Copyright © 2005 by Blake Charlton. All rights reserved. No part of this text may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, reposting, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission of the author.
30 August 2006
Strangely BayCon was more overwhelming. The World Science Fiction Convention, this year in LA, seemed quite calm in comparison. I wonder if it was or if it was only my perception. There was very little cosplay, perhaps that did it. I don't know.
Well, anyway, even though World Con didn't seem strange or other worldly, it was tremendous fun.
The number of wonderful folks, fans and pros alike, I got to meet and hang out with was staggering. I picked up a roommate and good friend in Pat Rothfuss, who's epic fantasy trilogy will be coming out soon from DAW. I'd provide a link, but Pat's a Luddite and didn't even have a cell phone *gasp* when we were rooming together. So whenever he gets his webpage up and running I'll be sure to provide a new one.
I got to sip a few beers with young impresarios Paolo Bacigalupi and Daniel Abraham. Paolo has written, for my money, some of the most impressive short fiction I've yet come across. And Daniel recently published the most original, unexpected, and yet absolutely perfect fantasy I've read recently. Check out A SHADOW IN SUMMER; you'll thank me. I'm thrilled and humbled to be sharing a room with these two guys at World Fantasy Con in the fall. I'll be the only one in the room without 1) a Nebula or Hugo nomination, 2) a work in print, or 3) hair.
Yeah, I know; you saw #3 coming.
And then there were the illuminati I got to rub elbows with: Larry Niven, Tom Doherty, Peter S. Beagle, Tim Powers, Ann Mccaffrey!!!! And, yes, I 100% devolved into a gibbering fanboy around each and every one of these greats. The most amazing thing about it was that they were all incredibly nice people.
And then….and then…oh man, I sound like my fifth grade students when I get excited.
Okay one last and then…then I'll stop.
And then I went to a panel on 'Disability and Science Fiction'. Only one panelist was slotted and she didn't show up. So after about 15 minutes, we (and by we I mean a group of 15 odd disabled folk) were sitting around in this room waiting for something to happen.
Being a dramaking author, I decided to usurp the panel. I got up picked up the microphone and waxed poetic about my writing, my thoughts about neurodiversisty and physical diversity, their affect on a society, why disabled folk and non-disabled folk are drawn to speculative fiction, blah blah. Well, I was soon joined by a special ed teacher who joined me in usurping the panel, and then everyone in the audience joined in. It was a really fantastic, round-table discussion. There was every flavor of disability you could imagine from blindness, to epilepsy, to physical impairment. It all ended in a wonderful roundtable discussion about how we define disability and capability.
I can't speak for the others there, but I came away with a strengthened belief that disability is a belief as much as it is a physiological condition. To say "I am disabled" is to say "I lack something I think I should have." And what we think we should have is dependant on our context. In a world without writing, there would be no dyslexics; in a world without light, there would be no blindness; in an environment with no gravity, there would be no wheelchair users. And speculative fiction really is about changing contexts. We imagine a world much like our own and then play with the settings to prove that we would still be human if...we could live on top of clouds, see into the future, colonize a low-g planet, and so forth. For my two cents, that is why speculative fiction draws the disabled and the sympathetic; we seek to see that changing context does not change us, it merely reveals more of us.