Updated and probably Final Boskone Schedule

[lagilman]

In case anyone reading here will be at Boskone this weekend in Boston, MA...



Friday 8:00pm Pictionary
Myself, Keith DeCandido and Craig Shaw Gardner, none of whom can draw worth a damn. SFnal themes, of course. Alcohol WILL be involved, on my part at least.


Saturday 2:00pm Shadows Over Baker Street: SF&F Tie-ins to Mysteries
Pretty obvious, there. Huge crossover -- why? And why do so many SF writers also write mysteries, and vice versa? (Walter Mosely, Dana Stabenow, Peter Heck, Kristine Rusch, etc)

Saturday 4:00pm Kaffeklatsch
Your chance to ask me all those questions you never had the nerve to in a larger setting. Also to see my pretty!shiny!bright! cover for Staying Dead up close and personal.

Saturday 5:00pm Tall Dark and Handsomoid: the Rise of Romance SF
I can't promise anything, but I suspect the term "interstellar smut" will be used at least once.


Sunday 1:00pm Writing Your SECOND Novel
Not that I know anything at all about this topic, oh dear me no...

Comments

[arcaedia.livejournal.com]

Hey...they borrowed our title: Shadows Over Baker Street (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0345455282/qid=1076167500//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-4277812-7635024?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)

Anyways....we should probably get together and talk over whatever, yes? I'll be attempting to sit down and do necessary scheduling on Monday.

Re:

[lagilman]

We're arriving mid-afternoon on Friday, weather and the usual craziness permitting, departing Sunday afternoon, ditto. Other than the above constraints, the schedule is open...

(still very weird to be saying that...)

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Re, the mystery thing--

Steve Brust has a theory about that, which, unless I'm misrepreneting him enormously, has something to do with both mysteries and SFF using the extrapolative/intuitive/deductive functions of the brain, and thus generating a similar sort of pleasure in the reader.

A lot of SFF fans who read the more traditional sorts of IQF (Interminable Quest Fantasy) also seem to be category romance readers, and I expect there's a similar pelasure to be had in those two categories of things as well--expectation fulfilled and all that.

*theorizes randomly from anecdotal evidence*

Re:

[lagilman]

There's also the theory that SF and fantasy are worldbuilding constructs, while mystery and romance are plot constructs, which is why blending one from column A and one from column B seems to work so well. And why "science fantasy" has such an uneasy blending, and likewise romantic mystery... it generally has to be one or the other with a subtext of the other to work at all.

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[matociquala.livejournal.com]

That's very shiny. *g* I like that!

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[matociquala.livejournal.com]

And oo my, look at all my typos....

alas.

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[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'm half sorry you're doing this panel @ Boscon, as we're having something similar at Farpoint (yes, I know I'm mad at them, but I still want the panels to work) called "Spaceships and Detectives." Fascinating theories; must bounce 'em into the air at our panel.

Would then the current fashion for historical SF/alternate history be a form of forensics crossover, in that the past is being examined and interpreted? Or does the forensics fad become part and parcel of world building?

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[neadods.livejournal.com]

why "science fantasy" has such an uneasy blending, and likewise romantic mystery...

Thinking more about this and went "Er." But where does this leave steampunk, which is pretty much retro-science/historical fantasy. And more importantly, where does it leave the great bantering detective couples - Lord Peter & Harriet, Nick and Nora, dozens of TV incarnations (Steele, Moonlighting, Hart to Hart, etc.)?

Of course it's easy to do romantic mystery badly - it's all too appallingly easy to write anything badly - but seems to me it can be done well as well.

A rebuttal! A rebuttal!

[lagilman]

The Lord Peter books were mysetries, first and foremost. They worked even before Harriet came on the scene (first person to mention Peter/Bunter will get such a whapping...)

Hart to Hart were (IMnsHO)romantic dramas, more than mysteries. Moonlighting and Remington Steele I'd say were more of a mystery, but I will damit it brushed the line more often than not. The thing was, the romance supposed to be an adjunct to what they were doing, which was solving the puzzle.

But keep in mind that you're mentioning the handful that worked, and worked well enough to be remembered. Out of how many attempted? You may be using the expecptions to prove the rule, here...

Or maybe not. It is, as I said, a theory.

Re: A rebuttal! A rebuttal!

[neadods.livejournal.com]

But keep in mind that you're mentioning the handful that worked, and worked well enough to be remembered. Out of how many attempted?

Far too fond of a good debate not to jump right on this. Can we really use numbers to prove that Y successes out of X attempts proves a rule that Y doesn't really happen? Because I'm going to rebut that by using the same rule, the slushpile-to-purchase factor, much less the slushpile-to-really good factor proves that there is no such thing as a good book. (very toothy grin)

The Lord Peter books were mysetries, first and foremost.

As were Nick and Nora and the good Steeles, and so forth. Yes, the romance is not the driving factor of the plot, but it is a significant subplot. Too significant to entirely discount as a motivating factor, particularly when worked into the plot - Busman's Honeymoon, Gaudy Night, the college reunion episode of Steele... I'd even make a tortuous argument for Northanger Abbey here, although the only mystery lay entirely in the mind of a young, not-too-bright girl.

Now if you want to argue that a book that is romance first and mystery second doesn't work particularly well as opposed to one that is mystery first and romance second, then there's not too much I can say to rebut you - the only romance-first mystery I know off the top of my head is Ashford's The Bargain, and it rises like a wonderful souffle - only to fall just as souffle-like at the denoument.

But getting back to the original thread, how about saying "romance is character, mystery is plot, F/SF is worldbuilding"? Because what makes us reread a book when we already know whodunnit? The characters, which haven't come up yet in the discussion of genres.

Re: A rebuttal! A rebuttal!

[lagilman]

Because I'm going to rebut that by using the same rule, the slushpile-to-purchase factor, much less the slushpile-to-really good factor proves that there is no such thing as a good book. (very toothy grin)


Different formulas of the same rule - the slushpile to acquistiion ratio proves that there are more bad storytellers out there than there are good ones (to channel Cordy for a moment -- "boy howdy!"). The low number of acquisitions point up the number of really bad submissions out there. Is the cat black with white, or white with black? Depends on which way you're looking at it.

And I will conceed the romance=characters. Which is all the more reason for it to go so well with F?SF. But not horror, which is also about characters, really.

Re: A rebuttal! A rebuttal!

[neadods.livejournal.com]

And I will conceed the romance=characters. Which is all the more reason for it to go so well with F?SF. But not horror, which is also about characters, really.

Unless you're Esther Freisner, who wrote "Love's Eldrich Ichor" for Cthulu and the Coeds, or Kids and Squids. But then, she breaks the rules so elegantly...

PS - sorry for not properly closing that italics tag previously!

[badgermirlacca.livejournal.com]

sigh Wanna go.

Wanna go to all of those, and not just because I know some of the people on them....

Badger (back to working on Morgan mystery)