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Or, this would be a better and timelier report if among other things I did not have a recorder group performance next week, a pilot's license to be maintained, and a recently arrived rabbit as a permanent guest.

I was not at Eastercon (Concussion in Glasgow) for the entire weekend. I arrived Friday night in time for the mass signing, spent the night at one of the satellite hotels, and went home after Dr Who on Saturday evening… then back to the con late Sunday afternoon. I didn't go on Monday. In fact I didn't see much of the programming, apart from the 3 panels I was involved in plus a couple more, but I did do LOTS of wonderful chatting with people I had never met before and talking about books. And I don't think I had to buy myself a single drink during the entire weekend. I was very impressed with the friendliness and generosity of everyone I met, more so than at WorldCon last summer (though of course EasterCon is a considerably smaller event and able to be more intimate).

If you want a good in-depth and overall impression of the con, try [livejournal.com profile] brisingamen here. In a perfect world I would give you a blow-by-blow report of the panels I went to, but I think edited highlights are all I can manage.* I listened in on "Location, Location, Location," a panel about the "sense of place" in a story (or not). Liz Hand said the things that resonated with me most here, such as "We start from landscape…because culturally that's where we start from"--and she also brought up that Master of Sense of Place, Alan Garner, whose tremendous influence haunts every single convention and conference I attend. A discussion arose as to whether or not globalization may be glossing over some of the details that make any given landscape culturally unique. Liz again: "What are we going to write about when we all have this shared common world culture?" The comment was made that in sci-fi "place," the world, is viewed as dynamic, and a comment from the audience pointed out that in some books (SUCH AS ALAN GARNER'S) the very landscape is a character.

In "The Voice of Historical Fantasy" (I was part of this panel; I was very pleased with the panel topics I was given to take part in, which I think were the brainchildren of Farah Mendlesohn), I gibbered on about how wonderful it is to be able to put forth my wild historical conjecture with impunity, but all the fiction writers on the panel agreed (as did many members of the audience) that though the historical period may be an integral part of the story, what makes the story is character and plot. I suppose I did not articulate this as well as I might have, but I am enamoured of my characters because of who they are; they happen to live in the 6th century. I love my husband because he is TIM, not because he is English.
We got sidetracked onto Feminism and Strong Female Characters.

I moderated the panel on "Aesthetics and Ethics in Children's Literature." Sheesh wow, what a discussion topic. (And I have never moderated anything before.) The quotation that inspired the topic (Farah's idea again) was Wittgenstein via Delaney, to the effect that you can't have aesthetics in your writing without thinking them through ethically; Farah was particularly annoyed at the "moral sloppiness" she'd encountered recently in much high-sung children's fiction. We were all able to back this up with discrete examples and I managed to squash a digressive P-word rant before it started (I am good at that).

Useful quotations from this panel:
"Don't ever, ever write down [to your readers]"
"Moral issues evolve naturally"
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty" (no, this was not original)
And from the publisher on the panel: "I'm interested in writers who tell stories… First, second and last."

I also listened in on a panel about multiple viewpoints. The best image to come out of this one was: "God's garage is full of remaindered books." (So is mine, or it soon will be.) And on Sunday I was on the "what's new and hot in children's sci-fi" (that is an approximation of its real title). We decided that there wasn't anything--the new, hot stuff was all fantasy, or the writers who are producing good kids' sci-fi don't restrict themselves to it, or even classify themselves as writers of science fiction. Fantasy *is* bigger and hotter than science fiction in the children's market right now; I don't think there's any doubt about that. We threw a lot of names around. There was a teen reader in the audience who made some excellent points and suggestions.

I met and talked to some very cool people. I also had some marvellous media experiences, including watching the first episode of the new series of Dr. Who in a ballroom with 500 people (I don't know what the final count was… maybe closer to 300, but still great fun). The HIGHLIGHT of the weekend for me, sad git that I am, was a showing of the 1977 BBC production of Alan Garner's Red Shift. It was here that I met [livejournal.com profile] brisingamen, who is arguably a much more dedicated Alan Garner groupie than I am, despite my having rung the bells and sung in the choir at Nether Alderley church, and having my picture taken in the window of the folly on Mow Cop, and setting my first novel in the caves at Alderley Edge, and getting my copy of The Owl Service signed by Garner AND his wife, and … stuff like that.

I liked Eastercon. I am going again next year. And [livejournal.com profile] sdn will be there!

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In other news… So, as I said, we have a rabbit. It arrived on Easter Sunday while I was in Glasgow watching Red Shift. The children are beside themselves with joy at having a pet more interesting than a goldfish (though they are very loyal to the goldfish). It is a "blue" Dutch lopear and is housetrained and mellow and terribly eager for companionship. We have got it for a year. (I would rather have a cat. The litter box is just as pesky to change, you can't let the rabbit run around the house on its own, and it doesn't purr. Maybe when the bunny goes home.)
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*The committee asked that we not post other panel members' names on our blogs if we put up our schedules, to avoid them turning up that way in Google searches, etc., so I'm not going to list the panel members here, either. But you can get a programme overview at http://www.eastercon2006.org/
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