Rogue's Gallery

Hello!

This is my first year as Coordinator for The Gathering, which takes place on the Friday of WisCon, from 1-4pm. At The Gathering, you can greet old friends and make some new ones as you peruse the many tables and activities available for your delight and amusement.

Of course, in order to have activities available, we need people to host said activities.

Please write to gathering34@wiscon.info with any offers you might have to host activities (with a description of said activities). Write there also with any questions you might have.

Thanks!

Kij Johnson's Fudoki: think Lian Hearn's Tale of the Otori except it doesn't FUCKING SUCK ROTTEN, BLOOD-ENCRUSTED, WORM-RIDDEN APPENDAGES.

( Actually, it's really quite good. Good? Excellent, even. )

I had a thought for how to make a particular kind of panel run more smoothly.

I have attended a lot of panels, most of which I really enjoyed, on the general topic of "how come we never see $noun_phrase in SFF?" ("fat protagonists", "protagonists who are mothers", "old protagonists", hard SF written by women" etc.) A common way for these panels to fail is that for any noun phrase, there are a handful of obscure books/shows/movies that really do address that issue and a couple dozen more that sort of skirt it, and the panel gets bogged down with people listing off these books and media.

Since we are all at the panel because we're interested in the topic, this is pretty useful, because presumably we would like to experience these rare outliers that are addressing the topic. But it takes a long time for people to list these off (and to pause the action while everyone who wants to writes them down), and then we run out of time to discuss the phenomenon of why this issue isn't addressed more often, which is the ostensible panel topic.

So I wanted to suggest that the rooms have poster paper on an easel with a marker, and at any time during a panel that an audience member (or a panel member!) thinks of something they would recommend that's germane to the topic, they can just stand up an write it on the paper and sit down again. The conversation doesn't have to get interrupted, other people in the room can take notes or not as they fit, people who blog the panel can take down the list for later republishing, etc. If you're worried it won't be obvious why you're making the recommendation, you could put a few keywords in parens after it. (For example, "all Le Guin (gender issues)" or "Xenogenesis saga, Octavia Butler (book cover whitewashing)".)

This could really be generalized to lots of other panels too- this was just the panel style that I noticed was most derailed by recommendations.

Thoughts?

Wishing the best of the Season to you all, by all the Names we honour it!

The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman and various artists. 10 Volume compilation of the comic book series.

Living in the boondocks as I do, I missed these comics when they were originally published-probably the only goth who didn’t read them back then. In one way I’m glad: I would have hated waiting between issues. I devoured these books over the course of a month- I resisted the urge to grab all 10 at once when they showed up at the library, even though I wanted to just scream “All mine!” and run cackling out the door.

These are the most sophisticated comics I’ve ever read. Gaiman mixes his own creations, The Endless Ones (who include Dream, Death, Delirium, Desire, Destiny and Despair), with the pantheons of Greece, Egypt, Norway, the Bible and adds the world of faerie for good measure. Dream’s world is seductive and coming up out of it after a thorough immersion- reading a whole volume in one sitting- requires some adjustment of thought, so total is Gaiman’s world building. These aren’t happy little stories, though. There are no deus ex machine endings here; things come at a cost. Excellent writing; if you like myth you’ll like these, even if comics aren’t your usual reading.

Valente's Under in the Mere was an interesting read. I'm familiar with the source material (well, not the Vulgate Cycle, but Malory and Gawain the Green Knight, which in any case appear to be the primary source here) though I'm no medieval romance expert. It let me "get" the references, which for the Green Knight chapter I think is essential, since the allusions to the seduction/hunting game would probably not make sense otherwise.

I'm not sure I can give much of a critical thought about this book, since for the most part the Athurian framework seems to serve as a canvas for prose-poetry and not much else, though I appreciated the imagery of knights as automata and the Dagonet chapter (more Idylls of the King than Malory, though the specifics are mostly Valente) was my favorite. The rest are a bit hit-and-miss, and my interest flagged entirely while going through Pellinore's and Galahad's sections. I enjoyed the familiar Valente theme of monsters' perspectives (Bertilak, Pellinore, arguably Mordred) and her Morgan is quietly excellent, but on the whole I came away from Under in the Mere a little unsatisfied. I should say, though, that I'm not a reader of poetry: I like pretty language as much as anyone, but without substance to hold it together it's harder to appreciate.

What did everyone else think? I'm especially interested in how people unfamiliar with Malory/et al responded to it.

x-posted a little, for obvious reasons
Spec the Halls, my contest for winter holiday-themed science fiction, fantasy, or horror (stories, poetry, art, or other creative works), closes to submissions Friday, December 18th. So far we have only a dozen or so submissions, so if you submit a good piece, the odds of winning are relatively high! Or go there to enjoy the entries. http://www.aswiebe.com/specthehalls.html Spec the Halls: A Winter Celebration of the Weird and the Fantastic http://www.aswiebe.com/specthehalls.html

x-posted a little, for obvious reasons
Spec the Halls, my contest for winter holiday-themed science fiction, fantasy, or horror (stories, poetry, art, or other creative works), closes to submissions Friday, December 18th. So far we have only a dozen or so submissions, so if you submit a good piece, the odds of winning are relatively high! Or go there to enjoy the entries. http://www.aswiebe.com/specthehalls.html Spec the Halls: A Winter Celebration of the Weird and the Fantastic http://www.aswiebe.com/specthehalls.html

x-posted a little, for obvious reasons
Spec the Halls, my contest for winter holiday-themed science fiction, fantasy, or horror (stories, poetry, art, or other creative works), closes to submissions Friday, December 18th. So far we have only a dozen or so submissions, so if you submit a good piece, the odds of winning are relatively high! Or go there to enjoy the entries. http://www.aswiebe.com/specthehalls.html Spec the Halls: A Winter Celebration of the Weird and the Fantastic http://www.aswiebe.com/specthehalls.html