Friday at Worldcon
Aug. 10th, 2005 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lady_schrapnellThough Friday had a lot of really interesting panels, and more meetings, so may take more than one entry to cover. I see now that people returning and reporting are doing clever things like cuts, even separate cuts for different reports, but that's way beyond my capability.
Friday morning we met![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vierann45 for a chat and beverage-of-choice in the cafe, which was great - another meeting that went happily. The minor arcana involved in this meeting was the discovery (not by me, not to hog credit where it's not due!) that even the bottles of water sold at the con were far from mundane. The label name was 'Guardians of the Source', and there was a nifty picture on the label of 5 children (though my daughter said they might well have been hobbits) running down a slope towards a lake - from whence they were clearly not likely to return in this lifetime. This gets better though, because the next day, the figures were gone from all the bottles of water our combined group bought. And they were gone the day after as well, but there was a magical reappearance on the last day... (All right, our last day - but it sounds better the other way.)
First panel then was 'Why Write for Children and Young Adults?', with (among others) Oisin McGann, Sharyn November and Jane Yolen. First time I encountered Jane Yolen (outside her books), and I was really impressed with how nice she seemed. Also with a lot of intelligent things to say, of course! Nutshell version was that young readers were more passionate, more appreciative and more open.
I'd have loved to go to the Belly Dancing session and 'The Return of the Queen: Writing Feminism in a Medieval World', but had things all afternoon so figured lunch was in order. A lot of times like that, of course, but there was so much that I did get to and appreciate that I don't feel too badly about it.
Next session was 'Fantasy for Children', with three papers. The first was rather depressing - a bunch of teens (15 to 17) in several Scandinavian countries given a short story by Ursula Le Guin to read and review, and their responses correlated with their reading habits. The researcher thought that avid fantasy readers would have developed skills of imaginative reading, which would help them apply ideas to other situations and the like, but in fact found that the avid fantasy readers were - not that it was put this way - the least able to cope with a story of any complexity! There were too few SF readers to make a good sample, but they didn't respond much to the story emotionally, but at least found it easy to follow. Of course there's fantasy and fantasy, and perhaps these kids were reading total generic stuff, but it was still sad (to the researcher as well!) The last one was a talk on Catherine Fisher and Annie Dalton, which I'd been really interested to hear, having read almost all of Fisher's books and a couple of Annie Dalton's, though not the fluffy pink angel ones. Not really very interesting stuff, unfortunately, as it was mostly just a listing of all the books each had written and a brief description of each. Stella(DWJ's editor, which should be enough to identify her for those who know, and not enough, I hope, to be intrusive) was sitting right behind us, so I was introduced to her, and then hopped into conversation with Meredith (who should have been met, along with other DWJ listers, at the Howl showing-which-didn't-happen). I managed to find a copy of Out of the Ordinary, a Tam Lin story by Annie Dalton, which Dorian lent me ages ago (and for which I'd been looking ever since), which made me happy, and now have a recommendation for another to try to get hold of - except that I only know it was fourth on the list that Meredith was holding, and had the word 'Dark' in it - either Naming the Dark (which I think it was) or The Afterdark Princess.
Ran out of steam before the day being reported was half over even. I've been helping edit a book, which makes me very happy, and now am being asked to edit a story by the daughter, which would make me happy except our printer's not working, and I can't think that way on text on a screen.
Friday morning we met
vierann45 for a chat and beverage-of-choice in the cafe, which was great - another meeting that went happily. The minor arcana involved in this meeting was the discovery (not by me, not to hog credit where it's not due!) that even the bottles of water sold at the con were far from mundane. The label name was 'Guardians of the Source', and there was a nifty picture on the label of 5 children (though my daughter said they might well have been hobbits) running down a slope towards a lake - from whence they were clearly not likely to return in this lifetime. This gets better though, because the next day, the figures were gone from all the bottles of water our combined group bought. And they were gone the day after as well, but there was a magical reappearance on the last day... (All right, our last day - but it sounds better the other way.)First panel then was 'Why Write for Children and Young Adults?', with (among others) Oisin McGann, Sharyn November and Jane Yolen. First time I encountered Jane Yolen (outside her books), and I was really impressed with how nice she seemed. Also with a lot of intelligent things to say, of course! Nutshell version was that young readers were more passionate, more appreciative and more open.
I'd have loved to go to the Belly Dancing session and 'The Return of the Queen: Writing Feminism in a Medieval World', but had things all afternoon so figured lunch was in order. A lot of times like that, of course, but there was so much that I did get to and appreciate that I don't feel too badly about it.
Next session was 'Fantasy for Children', with three papers. The first was rather depressing - a bunch of teens (15 to 17) in several Scandinavian countries given a short story by Ursula Le Guin to read and review, and their responses correlated with their reading habits. The researcher thought that avid fantasy readers would have developed skills of imaginative reading, which would help them apply ideas to other situations and the like, but in fact found that the avid fantasy readers were - not that it was put this way - the least able to cope with a story of any complexity! There were too few SF readers to make a good sample, but they didn't respond much to the story emotionally, but at least found it easy to follow. Of course there's fantasy and fantasy, and perhaps these kids were reading total generic stuff, but it was still sad (to the researcher as well!) The last one was a talk on Catherine Fisher and Annie Dalton, which I'd been really interested to hear, having read almost all of Fisher's books and a couple of Annie Dalton's, though not the fluffy pink angel ones. Not really very interesting stuff, unfortunately, as it was mostly just a listing of all the books each had written and a brief description of each. Stella(DWJ's editor, which should be enough to identify her for those who know, and not enough, I hope, to be intrusive) was sitting right behind us, so I was introduced to her, and then hopped into conversation with Meredith (who should have been met, along with other DWJ listers, at the Howl showing-which-didn't-happen). I managed to find a copy of Out of the Ordinary, a Tam Lin story by Annie Dalton, which Dorian lent me ages ago (and for which I'd been looking ever since), which made me happy, and now have a recommendation for another to try to get hold of - except that I only know it was fourth on the list that Meredith was holding, and had the word 'Dark' in it - either Naming the Dark (which I think it was) or The Afterdark Princess.
Ran out of steam before the day being reported was half over even. I've been helping edit a book, which makes me very happy, and now am being asked to edit a story by the daughter, which would make me happy except our printer's not working, and I can't think that way on text on a screen.
