Sharon Penman has Died

 Another sad loss - Sharon Penman had been ill for some time, but her death was still an unpleasant surprise.  She had recently been diagnosed with a rare cancer.  She was 75.

She was one of my favourite historical novelists, and one of the few who wrote about Welsh medieval history.  Both Sharon Penman and Edith Pargeter wrote about Prince Llewelyn, the last independent Prince of Wales.  Edith Pargeter wrote four books under the umbrella title Brothers of Gwynedd, and Sharon Penman wrote the magnificent trilogy which begins with the life of Llewelyn the Great, the Last Llewelyn's grandfather: Here Be Dragons, Falls the Shadow and The Reckoning.  Falls the Shadow brings in Simon de Montfort as the main character, as his daughter Ellen eventually married Llewelyn (no thanks to Edward I, who I despise with a deep and abiding passion!). 

 I wept non-stop through the last 200 pages of The Reckoning, partly because I was so involved with the characters, and partly because I already knew the history, so I knew what was going to happen to them.  When I was an archaeologist, I did the site tours of Caergwrle Castle in North Wales, which is where Dafydd, Llewelyn's younger brother, launched his attack on nearby Hawardan Castle (which was held by the English), thus starting a war with England which Edward I very decisively finished.

Sharon didn't only write about Welsh history, though.  Her first book was The Sunne in Splendour, about Richard III, and it is magnificent.  It was also completely re-written after the original manuscript was stolen, while she was still working as a tax lawyer.

She's also written about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Anarchy under King Stephen, and Richard I.  Her most recent book was The Land Beyond the Sea, about King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and the war against Saladin - the same period that was covered in the film Kingdom of Heaven, but with a more historically accurate Balian d'Ibelin.

For lighter medieval fare, there are the lovely Queen's Man books, shorter medieval mysteries about a young man who works for Queen Eleanor.  I'm very fond of Justin de Quincy (and his dog Shadow).

Jill Paton Walsh has Died

 I first knew about Jill Paton Walsh through her children's books, especially A Parcel of Patterns, which is about the village of Eyam that sealed itself off to stop the spread of the plague (quite a topical subject now).  Another I enjoyed was Fireweed, set during the Second World War.

She also wrote detective novels with the main character of Imogen Quy, so she had experience in the detective fiction genre when she came to continue the Lord Peter Wimsey series of novels, from the notes that Dorothy L Sayers had left.  Opinion in Sayers fandom is divided on these, but I enjoyed them, even if some people do see them as a form of fan fiction.

She was 83.

Monday at WorldCon - Lady Astronauts

I had been planning to go to Mary Robinette Kowal's reading on Monday morning even if she hadn't won the Hugo. So it was even more exciting that she actually brought the Hugo with her, and let people hold it!

She explained that they are told how to hold the Hugo in rehearsals - not in the middle in front of your body under any circumstances, because it just looks rude! The correct position is cradled in one arm to the side.
She also told us about the dress she had been wearing the night before, a gorgeous silver evening dress. I missed the name of the designer, but he had created a range of dresses named after lady astronauts, and the dress Mary Robinette wore was the Peggy Whitsun, named for the woman astronaut who had spent the longest period in space.
She also brought some computer punch cards from the sort of computers that feature in her books. I remember being shown round the computer room of Salford University when I first started work there in the 1970s - it looked like something out of the Man From UNCLE, and it worked by feeding punch cards into it!
And she brought Lady Astronaut Club badges, too.
She read two pieces from her as yet unpublished work, this time telling the story from the point of view of Helen, the senator's wife (and pilot) rather than Elma the Lady Astronaut's. She said there are two ways of reading, a neutral tone that enables the listener to hear the story clearly, and a more emotionally engaged reading where the reader is acting the parts and doing the voices. She prefers the latter, but added that both ways are valid.
It also turned into a bit of a writing class as she frowned at one point. "Hm, both those sentences end with "hand" - that's not good," and changed it on the fly. The second piece was still only a draft, so may well change before publication.
There was also discussion about Pancho Barnes - one of the audience asked if Helen was based on this real life pilot, who sounds fascinating. There was a book recommendation - Sky Girls, written by one of the Mercury 13, the women who did the astronaut training but were not allowed into space, about the Powder Puff Derby, a flying race for women pilots.

Friday at WorldCon 2 - Angels, Demons and Tie-in Novels

A pause for lunch, and I found myself having a lovely chat with Ada Palmer's dad. He was very proud of his Hugo winning daughter (who was sitting with friends on the other side of the large round table)!
Then it was off to queue for the Angels and Demons: Christian Mysticism in Fantasy panel. This was the one where I was right at the end of the queue - I just managed to squeeze in by sitting on the windowsill!
The panel member I really wanted to see here was Brother Guy Consolmagno, Jesuit and official Vatican astronomer.
He related the story of a meeting he'd had with Lois McMaster Bujold at a previous Con, when she realised that he was a Jesuit, and hoped he wasn't offended by some of the things she'd written. He answered that he was also a physicist - and she had faster than light travel in her books....
One of the topics of discussion was what an author does when they leave religion out of their fictional societies. The obvious example (which I hadn't actually thought about before) was Pern. Who teaches the children? The Harpers! Who performs the rituals that people go through in their lives? The Harpers! Who keeps the memory of the planet's history? The Harpers! And then the question was asked - what if they were the baddies, manipulating Pernese society for their own ends?
Brother Guy also suggested that heresy was really the emphasis of one truth at the expense of others, which gave me food for thought. And he said that the religion in A Canticle for Liebowicz was too nice!
The panel talked about myth, and suggested that the stories were a way of describing the natural world so it made sense. For instance in Ancient Greek myth there is the Medusa with snaky hair. Could this also relate to the octopus?
In a previous panel on Cultural Appropriation there had been some discussion about taking parts of a culture without asking permission, and the same could be said about religions - taking the cool parts out of context. It wasn't such a problem for Christianity, which is not threatened, but it's different for minority religions.
Finally there were recommendations of books that dealt with religion in fantasy well, and these included The Sparrow by Mary Russell (Jesuits in Space), and Jo Walton's Lent.

I didn't need to queue for the next panel, which was Expanding the Storyverse with Tie-In Novels. This was the only chance I got all weekend to see guest of honour Diane Duane, and it was lovely to see her on the same panel as Pat Cadigan. I saw Pat Cadigan at EasterCon in Birmingham, and she was a brilliant speaker. Now, she was whizzing round the Con on a mobility scooter and introduced herself by saying "I'm Pat Cadigan, bitches!"
I love Diane Duane's Star Trek novels, so it was great fun to hear her talk about that. The panel also talked about difficulties they had had with the studios, like the one which read the tie-in novel and told the author she hadn't put a certain thing into it that they wanted in it - but they wouldn't tell her what it was in case the information leaked to the public before they were ready! Or the tie-in novels that all had to be 95,000 words, so the authors would go through the manuscripts taking out all the contractions so they got two words instead of one.

Saturday at FantasyCon

After breakfast at the Town Crier, Saturday morning started for me in the lovely courtyard at the heart of the Queen's Hotel:

I was planning for a full day of attending panels - as much as I could manage while remembering to eat!

First was Feminism and Feminist Themes in Genre Fiction, in the Albert Room. Teika Bellamy, who I'd met the previous night, was on this one, along with Cheryl Morgan (member of the Women's Equality Party, among many other things).
One of the questions was what constituted anti-feminist themes, to which the immediate answer was "Chainmail bikinis!"
It was also pointed out that there is a clear difference between novels and TV/film - and more people are likely to have seen something on TV than read a novel, so it's a pity that films and TV series are lagging behind the novels in terms of feminist themes. It surprised one panellist that Star Trek Discovery had gender parity in casting, which is a step forward (but problems with the gay relationship, so still some way to go....).
The book edited by FT Barbini, Gender Identity and Sexuality in Science Fiction and Fantasy, from Luna Press, was recommended - the book later won the British Fantasy Award for Best Non-Fiction.
Black Shuck Press are also re-publishing work by lost women writers.
Another writer who was recommended was JY Yang, so I was pleased that I'd picked up her Descent of Monsters at Forbidden Planet earlier this year (that list of books I want to read keeps getting longer and longer!).

Next, in the largest panel room, the Victoria, was Breaking the Glass Slipper. I had no idea what this might be when I went in, but it turned out to be a live podcast (they were also up for a British Fantasy Award, but beaten by Anansi Boys). That was a highly entertaining session, with Claire North the third Guest of Honour and RJ Barker bouncing ideas off each other and being very funny. Claire North also writes as Kate Griffin - I'm sure I've seen some of her books around somewhere.
Top tip from the panel was that koalas have human-like fingerprints, so if you're planning a murder always take a koala bear with you.
They talked about plotting and how they plan stories out. RJ Barker said that "My subconscious is looking after me because I'm an idiot."
They also talked about murder mysteries, with RJ Barker saying that "There's no pity in Miss Marple! Even Sherlock Holmes sometimes gives a villain a 24 hour head start, but Miss Marple would never do that." And, in answer to a comment that Sherlock Holmes was chill: "I don't think Sherlock's chill - he's off his tits!"

Following on in the same room was the Writing for Children panel, with Francesca Barbini (who edited the Gender Equality book and runs Luna Press as well as being an academic) and Pauline Kirk on the panel. I didn't write any notes down for this panel because I was too busy agreeing with what they said about children's imaginations and some favourite fantasy books. Several of the panel go into schools to work with children, so they see what children are interested in first hand.

And following on from that was the Religion in Genre Fiction panel, with a diversity of religious groups represented. Rosanne Rabinowitz writes about Jewish Kabbala and socialism in early 20th century Russia, Tasha Suri has a Hindu and Sikh background and her epic fantasy based around Indian mythology is out shortly, and Iain Grant has written a book about Satan losing his job and going to live in Birmingham. There was also a Quaker lady who had been an activist in Palestine. Again, I was too swept up in the discussion to take notes!

Friday at FantasyCon

As a newcomer to FantasyCon, I'd intended to go along to the New to FantasyCon meeting at 4pm.
Then I got distracted. The Blogging in Genre Fiction panel started at 3.30pm, and looked interesting - and I'd already seen two familiar faces by the registration desk. I first met Babs at Baskerville Hall near Hay, at one of the regular Wednesday night music sessions, with her friend - they're both from Holland. And then Russell Smith dashed by in a Red Cloak vest (they're the stewards for the convention). I first met Russell at LonCon 2014, though I only got to speak to him properly at the Dysprosium EasterCon, when we were both at a panel about swords (the speakers brought some really cool swords along for people to handle).
So, Blogging in Genre Fiction it was, then, moderated by Kit Power, who writes for Gingernuts of Horror (it was the first panel he'd moderated, and he was quite nervous). Another panellist was Alisdair Stuart, who writes for the Doctor Who RPG (he said the background info on the Tenth Doctor nearly killed him!), and then there was Kate Coe, and Micah Yongo (who is from Manchester, so instantly endeared himself to me). On the basis of this panel, I later went off and bought Kit Powers' book containing some of his columns for Gingernuts of Horror, and Micah Yongo's novel Lost Gods.
I bought a lot of books in the dealers' room over the weekend....

The next panel in the same room (the Edward, right at the end of a maze-like corridor) was on The Role of Class in Science Fiction and Fantasy, with some more interesting panelists. Alison Baker (she pointed out this was her posh name - she's usually Ali) is a researcher in children's literature, and introduced herself by proclaiming "Hogwarts would never pass an Ofsted report - buy a drink and I'll tell you why!"
The conversation was fascinating, discussing working class characters like Ser Davos Seaworthy in Game of Thrones, who came from Flea's Bottom in King's Landing and is raised to be advisor to Stannis Baratheon without really wanting the honours. Another good working class hero is Commander Vimes in the Discworld books, who is slightly embarrassed to be raised to the nobility when he marries Lady Sybil (and wouldn't it be interesting to get those two characters together for a chat?).
The books of Patrick Ness were also recommended.
The discussion went on to talk about the Chosen One (in so many fantasies, and Buffy, of course), and it was suggested that the loss of the apprenticeship model has led to writers emphasising innate talent over learning a skill, and led to the rise of the Chosen One in fiction.

Russell Smith was one of the panellists talking about Robot Companions in Film and Television in the Albert, the other room down the maze-like corridor, for the next panel I went to. One of the thoughts I brought away from that panel was - never be a villain with a robot sidekick, because they always turn on you in the end, the classic example being Maximillian in The Black Hole! The conversation bounced around from Metropolis to the present (was it this panel where they hated KITT from Knight Rider? Or thought he was insufferably smug?).

At 8pm it was time to go to the Jubilee Room for Welcome to FantasyCon, down another long passageway. This was more modern, leading to the new extension to the hotel at the back (the King's Suite) and had specially built niches in the wall on one side to display the armour of several ranks of Roman soldiers (and a gladiator) suspended over real Roman column bases on loan from the Grosvenor Museum in Chester.
The first thing the organiser said was: "I'm very sorry."
This was because the printed programmes had not yet arrived, so they had been giving out sheets with the programme details on them. He went on to talk about the good will that Conventions such as this run on - the people prepared to be on panels, the Red Cloaks, and so on, working together to make a good, smooth-running convention. Then he introduced two of the Guests of Honour, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Farah Mendlesohn. I'd seen Adrian before, at EasterCons - he's quite tall and has a distinctive dark beard, and I've even read some of his Shadows of the Apt series.
Farah Mendlesohn is a historian and has written a book about Robert Heinlein, and a book on Children's Fantasy Literature, amongst other things.
The third Guest of Honour, Claire North, wasn't due to arrive until the following morning.
In the queue for the prosecco, I met Teika Bellamy, who has edited books of modern versions of fairytales - and her name means fairytale in Latvian (she is half Latvian and half Russian in origin), and we had such an interesting conversation that I ended up buying three of the fairytale collections in the dealers' room the following day. The series title is The Forgotten and the Fantastical. And I discovered later that she is actually Doctor Bellamy - there were such a lot of very intelligent, articulate, and interesting people at the Convention, I had to work hard to keep up!

Memories of Ursula le Guin

There has been a lot of coverage of the death of Ursula le Guin over the last couple of days.
Here are my memories:

In 1973, I think it was, our school building was found to have asbestos in it, and was closed down until the asbestos could be removed. For a week or two, we were supposed to turn up at school at intervals to be given work to complete at home, but after a while it became clear that the work would take a long time to complete, and we were bussed to a redundant Victorian junior school at the other end of Salford - a rough area; we were warned not to linger on the pavement when crossing from the schoolyard to the bus in case we were beaten up by the local kids!
Because we didn't have access to our own school library, we got a temporary one, with books that did not appear in our own library. I read quite a few of these - and with three days to go before we moved back into our refurbished school building, I found The Wizard of Earthsea. It was this one:

Acutely aware of the deadline before I had to give it back, never to see it again, I read the book in every spare moment. I practically lived in Earthsea, only emerging to do whatever was essential before I plunged back in again. Even now I only have to close my eyes and see the old classroom where I was reading on my knee while eating my packed lunch - and feeling totally immersed in that magical world.

Pretty soon after that I found The Tombs of Atuan - and I could navigate the labyrinth perfectly, just like Arha, in the dark.

The Farthest Shore gave me nightmares of that low wall over which the dead pass - but also showed me the importance of living well, unlike the people Ged and Arren met on their journey, who had given up and were waiting to die.

A couple of years ago, the BBC adapted The Left Hand of Darkness and the first three Earthsea stories on radio, and I got that same thrill as when I first read them.
I haven't seen any of the film adaptations - I don't really want to....

As an adult, I discovered The Dispossessed and The Word For World is Forest and The Left Hand of Darkness, as well as the Hainish stories and some of the Orsinian Tales, and her additions to the Earthsea saga.

I have only been able to read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas once.

One birthday, my mum presented me with a thick book, saying that she knew I liked this author. It was Always Coming Home, and was possibly the best birthday present she ever gave me, considering that she thought my reading tastes were a bit weird.

More recently, I've read her blog posts in the Book View Café blog, so Ursula le Guin has been a part of my reading background for most of my life. I was very pleased to see her honoured by the literary establishment, as well as her many SF and Fantasy awards.

Most weeks, I go to an acoustic music session locally - there's singing, but also poetry reading and other readings. I often perform something when a famous person has died - if a TV star, I'll sing the theme of their TV show, for instance. For Ursula le Guin, I found a quotation which has been doing the rounds of Twitter and Facebook - the one that finishes: "I'm going to go unbuild walls."
It seemed to go down well.

Richard Adams

I cried when Hazel went with El-Ahrairah at the end of the book when I first read it - it's beautifully done. The book was adapted very well done on Radio 4 recently, too, and worth looking out for. I never really liked any of his other books, but I think this one deserves to join the classics.

It was beautifully done in the film, as well.
Richard Adams was 96, and it seems, like Hazel, he was feeling tired, so he left his body behind to go with the Prince with a Thousand Enemies and join his Owsla.

Mancunicon Saturday

On Friday morning, we went in search of the free bus service that serves the town centre, but it was a bit of a long way to walk to the bus stop by Oxford Road railway station (the first railway station in the world!) with my Young Man still needing his crutch, so for the rest of the weekend we got taxis either way instead. I could definitely get used to helpful staff phoning for a cab which arrives within five minutes every time I want one!

I wanted to see the A Feminist Fantasy Canon panel, which included one of the guests of honour, Aliette de Bodard. The consensus was that we don't actually want a fixed canon of women fantasy writers, because that would be bound to exclude other writers, but we do want the existance of women SF and fantasy writers to be acknowledged, instead of being discovered anew every generation with astonishment, as if women had never written SF or fantasy before (except for Ursula le Guin!).
At the moment I'm following the re-read of Katherine Kurtz's Deryni books on Tor.com - she was writing historical fantasy in the 1970s which was influential, but overlooked now. One edition of her books has an introduction by Lin Carter, who did a huge amount of work to get fantasy books published, and he was astonished that the first four authors he had published were women, and that they were better than any of the men's work he had looked at! Another of those authors was Joy Chant, whose Red Moon and Black Mountain deserves to be far better known.

Lunch was down on the ground floor, with more helpful staff behind the counter - we had a burger and potato wedges, and drinks from the American Craft Beer stand which the hotel had laid on specially for the Con. I never usually drink lager, but the Amber Lager I had was really very nice (and now I've forgotten the brewers!). Outside the windows, the rain was blowing sideways, which really made me feel I was back home!

Later, the Young Man went to the Tribute to Tanith Lee, another great fantasy writer, while I went to the Kaffeeklatch with Charles Stross.
This was very exciting. I first became aware of Charles Stross when he won a Hugo for Equoid - and thought that I probably wouldn't like to read it because it was described as horror. Then I saw him at EasterCon last year, sharing a stage with Jim Butcher - and they were both very funny together. So I tried one of the Laundry Files series, and was instantly hooked. For me, horror is a lot easier to read when it's also very funny. The other people in the room with Charlie were far better versed in his work than I was - now I need to look out for the Merchant Princes series, too.
He is immensely busy at the moment, with five books on the go at different stages (on another panel the following day he said he managed to watch about two new films a decade, prompting the response "That's why you meet your deadlines!"). He also gleefully described the way he's going to blow up Leeds (with added dragons and elves) in his next Laundry Files book, and make Bob (main character in the Laundry Files) go on TV to be interviewed/grilled by Jeremy Paxman at the beginning of the following book about elvish immigration policy!

Later, we went to the talk by Lilian Edwards entitled Privacy and Identity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which she said was her Daredevil talk, with a bit of Captain America. She works in the area of privacy laws, and casually mentioned being quoted in New Scientist, and attending a House of Lords committee - but she's also a great Daredevil fan (and a fan of the present trend for male heroes to take their tops off for the delectation and delight of middle aged women!). The talk also went off into the areas of real names on Facebook - and the good reasons some people have for using a pseudonym, illustrated with the way Matt Murdock's life was ruined by him being outed as Daredevil.

We were going to the Little-Known British SF TV shows of the 1950s to 1970s talk - but it was in Room 6 and there was no way we were going to squeeze in, so we went up to the Presidential Suite for the Elsewhen Press book launch. We didn't stay too long, because the Young Man needed to sit, and all the chairs were taken, but several of the authors appearing in the new anthology read from their work, with the backdrop of sunset over Manchester from a great height.

We finished the evening off with An Adventure in Time and Space: 53 Years in 53 Rels - a play dashing through the entire history of Doctor Who, with a small cast who all played several parts (and were all holding their scripts, which didn't detract from the fun at all), with minimal costume changes (Adric had his gold star of mathematical excellence; Davros sat in a chair holding his arm at an odd angle etc.) with Daleks and dinosaurs being represented by toys being waved in the air from the side of the stage. It was very funny.
There was a running gag about girl companions leaving to get married ("Yay! Feminism!"), topped off by Missy snogging the Doctor near the end ("Yay! Feminism!"), and the chap playing the War Doctor did a very good John Hurt impression. He also played the Fourth Doctor. Oh, and Leela had a Scandinavian accent for some reason.

Charles Stross: The Apocalypse Codex

I first saw Charles Stross at WorldCon last year - his novella Equoid won the Hugo.
I saw him again at EasterCon this year, making a great double act with Jim Butcher on stage, discussing such serious topics as how a werewolf might be affected by the Dangerous Dogs Act.
I'd somehow got the impression that he wrote horror, which is not something that I enjoy reading, but after seeing him on stage I thought I'd at least have a try of his Laundry Files series.
I can take horror if it's also funny, and this is very funny. The hero, Bob Howard, has a very witty turn of phrase. It's also more like an occult James Bond story than I was expecting, with their equivalent of "Q Division" handing out gadgets powered by ceremonial magic via laptops. And he's spot on with the descriptions of civil service bureaucracy, with Bob worrying about keeping receipts for his expenses along with the sorcery.
Of course, the book I picked up at random turned out to be number 4 in the series, but it was fairly easy to work out what was going on.
And now I'll have to get the others - I've just found myself another favourite author.

Goodbye Terry Pratchett

There'll be a welcoming party going on now at the Broken Drum.