Kathryn Cramer

Readercon 2009 photos

I've posted our photos from Readercon 2009.

David Hartwell, Charles N. Brown, & Jeri Bishop

ohn Clute, Jeri Bishop, Michael Bishop, & Gary Wolfe

Kit Reed, Samuel R. Delany, & Ellen Datlow

Sarah Smith (with newly broken arm), & her son Justus Perry

Scenes from the Stokers last night

vampires!

Steve Jones, Dennis Etchison, & F. Paul Wilson

Stephen Woodworth

Ellen Datlow & Scott Edelman

Wrath James White

John Skipp

Stoker weekend, day 1: a friendly pleasantly serious mellow vibe

The Horror Writer's Association Stoker Weekend started yesterday morning, and we are having a great time. People are very friendly and it has the kind of pleasantly serious mellow vibe of World Fantasy Cons and Necons I remember from about 20 years ago. There are about 250 attendees and the hotel space has areas for easy gathering both inside and out.

My Flickr photoset is HERE. Scott Edelman's photos are HERE.

First thing Friday morning, we checked out the pool.

We talked to Scott Edelman over breakfast, and then I hung out in the lobby meeting new people before opening ceremonies. 

At opening ceremonies the guests were introduced, including my husband, David Hartwell, F. Paul Wilson, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. 

Afterwards, it was time for a glass of wine (Ron Larsen bought me a really nice glass of white wine) and I drew Quinn Yarbro outon the subject of how she came to be a shuttle bus driver for the 1968 WorldCon. (She'd seen a call for volunteers in IF.)

At 2PM, I was on an anthology panel moderated by Ellen Datlow with Bill Breedlove, RJ Cavender, Chad Helder, Stephen Jones, and Vince A. Liaguno. I've known Ellen and Steve for 20 years, but the rest I think I'd never met. It was a wide-ranging interesting discussion of anthologies and anthologists, one of the better panels I've been on on this subject in a number of years.

After that we headed for the Gauntlet Press Party, where Richard Matheson (in a wheel chair) and his son Richard Christian Matheson were to be found.

At the party, I had a long intense conversation with Alan Rodgers and Amy Sterling Casil (whom I hadn't seen in ages).

We had a quiet family dinner of comfort food in the hotel restaurant (by this time we were all quite exhausted). Then we took a nap for an hour, because tehre was more to come.

The Gory Ghoul Bar was the event the kids had most been looking forward to. The kids and I put on our costumes and David put on a David outfit (it involved a purple shirt and an yellow tie). There was loud ebullient rock and roll of fluctuating key performed by mostly costumed authors and publishers. My kids danced a lot, and I danced too, mostly to help keep little girls from skinning their knees or colliding with something. 

F. Paul Wilson did a fine job of "I'm an All Right Guy" by Tom Snyder. Scott Edelman has posted the performance to YouTube. (My daughter Elizabeth is the dancer in the unicorn pegasus costume.)

Peter and I both won costume prizes. he won as Goriest Ghoul or most Horribly Horrible or something, and they made up a special category for me: Best Tim Burton movie refugee. I was wearing one of my mother's 1950s party dresses (carefully preserved by my grandmother, which I received as part of the settling of her estate in 2008) plus a black velvet hat.

I am looking forward to the Non-Fiction Horror panel this morning. So far, it seems a good time is being had by all.

Gender, Identity, SF, & the Singularity ( a draft essay written 7/14/07)

The following is an unfinished essay drafted in July of 2007 in response to a panel I was on at Readercon in 2007. I could not lay hands on some crucial resources, such as the essay "Performance" by Don West (byline "D. West"). It appeared in Malcolm Edwards' fanzine TAPPEN, issue 5, 1982. Reprinted in DELIVERANCE, a 1992 collection of West's fanzine writing, in order finish it, and so I never did, though God knows, as we excavate the Hartwell basement archives, it may in time turn up.

I've decided to publish this unfinished draft, since my opinions on pseudonymity have recently attracted so much interest. 

—Kathryn Cramer

---

I am pretty good at communicating my thoughts to the science fiction field most of the time, both in essays and on panels. But once is a while, I find that I've said something I thought was clear, and that it really didn't communicate. In a number of cases in the past, this has lead to book projects or essays, for example my anthologies The Architecture of Fear and The Ascent of Wonder, or essays such as "Science Fiction and the Adventures of the Spherical Cow."

I seem to have just had such an experience, given comments I've heard or read about the panel at Readercon entitled "The Singularity Needs More Women." Such comments are for the most part not hostile, and it was not a hostile panel. Rather, I gather that some substantial portion of the audience did not get the connections I was trying to make between the science fictional notion of the Singularity and the here and now, specifically in relation to people's online construction of their identity.

I'm not going to try to rehash what was said on the panel, but rather explore what I was getting at from a different angle. —K

In a way, this was an impossible panel: We were invited into the hazardous quicksand of feminist identity politics to indulge in fantasies about what things would be like if this were only cleared away, if only all gender-related constraints on our identities were removed. We mostly didn't go there. And inasmuch as we did go there, it has not made people happy.

One continuing theme I find myself wanting to talk about at Readercon is that we already live in an unrecognizably transformed world; social changes have been worked upon us that we are unable to recognize or articulate. On this panel, I used the example of online identity and pseudonymity; in previous years my example has been how suburbia as it actually exists has become unrecognizable and that its social codes have been transformed in unrecognized ways, transformations that often are not a liberation.

Both the the Singularity and Transhumanity are social concepts. The core issue of the topic of Singularity and its relationship to gender is the extent to which one believes gender can and will be transcended through technology. And a key element in these concepts is our inability to recognize a transformed society and our transformed species: The Singularity is supposed to be an unrecognizable transformation. One thing usually said on panels about the Singularity and science fiction is that if such thing is truly unrecognizable, then one can't really write fiction about it. This panel was no exception.

A couple of works I should have talked about and didn't: Frederick Pohl's story "Day Million,"  a story about social identity in the far future that David Hartwell and I described in an introduction as "a story set in a future so distant and different that we can only glimpse it in mysterious reflections and intriguing images," and Bruce Sterling's Schizmatrix. A "Day Million" moment in Schizmatrix is when a man proposes to his ex-wife and so much has changed in their post-human existence that she accepts his proposal without knowing she's married this man before.

"Day Million" is of course deeply entangled in the subculture of science fiction's Futurians, which had its geographical center in New York City, and later in Milford, Pennsylvania. The post-Futurian sf sub-culture centered around the influential Milford writing workshop, held in Milford.

For a while in the 1980s, I lived in Milford, Pennsylvania and worked for Virginia Kidd, a literary agent and the ex-wife of SF writer James Blish. Before taking the job, I read Damon Knight's The Futurians to catch up on the back gossip. (I discovered later, after many conversations, that there is no one canonical account of the Futurian era: each person has their own -- most are fascinating -- and they mostly don't match.)

One key element of Futurian society was choosing a name. Many of the Futurians changed their names in order to change their lives. Virginia Kidd's first name on her birth certificate was not "Virginia." James Allen, another agent with the Virginia Kidd Agency once told me how Virginia counseled him to change his name when he became a literary agent. Virginia's good friend and client, Judith Merril (who was also Fred Pohl's ex-wife), told me over dinner how she came to change her last name to Merril. (She subsequently wrote this up for her autobiography.)

No one knew who the heck Lester del Rey was until several years after his death. He left behind a substantial estate and after several years of attempts to sort out the inheritance, it was apparently revealed that his name was Leonard Knapp.

Such name changes were partly pragmatic, since many were Jewish and could expect a more successful career under a non-Jewish name. And at least one member of that generation was looking to avoid back child-support. But there was also a substantial element of social fantasy. One thing I tried to understand over many such conversations was exactly why the Futurians perceived changing one's name as such a powerful act. I interpret "Day Million" as a partial expression the fantasy of only apparently real identity, or perhaps of the Modernist idea of a mask identity.

I see the current popularity of the concepts of the Singularity and trans-humanity as closely tied to online experimentation with the fantasy of apparent identity. Examples I used on the panel included Wikipedia admins who insist on the use of a pseudonym and claim that all attempts to decipher it amount to stalking; and Second Life, which requires you to adopt a pseudonym when you register -- you must select your last name from a pull-down menu and may only specify a first name; and the vast social wasteland of online dating, an unfolding disaster in human relations on a huge scale. My strong anti-pseudonymity message is not something people are all that receptive to at the moment.

The science fiction community strongly influenced the early evolution of the Internet because so many techies read sf and are involved in the sf community, and sf's ideas about pseudonymity and the adoption of a fannish name and persona seem to me to have influenced Internet fashion.  Cyberpunk sf was especially influential upon the shape of Internet social space: from William Gibson we have the very name of cyberspace, which as I recall he described in the 80s as that place you are when you're on the telephone — except that now 100 million people might overhear your call,which is recorded and archived.

There is one important difference between Futurian beliefs about only apparently real identities and the current online version of disposable personae or identity: The Futurians chose a name and tended to stick with it for the rest of their lives, whereas online identities are much usually more ephemeral. Also the Futurians used such names in person, whereas online aliases are mostly intended for use in electronic communication in cyberspace.

A significant transitional figure is James Tiptree, Jr. (aka Alice Sheldon aka Racoona Sheldon), a mother of the cyberpunk movement. She was a client of Virginia Kidd's. After her death, I accepted a couple of her posthumous awards on behalf of the Kidd agency. My husband, David Hartwell, was her editor and one of the few people in science fiction who ever met her in person. (Philip K. Dick, another writer who prefigured cyberpunk, is in some ways an opposite figure to Tiptree. He was concerned with distinguishing the authentic from the "only apparently real." )

Alice Sheldon used her real name in her everyday life, but used an alias for her writing and correspondence in the science fiction field. Her true identity and gender were only revealed after the death of her mother, a well-known writer. Her fascination with the power of pseudonymity seems to have its origins not in the Futurian subculture, but in that of the CIA. She was briefly employed by the CIA and was the wife of a high ranking CIA official, Huntington Sheldon. The Sheldons were part of the intelligence subculture that founded the CIA.

(Perhaps the origin of the false identity as it is used in the "intelligence" community is the Romantic spy and criminal fiction of the 19th and early 20th century: in the Robin Hood stories, Richard the Lion-Hearted supposedly sneaked back into England to depose the bad king.)

Tiptree had a tremendously seductive literary voice and persona. But while the science fiction field may have benefited from her adoption of an alias, since it arguably enabled her to write a highly regarded body of fiction, it is not clear that she herself benefited. Her adoption of the Tiptree pseudonym apparently started as a joke, and took on the role in her life of an addictive drug. Her life did not end well: She had chronic problems with depression and ended her life by shooting her husband and then herself. Tiptree is an icon in feminist sf as someone who liberated her writing voice by adopting a male pseudonym. In the context of a discussion of trans-humanity and gender, she perhaps represents feminist hopes for liberation from the constraints of older constructions of female social identity.

Though Tiptree and Phil Dick are in some ways opposites as literary figures -- Tiptree as icon of the power of pseudonymity, and Dick as an icon of the technological relevance of Kierkegaardian authenticity -- both writers are intensely concerned with alienation, which seems to me one of the core issues of Internet constructions of personal identity.

The argument can be made that the adoption of the alias James Tiptree, Jr. allowed Alice Sheldon a truer expression of her inner voice than society would have allowed for someone named Alice Sheldon, and that the adoption of an alias was a form of authenticity. This argument is rarely used with regard to adoption of aliases today, with one notable exception: The strange case of Laura Albert aka J. T. Leroy. Albert, an author who lost a civil suit claiming fraud brought by a movie company, gave some very interesting testimony:

Ms. Albert herself, in testimony from the stand, suggested that JT LeRoy was far more than a pseudonym in the classic Mark Twain-Samuel Clemens mold. She offered the idea that JT LeRoy was a sort of “respirator” for her inner life: an imaginary, though necessary, survival apparatus that permitted her to breathe.

The portrait of Alice Sheldon in her biography suggests some similarities to Albert. Interestingly, the end of the New York Times article about the ruling against Albert suggests that she is now "liberated" from her pseudonym.

Despite the many arguments that are made about the necessity of Internet pseudonymity for reasons of privacy, alienation is much more important to the core ethical issues of online communities and their strivings toward a trans-humanity, a transcendence of all constraining circumstance. While we are no more intelligent and perhaps no less powerful online than we are in person, we can certainly make ourselves seem  unrecognizable and estrange ourselves from our genders of birth, our ages and educational levels (see the Essjay controversy), our marital status (as is widely practiced on dating sites), etc. While this is not true trans-or post-humanity, it represents at least a kind of fantasy of trans-human existence, easier than a make-over or reinventing yourself under your own name. Much as we would like science fiction to be about the future, it is so often about the present. 

For the most part, writers such as Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow who are concerned with the Singularity subject matter, do not try to conceal the connection of their writing to the here and now.

We did, I think, get at that issue toward the end of the panel: How gendered popular types of Internet communications truly are; how much more flamboyant gender expression sometimes is online than in real life, and on the darker side, how much more overt and nasty online enforcement of gender codes can be.

Backlash is at least as characteristic as liberation of rapid social change generated by technological change. Is the Internet fad for pseudonymity a form of backlash or of liberation? The popular claim that a protected pseudonymity is necessary to protect people from stalking suggests that pseudonymity is a backlash against unwanted transparency. David Brin claims that transparency is "freedom's best defense." I think I agree with him.

Before the panel, I was asked by the convention program chair whether I was pro- or anti- the notion of the Singularity, ostensibly because this was anticipated to be an anti-Singularity panel. I'm not sure whether the above discussion makes me pro- or anti-Singularity. I believe we are already in the midst of rapid transformation that is rendering the world unrecognizable, already in the midst of a rising inadequation of the mind to the world.

There is another word for this: alienation. And perhaps that is what we should be talking about.

Or maybe not. From Charles Stross's Singularity! A Tough Guide to the Rapture of the Nerds, a definition of the Singularity:

The SIingularity is what happens when reality throws a divide-by-zero error or you extrapolate a curve to a straight line. Or something. Maybe it's what an Italian rock star says when you give him a wedgie. Who knows? All I know is that Vernor Vinge invented it -- damn him! (If it wasn't for those meddling computer science professors I could still be writing about PixieDust ...)

Anyway. You don't need to understand all that stuff to write about the SIngularity. What you need to understand is that after the SIngularity things will be cool. We'll all be PostHumans or UpLoading ourselves into our pocket calculators, there'll be lots of ArtificialIntelligence to help fight outbreaks of GreyGoo, and if there are annoying folks you don't want to have around you can just tell them to go TRanscend.

It's the hot new topic for wish-fulfillment adventure and escapism. And there'll be jam for tea every day.

As the Mad Hatter said, "Have more tea."

(to be continued at some point  . . .)

I have posted my Balticon photos

My Balticon photoset is HERE.

Greetings from Balticon!

Wiscon program item noted without comment: "Something Is Wrong on the Internet!"

http://wiscon.piglet.org/program/detail?idItems=302

Program Item

Name Something Is Wrong on the Internet! Track(s) Feminism and Other Social Change Movements (Reading, Viewing, and Critiquing Science Fiction) Description What keeps you going at 4 a.m. when there's so much fail, and only you and your fellow Internet drama addicts stand against it like stubborn superheroes? Let's talk about why Internet drama is important to us as activists and as fans, why we engage or disengage, and what it all means when ideas and personalities clash in public discussion of sf/f books, tv, fic, and culture. Location Capitol B Schedule Sun 10:00 - 11:15AM Panelists M: Vito Excalibur, Piglet, Liz Henry, Julia Sparkymonster

UPDATE: Two accounts of the panel, one from Laura, in the audience, with several unattributed quotes about mobbing:

Hint of a fail is when a person says “There is a mob after me!”

. . . and . . .

If you never shut up about things, then you will continue to be mobbed.

And one from Liz Henry:

danny: what seems to spark a particularly bad reaction is a bunch of people's reactions being called a "mob" - it is not a mob it is a lot of individuals having their own valid reactions.

Ad Astra photos

I've posted out photos from Ad Astra in Toronto HERE.

Tamora Pierce, David Drake, Violet Malan, & Karin Lowachee

Steampunk Fashion Show

Photos from ICFA 2009

Guy Gavriel Kay, Farah Mendlesohn, & Gary Wolf

I've made a Flickr photoset for David's pictures from the ICFA currently taking place in Orlando, FL. More will be added to the set as the event proceeds.

Also, HERE are Ellen Datlow's.

David's Boskone photos

I have posted David's photos from Boskone to Flickr HERE.

James Morrow & Michael Flynn

Out sick from Boskone on Valentine's Day

I had dithered a bit about whether to go to Boskone. (David had always planned to attend and is there now.) The logistics were complicated. About a week ago, I made the decision to go, planning to driving up Saturday morning.

Didn't happen. I've been sick in bed and have been running a low fever, so, no, I didn't get the kids in the car and drive to Boston. David, who drove up Friday morning and is on the program and has a dealer's table, says it's smaller than usual, but a really pleasant time. Hi Boskonians! (KC waves at you through the screen.)

I may be sick, but I'm not having a bad day. Elizabeth brought me breakfast in bed. I pulled myself together to take the kids out for a child-appreciation Valentine's Day lunch, and then we went to the chocolate shop and stocked up on bonbons. 

So I may be sick in bed, but I am well-supplied with great kids and cats and chocolate. Things are all right.

David's photos from Comic Con

I've posted on Flickr David's photos that he took at Comic Con  today. (I didn't go.)

World Fantasy Con photos

My WFC pix are HERE.

In case you are wondering, the blue did come out of David's hair when he took a shower this morning.

Playing Hookey from the WorldCon

Cheryl Morgan has noted that my kids and I are absent from Denvention. Ah, I'm busted playing hookey from the WorldCon. No, I'm not in Denver, I'm in Westport, NY painting my basement and painting pictures of Lake Champlain.

Meanwhile, Peter & Liz performed last night at the Deport Theatre as part of the theater's summer apprentice program. Amazing action photos here. Today Elizabeth goes on a trip to a local farm.

This evening, the kids and I are going to an event at an "art farm." If by chance NYRSF wins a Hugo, I'm sure David will bring it home. I will, however, be in Montreal next year.

Confluence Pix

I've created a Flickr photoset for our Confluence photos  and will add more later. Here is the scene so far:

Mike Walsh sells books in the Dealer's Room. (Didin't I see him last weekend?)

Panel: Is the Internet Essentially Fungal? with Kathryn Cramer, Geoff Landis, James Morrow, Mary Turzillo

JJ presides over the Beer Tasting. (Yummy!)

Charles Oberndorf & James Morrow at dinner on the terrace.

Greetings from Confluence

I have arrived at Confluence and have my first program item in  about two hours, a panel which I proposed on whether the Internet is essentially fungal, which I think it is.

Here's my program schedule. I'm expecting this will be a lot of fun.

Friday   6:00pm  Is the Internet Essentially Fungal?
      Kathryn Cramer   (M)
      Geoffrey A. Landis
      James Morrow
      Mary A. Turzillo
  In his book  Mycelium Running, mycologist  Paul Stamets argues that fungi are nature's Internet. Perhaps it's really the other way around. Is the Internet essentially fungal? Discuss from the SF  worldview (and perhaps from Lovecraft's as well).

Saturday 1:00pm  Critic Guest Talk: The Game of  Genre
      Kathryn Cramer

Saturday 4:00pm  Trends in Short Fiction: From Original Anthologies to Online Fiction
      Lawrence C. Connolly
      Kathryn Cramer   (M)
      David Barr Kirtley
      Paul Melko
      Karina Sumner-Smith
  Every year, we hear predictions of the death of short fiction. Yet, every year, some of the genres best works are not novels but short stories and novellas. And more new outlets are appearing.  There are more good original anthologies than we've seen since the golden  years of Universe, New Dimension, Orbit, and Dangerous Visions. And online markets are flourishing. The panel looks at some of the best  new short fiction, where it can be found, and the prospects for the future.

Saturday 5:00pm  What's Best?
      Kathryn Cramer   (M)
      David G. Hartwell
      James Morrow
      William Tenn
  Never mind what's best THIS YEAR, how do we decide what is best in  sf and fantasy anyway?

Sunday  10:00am  Kaffeeklatsch/Literary Beer

Sunday  12:00 noon Real Life Utopianism
      Kathryn Cramer
      Joe Haldeman
      James Morrow   (M)
      Kathryn Morrow
      Charles Oberndorf
  SF as a literature is  strongly concerned w /utopias and dystopias. How do we individually relate these visions to our real lives? What  have we done lately at  achieving utopia?

Right now I'm in my hotel room, having eaten lunch andd taken a shower. Against my better judgement, I spent a few minutes on the Internet and found myself trying to parse why    Violet Blue is trying to get a restraining order against some guy who had never previously impinged on my consiousness  (for his Wikipedia edits having to do with her Wikipedia entry).  What he had done to upset her looked to me simply like standard fairly reasonable Wikicrat behavior.  I never did figure out what this particular fuss is supposed to be about.

When oh when will I learn that I really don't need to try to follow the threads of this kind of Internet  mycelium? Fungal. Yes, the Internet is fungal.

Readercon Pix & Others

I have posted our photos from Readercon, which was last weekend, as well as our photos from the NYRSF 20th Anniversary Party the weekend before.

(Is Donald gesturing, or is that air guitar?)

Now, I am off to Confluence in Pittsburgh, where I will be  P. Schuyler Miller Critic Guest of Honor. Wheee! (Be there or be sqaure!)

(After that, I'm going back to the Adirondacks to rise with the sun and plant pretty flowers in the mountains.)

Balticon Photos

I've posted our photos from Balticon including shots of Michael Flynn, Connie Willis, Walter Jon Williams, Urban Tapestry (the music guests of honor), and Karl Scroeder, plus a photoset of the nearby Oregon Ridge Nature Center.

David Hartwell & Karl Schroeder in the dealer's room

kids w/ Gameboys

Peter & David explore the swamp at the nature center

ICFA Photos

I've posted our photos from ICFA (The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts) on Flickr.

Critic Guest of Honor at Confluence 2008

I am pleased to report that next summer, I will be the P. Schuyler Miller Critic Guest of Honor at Confluence 2008 in Pittsburgh, PA.

(The following summer, my husband, David Hartwell, will be the Editor Guest of Honor at the Worldcon in Montreal.)

Archon & Confluence pix & more!

I've posted our photos from Confluence in Pittsburgh, PA and from Archon/Nasfic in Collinsville, Illinois as well as photos from visiting earthworks at Newark, OH and at Cahokia in Collinsville.  Enjoy.

As usual, we are behind on captioning.

Our Readercon Pix Are Up

Our photos from Readercon are up. As usual, we haven't captioned most of them.

YouthCan 2007

Monday, I took my son Peter to YouthCan 2007, a conference for kids on helping the environment through technology held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Most of the people attending were part of school groups, some from as far away as Argentina, Russia, and Iran, though most from the US. In all, attendance was about a thousand.

A couple of years ago, I tried to arrange for a delegation from my son's school to attend, but in our district there were too many bureaucratic obstacles, and so I failed. This year, when I received a reminder of the event via email, on whim I decided that Peter and I would attend.

I decided to drive in rather than take MetroNorth from Pleasantville, since once you get off MetroNorth it is a bit cumbersome to get -- via public transportation -- from Grand Central Station to the museum. We left home about 8:30 AM and got a nice parking space in the museum parking garage (for which I later paid a hefty sum: $43).

(I had arranged for a babysitter for my daughter in in the afternoon [$30-something], and for the Mother Hen bus service [$30] to get her from pre-school and take her there, so Peter and I had as much time as we needed. Museum admission was free with the event, but I had already run up over a $100 tab as soon as I set the plan in motion. And Linda Hirshman wonders in a New York Times OpEd piece wonders at the struggle of moms rejoining the work-force, or meditates on our competing obligations; or something. It cost a hundred bucks to spend the day with one child in NYC without the other. In my utopia, this would be cheaper.)

We arrived before opening ceremonies began; opening and closing ceremonies were held in the Hall of Ocean Life -- with the full scale model of a blue whale hanging from the ceiling -- a great venue for any event. The room full of kids and chaperons was better behaved than one might have expected as we waited for the rest to arrive because there was so much to look at just in that one room.

Andrew Revkin, a science writer for The New York Times and author of the kids' book about global warming, The North Pole Was Here, gave what was essentially the keynote speech. He made the interesting point that he realized that after writing 300 NYT articles, the people he should have been writing to were kids, since the decisions affecting our current climate are already made and that the decisions made now and in the near future most affect those under 19. I would have liked to see his one-hour presentation on his trip to the North Pole, but I had Peter signed up for something else, and so just bought a copy of his book to read later.

There were three program slots to sign up for. Our first was EcoMedia, held by The Bronx River Art Center:

Become educated about the Bronx River environment through several student multimedia approaches with different tools involving ecoTV, ecoGames, ecoWeb, ecoSound, and ecoPhoto.  See an amazing project unravel before your eyes as students in this ecological workshop, translate ideas like invasive species or watershed physics.

This was my first exposure to 13-year-olds giving software demos. I suppressed the impulse to try to help. It made the biggest impression of all on my 9-year-old son, who had seen mommy do many or all of the things the kids were showing him how to do, but having kids show him was different.

The next session we went to was held by third graders from Miami Country Day School and consisted of a series of presentations by groups of third graders on solutions to the problem of world hunger.

How much land is actually useful for agricultural purposes? Find out and learn about a more effective way to grow crops in many of the poor regions of the world. Be ready to take home all you need to make your own container garden. Make up a recipe with organic herbs flown fresh from our school garden for your enjoyment! This workshop is hands-on, nose-on, and mouth-on.

The kids were doing a splendid job. But the room was hot and crowded (too small for the number of people there) so we slipped off for lunch before the end.

In the cafe, we found the group who had given the ecoMedia presentation, so we sat with them when we ate our lunch.

The third session we attended was Guerrilla Gardening, held by sixth graders from the Salk School of Science in New York City.

Save the plants and save the world! Learn how you and/or your school can create amazing indoor gardens while recycling and reusing your kitchen refuse. Plant beans, corn, potatoes, ginger, and much more. Leave with a head start on your own garden!

The students collectively taught a lesson that they might have had at school with their teacher. We drew sketches of various kinds of seeds found in many kitchens (kidney beans, bird seed, popping corn, etc.) then we made planters for them out of clear egg cartons and each came home set up to sprout the seeds on our windowsills.

After that, we attended the lively closing ceremonies in which there was some moderated discussion of what we had gotten out of the day. One of the teenagers attending had submitted a compelling short essay that was read out loud.

After the official conference was over, we paid a visit to the Discovery Room, one of Peter's favorite parts of the museum. He looked at live grubs and butterfly wings under the microscope. We also spent a while in the museum's enormous gift shop.

After a snack in the museum's main dining room, we went up to the top floor and saw the Audubon exhibit and the dinosaur skeletons. we saw a few more exhibits and then headed home.

For next year, when Peter will be in middle school, I think I'll try again to get a school delegation together to give a presentation.

Amazing photograph of Patrick Nielsen Hayden with both eyes open, looking at the camera!

Tor Books editor and blogger Patrick Nielsen Hayden is notoriously difficult to photograph, so I thought I'd share this photo with you which David took at ComicCon in Manhattan the other day.

Also shown: Brian Vaughn and Kay McCauley.

Kathryn Cramer complains about conventions and childcare, part 463

It says a lot about American conventions and conferences of all types that Harry Brighouse had to write this sentence:

The topic was Rethinking Gender Egalitarianism, and I was leaving my wife at home much of the weekend with a 4-week-old baby and the girls.

There was aparently much discussion of the issue of society & childcare which followed once he'd arrived at the conference. But, speaking as a wife who these days frequently stays home from events she would have preferred to have attended, I do wonder which voices in this discussion did not show up to be heard because the problem is not adequately addressed by our cultures' public gatherings.

Boskone 2007 Pix

We have posted some of our Boskone photos on Flickr. We'll post more later.

(Meanwhile, I have come down with something involving red spots which I caught from my daughter, and so am missing my afternoon panel.)

My Philcon Pix Are Up!

My Philcon pix are  up on Flickr. Enjoy!

Nathan Lilly on the blogging panel.

Capclave Pix

I've got photos from Capclave up on Flickr.

Xtreme Ruffles at Albacon

Albacon is being held in an Albany, NY hotel that is also hosting a pagent for little girls. So girls in Xtreme Ruffles and pancake makeup are occasionally visible from the Albacon function areas. My three-year old daughter caught sight of some of the pagent proceedings and exclaimed that she wanted to go to "the face-painting."

Our Favorite Pix from WorldCon

John Hertz and Cheryl Morgan: which Fan Writer will survive?

Kathryn Cramer & Mari Kotani

Liza Trombi

Pat Cadigan & Gardner Dozois

Rudy Rucker & Paul Williams

Disney Survivors: Kathryn Cramer & Sheila Williams

John Scalzi in the new Campbell Award tiarra.

Nice Shirt!

Scott Dennis, on behalf of the Clothiers Guild, presented my husband, David Hartwell, with this shirt, commemorating his Hugo win for Best Editor.

And here is David on an editing panel with his Hugo a little earlier in the day.

Sheila Williams, David Hartwell, & Ellen Datlow

Where Is the Time Machine When We Need It?

WARNING: SCIENCE FICTION FIELD IN-JOKE AHEAD.

What I would like to advise Connie Willis to say when touched inappropriately during the Hugo Awards ceremony: Go away little f*ck!

Cory Doctorow & his MacBook

I tried to get Rudy Rucker to take this shot of Cory Doctorow yesterday, after the "Bloggers as Public Intellectuals" panel at the WorldCon (featuring, in addition to Cory, Kevin Drum, Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden, MaryAnn Johanson, & Phil Plait) and but Rudy didn't do it. So I took the shot myself today.

There is a better version of this to be had, but I thought it was interesting to pose.

Here's a fuzzy shot of yesterday's panel I took with my cell phone:

Trinoc*con Photos & Others

I've got a bunch of photos up on Flickr from Trinoc*con where David was Toastmaster.

Dan Reid & Gene Wolfe.

John Kessel, Kathryn Cramer, & Keith Farrell.

But wait, there's more! Many more pix from North Carolina!

Me & Chimney Rock.

David & Peter at Biltmore.

Elizabeth with her daddy in the gardens a Biltmore.

The Sweetest Klingon

I think my favorite costume seen at Marcon is T'ffany, a valley-girl Klingon:

I continue to update my Marcon Flickr photoset.

Amazing Marcon Pix!

I've posted to Flickr our photos so far from Marcon in Columbus, Ohio, where my husband, David Hartwell, is the Editor Guest of Honor. I'll be updating the photoset as I take more.

Not Going to WFC

A couple of people have asked whether I'm attending the World Fantasy Convention in Madison. Yes, my husband is heads the board of directors of the organization that oversees the convention from year to year, and yes, this year's theme, "The Architecture of Fantasy and Horror," would be a perfect venue for me, since in the 1980's I edited two anthologies of architectural horror, The Architecture of Fear, for which I won a World Fantasy Award, and Walls of Fear, for which I was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. But NO, I'm not going.

I would leave it at that, because of course with every convention there are some people who can attend and some who can't and many of those who can't can't for reasons that are not fair, like not having enough money. And certainly, over time, I've gotten to go to a lot of conventions. But I wanted to spin this out for you a little in terms of science fiction and its social policies and what happens specifically to women.

A while back I wrote a bit about the situation of childcare at conventions at which I was able to show up. I had great difficulty being able to attend the convention program because of the lack of childcare at conventions. While other people attended the program, I would usually be in the halls with my kids, no matter how interesting I might have found the goings on inside.

People took me seriously. In response to may complaints, some changes were made. Not enough, but some. I had an impact.

But now, for the most part, I am not getting to those halls in the first place. One of our book contracts was not renewed and so money is tight. The Glasgow Worldcon had put me on the best batch of program items I had ever been assigned. But I had to cancel because the plane fares never came down to the level we could afford for a family of four. And back last fall, I had to eat a ticket to France for Utopiales because our family-member childcare for the trip fell through, and we couldn't afford to buy childcare on the open market in Westchester. (I haven't managed to get to Eurpore since Peter was born in 1997.) Between Utopiales and the Glasgow Worldcon, that's two trips to Europe cancelled in the past year.

And I'm not going to Madison. With my son in an elementary school that is very pushy about its attendance policies, we couldn't really bring him given the complexities of getting to Madison. Childcare for the weekend while I went out would be amazingly expensive here. We make $90,000/yr below the median income for our school district, so for the most part, I can't buy babysitting at market prices. (A sitter for an evening out costs about $15/hour around here, so I don't get out much.) The noose tightens, so I'll probably seeing less of people who expect to just see me around, if only in the halls though not in the panels or evening parties.

I would lay on you my grandmother's line, "I'm not complaining, but. . ." (When I was a kid I would always believe her: that she wasn't compaining, even though that line always prefaced a complaint.) But it would be a lie: I am complaining. But I'm telling you folks in the science fiction field about this not because I expect you to fix it for me, but because I'm sure I'm not the only woman you are losing access to over things like this.

David's WorldCon Photos

David put up an album of his WorldCon photos last night.

Paul Park, Roz Kaveny, & Charles Stross.

I hope to put up my un-WorldCon pix today.

By the way . . .

In case you're wondering why we haven't posted more photos of our Canadian travels, and of Westercon in particular, David accidentally spilled orange juice on our Powerbook on our last day in Canada so it is being professionally cleaned. When  we get it back, I can play more with the treaures on its harddrive.

This photo was taken at the Edith Cavell Glacier near Jasper in Alberta.

Reassurance

Folks from the UK sited (in good health) at Readercon so far: Graham Sleight (who was boarding his flight here about the time of the attacks), Farah Mendlesohn, and John Clute.

Eaton Conference

David and I will both be appearing at the Eaton Conference at the end of next week, which is being held at the Science Fiction Museum at Seattle Center:

UC Riverside Libraries and The Science Fiction Museum & Hall of Fame Team Up for Conference on Science Fiction

Eaton Conference to be Held May 5, 6 and 7 in Seattle in Connection with Science Fiction Hall of Fame Induction The University of California, Riverside Libraries, which house The J. Lloyd Eaton Collection, the world’s most extensive science fiction and fantasy collection, joins The Science Fiction Museum & Hall of Fame in Seattle to present "Inventing the 21st Century: Many Worlds, Many Histories" on May 5, 6 and 7 in Seattle. The conference will be held at the same time as the museum’s first ever Hall of Fame induction ceremony Friday, May 6, which will honor film director Steven Spielberg, author Philip K. Dick, artist Chesley Bonestell and animator Ray Harryhausen. Eaton Conference attendees will have the opportunity to register before the general public. Speakers this year include Gregory Benford, Howard Hendrix, Joseph Miller, Eric Rabkin, George Slusser, Stanley Schmidt, Greg Bear, Eileen Gunn and Alan Shapiro, with David Hartwell delivering the Frank McConnell Memorial Lecture.

For full release, click here: http://www.newsroom.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/display.cgi?id=1028

If you follow the link, there is a schedule of events. There are two versions of the schedule circulating, one in which David gives his keynote speech at the beginning of the conference; one in which he gives it at the end. I'm supposed to serve on a panel at some point, but so far panel descriptions are limited to the word "panel."

I've been to an Eaton conference or two before, and the material is much meatier than what you tend to get on panels at your average SF convention, so if you live in the Seattle area, be sure to attend.

Back from Spring

We arrived home from Florida night before last straight into a Noreaster. There was local flooding at JFK from record rainfall. There were these enormous puddles we had to cross with all out luggage in order to get to the parking lot. (The "record" rainfall was .69 inches. I can't imagine what it it like to get across those streets after a summer cloud burst.) Some luggage and Elizabeth's car seat fell into a deep puddle on the way to the car. So I had to donate my coat as a seat liner to separate her from the wetness. About halfway home, it must have soaked through because her cheerfulness deteriorated into a fullblown two-year-old tantrum because I wouldn't let her climb out of her car seat. Meanwhile, the car crawled slowly through a wide variety of appalling road conditions. I don't know how long our driver has been driving in snow, but the deepening snow and sleet on the road seemed to make him extremely nervous. Between that and Elizabeth howling in the back seat, I felt bad for him.

Carl, who had gone to San Francisco for part of the time we were in Florida, had a much harder time getting back. His flight into White Plains was scheduled to get in around eleven, but it was cancelled by air traffic control because a plane slid off the runway there. United flew in him into La Guardia instead. At 1 AM when he arrived, ground transporation had of course shut down. He did ultimately find a service that would drive him out here for the paltry sum of $125. The drive took 2 1/2 hours because of slippery road conditions. He got here at 4:30 AM. I saw his footprints in the snow at 6 when I got up, so I knew he'd managed t get here.

I spent a busy day yesterday coping with entropy: shovelling wet heavy snow out of the driveway; picking up the repaired snow thrower from Sears in Jefferson Valley (the driveway needed to be shovelled before the snow thrower could be retrieved!); taking our digital camera to the camera store for repair. Because of the snow, Peter's school had a two hour delay and Elizabeth's preschool was closed. Today is a school holiday (whatever happened to good old Easter vacation?) so then next day they go to school and I have quiet time to get things done is Monday.

Having been away for a little while, I find that I like the newly painted walls I worked on before I left even more than before. They somewhat make up for having to return to winter.

I read very few blogs while travelling, but I note this morning that Cheryl Morgan (seen via Mark Kelly) is chastising those who announce their Hugo nominations on their blogs before the full nominations list has been formally announced. Ahem. This household has assembled more Hugo nominations than most over a 20 year period and I don't think I've encountered this particular bit of etiquette before. Since, the nominations are all we ever get, I personally think it is appropriate for nominees to enjoy their nominations to the fullest. She explains her rationale:

Worldcons can’t always get in touch with every nominee easily. And sometimes people decline, necessitating an emergency email to the sixth-placed person. It really isn’t fair to go round bragging about your own nomination (or someone else’s) until everyone has been notified and accepted.

Anyone nervous enough to be concerned about the comparative haste with which various people have been notified of their nominations has a problem that cannot be solved by etiquette. She seems to be asking to give everyone exactly the same number of days of nominated glory. Or for those who should think about what an honor it is to be nominated to have sympathy for those who might actually win—or perhaps just for the favor of those knowing early not to increase the anxiety of those who earnestly hope but have not heard yet and will not know for sure until the final list is announced, perhaps without them. Who among us cannot be sympathetic to those feelings, but we ought not to follow the lead of the most anxious or most easily wounded, I should think.

Sudden Temporary Architecture of Chaotic Light

I had lots of lovely blogging planned for late last night when the kids were asleep, but our hotel's Wayport internet connection was a bit spotty overnight, so I'm going to rush through a bunch of material that I had planned to address in a more lesiurely fashion.

One fringe benefit of the net connection being down is that since I couldn't keep a good connection, I followed Rudy Rucker's excellent example and went out and did early morning yoga by the pool. I picked my spot next to the whirlpool, since it was a little chilly out. Just as I finished up, the first rays of the rising sun came in through the palm fronds illuminating the rising steam, creating a sudden temporary architecture of chaotic light: vectors of golden light textured by the steam's vortecies. (I couldn't resist using that as a title.) For those at ICFA who would like to try seeing this tomorrow, it happened at about 6:45-6:50 AM.

OK. Quick run through of what I want to cover:

First of all, my dad, John Cramer, has some new physics stuff in the news. I was waiting for a few free moments to carefully write this up so you would think I knew what I was talking about, but this is not to be in the immediate Floridian future, so here is the link:

American Institute of Physics: A Puzzling Signal in RHIC Experiments:

A puzzling signal in RHIC experiments has now been explained by two researchers as evidence for a primordial state of nuclear matter believed to have accompanied a quark-gluon plasma or similarly exotic matter in the early universe. Colliding two beams of gold nuclei at Brookhaven's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in New York, physicists have been striving to make the quark-gluon plasma, a primordial soup of matter in which quarks and gluons circulate freely.

However, the collision fireball has been smaller and shorter-lived than expected, according to two RHIC collaborations (STAR and PHENIX) of pions (the lightest form of quark-antiquark pairs) coming out of the fireball. The collaborations employ the Hanbury-Brown-Twiss method, originally used in astronomy to measure the size of stars. In the subatomic equivalent, spatially separated detectors record pairs of pions emerging from the collision to estimate the size of the fireball.

Now an experimentalist and a theorist, both from the University of Washington, John G. Cramer (206-543-9194, cramer@phys.washington.edu) and Gerald A. Miller (206-543-2995, miller@phys.washington.edu), have teamed up for the first time to propose a solution to this puzzle. Reporting independently of the RHIC collaborations, they take into account the fact that the low-energy pions produced inside the fireball act more like waves than classical, billiard-ball-like particles; the pions' relatively long wavelengths tend to overlap with other particles in the crowded fireball environment.

This new quantum-mechanical analysis leads the researchers to conclude that a primordial phenomenon has taken place inside the hot, dense RHIC fireballs. According to Miller and Cramer, the strong force is so powerful that the pions are overcome by the attractive forces exerted by neighboring quarks and anti-quarks. As a result, the pions act as nearly massless particles inside the medium.

Secondly, ICFA Guest of Honor Rudy Rucker has much of the material he's been presenting here up on his web site: His speech from lunch, "Seek the Gnarl" and the PowerPoint slides from his his science talk.

I didn't get to see the luncheon speech, but really enjoyed the science talk. The PowerPoint slides don't give you the full sense of the experience, since they don't include such things as Rudy projecting fractal patterns onto his skin or using a gnarly stick as a pointer. A good time was had by all.

Also, Rudy's blog has great stuff about his recent trip trip to Palau including an interesting discussion of his experiences swimming with jelly fish.

Finally, we have more pictures to put up in my ICFA photo album, but they'll have to wait until later today.

Camera Adventures

No sooner did I set up an ICFA online photo album, but our digital camera broke: the pictures it takes now all come out black. I spent a little time in the afternoon trying to figure out what to do about this, and concluded that the answer was I should borrow another and plan to take our in for repair when we return home. So Patrick O'Leary has lent me his digital camera which has a very silly feature that ours lacked. It can take 16 rapid shots one after another and then make them into a 4 X 4 photo collage like this one.

I did post about 17 pictures we took before the camera broke. I'll post what I can after this.

ICFA is starting

The ICFA is beginning to get into swing and I should have conference photos up tonight or tomorrow morning. (I'm also thinking of writing up restarant recommendations and suggestions for excursions.)

Meanwhile, I've been doing a trip photo album for Peter which is quite nice: Peter's Florida Adventure [link fixed].

Escape

Yesterday when I got up it was snowing cats & dogs. We had to dig ourselves out of five inches of snow to get out of the driveway. But we have escaped. This is the view from our hotelroom window when I woke up this morning. Note the plam trees in the foreground and the absence of clouds.

We are in Ft. Lauderdale and the weather forecast is for sunny days with highs in the 80s and lows in the 60s and 70s for the whole time we're here. (It might rain Thursday night.) Soon our friends will begin to arrive for the ICFA. Looks like a good time will be had by all.

David's Shevacon Pictures

I have posted an album of David Hartwell's photos from Shevacon in Roanoke, Virginia. (David went; I stayed home with the kids.)

David came back via La Guardia (LGA) Sunday. His bags enjoyed a four day holiday in London (at LGW, i. e., London, Gatwick) courtesy of US Airways on their way home. It took extreme patience and the intervention of Tor's travel agent and American Express to pursuade US Airways to bring the bags home.

Enjoy the pictures,

Urban Tapestry Kids' Concert

I've made a separate photo album for the Urban Tapestry Kids' Concert at Boskone.

More Boskone Photos

I've uploaded a lot more Boskone photos. So far, my favorite is this shot of Linux God Eric Raymond: