Toronto Spec Fic Colloquium Notes #2

Canadian Science Fiction: Taking Over The World, Nicely
By Julie Czerneda

ETA: Video Part 1, Part 2

SF = the literature of change

Oxford lexicon of SF words (? look into this?)

Asked American publishers to define Canadian SF: "more comprehensible than European SF"
also "it's different," where different = complicated, inclusive, messy.

~

How to survive/get money being a writer:
- public lending rights => $ (how?)
- access copyright
- Canada council grants
- Ontario and Toronto Arts Council grants

Sandra (CZP) - said SF on grant app can be stumbling block
Peter Watts - disagreed, said he'd gotten money with SF on grant, "rub it in their faces"

mention of Tesseracts 15

Derwin Mak - editor of Dragon and Stars antho - said not enough SF in subs

Imaginarium 2011 - reprint anthology, any Can SF publ'd in 2010 (for $) eligible

Toronto Spec Fic Colloquium Notes #3

Why You Can’t Teach Writing
By Bob Boyczuk

ETA: Video Part 1, Part 2.

Quote: John Barth
material = life
medium = language
craft = fiction
art

Only medium and craft are teachable.

What can be learned? Critiquing.
"Criticism is a gift"

~

Comment from Sandra (CZP) - they have levels of form-letter rejection, depending on editorial opinion of submission.

Toronto Spec Fic Colloquium Notes #4

Queering the Genre
By Gemma Files (author of A Book of Tongues) & Michael Roe (Editor of Queer Fear)

Watch the recorded version online: Part 1 and Part 2.

"The genre" in this case was horror. I didn't take a lot of notes for this one, primarily because it wasn't what I expected and there wasn't a lot of... comments that weren't kind of stating the obvious for queer writers.

Things I did note:
- life experience as emotional grounding
- horror genre is about Othering
- history of horror -> queers as others/monsters, disgust at sexuality
- reading is participatory - dictates influence
- Clive Barker - was "polymorphously perverse"
- re/addressing sexuality as monstrous

Perhaps the most interesting part of this talk wasn't the talk but the exceedingly random interruption. But I'll let you watch and experience that for yourselves.

Toronto Spec Fic Colloquium Notes #5

Gods, Jackboots, And Rule 34: How Pornography Could Save The World
by Peter Watts

[aside: I really hope they get the video for this one up soon, because the talk was amazingly entertaining.
ETA: Video! Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
As always, " " indicates direct quotes, and any misattributions or misunderstandings are mine.]

Peter alleged to write "hard character SF" (hcSF) - he prefers/coins term: "neuropunk"
(examples of hcSF = Battlestar Galactica, Dexter)

neuropunk - started with socio-biology
"we are chemicals and electricity"
brains are survival engines
"free will is incompatible with physics"
"the brain lies" -> fitness trumps truth
we are not thinking machines, we are feeling machines
real science informs personality

hcSF - explores why we are the way we are, and understanding it, can therefore "hack" human nature

natural selection favours the paranoid - those who see agency where none exists
(did something move in the grass, or was it just the wind? the paranoid lived)
- those who are powerless are more likely to see patterns
- belief in god/astrology increases in times of stress

[case in point: Discovery News, Nov 9, 2010: Belief in God Increases with Government Instability ]

the *idea* of surveillance triggers a response (picture of eyes on wall in exam hall enough to deter cheating)
- authoritarian religions have observable advantage in terms of survival
- USA the worst of developed nations on successful socities scale

success - for propogation - depends on self-delusion

throwing rocks at moving targets necessitated time series analysis (invention of time in order to understand world)
- positive feedback loop reinforces black and white thinking

example: climate change
- our species has chosen catastrophe because we don't believe in it

how to short-circuit this behavior?
- you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't arrive at through reason
- have to hack our brains to make our instincts part of the solution

Rule 34: If it exists, there is porn of it. - The Internet

Therefore: to save the world, we need to make change pleasurable - use whatever turns people on.