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

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!