world. It can also free up the main character to have adventures. Is killing off a parent (or guardian of any kind, really) helpful cultural shorthand for a story or a thin stab at character motivation? Are there some ways, reasons, and motives to kill off a parent figure that are worse than others?
Greer Gilman, Timothy Goyette, Merav Hoffman (m), Gail Z. Martin, Rebecca Slitt
The Wonderful Panel of Oz Mon 1:00 PM
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its 13 sequels constituted a truly American fairy tale, replete with mythology but without the harsh moral lessons that tales such as the Brothers Grimm had become infamous for. To this day, scholars and enthusiasts debate the great world that Baum shaped, from whether he originally intended a metaphor for early twentieth-century American Progressive Party politics, to the role of women in the series, to the seeming predictions of modern technology in its pages.
Greer Gilman, Merav Hoffman, Toni “Leigh Perry” Kelner (m), Daniel Miller, Sonya Taaffe
Reading: Arthen, Gilman, Hunt Mon 2:30 PM
Authors Inanna Arthen, Greer Gilman, and Walter H. Hunt read selections from their works.
Inanna Arthen, Greer Gilman, Walter H. Hunt
Wait, what? Monday at 2:30? Après moi le chien mort. And I have this lovely new bit with Ben Jonson and John Donne, damn it.
The other disappointment is that in the first draft I was put on one of my first-choice panels, "Religions, Holidays, and Rituals in Your Fiction." How Cloudish is that? And then got taken off in the second and final round. Rats. I would dearly love to get a chance to do this one, somewhere, sometime.
Hope to see you at the windswept Westin-Way-Out-There!
Nine
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