Testing, testing

posted by Anonymous at 21:33   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 1 comments

 
Home to pack for Westercon, in (soggy) Calgary. My schedule, at present, is positively indolent: five panels between Friday night and Sunday:

• SF Mind Control, Friday 9 pm
• Part time writer, Saturday 11 am
• Earth as a model for other planets, Saturday 4 pm
• What do you passionately read, Saturday 6 pm
• The Alien within, Sunday 1 pm

Unless they put me to work (which is always possible!) when I show up, I will have plenty of time to socialize, attend other panels, and visit old stamping grounds. The slightly unwieldy formatting in the on-line schedule deters me from figuring out conflicts amongst my list of desirables. I shall wait on paper.

I have started a clutch of Backpack pages as a repositry of notes, snippets, odd thoughts that will hopefully develop some coherence prior to the panels. Here's the one for SF Mind Control.
posted by Anonymous at 18:14   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 

Having two conversations about the meaning of SF this month that seem to be running in parallel: one with Joe Mahoney, via e-mail, and one on the SFCanda mailing list. Best bits IMHO are requoted here.

My personal definition of good SF is "fiction that examines the human condition in situations not currently considered possible." -- Joe Mahoney e-mail to Lynda Williams 20/06/05

"Although it is important for SF to address the impact of science, its literary and emotional parentage has more to do with mythology, morality plays and tall tales, than it does with science. Science is often its material, not at the heart of its motivations. The distinction between "hard" SF and "fantsy" is naturally difficult to make because it is artificial and wrong headed, driven by the desire of those who set up the dichotomy to ally themselves firmly with a source of power (science) and distance themselves from less respectable fantasy. I have a scientific background, and see value in making science as real as possible in SF in order to make any message it has to convey that much more relevant to the modern world. But if someone manages to address the same issues symbolically, through fantasy methods, I see more kinship than difference between the two approaches." -- Lynda Williams, post of SFCanada Williams 19/06/05 (with some editing by author for brevity)

posted by Lynda at 08:37   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 

"Mortal Choice" by Lynda Williams in v.31, n.1 of Dandelion.

Delighted to find my author's copies of dANDelion magazine in my mail box this morning. The story I contributed, called "Mortal Choice", is not an Okal Rel Universe one. It is a product of my thinking, on and off, about the problems that would have to arise, of a practical nature, if medicine advanced to the point that people were virtually immortal. And also about generational sparing concerning the "meaning of life", and how that might persist.

dANDelion is published out of the English Department at the University of Calgary, and edited by Andre Rodrigues. It was a pleasure working with Andre, who was even adventurous enough to accept my audio file of myself reading the story in lieu of my attendance at the issue's launch, earlier this summer.

posted by Lynda at 17:06   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 

Art work above features at http://www.greatwriting.co.uk where one can find Mike Atherton's interview with me on writing for the ORU and the role played by votary authors.

posted by Lynda at 08:11   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments