Rowan Tree and Red Thread

What follows are assorted notes I jotted down while we were at Worldcon, prettied up a little. I've missed some panels out that I enjoyed but don't have very clear memories of, but it's long enough as it is.

We arrived after a hard flight. It was a little Saab twin-prop job that hopped around the sky, tossed about by turbulence. I hated it. Once we were on the ground I regained my composure, but I was terrified while we were in the air.

We got to the hotel around 3.30 or 4.00. We didn't do much that afternoon and then wandered down to the conference centre to register. The dealers' room wasn't open at that stage. Afterwards we went back up towards Sauchiehall Street and ate dinner in the Argan café, a Moroccan and Mediterranean restaurant. It was delicious but marred by the very slow delivery. I know that I ate tapas-style and Sam had the more regular starter and main course, but her main course arrived about 45 minutes after I'd had my last dish. Crap.

Thursday was getting into the swing of the con, learning our way around the venues and hitting the first of the panels. We met up with Lisa (drcpunk) and Josh (mnemex) , two APA-friends from Alarums & Excursions, in the dealers' room after some texting tag. We chatted for a while and got to know one another. Nice folks, and good listeners as well as good talkers. We later met for lunch the Gallery Bistro upstairs in the SECC. Maddy Eid and Paul King, ex-A&Eers, and Paul Mason, Keiko, his wife and Micha, his son, were all there ahead of us, and we had a curious reunion of people I'd never met. E-mail does that to you, I suppose. Paul Mason is a delight in person, charming and clever, making a much better impression than he sometimes gives in print where his Brit-irony can overwhelm his sense of humour. I'm glad I got a chance to talk to him, especially now he's bowing out of the APA.

Later that day we attended the I'm Sorry I Haven't a SFing Clue. The "Guess that Humming" round was hysterical with the audience producing a remarkable rendition of Also Sprach Zarathustra, complete with choral accompaniment and corpsing from the panel (including Christopher Priest, Ben Jeapes, John Meaney and Ken MacLeod and hosted by Tony Keen). Priest and Jeapes had obviously read their e-mail before the con as they actually had some jokes prepared. MacLeod and Meaney managed to wing it fairly convincingly nonetheless.

Friday was a panel marathon, but we also caught up with old friends. Whisky was consumed. We hit a load of panels and I don't really remember them all. I'll have to pull out the programme and remind myself. I do remember going to the Cory Doctorow panel on hardware hacking, social science rigour with Ginjer Buchanan, Laura Frankos, Charlie Stross and Jo Fletcher, Fantastic Cities with Michael Swanwick, Ian McLeod, Jeffrey Ford and Claire Weaver. We ate hot dogs and had a minor incident in the dealers' room.

Other panels that left an impression on Friday included Connie Willis, Cory Doctorow and Sean McMullan on gender, character and historical context, and the Art and Science research methods panel. Talking about the differences in method and techniques were Tony Keen, Liz Williams, Farah Mendlesohn, Greer Gilman and Dave Clements. Lots of interesting anecdotes and curious to hear two historians claim they (historians) use a much more "scientific method" approach than most "arts" disciplines. I still have my doubts, but the methodologies do have some similarities with astronomy & astrophysics, where experiments in the strict sense are also impossible and one has to go to the historical record (either here in our past or out there in the universe).

Later we went to dinner with David Clements, Conor Kostick and his girlfriend Aoife and Oisin McGann, an artist and children's author from O'Brien Press who was over for the con to wave the flag. Good, basic dinner and lots of good chat, lubricated by a couple of double shots of Bowmore 12 year old, on special offer from the Moathouse Bar. On the way out we bumped into Alex who had made it to the con after his AI conference in Edinburgh.

Over dinner I spotted Steph Swainston, the author of The Year of Our War, who we had seen briefly at the Whisky, Whiskey, Bourbon and Rye panel. She was dressed in plain black vest and trousers, doing a remarkably good impression of a scholarly looking Aeryn Sung.

Saturday the panel marathon continued and I began to think I'd have to write a novel just to empty my head of the hundreds of ideas that were cluttering it up after this intense SF dose. After breakfast we headed into the centre of Glasgow to buy whisky. We ended up in the Whisky Shop in the Buchanan Galleries, tasting whisky before 10am. This is an excellent way to start the day. We were beguiled into buying a £55 bottle of a 16 year old Laphroaig special bottling, as well as a couple of other tasters.

Once as the con we went to the panel on consciousness with Connie Willis, Justina Robson, Ian Watson and Kelly Link. Very good but I don't remember much apart from deciding that Robson's work was probably worth looking into and Willis' recommendation of getting in neurology as the next big thing. Also recommendations for Karl Schroeder's new book The Lady of Mazes and Geoff Ryman's Air.

We also went to Charlie Stross's kaffeklatsch and were entertained. He's full of ideas for new books, including a funny take on economic warfare and industrial espionage between MMORPG software houses. Virtual bank in one MMORPG world is robbed by orcs with red dragons as air support and the economic crisis it produces may crash the IPO and the venture capital will evaporate. Police are called in and it takes (p)ages to convince the inspector that it's not all just "wasting police time".

Also looking forward to Glasshouse, his sequel to Accelerando in a post-singularity solar system. It looks like the Family Trade sequence is going to bloom into 9-12 volumes!

Later we went to a panel with Marcus Rowland and David Cake (and others) on game playability vs. realism. There were a surprising amount of old RuneQuest fans in the audience and a lot of Glorantha fans too. Then on to Tall Technical Tales, with some really funny stories of lab accidents, military tech disasters and, of course, explosions. I remember the 20,000 litres of liquid hydrogen in the Bubble Chamber and many, many burst car tires; the four bulldozers airdropped to the early warning station in Canada (only the fourth survived arrival); the spherical elephant with two release valve (mouth and anus) in a C130 transport; and "shouldn't you be clipped on?" said to the tech standing on the cargo door at the rear of C130 circling over Salisbury Plain at a few thousand feet ("I never knew my toes could grip through the soles of my boots!").

After dinner on Saturday night we lit out to the Hilton with Dave Clements (purplecthulhu) to attend the anonymousclaire LJ party. I had fun, and finally got to chat to Nicholas Whyte (nhw) face to face for the first time in years. Good party.

By Sunday my note taking was more comprehensive. Yet more panels and some incredible Indian food.

First up were Stross, Ian McDonald, and Cory Doctorow on AI, the aliens we make. This was a really good panel and bursting with ideas. As a result my notes are a dog's breakfast.

Stross on ants passing through the Singularity before us to become "post-ants", PLCs and LLCs having privileges and rights in law that make them in some ways living beings; have they become post-corporations? ISO9000 and quality assurance procedures make it possible (theoretically) to replace any individuals in any post in a corporation and still have it function as before. Humans are replaceable.

River of Gods has artificial soap-opera characters run by AIs, blurring the line between character and self, and yet another reason I must get a copy of the book.

Intelligence is expensive, and evolution may internalise technology, make it an instinct and intelligence may wither away. Instinctual technology like in Schroeder and Reynolds. Cory: "organic stupidity and artificial intelligence". Aliens arrive on Earth and clearly see that it's run by a Satanic coalition of cats and grasses.

Individuals smarter than the group? Memes allow for people to be just smart enough to act as a substrate for memes and they don't have to think any harder than that.

Kurzweil is a propagandist, says Stross, he doesn't address the dystopian aspects of the technology he espouses at all.

The body provides intelligence too. Cory: "If you think that intelligence lies north of the brainstem you've obviously never neutered a tomcat."

Stross on Penrose and quantum effects in microtubules: A treatment for gout cleans out the microtubules: does this make you non-sentient according to Penrose? I called out that Penrose's thinking on this subject was rubbish, and Cory echoed that to the audience. He also quoted Djykstra. "the question of a machine that can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."

Turing test: Cory suggests that chat room bots may be AI-approaching spam bots, attempting to convince human chatters that they're human. Once someone types "Are you a fucking 'bot?", the bot dies, and returns to base with the parameters that worked up to that point, to refine the next generation.

Stross (I think): the singularity AI arises from spam filters, and it hates us from reading our spam.

McDonald and Doctorow: Multiplicity of consciousnesses: How do we merge or converge multiple copies of ourselves once a digital version of the self is possible? How do you merge holographically stored/implemented memories (as in the brain)

McDonald: the physicality of human intelligence is quite different to AI and its ability to multiply itself, and copies of itself.

Doctorow: AI may not be cost effective. There's loads of human intelligence wasted: e.g. Google aggregates human choices (links on webpages) and translates that into information about popularity. How about using humans as the intelligence behind NPCs in MMORPGs?

Stross: Augmented intelligence; you use the tools to augment capabilities, like labs on a chip, wikipedia etc.

After that we were at a panel on favourite and unremembered children's books from the panel's childhood. Terry Pratchett and others, including Janet McNaughton (www.janetmcnaughton.ca) who will collate the recommendations on her website.

Some recommendations include:

Ken Opal, The Live Forever Machine: Two immortals preserving or destroying history, discovered by a young boy who tries to thwart them. It reminded me a bit of Rome and Carthage in Unknown Armies.

Peter Dickinson, the Blue Hawk: Far future dying civilisation, salt choked, real gods and elaborate rituals. Boy gets the white stone that allows him to be the trickster for a day, save a blue hawk destined for sacrifice and the world changes.

Penelope Farmer, Charlotte Sometimes: Shared lives time travel between the 70s and 1918 before the Great Flu Epidemic.

T. H. White's Mistress Marsham's Repose: Lilliputians come to England settle in a stately home to create a civilisation of their own. They help a girl against an evil governess, treasure seekers and there's lots of Latin jokes.

Daniel Pinkwater gets another recommendation from Pratchett.

Andrew Slade, Dust: Dustbowl magic realism/horror.

Graham McNamee, Acceleration: Lost and found dept. worker finds diary of psychopath, gets drawn in and tries to save the killer's next target.

E. Nesbitt, the Magic City: Boy builds city of household objects and enters it, pursued by sinister governess on a hippogriff.

John Christopher, The Guardians: England split into industrial hell and rural idyll, tight social control, Plato's republic is the basis for government and the Guardians run everything. Seduction of power, the hero is groomed for a position of power; does he become a guardian or not?

Elizabeth Stucly, A Star in the Hand (?): Fishing village, boy good at art wants to do more with life than fishing; Billy Elliot for people with two left feet.

Hittie (sp?), her first hundred years: The life and adventures of a wooden Victorian doll from New England.

Then onto Genre Killing Ideas with Alastair Reynolds, Karl Schroeder, Charlie Stross and Ian McDonald.

Genre killing == "anything that makes your characters safer" says Schroeder. All the panel hate nanotech for that reason. "magic pixie dust" says Stross. Mobile phones are the genre-killing idea for teen slasher flicks.

Vice (porn and gambling) are technology drivers == nanolube! (Stross). What are the other rude uses of nanotech? "Tits and ass all the way to the Singularity".

Ubiquitous high bandwidth surveillance cameras will soon be in the hands of everyone. Vidcamera phones are the next big thing. Not Big Brother but lots of Little Brothers (like Brin's Earth).

Schroeder: Larry Niven's Known Space kept getting screwed by NASA planetary missions. He gave up. NASA robot missions == genre killers for planetary romances and solar system SF. Also recommends Peter Watt's new book Blindsight. It sounds really interesting, dealing with neurological disorders and mind/brain issues.

More generally, genre-killing devices are any that remove or destroy limits arbitrarily (like magic). Without rules it's hard to write fiction. Neither the reader nor the writer can believe what comes next if there are no rules whatsoever.

Schroeder: Genre-killing idea in mainstream fiction is the anti-depressant. In crime novels it's modern forensics and the mobile phone/camera.

Sunday lunch at the Mother India Cafe on Argyle Street. Simply brilliant Indian food. We ate way too much, including chilli king prawns, chicken achari, lamb pasandi, curried smoked haddock, some aloo thingy in a pancake, plus nan, paratha and raitha. What an excellent meal with great combinations of flavours. I'll definitely go back there the next time I'm in Glasgow. The only drawback was the bloated stomach and burping I had for the rest of the afternoon having overeaten at lunch. Eyes bigger than stomach, I'm afraid.

In the afternoon we had the kaffeklatsch with Jack Cohen, an excellent fellow full of stories and thoroughly convivial and warm-hearted with it. Ask me for his jokes about the bronze rat, the perils of anal sex and the ladies in a taxi in Cheltenham.

Jack's got a new book with Ian Stewart coming out soon, Appearance of Reality, a sequel to Figments of Reality and The Collapse of Chaos. I look forward to it. Also I might look up Heaven, a fiction work he wrote with Ian Stewart. The book includes a sentient pond, where ecosystems are the systems underlying thought, memory and so on. Different species fill the roles of organs and the like. It communicates with other ponds through a variety of flying insects. Cohen complains that he's a lousy writer, and needs a good editor or co-writer to make his ideas plain and comprehensible. Possibly this it the legacy of scientific academic writing.

Back then to the dealers' room (again) for more damage. Sam got something from the NESFA Press that I don't remember the details of, and some children's fiction from the very good collection provided by one of the other dealers. I wonder if we kept their card?

We deliberately avoided the Hugo Awards as I was still pretty dodgy in the tum, and we were both fairly tired. We chatted with Brian Nisbet (natural20)and Lorna (dopplergirl), his room-mate for a while. We went then to the shelving panel for a while but skipped out before the end. In the Moathouse bar we met Lisa, Josh and Michael Cule for the last time and heard some war stories from Michael. We made our goodbyes and returned to the hotel to pack and collapse.

The following morning it was down to the dining room for the last of our indulgent fried breakfasts at the hotel, pay up and grab a taxi for the airport. The flight home was much smoother than the one out, and the weather was good for the landing approach so we got a good look at Cork and the coastline from the air. We got the car out of the long term car park and hit the road for West Cork and a sleepy reunion with Rowan. I was almost as clingy as she was, and very happy to see her again. I think she had a good time with her grandparents though, so her stay was a success.

Apologies to anyone I met and forgot to mention, or any panellist who I didn't include. I'll plead ignorance and exhaustion in roughly equal measure. I'd like to thank the organisers of Interaction publicly. It was a fabulous con, and I really enjoyed it. SECC security might have been a pain, but the quality of the panels and the general mood of fannish good nature were splendid.