Friday at Worldcon, part 2

[lady_schrapnell]

This second part consisted of - well, a lot, actually. First was the panel Charlie moderated, on 'The Second Golden Age of Children's Fantasy (1970-1990), with Stefan Ekman, Conor Kostick, Janet McNaughton, Maureen Kincaid Speller, and Francis Spufford. Of these, as mentioned, I was reading CK's Epic, Spufford's The Child that Books Built, knew Maureen a bit from the dwj-list (which I think she doesn't frequent any more, though that could be wrong), and realised afterwards that Janet McN has just had a Tam Lin story called An Earthly Knight published. Many of you will know I'm a big Tam Lin story addict, though I'd not been sure I was desperate to read this. The girls and I had also thrown out names and books with Charlie beforehand, and were interested to see if everyone pretty much agreed there had been a second golden age then. Which they did, with the exception of Stefan Ekman, who said in Sweden, the second golden age came earlier (I think it was earlier), and said that the height of fantasy novels for children in this period was a story of a child who found his trousers kept having money in the pocket, and all the money he pulled out of it was eventually found to be coming from the Bank of Sweden, to which it was returned. This had everyone in stitches, and seemed to prove that social democracy wasn't great for fantasy writing! All the rest agreed that in Britain and North America, there had been a wonderful abundance of fantasy, with Diana Wynne Jones, Susan Cooper and Joan Aiken, Tove Jansson (started writing earlier, but books were appearing in English then) among many others. Oh, Eva Ibbotson and Ursula Le Guin! Alan Garner was a little bit earlier, but still fit in the period, as well. (All right, and Tamora Pierce, but I don't like her, and I suppose a bit of Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl too, but ditto.) A lot of the fun of it was interesting and intelligent people who just loved these books being fired up with enthusiasm and talking about why they were wonderful and bouncing in the seat (this is those of us in the audience), going 'Oh yes, I loved that one too!' Which is one reason why I was finding The Child that Books Built so wonderful, and would highly recommend it. Only sour note to that panel was the woman who'd given the talk on C. Fisher and A. Dalton standing up when things were opened up for discussion and someone had asked about the difference between children's and YA books, and saying the difference was relationships. (I.e. romantic ones). Would have been bad enough except she made a point about Alanna in the whatever it is T. Pierce quartet and her three relationships (which she made on at least two other occasions), and then said C. Fisher's Corbenic, which she hadn't read, and the relationship in that, was another example. Except there is no outright romantic relationship in any C. Fisher book! Yeech.

Got to meet Francis Spufford after, and he was absolutely lovely, and in proper fan-girl mode, I brought my copy of The Child along when we met him the next day, and got it signed.

The next panel was 'Is Genius Gendered?', with Connie Willis, Cory Doctorow, and Sean McMullen. CW and CD got there first, and had decided to hijack the panel, which they found uninteresting, but their efforts were rather re-hijacked by SM, who wanted to talk about how he did gender so wonderfully because of all his experience teaching karate and using his female students as models... He may be a brilliant writer and a straight-up great guy, but I was not impressed. The other two were as good as they could be in the circumstances, and I liked Cory Doctorow enough to succumb to his beautiful new book, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, when we saw it on the Borderlands book stall next day. There was quite a bit of succumbing all told!

Dinner, eventually, with Stella (editor mentioned before) and Charlie - with me prepared to be horribly intimidated by the former, but ending up having a great time. And recommending she read books left, right and centre! I have no shame. But, for an example, she talked about going up in the Whispering Gallery in St Paul's Cathedral so how could I resist saying she had to read Joan Aiken's The Cuckoo Tree.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Relief to find one other person in the world who loathes Roald Dahl.

--signed, The Alien.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

This comment never posted to me, for some unknown reason. Yes, I absolutely can't abide him, and my younger daughter was force-fed huge amounts in school when young, which induced much teeth-grinding on my part. We're not quite alone though - Michelle Landsberg's Reading for the Love of It has a good section on why she dislikes him also!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Must seek this out!

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

It's well worth a read, I think. Let me know if you have any trouble finding it - I'd be happy to send you my copy so you can see if you like it.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I've already had some trouble searching it out...have you the ISBN?

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

It's 0-13-755125-8. Inside it says that's the ISBN for the pb and there's also 0-13-579822-1

Prentice Hall Press, 1986, 1987. And Michele only has one 'l' really.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Okay, first error, I was stupidly typing Michelle with the two ls.

Thanks!

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

The error wasn't yours - I spelled it wrong when mentioning it! And my offer holds indefinitely, so please let me know if it's not easy to come by.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I just found a copy (a library discard) for only three bucks, and so have ordered it quick, before someone else gets it. Thanks!

[emmaco.livejournal.com]

Ah! I knew I had picked up the recommendation to The child that books built somewhere but couldn't remember where. Thank-you very much - even though I grew up a bit later I've read many of the books Spufford talks about and it's great reading a memoir of another book addict.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Isn't it? I grew up a few years earlier, but never mind! ;)