67th World Science Fiction Convention

[petronia]

I did attend, on the Sunday, and met nojojojo after her panel on - why am I not surprised by this - Michael Jackson. Reproducing the blurb from the programme, because f'reals:

Michael Jackson's THRILLER: SF Culture Landmark
Nora K. Jemisin, Stephen H. Segal, John Scalzi

In 1983, Michael Jackson's THRILLER video gave us lycanthropic romance, zombie dancers, and state-of-the-art special effects -- not to mention Vincent Price reciting graveyard poetry. How did this watershed television moment set the stage for the next 25 years worth of SF/pop music/pop culture crossovers, from Jackson's own subsequent oeuvre through Rob Zombie and beyond? (1hr 30min)

I was only there for half the panel; when I walked in they were talking about John Landis's other work, which led to Eddie Murphy and whether or not he would have been as big a star if MJ hadn't happened at the same time, which led to the Osmonds and schoolyard segregation circa Donny & Marie. And then they played the video of "All Is Full Of Love", which is my fave Björk song. XD Nora said she'd wanted to start with Sun Ra and end with Janelle Monae, though - that would've been a more interesting talk.

Suddenly remembering that Solange's "I Decided" went into space as well... It's like she had to time travel to find her man, like Lachesis out of Five Star Stories. XD; HMM THIS POST LACKS YOUTUBE EMBEDS.

And I can't find an embed of this, fff whatever Universal

Nora, this is the Wire article I mentioned (by dubdobdee, who is currently writing furiously on both a follow-up piece and Michael Jackson). It's from '92 and I suspect OCR software was involved in getting it online, although it's perfectly readable. XD;

I also got some books signed! As in, resigned myself to lugging around Dream Hunters and my Privilege of the Sword trade paperback all day on the basis of how annoying it would be on the 1% chance I randomly crossed paths with Neil Gaiman emptyhanded, then... randomly crossed Neil Gaiman in a corridor five minutes after getting past registration ahahaha. orz It was sort of a rockstar-ly walk-and-sign. I got to talk a bit more with Ellen Kushner, though, after one of her panels. She asked me if I'd ever worked in radio. I should probably take a serious look at that one of these days.

Nora's book (which looks to be amazing) is going to be out in February. ...And there is other stuff I should talk about but I have to run to give dipping_sauce her Battlestar Galactica pin. XD; Hey guyz post yr fave SFF-related music videos in the comments!

The '09 Hugo Awards are really awesome-looking. T_T

Comments

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

Envy! Envy! :O

[meril.livejournal.com]

What, did this Worldcon get all the interesting panels? I'm totally not surprised this is what you went there for, though. :)

Also, re that article you just linked, I've found that most of the interesting criticism and discussion of sff comes from people who aren't involved in capital-F Fandom. The observations derived from that are probably best put on my own journal, though.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Well, there were a buttzillion panels, and not all of them looked interesting by any means. XD; I went to that, then one about reproductive futures (mostly about mpreg somehow!? which is not the reproductive future that interests me the most tbh), one about interstellar trade (LOL MBA) with Larry Niven that was about 90% dude audience, then Ellen Kushner's panel re how much history you need in order to write fantasy which featured a lot of hilarious anachronism gaffes, then one about how to write women in space militaries, which was mostly about how to write believable military period... Writers waffling on about writing and whatnot. I'm pretty decent at knowing in advance what would interest me, I guess? It's not that different from picking panels at business conferences. XD;

I've always seen a weird disconnect in that SF writing never seems (back-)informed by the musical genres that are most SF-esque/futurist (and that I like at least partially because they are). Like, William Gibson famously wrote Neuromancer on a typewriter, but it's almost weirder that he was listening to Steely Dan while writing it, yanno? It didn't occur to me to think of it in terms of race, although I guess it should've been obvious.

[meril.livejournal.com]

I'd like to respond to this with the time it deserves, but I'm working 12 hours a day this week (is there an emoticon for beating one's head against the wall?) so my concentration is on about 5% today.

I did go to the military women panel in Denver. Tanya Huff was probably on this one too. The audience in Denver had quite a few people who had recently served in the US military and one guy who had just finished his mandatory military service in Israel. It got a bit, um, off-topic in there.

When you think about it in terms of sf writers, once they're published, being older than 40 and also probably not being influenced by the arts community outside of the genre, I'm not particularly surprised by that at all. I did want to post about insularity etc. but I really don't have the time.

[uminohikari.livejournal.com]

o.o *envious!*

[tongari.livejournal.com]

i am pretty sure someone will post a david bowie video so here is a link to a video about a david bowie video:

Flight of the Conchords - David Bowie In Space (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4zV4pJ8MwM)

[helvetius.livejournal.com]

:O

(He is awfully rockstarry ain't he, the Gaiman Boy? Comes complete with dark sunglasses and leather jacket. LOL)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

The jacket was an artifact in and of itself! XD

[nojojojo.livejournal.com]

::gyah:: Just now got around to following the trackbacks off my latest post, and found this. Sorry. Thanks for the Wire article, tho'! Wish I'd had it before the panel; would've been perfect. -_-

Friending you!

[petronia.livejournal.com]

No prob! Glad you got the link. *g*