conference

For several years, I've been trying to persuade Daniel to attend Boskone. It looked like an ideal conference to dip your foot into the culture of speculative fiction authorship: to see what authors say about the craft of writing, the process you need to follow to get your work published, and how to grow the audience for your work. I particularly encouraged him the year he had his first sale (a story in Hidden Youth), but he's been resistant to GO OUT and SEE PEOPLE. This year, I sent him the link as an afterthought, without much expectation he would take me up on the offer. But he did! And so I encouraged him to look through the program, identify the people he wanted to see and the events he wanted to attend, and we laid plans to go. (I also did one other, slightly mean, thing. I pulled the copy of Hidden Youth off the bookshelf and said, "Now, who were the editors again?" He responded with an expletive. But then took the book from me and studied the cover and table of contents to refresh his memory of who the people were. )

In the morning, I got him to regain control of his twitter account so he could watch comments on the #boskone hashtag. The author community uses twitter better than most and I find it to be a fun way to keep track of events and connect with people at the conference -- and with the people who couldn't attend.

The trip was simple (get on the mass-pike and drive for 1 hour 40 minutes) and we found the cheaper parking without much difficulty ($18 for the day). We arrived with a half-hour to spare before registration opened, so we hung out and inspected the program to pick what we wanted to do. Well, Daniel did that, while I dorked on twitter.

Rather than go through a recitation of the specific events we attended, some highlights:

The panels showed a thoughtful balance of gender and race. The only unbalanced panel was the panel on Clothing that Creates Character: all seemingly white women. Maybe they couldn't find a man to participate. Or, perhaps, the men who tried to volunteer to participate got stuck with pins until they put their hands down. It was one of the best panels I attended: I learned a lot. Although I felt just a little sorry for Janet Catherine Johnston and J. Kathleen Cheney: Mary Robinette Kowal and Elizabeth Bear could put anyone in the shade. Suford Lewis did an amazing job of moderating: each question brought out interesting stuff and each following question really drew from what hadn't been said yet. It was masterful.

Scott Lynch's moderation of Class Structure in SF and Fantasy brought out good contrasting views from the participants. Each brought a different dimension to their responses which made the panel particularly interesting and useful. I was a little surprised that nobody mentioned HG Wells' Morlocks and Eloi. Or Heinlein. It was during this panel that I realized that I was expecting scholarship which is totally unreasonable for a writer's convention staffed by volunteers.

I very much enjoyed readings by Scott Lynch, Elizabeth Bear, C.S.E Cooney (who had been recommended to me by a friend on twitter) and Carlos Hernandez (who just happened to be following C.S.E Cooney). Daniel particularly liked the funny voice Scott Lynch used for his tea-kobold. I asked C.S.E Cooney about how her writing flowed so smoothly off the tongue. Her response was about the performance: how she prepares to give a reading by singing the manuscript or reading it various ways. "So it's just about the performance? Not an essential quality of the manuscript?" That set her back for a moment, but then considered how her understanding of performance led her to draft her manuscripts in particular ways. Very insightful.

We probably could have stayed for one more session, but we left around 5pm. Daniel was nodding off and didn't want to embarrass himself by actually falling asleep during a session. We headed out into the twilight for the long walk back to the car. And the drive out of the city and into the dark of rural Western Mass. The salt trucks were out covering the roads with rock salt as we arrived back in Amherst and the first flakes began fall as we drove up over Orchard Hill.