The Clarion Workshop at UCSD

The 2008 Clarion class is settled into their new spaces at UCSD, and has begun this year’s Workshop under the trusted guidance of Kelly Link. Tania Mayer’s been spending lots of time with them, and I had the time to have dinner with them last night over at Canyon Vista, whose website, for reasons I don’t understand, doesn’t show the canyon for whose vista it is named.

Anyway, lots of little things to catch up on, now that they’re settled:

• The new Star Trek exhibit at the San Diego Air and Space Museum in Balboa Park. It’s blogged here at Wired, and written up in the San Diego Union-Tribune here. It’s a little pricy at $24 a head, but for the serious fan, well worth it.
• I’ve been shlepping around a copy of an article in the May 28, 2008 Boston Phoenix article called, “Rage Against the Machines!” It asks the question, “Could robots take over the world?” and decides the answer is probably yes. I mostly like it for the fact that it runs through the gamut of worries about robots, rather than that I agree with its breathless litany of fears. It’s a fun article.
• If you haven’t Twittered, you probably don’t want to Plurk — but if you’ve done either, you may just be seriously addicted to them. Plurk is particularly addictive, in that it puts people’s Twitters into some kind of organization. So you can track the ramblings of your good friend Goomoo, f.x., or switch to tracking Goomoo and his friends. I clicked on one of the friends, and found myself tracking Twitters off the technology blog StartupMeme. At that point, I shut it down, lest I be trapped there all day. Then I went back, set up a Clarion account, and dropped a plurk. I’m such a sucker for a new technology…

The New York Times reported this week on a fading custom in northern Albania: women who take “an oath of virginity to live, and be treated, as a man.”  The article focuses on Pashe Keqi, who vowed to “forsake marriage, children, and sex” following her father’s death:

For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men. Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Ms. Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority — including the obligation to avenge her father’s death.

She says she would not do it today, now that sexual equality and modernity have come even to Albania, with Internet dating and MTV invading after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Girls here do not want to be boys anymore. With only Ms. Keqi and some 40 others remaining, the sworn virgin is dying off.

I’ve been to Albania — twice — back right after the death of its long-time tyrant, Enver Hoxha.  I remember temporarily dislocating my jaw chewing some aged beef that can only have been roadkill, and watching out the window at the mocked-up bazaar of cars stolen from Italy being sold in a central square of Tirana, the nation’s capital.  In Tirana, and in the nameless coastal town where we visited one of Hoxha’s many palaces, the country seemed trapped in the 1940s, time standing still.  In the northern highlands, it seems, they carved out an entirely new world. 

… with the start of the second Clarion Workshop here at UC San Diego.  The students arrive over the weekend, and I’ll have the chance to meet them Sunday night over dinner.  Kelly Link is coming in tomorrow, I’m told, driving over the Rockies from a stay in Santa Fe.  She wisely mailed herself a few boxes of things she’d need over the week she’s here, to minimize the schlepping.

It’s amazing to see what it takes to put one of these things on.  I stopped by the indefatigable Tania Mayer’s office today, where I found boxes upon boxes of pots, pans, fans, water pistols, water rifles, water cannons … well, you get the picture … all piled up around her in preparation for moving the students in.  It’s a zoo, but she’s in marvelous good spirits as always.  (The only time I ever see Tania bummed out is during the weeks after the Workshop, when everyone’s gone back to their normal lives and she’s all alone.)

So there’s a visit to Mark Thiemens’ lab scheduled for this coming Friday afternoon, and a visit by Nancy Holder for dinner on Saturday.  Kelly Link’s reading at Mysterious Galaxy, our totally favorite bookstore and for the second year in a row the donor of a Clarion Scholarship [hint: so go there, thank them, and spend money!], is scheduled for Wednesday, July 2, at 7:00 p.m., where she’ll be signing Magic for Beginners.  [By the way, if you’re a fan of signed books and live too far away to come for the signing, you can generally order online at MG in advance of a signing and ask that the book be signed before shipping — if you ask nicely and tell them Clarion sent you.]  All the Clarion instructors will be signing at MG this summer, as will the occasional Clarion alum — like Bob Crais’s visit on Monday, July 7 for his new Elvis Cole volume.

 So my readership will drop, but I’ll still be here.  Hello?  Hello?  Anyone out there?

Well, we tried to do it, but we just don’t have the depth of volunteers or a Workshop that works without us running around like chickens with our heads cut off…

I should have posted this much earlier, but I forgot — I’m afraid we’ve had too much going on planning for this Sunday’s launch of UCSD Clarion #2.  And of course you can’t postpone an anniversary — at least not without a workable time travel system.  So it’s more like the reunion party is melting, like the Wicked Witch of the West, and we’re the puddle left behind. 

We were planning on a celebration focusing on our Ur-Teacher, Kate Wilhelm, whose spirit and wisdom enliven every moment of the annual workshops.  Instead, we are announcing a new fundraising drive in honor of Kate to fully fund the Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm Endowed Scholarship here at UCSD.  The fund currently stands at $20,000 and has a funding goal of $36,000; it will be used every year only for scholarships for Clarion students.  Donations can be mailed to:

The Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm Endowed Scholarship Fund
c/o Nancy Ho-Wu
UC San Diego Department of Literature — 0410
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0410

Alternatively, for those of you who prefer to donate to the Clarion Foundation, the best way to reach them is via their website’s Giving page, which has several options for what and how to give, at:

http://clarionfoundation.org/donatecash.htm

Thanks from all of us. 

Don’t miss yesterday’s New York Times article in the Science Times section on “the legacy of one of technology’s lost pioneers: Paul Otlet,” arguably the first to imagine the Internet.  Otlet’s work in the 1930s “described a networked world where ‘anyone in his armchair would be able to contemplate the whole of creation’”:

In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes,” as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. He called the whole thing a “réseau,” which might be translated as “network” — or arguably, “web.”

The article, “The Web Time Forgot,” includes terrific visuals available via the link above, focuses on Otlet’s Mundaneum and links to a documentary on his story.  But as with my earlier post on a similar case, where the novel lies not in the facts of the story but in the story behind the facts, the tale here circles around the destruction of Orlet’s work:

Today, Otlet and his work have been largely forgotten, even in his native Belgium. Although Otlet enjoyed considerable fame during his lifetime, his legacy fell victim to a series of historical misfortunes — not least of which involved the Nazis marching into Belgium and destroying much of his life’s work.

An alternate history, perhaps?  One involving the Nazis capitalizing on rather than destroying Otlet’s work or, jumping ahead to 1945 and assuming Otlet survived the war instead of dying in 1944, the Americans and Soviets racing each other to grab Otlet and his colleagues rather than Von Braun and his?  What if the web had preceded the race to the moon?  Would it have mattered?

There was a very interesting blog post on the Wall Street Journal website, of all places, about ten days ago, on the difference between men and women as computer coders:

Emma McGrattan, the senior vice-president of engineering for computer-database company Ingres–and one of Silicon Valley’s highest-ranking female programmers–insists that men and women write code differently. Women are more touchy-feely and considerate of those who will use the code later, she says. They’ll intersperse their code–those strings of instructions that result in nifty applications and programs–with helpful comments and directions, explaining why they wrote the lines the way they did and exactly how they did it.

It’s still showing up as number 2 on the WSJ’s list of most popular posts; they must have hit a nerve.  Lots of guys in their whining about how they actually ask directions, and don’t write obscure code (note: I’m a guy).  But it’s an interesting idea, and maybe a reflection of the simple fact that many things in our culture, or in any culture, override the norms of the world around us and the rules that our technologies try to set.  It’s a nice thought: culture beating technology this time around.

In case you missed it, the third Slayage conference on the works of Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Josh Whedon took place last week at Henderson State University in Arkansas.  The program lists a wide variety of topics, described in a Los Angeles Times preview of the conference as follows:

Aristotle. Nietzsche. Buffy?

The blond heroine of the campy television series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” as well as other works by creator Joss Whedon, are the focus of an academic conference at Henderson State University this weekend. The show starring Sarah Michelle Gellar won cult fame and critical praise during its seven seasons on the WB and UPN networks.

Since it ended, the series has spawned enough academic books on the philosophy surrounding the roles of friendship and feminism to fill a 15-foot-wide bookshelf at the college in Arkadelphia, said Kevin Durand, an associate professor of philosophy.

Conferences on Buffy aren’t all that new, as evidenced by this 2002 Salon.com piece, “Deconstructing Buffy,” on the first-ever academic conference on Buffy, held at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.  The interesting catch here for me is the fact that, six years later, people are still commenting on these conferences — Google News shows 261 articles today in response to the search terms “buffy vampire academic.”

Clarion Foundation Board member and UCSD alumna Nancy Holder is our own representative to the Buffyverse.  She taught a Buffy course at UCSD Extension in the Winter Quarter ‘08; with any luck, she’ll be back for another.   And she’s also teaching the occasional Creative Writing course for UCSD undergraduates, this Spring quarter that just ended having taught a course on writing “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Irrealism.”  Cool.

… from the story in today’s Los Angeles Times about the decision of Nepal’s King Gyanendra to move out of the royal palace:

Gyanendra’s departure closed the final chapter on the world’s last Hindu monarchy, but a remnant stayed behind: the 94-year-old mistress of the deposed monarch’s grandfather, who died more than half a century ago.

Few Nepalese knew of the mysterious woman’s existence until authorities announced Wednesday that she would be allowed to continue living in the palace. The youngest mistress of King Tribhuvan, who ruled from 1911 until his death in 1955, has no house to move to or relatives to take her in.

Without that last bit — “no house to move to or relatives to take her in” — it’s not that interesting.  With that, though, it’s a story begging to be told.  Anyone want to call dibs?

There’s this serious listing craze going around these days, with Michael Marshall’s May 11 post on ABCNews.com about five science fiction movies that get the science right, PC World May 12 post on science fiction’s goofiest gadgets, and io9 seeming to do one every few days – my favorites being the Greatest Space Cocktails post from May 9 and Tastiest Food Moments on May 12.

So here’s my shot, a list of movies that get the sociology, the cultures, right.  Top Five.

5.  Blade Runner.  This is perhaps my favorite science fiction movie of all time, whichever version I’m watching, but it has several misses on the social ecology side along with its many hits.  Hits: the streets of L.A., taxis of the future, the misery of living in tiny spaces with credits eaked out like the gold stars second-grade teachers give their students.  Misses: the whole replicants side of life, and the fact that I somehow can’t believe that the future is just going to be one giant Western.

4.  Bubba Ho-Tep.  This might not qualify on some people’s lists because it’s a mummy movie, but it’s a stunningly good portrayal of social relationships in retirement homes.  The two lead characters (Sebastian Haff and John F. Kennedy, played by Bruce Campbell and Ozzie Davis respectively) do an incredible job representing the loneliness inherent in old age, while even the minor characters — the woman who steals things from other patients as they lie dead or dying — are fleshed out.  So to speak.

3.  Gattaca.  This dystopian society takes genomic information to the nth degree, selecting people for its space program based solely on their genetic perfection.  Vincent (a terrific Ethan Hawke) lacks the requisite DNA, while genetically perfect Eugene (an equally wonderful Jude Law) has been paralyzed in an accident.  They swap spit, although not in the way that high school kids do.  A very precise depiction of the dangers inherent in knowing everything about your DNA.

2.  The Fifth Element.  This is something of an odd choice, I admit, given how far out of touch with reality this movie is — but the oddness is entirely because director Luc Besson brought a sensibility that’s lacking in American films.  Mr. Zorg (Gary Oldham) is great and his evil allies delightfully stupid, while the monastic order that’s preserving the Element’s place in the world is utterly believable.  Throw in Bruce Willis’s attitude and Milla Jovovich’s infantilistic confusion, then deduct a few points for Chris Tucker’s performance while adding back a couple for the idea of a universe-wide ‘reality show,’ and you’ve got the formula for an utterly believable societal structure. 

1.  Alien.  What is there to say?  Assume that everything that can go wrong with society has gone wrong, and you have the social structures and interactions displayed in Alien.  The military-industrial complex really is running everything, and is willing to sacrifice all in the search for new weapons.  The interactions between crew members stuck interminably together in space rings true; the inches-from-crazy crew member Lambert (Veronica Cartwright’s best performance ever) portrays the edgy kind of person we all run into in our jobs; while the ship’s generalized state of disrepair reflects the reality of an industrial workplace.

I’ve been blocked in my Clarion postings the last couple of weeks, partially because of a week’s vacation and partially because of serious conflicted feelings about the Eaton Conference and its participants.  I’d promised a final Eaton posting, but just haven’t been able to bring myself to write it.

I have the impression that the sf and fantasy worlds are similar to academia in one key respect: the politics are so vicious because the stakes are so low.  That’s not to say that there was anything vicious about Eaton; but I was so struck by the depths of the divide between the pro-Mars folks at this years conference and the rest of the SF and fantasy worlds, coinciding with another triumphant visit to Mars in the days afterwards, that I’ve been totally blocked in writing about it.

The final day of Eaton brought home to me the divide between what I came to think of as the Era of Optimism — from Clarke and Bradbury all the way up to Brin — and today, a time when there’s much less clarity than there was in the early days.  It’s not a real time-scale, since Brin and Bear clearly overlap with the Nowists, including Eaton Conference participant Kim Stanley Robinson.  But the conference was focused on a time and, even more, an idea that it was important to go to Mars, important to go into space, important to move forward — with a clear sense of what ‘moving forward’ might mean.  That’s simply not there any more, and the writings and beliefs of today’s SF and fantasy authors reflect that lack of clarity. 

Perhaps that’s why those from the Era of Optimism just don’t get fantasy, or mundane science fiction, or other genres, and even less so the drive that leads so many SF writers in those directions.  Many spoke openly of not getting those genres, and not seeing them as SF.  I found it terribly disconcerting, seeing heroes dissing the people I now read the most.  Hence my subsequent silence.

There’s lots more in this vein that I have to discuss in the coming weeks.  Not that it’s surprising to most of you, I’m sure; I’m not a con-goer, so I don’t get to see this as often as most fans.  And I won’t be commenting further on the Eaton Conference — and want to note here that it was a fabulous conference, bringing together titans who were able to focus on the single driving issue in their work, the physical manifestation and metaphysical concept that we call Mars.  It was a tremendously important moment, and one that was both well-designed and brought off with tremendous skill.  But this divide, between the then and the now, I will return to.   

P.S.  I was able to speak to Edward Laag, UCR graduate student and winner of the Eaton Conference short story contest, after he accepted his award.  I gave him a brochure for the Clarion Workshop and told him he should apply next year.  I couldn’t find the second-place winner, UC Irvine grad student Andrew Warren, but I’ll track him down too.  We’ll see if they follow up.