Wooo! Philcon!

[miss_yt]

I have just had a great weekend, and I am totally geeked out!



On Friday, I went to a Bryn Mawr alumnae event organized by a friend of mine. It was a party at a bar that was not nearly as fun as I'd anticipated. First, I only knew one person there - the organizer - the place was too loud, and the beer was only so-so. But they did make really good Cosmos, and the organizer of the event was looking for suggestions for future outings, so I listed some stuff I'd like better, such as a museum trip. So I guess it turned out okay.

I also stopped off at Philcon to pick up my badge. This was a mistake for two reasons: first, I got there too late for any events. Second, I forgot to bring the badge back with me on Saturday morning and had to buy a new one for the day, even though I was on the pre-registration list and the people at the desk recognized me. Fortunately I will be able to get my money back, which is good, because 35 dollars is a bit more than I can comfortably waste. Other than that, though, the con was quite fun.

Although I was dressed like a Babylon 5 telepath, and those who recognized my costume tended to be quite enthusiastic about it, I did not get any requests to read minds. A few people thought I was a Psi Cop, although I was not wearing all-black or jackboots (I was wearing some nice boots, at least on Saturday, which was sort of a mistake - they had rather thin soles and I did a lot of walking, not a good combination). The leather gloves held up well, although they are now somewhat worse for wear. I swear they made me knit faster. Yes, I was working on the Harry Potter scarf during the panels. I got two whole color bands done, although I had to rip back on one of them a bit later. I did an accidental increase or something. Some people were very impressed by the fact that I was knitting. I met a few fellow knitters but not as many as I'd thought I'd see.

I went to a lot of panels having to do with writing and the publishing business, since I hope to get something published someday. And, y'know, I might want to get more into publishing too. I spoke to an author who knows a lot about the martial arts and can help me find books about ninja (for research - I want to write a story about an assassin). I also spoke to a literary agent who can direct me to resources having to do with her line of work. Being a literary agent might be a good job for me, if I can keep my act together. You have a closer relationship with writers, generally work in smaller organizations, and enjoy more job stability. Agenting may also pay better than editing, though to be honest I'm not really sure. Anyway, I actually networked! Go me! One of the freelance editors at a particular panel had written a children's book called Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts, which brought to mind the old schoolyard chant for which it is named. Even though I hadn't thought about it in years, I still remembered it all and skipped around singing it for a while. For mercy's sake, I will not type the lyrics here, as I know that the mere mention of the song may have gotten it stuck in your heads already.

Although I had been to Philcon before, I also went to the second orientation panel to see hughcasey, who I imagine is going to collapse in a heap after all the work he's done for the con, if he hasn't done so already. I also ran into scifantasy and a couple of my Bryn Mawr friends, who all tended to hang around the filking room. I was all over the place, though.

Aside from writing and publishing panels, I also went to three interesting topical panels. One was concerned with Harry Potter's staying power - whether the books are just a flash in the pan or an enduring classic that is just too young right now to be a classic. I quoted critic Harold Bloom's remark (an erroneous one, I think), that the Harry Potter books would be "in the dustbins in a generation." The consensus of the panel and the audience was that it was not so - although the books have been hyped a lot, their value is not all hype. If you look carefully, you can see that J.K. Rowling, while she uses classic and familiar fantasy tropes, has recast those tropes into something new and engaging that helps us identify with her characters. For instance, Harry being both a prophesied and reluctant hero plays on our sympathies, and the fact that Rowling carefully avoids any real contemporary or pop culture references (save one, a passing mention of Dudley throwing a Playstation out the window) helps ensure that the book will not become dated. After having typeset a few volumes of literary criticism, I was in a position to see how serious the discussion of these books was among the panelists and their audience. That surprised me, although perhaps it shouldn't have. The folks who come to Philcon are, by and large, smart people.

I also went to a panel called "You got religion in my science! You got science in my religion!" It was of course concerned with the evolution vs. intelligent design debate. While some of the panelists highlighted the fact that this debate is about what is to be taught in public schools - not about what we as a nation/society/whatever are supposed to believe - they did not seem to have a good grasp of what is and what isn't possible in our public schools. One panelist said that children should be taught the history of conflict between science and religion, and how both evolutionary theory and the intelligent design view originated. In principle, I like that idea. In practice, though, it really isn't possible. Public school education is meant to indoctrinate you and prepare you to take standardized tests, more or less. The schools do not have the time or inclination to do something that innovative (actually, forget innovative - just say sensible), and there are few teachers with the skills to do what that panelist was suggesting. So, as much as we might discuss the issue on the meta-level, we really need to resolve it on the macro-level of evolution vs. intelligent design and the validity of each, because in our mostly simple and crude school system, only simple and crude solutions can be applied universally. I don't like it either, but that's the way it is.

Another intersting panel I went to was called "War as Video Game: The Future of Military Tech." The panel, consisting of three people with extensive experience in various branches of the military, was ostensibly to discuss the possibilities of remote-controlled or robotic weapons. They also talked about the usefulness of tactical simulation games such as America's Army in training recruits. What they had to say on those subjects was quite enlightening. I actually want to talk about the second one first, because it's a little simpler. While first-person shooter or military sim games are useful to a certain extent as training tools and very useful as recruiting tools, they cannot fully train a person in teamwork or combat tactics. There are various reasons for this, but the two big reasons are that you get a lot more and far more varied sensory input in real life, and also a person sitting at a computer playing a combat game and a person actually getting shot at while in a combat situation in real life are not going to react the same way. When you're in danger you don't think the way you would in a mere game. Remote-controlled combat machines and planes might be a possibility, but not as much of one as you'd think, because they would not have the flexibility of a soldier or pilot who is actually there, and that flexibility is very important. As for completely automated systems, we can't yet produce them in sufficient quantity to be really useful in a standard battlefield situation, and they would be worse than useless in the kind of military actions our soldiers tend to engage in now. No, war in the forseeable future, at least on the ground, is going to be very people-based and low-tech. And this is where the really interesting part of the discussion comes in. You see, the soldiers currently in Iraq are engaged in what is basically a police operation. Small groups of soldiers have to use SWAT-style tactics to battle insurgents. The insurgents, in a way, have an edge over our soldiers, because their organization is made up of a network of cells that have a common goal but each act independently. Our army, being a very bureaucracy-driven, hierarchical, top-down organization does not allow junior officers and soldiers the kind of flexibility that al Quaeda and the insurgents have, which is one of the major problems we are having in the Middle East right now. Situational data has to go from the soldiers to the proper agencies, and then it has to be coallated and filtered back to them. This not only takes time, but puts the final decision-making power in the hands of people who are not in the field and see things very differently from those doing the actual fighting (I'm not even going to get into willful ignorance and such here). Our soldiers are up against a whole different paradigm of warfare from what we are accustomed to. This is like the rank-and-file formation of the Redcoats getting shot all to hell by American farmers sniping at them from the trees in the Revolutionary War, except that in this case our people are the British. And with the way things are going, there is little chance that our military and intelligence techniques will be restructured to be more effective against insurgents. At the end of this very informative panel, I spoke with one panelist who recommended to me a couple of books on the history of Western warfare. You wouldn't think it, but I'm interested in this sort of thing, although I'm not a military buff.

Ah, and now for another great highlight of the con - the gaming! I didn't go to the usual D&D game on Saturday, because one of our players was definitely out, one would not be arriving until late, and scifantasy, seeing that the whole game schedule was sort of falling apart anyway, decided to back out and stay at Philcon. I was actually sort of relieved because I would have missed so much if I'd left. Sorry, ironroot, but Philcon is only once a year, you know. Anyway, I got to join in a D&D game for a while. I picked up on my character's capabilities very quickly, although I was more or less coming in mid-game. For the most part it was quite different from what I was used to, as the DM was not using ironroot's initiative system and he was also using a printed script to play from, instead of having the general plotline in his head and elaborating upon it. This had the lamentable consequence of making all the NPCs speak in very stuffy high-fantasy ways, but still, the session was good. I had to leave again for the Masquerade and showing of Call of Cthulhu. The Masquerade was only so-so, but the movie was excellent. And later, during the parties, I met a Pastafarian with a Flying Spaghetti Monster shirt, and explained to him my recently developed theory that Cthulhu is an apocalyptic form of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (I was also chock-full of sugar and caffeine by then, which may have contributed to it). Fortunately, he found this very interesting, and I intend to write an e-mail to Bobby Henderson, founder of Pastafarianism, about this theory.

I talked with a lot of nice people (and ate lots of nice food) at the various parties that were going on. I kind of wanted to stay for the screening of Batman Begins, but decided I had better try to get home around midnight. So I trudged back. Roo was very glad to see me. I was so excited that I didn't go to sleep for another couple of hours. But I was still okay for the next morning.

I returned to Philcon, which was winding down. I only went to a couple of panels (one of them was another writing panel, this one about what editors want when you submit a manuscript). I got shanghaied into a game of Fluxx with some high school and college students. One of them was a girl whom I had mistaken for a Bryn Mawr alum - she was the person who invited me in. I had lots of fun playing with them. One of the great things about Philcon is that you can bring people into your circle or strike up conversations with them at random and it's okay. Nobody has social skills so nobody cares about them. Heh.

The very last panel I went to was about other geek events in the Philly area and elsewhere. I now have information on several groups and events that I would like. I'm thinking I might want to try and go to Balticon next Memorial Day weekend, because Neil Gaiman will be there, and I want to worship at his feet get his autograph, tell him I enjoy his work and maybe see him read aloud.

Oh, and one more great thing - I got to ride in a service elevator, albeit only one floor. Another young woman and I got lost when trying to take the stairs down to the third floor, because not all flights open onto all the floors.

The whole experience ended on a bit of a sour note when I was getting my coat back at the bell captain's desk. The guy on duty was at best patronizing and at worst condescending. He asked me if aliens had come to the convention, if we believed aliens existed, if Spock or Captain Kirk had shown up. I decided that if he was going to be an asshole, I would be one too, and shared some of my theories about aliens and explained that Philcon was a more literary sci-fi convention, which I knew would go right over his head in such a way as to intimidate him a bit. I don't know if it had an effect, but it made me feel a little better.

Overall, I had a great weekend. Now, though, I have to look forward to extracting a zillion little text boxes from an encyclopedic series of books and putting them into a database...sigh...