[This post is part of a series which collects and expands upon notes taken during panel discussions at the January 2015 ConFusion science fiction convention in Dearborn, Michigan. The index page, which links to the other posts in the series, is here.]

Panelists: Sarah Gibbons, Jen Talley, Michael DeLuca, Brigid Collins, Courtney Allison Moulton

(I tried to find a link to information about Sarah Gibbons, but I can find no information about her online anywhere)

This panel focused on how to research things that don’t necessarily exist. Research is a vital part of writing a story. Even if it is the flightiest of unicorn- and dragon- laden high fantasy, it is important that it be internally consistent and that the narrative flow logically from event to event. And if the story contains “real world” elements, these should be as realistic as possible within the narrative framework.

The panelists agreed that the research value of the internet is huge, but that separating the signal from the noise can be difficult. Two resources which came up immediately were the Michigan Electronic Library and Project Gutenberg.

Wikipedia is the 900 pound gorilla in the room, but because of its open nature it is not so useful as a primary source. But thanks to the “related links” section at the bottom of each page, it can serve as gateway to primary sources. Given the open nature of the internet as a whole it is also important to double-check the primary source against an additional (non-Wikipedia) source.

Here are my thoughts on some specific points the panelists brought up.

Translations reflect the times in which they are translated. Languages evolve over time. Words that were common in the 1700s are long out of use now. New words are added to the Oxford English Dictionary every year. Social values change, words take on new meanings and lose old ones. On a meta- level, the text of a translation can provide useful information about the era in which it was translated. The 1885 translation of Crime and Punishment will convey different information than the 1992 translation. (Corollary: translations also mirror the parent societies of the language into which they are translated. A French translation and a Hindi translation of the same source will not yield the same outcomes.)

The value of observational research is huge. Research is not the same as experience. It is one thing to read about New Orleans; it is another entirely to visit it. Observing the thing you intend to write about will give you the ten thousand little details which may not have made it into another person’s notes. These details can take a story from the abstract to the immediate. I’m not reading about people in the French Quarter, I’m sitting in the Cafe du Monde watching pigeons fight over the crumbs of a discarded beignet, while the humidity makes a sunny day smell like rain. This leads to the next point:

The rationale of research is verisimilitude and plausibility. Does the story seem real, and does it feel like it could actually happen? Are things internally consistent? Does one event lead logically to the next? Do my theories about future nanotechnology lead logically from the current pool of scientific information? Even if you can’t precisely research something because it simply does not exist, you can come arbitrarily close. For example, you may not ever get a chance to eat dragon meat, but you can find iguana and alligator on the menu at some restaurants. Now you can describe a meal made of reptile. This emphasizes…

There is no such thing as too much research. The more detail you add, the more you immerse your readers in your story. Breadth and depth are equally important. Even if you are writing a short story which takes place over ten minutes in a barber shop, placing that shop in a particular place and time grounds it and makes it more accessible. Visit a barber shop like the one in your story. Get a haircut. Talk to people. Hang out for a couple of hours. Explore the neighborhood. What does it smell like? Who are the regulars?

Have I answered the question I set out to ask? You can abandon research at any point, but it isn’t really complete until you can answer this question with an unambiguous “yes”.

As a writer, showing your work can be a fun thing for readers. This goes over and above the “acknowledgements” section at the beginning or end of a book. As a reader, I love seeing the work that inspired and informed the book I am reading. Peter Watts is the first who springs to mind, with his novel Blindsight. He has an extensive bibliography, both in the book and on his website. He even put together an in-universe presentation explaining some of the science!

 

Notes from the “Staying Sane While Sluicing Through Slush” panel at ConFusion 2015.

This was a brilliant panel, and set the tone for me for what I picked through the rest of the ‘con. The panelists were delightful, and absolute founts of good information. In particular, Scott Andrews, who runs Beneath Ceaseless Skies, had several good stories about the industry (as well as a bone or two to pick). Since Caffeinated Press is up and running, and the submissions are starting to trickle in, the information in this panel was invaluable.

Panelists: Ferret Steinmetz, Christine Purcell, Justin Howe, Scott Andrews

* “Slushing” refers to the first read through the backlog of unsolicited submissions (the “slush pile“). This is a sort of gatekeeper position. If the slusher says NAY, it is quite unlikely that the submission will be seen by anyone else. Slushers need to be aware of this.

* Slushers are human beings. It must be acknowledged that the mental/emotional state of this person can influence whether or not a submission is accepted or not. It is on the Slusher to be aware of his/her internal state, and make choices accordingly.

* Slushing is hard work.

* Slushing is a definable skill. It that skill is the ability to do a quick read of the first portion of a manuscript and determine if it is a good fit for the publisher. One can become more efficient with practice. Also keep this in mind when reviewing submissions. It is okay for slushers, as bandwidth permits, to ask for a second opinion.

* Rejections should be personalized. This is helpful for the writer, and may keep doors open for better submissions as the writers’ skills improve.

* Only a small portion of a slush pile will actually be bad. The great majority will be competent, but not better than competent. But there are usually a few gems.

* It is important for EVERYONE at the publisher to occasionally read through the slush pile. This way everyone can stay current on the kind of work that is being submitted. Which leads to…

* Slush piles tend to mirror real-world events. Example: terrible snowstorm paralyzes New York. Two weeks later, a sudden flurry of submitted stories in which man-eating reindeer rampage through New York while it is paralyzed by a terrible snowstorm.

* Respect the writer, no matter their talent. They put forth the effort to write and publish the story. We owe it to them to at least consider it, no matter if this is the fiftieth awful thing this year. #51 might be magnificent.

* It’s okay for editors to talk among themselves about what they receive in the slush pile, but mention no specifics to outsiders. It’s okay to say “Why, yes! I am a first reader!”, but not what you have read. Word gets around. If writers stop trusting your editors, soon you will have no more submissions.

* Start each read optimistically. Assume that it will be an amazing story. Try not to get jaded. If you read a dozen crap stories in a row and are in a Stomp On Their Dreams mindset, take a break.

* STAND BY YOUR GUIDELINES. If you get submissions which do not fall within them, they should be rejected out of hand. Example: submitting a children’s story to Strange Aeons Press.

* Corollary to the preceding: The submission button should be at the very bottom of the guidelines page. Make authors have to read, or at least scroll through, every guideline before they can upload their stuff. Beware of query letters which start with something like “I know your guidelines say you only accept steampunk, but I have this unicorn story…”

* The cutoff for minimum standards for publish-ability varies from physical to digital. There is more leeway for digital because you don’t have to pay for shelf space. This is both and good and a bad thing. Lowers the signal-to-noise ration, but increases volume overall.

* Slushing can be a good learning tool for writers because you get to read so much bad writing. Some of those mistakes might be ones you also make, but seeing them objectively can give you tools to fix your own work.

* Slushing can give insights into upcoming trends, e.g. steampunk, urban fantasy, etc. These trends have to come from somewhere.

Here is the first ConFusion 2015 post, which links to the other articles in the series.

This was a fun panel, and at times a little disturbing. It was mostly the panelists and audience throwing titles back and forth and cringing appropriately. The titles included Flowers in the Attic, a number of Piers Anthony books, Stephen King, Ayn Rand, Anne Rice, and the Twilight novels, among many others.

The reasons for “messed up” ranged from nightmares, to skewed views of sexuality, to upended views of parent-child relationships, to unrealistic expectations about reality itself. Piers Anthony and Stephen King were mentioned about as much as everyone else put together. Straight-up horror novels weren’t mentioned nearly as often as fantasy and non-genre novels; maybe because the horror novels tend to be more straightforward.

It was also interesting to track which novels affected people of different generations. Piers Anthony for older readers. The Twilight novels for younger readers. Stephen King and Anne Rice for everybody. And didn’t it just make me feel old to hear adults talking about how the Twilight novels messed them up “as kids”.

So here is my list of books which messed me up, and why:

* Anthonology, by Piers Anthony. This one had some of the weirdest, most disturbing stories I have ever read. “In the Barn”. “Up Schist Creek”. “On the Uses of Torture”, etc. For a bored farm kid at the trailing edge of puberty, this was perhaps not a wise decision.

* Alien novelization by Alan Dean Foster. Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have read this when I was twelve. I didn’t see the movie until I was in college, so my imagination ran rampant. Nightmares and sleep deprivation followed for a long, long time.

* Jaws by Peter Benchley. See the entry for Alien. I was probably eleven. We had a pool. I had an aunt who lived on a lake. Needless to say, I was conflicted.

* The Shining by Stephen King. Read it when I was, oh, thirteen or so. Every other Stephen King book or short story I read before college can go in this entry, too. The lady-in-the-bathtub scene was so much worse in the book.

* The Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. This is an odd one. It wasn’t the books themselves that knocked me off-kilter, so much as the character of Raistlin. There are some personalities that teenagers shouldn’t use as role models.

I’m sure there are many others that a talented psychologist could uncover.

Feel free to add your own in the comments.

John Scalzi interviewed Dr. Cynthia Chestek about the state of human/machine neural interfaces.

This was a fun panel. I had heard of Scalzi’s legendary moderating style, and here he did not disappoint. He laid out the rules right up front and whenever someone from the audience tried to speak out of turn, he pounced!

The content of the panel was mostly Dr. Chestek talking about her work in the field of neural interfaces. In particular, implanting extremely fine wires in human brains to allow them to control machines or prostheses. Some random points from the talk

* The wires are very fine, on the order of 8 microns in diameter. For comparison, a human hair is between 40 and 50 microns in diameter. The wires need to be so thin so that they can match up with individual neurons, and thus receive discrete signals. Dr. Chestek said they slide into brain tissue “like butter”.

* The bit rate across one of these wires is very slow – in the neighborhood of four bits a second. This rate is per wire, though, so the more wires attached to a brain, the more information can be gathered. The down side is that for and significant amount of resolution and control, you need to have, at minimum, hundreds of wires.

* The advantage of using individual wires attached to neurons as opposed to, say, a mesh laid across the surface of the brain to pick up electrical signals is this: Given the complexity and density of the brain, it is extremely difficult to target the exact neurons producing the electrical signals. Direct contact is much more precise than close proximity.

* Also, the contents of the brain are not rigid. The brain itself is quite soft. It has “plasticity”. Neurons move around; not a lot, granted, but when your work is measured in microns any movement at all is huge. This increases the difficulty of mass-producing an implant by several orders of magnitude.

* Dr. Chestek was very firm on the point of “prosthetics, NOT augmentation”. For her this is an ethical point. Her work is meant to allow people to regain abilities they have lost through illness or injury. It is not meant to be used for powered battle exoskeletons or the like. Not that it ultimately couldn’t be used for such.

* One of the first uses might well be simple telepresence. Given the (relative) ubiquity of wireless broadband and cellular signals, a person confined to a bed could control a communication system of some kind in another room, or another building, or indeed almost anywhere on the planet. The more fidelity and the more senses engaged, the more bandwidth becomes an issue – not just in getting the signal from point A to point B, but in the amount of control a (for instance) completely paralyzed person has over the interface itself.

* John Scalzi’s latest book Lock In addresses some of these issues. Also, it’s a great read!

* I asked what the advantages were of inserting electrodes directly in the brain, instead of at the ends of the nerves in amputees. Dr. Chestek said she would be addresing these issues at another panel. Unfortunately I did not attend that panel.

That’s all I have for this panel. Click here for the introductory article of this series, as well as links to the other articles.