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.

The London Stone

The Young Man used to drink in a basement bar called The London Stone - which now seems to have been renamed the Cannick Tapps - near Cannon Street station.
The London Stone itself is an important part of the mythology of London, though opinions are divided about what it actually represents - the centre of the City? an object of Druidic worship (very unlikely)? part of the Roman governor's villa? Several ley lines are supposed to pass through it, and John Dee is alleged to have chipped bits off it for his alchemical experiments. It's even been suggested as the Stone that the Sword was stuck into, when King Arthur pulled it out!

Whatever it is, it used to be housed behind a grille right by the bar.
We couldn't find it, so we went into the All Bar One, where the Young Man remembered it to be, to ask if they knew. The barmaid was very friendly, but wasn't sure where it had gone to - she thought it might be next door but one, where the building was behind hoardings, being renovated.
According to Wikipedia, the Stone is presently in the Museum of London, on display, and will be replaced at 111 Cannon Street when the rebuilding is finished.

Seshat, Egyptian Goddess of Writing

Why have I never heard of this goddess before?
I've been familiar with Thoth, her consort, since I read The Tales of Ancient Egypt by Roger Lancelyn Green (the classic Puffin edition) at junior school, but I don't recall ever coming across Seshat, with the odd seven pointed thing hovering over her head, before.
And she's really very interesting - her name means "she who is the scribe", and she is often depicted inscribing the years of a pharaoh's reign on a palm leaf rib. She was the goddess of wisdom, writing and mathematics, which also included astronomy, architecture and surveying, and building (for which accurate mathematics was required). Knowledge of history was another of her attributes. She recorded the spoils of war, and the speeches of the pharaohs, and was part of the ceremony of "stretching the cord", the surveying tool which was used for accurate measurement in building, and symbol of the power of the pharaoh. As a funerary goddess, she kept the memory of the dead alive by writing an account of their lives.
She was also known as Mistress of the House of Books - her priests oversaw the library, and she was supposed to look after the library of heaven. In Spell 10 of the Coffin Texts, it says: "Seshat opens the door of heaven for you." Sounds like a library to me! Though it could also refer to her astronomical attributes. Sadly, she doesn't seem to have a temple in her honour, though I suppose any library would fulfill that role.
She is usually shown wearing a leopard skin, or a dress spotted like a leopard skin - symbolic of the stars and night sky.

Lyn Webster Wilde, writer and film maker

Tomorrow evening, I'm going to be at Hay Castle for a showing of the first 15 minutes of a film called The Dancing Floor - the event is to publicise the crowd-funder that Lyn Webster Wilde has launched in order to make the rest of the film. It's a story about a half-Welsh, half-Indian woman who comes up from London to Wales when she inherits a cottage - and gets involved with Welsh mythology. More information about the film can be found at www.lynwebsterwilde.wordpress.com

A few years ago, I went to a couple of writing courses that Lyn Webster Wilde ran in Hay - I learned a lot! I also started to look out for some of the books that she had written, especially Becoming the Enchanter, and On the Trail of the Women Warriors.
Becoming the Enchanter is the story of Lyn's discovery of the world of Welsh mythology, and On The Trail of the Women Warriors is about her search for the Amazons of Greek mythology. Both are fascinating - and the Women Warriors is, of course, right up my street, with my interest in fighting women throughout history. Both also involve a search for women's power, in mythology and history.

Dance the Dark Morris

I came across a picture of this morris dancing troupe on Facebook, and instantly thought of Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith, where the Dark Morris is danced to bring on winter.
In fact, this troupe is called Mythago Morris, after the book Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock - which is just as impressive! Mythago Wood, in the book, contains archetypes of legends throughout human history, and the deeper into the wood you go, the older the archetypes get.
This picture comes from druidry.org website, and shows them dancing at a Beltane celebration.
It's not surprising that they're asked to dance at Pagan celebrations - according to their website they base their dances around British myths like Herne the Hunter, the Green Man, the Rollright Stones, Ceridwen's Cauldron and the Knuckerhole Dragon. They're based in Sussex, and they dance in the Border Morris style.
It looks like great fun!

Pangur Ban

"I and Pangur Ban my cat,
Tis a like task we are at.
Hunting mice is his delight.
Hunting words I sit all night..."

So starts a poem written in the margin of an early medieval Irish manuscript, with the monk comparing himself to his white cat - Pangur Ban means the white fulled one, fulling being a process in the making of woollen cloth. Any Welsh place with Pandy in the name once had a fulling mill.
I was footling about on Goodreads last night, and came across the children's series about Pangur Ban by Fay Sampson - and realised that I'd read almost all of them, years ago when I worked at the Children's Bookshop.
Pangur Ban and his monk Niall team up with pony-mad Princess Finnglas, and have several adventures in a fantasy version of medieval Ireland.
There are a lot of things to like about these stories, like the way Niall sings hymns loudly when in dire peril, and the dolphin Arthmael who helps them - or possibly the Son of God in the form of a dolphin (and sometimes, when they are away from the sea, a dog which is prepared to sacrifice himself to save them).
Her story about the naming of Pangur Ban, when he was still a kitten in a witch's cave, reminded me of another childhood favourite, Gobbolino the Witch's Cat, by Ursula Moray Williams - in that story, Gobbolino spends the whole book trying different ways of being an ordinary house cat, but is always discovered and chased away. His sister, who takes up the life of a witch's cat with enthusiasm, has the glorious name of Sootica.

Fay Sampson is a very good writer indeed, and for adults she has also written a re-telling of the myth of Inanna, the Mesopotamian goddess of Love and War, and her descent into the underworld, as well as a series of Arthurian novels, among other things. I liked Star Dancer, the Inanna story, a lot - it's not often that Mesopotamian myths are made into novels, but there are any number of versions of the Arthurian myth.
She also wrote a stand alone novel for older children called A Free Man on Sunday, about the Mass Trespass of Kinder Scout in the Lake District in the 1930s - back when the Ramblers' Association was considered to be a bunch of radical Communists, just for wanting the freedom to walk out on the moors that surrounded the Northern mill towns where they lived! That story includes the folk song written by Ewan McColl - The Manchester Rambler - which is also about the Mass Trespass. Part of the chorus is "I may be a wage slave on Monday, but I am a free man on Sunday".
She has a website - with lots more books that I haven't read yet - at www.faysampson.co.uk