{"id":1650,"date":"2010-11-08T09:39:02","date_gmt":"2010-11-08T17:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=1650"},"modified":"2010-11-08T09:43:17","modified_gmt":"2010-11-08T17:43:17","slug":"beasts-with-broken-backs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=1650","title":{"rendered":"Beasts with Broken Backs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This posting consists of a wadge of a accumulated items, unceremoniously horked onto the &#8216;crawl with no common thematic underpinnings beyond the fact that it&#8217;s all part of the backlog.    I have met the major honking deadline which resulted in all these weeks of radio silence (and I&#8217;m told I&#8217;ll even be able to talk about it by the end of the month).  Another equally-major but slightly-less-honking deadline is about to kick in near the end of this week.  In between, we leave for France.  Nantes, specifically: home of a larger-than-life mechanical <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=katN8RY1n7M\">elephant<\/a>, and birthplace of the crepe.  Oh, and also of some guy called Jules Verne.  I understand he was big in the steampunk community.  Kind of a cephalophobe, though.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1654\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/WATTS_NOIR_brussels_fnac.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1654\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1654\" title=\"WATTS_NOIR_brussels_fnac\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/WATTS_NOIR_brussels_fnac-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Starfish:  True Crime\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/WATTS_NOIR_brussels_fnac-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/WATTS_NOIR_brussels_fnac.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1654\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo credit:  JC Pavon<\/p><\/div>\n<p>It continues to surprise me that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.noosfere.com\/utopia\/\">Utopiales<\/a> folks regard me highly enough to pay my way across the Atlantic to rub shoulders with the likes of Larry Niven and China Mieville.  Of course, conventional wisdom has it that the French regard Jerry Lewis as a comic genius; so perhaps their vision of me as a master of crime fiction can be regarded in the same light (no, that is not a typo; as you can see, I have proof).  For any of you who happen to be in the neighborhood, I seem to be appearing on the following panels:<\/p>\n<p>November 10<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>6.30 pm:  Opening ceremony<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>November 11<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>11.00 am:  Will we be sailing through the stars?  (Carole Ecoffet, Roland Lehoucq, Peter Watts)<\/li>\n<li>2.00 pm:  Does the universe have borders?  (Roland Lehoucq, Larry Niven, Juan Miguel Aguilera, Peter Watts)<\/li>\n<li>7.30 pm: Communitization: birth of new imaginary borders? (Pierre Bordage, China Mieville, Peter Watts, Dmitri Glukhovski)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>November 14<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>2.30 pm: Transports in future (Gilles Francescano, Alain Boeswillwald, Jean-Claude Dunyach, Peter Watts)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m also going to check out that giant elephant at some point, but I don&#8217;t know when.<\/p>\n<p>I get back from France on the 14th.  Four days later I&#8217;m appearing at <a href=\"http:\/\/sfcontario.ca\/\">SFContario<\/a>, which is the first con <em>ever<\/em> to be held within easy walking distance of my downtown apartment.  (Usually these things are held way out in the boonies, generally somewhere near the airport.)  This would be great if I still lived in my apartment.  Sadly, I do not; I have recently moved to the boonies, where sf cons are usually held.  Sometimes I think these things actively run away at my approach.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, my schedule at SFContario looks like this:<\/p>\n<p>Friday November 19<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>8 PM \u2014 Ballroom A: <strong>Pissing on the Grave of Postmodernism. Does anyone really care about <\/strong><strong>subgenres or literary movements?<\/strong> Does &#8220;cyberpunk&#8221; really mean anything anymore? How are categories of science fiction used by readers, writers, editors, reviewers, and academics? How can authors associated with certain movements remain relevant when literary fashions change? (Chandler Davis(M), Michael Swanwick, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Fiona\u00a0Patton, Peter Watts)<\/li>\n<li>9 PM \u2014 Ballroom BC:  <strong>Aurora Pin Ceremony<\/strong> (I have no clue what this is.  Maybe we&#8217;re supposed to guess each others&#8217; PINs.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Saturday November 20<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>10 AM \u2014 Courtyard:  <strong>Is Extinction Really Forever?<\/strong> Given that an extinct form of mouse has been cloned back into existence and dinosaur bone cells have been found in fossils, what are the ethical applications and limits of cloning technology? (Mark Offer, Stephen B. Pearl, Jane Carol Petrovich, Amanda Stock(M), Peter Watts)<\/li>\n<li>3 PM \u2014 Ballroom A:  <strong>Biotech: Friend or Foe?<\/strong> This science holds out the possibility of supplying fuel while removing carbon from industrial emissions, regenerating cartilage restoring mobility to millions, curing human illness, generating plagues that are racially specific, destroying our food supply by killing off bees, converting farm land to deserts. A look at this double-edged sword and where it might take us, good and bad. (Eric Choi(M), Mark Offer, Stephen B Pearl, Alison Sinclair, Peter Watts)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sunday November 21<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Noon  \u2014 Courtyard:  <strong>Where is Science Now?<\/strong> There have been a lot of political and cultural attacks on the role and value of science in modern society. Are we in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs? What role should science and scientists play in our social and cultural future? (Eric Choi, Julie Czerneda(M), Alison Sinclair, David Stephenson, Peter Watts)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Fading dimly in the rear-view mirror is the <a href=\"http:\/\/colloquium.webs.com\/\">SpecFic Colloquium<\/a>, way back on October 23.  I have to say, those guys really pulled it off:  the talks were good, the audience enthused, the readings compelling.  My only regret:  if I&#8217;d known that Karl Schroeder, whose talk came immediately after mine, was going to start off by talking about his colonoscopy, I would have taken an extra thirty seconds to add a feces-porn slide to the end of my own presentation, since I <em>did<\/em> mention the subject during my conclusion and it would have made a great narrative bridge.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Gods, Jackboots, and Rule 34:  How Pornography Could Save the World&#8221; seems to have gone over really well.  (Either that or everyone was sucking up to me for no apparent reason \u2014 which would have been nice, if unprecedented.) \u00a0 A couple of folks have asked if transcripts or recordings might be available.  I&#8217;ll probably post a transcript myself on the backlist page, once I have the time (i.e., sometime in 2019), but all the SpecFic talks were video&#8217;d.  My understanding is that the Chizine folks are posting them all on their own Youtube channel, although I don&#8217;t think they&#8217;re up there yet.  (If anyone can provide a link, I&#8217;d appreciate it.)<\/p>\n<p>Finally, to steal a page from Stephen Colbert&#8217;s <em>Look Who&#8217;s Honoring Me Now<\/em>, apparently the Spanish translation of <em>Blindsight<\/em> (<em>Visi\u00f3n ciega<\/em>, from Bibliopolis) has just won the <a href=\"http:\/\/tienda.cyberdark.net\/premio-xatafi-v.php\">Xatafi-Cyberdark<\/a> award for Best Foreign Novel.  I don&#8217;t know much about this award.  It&#8217;s juried, which is good.  It &#8220;aims to recognize the best works of fantasy literature, fantasy, science fiction, foresight and edited terror&#8221; according to Google Translate, which is also kind of good.  But nobody&#8217;s officially informed me that I won anything \u2014 I just ego-surfed my way to the announcement via mentions that started sprouting up on various Spanish blogs \u2014 so I don&#8217;t know if the award comes with a trophy or a complementary Porsche or something.  That would be even better.<\/p>\n<p>Okay.  Back to the grind now.  I continue to be snowed, but unless things go seriously south over the next few days I&#8217;ve broken the back of this thing.  I expect to be bringing the &#8216;crawl gradually out of coma over the next week or two.<\/p>\n<p>Hope to see you all here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This posting consists of a wadge of a accumulated items, unceremoniously horked onto the &#8216;crawl with no common thematic underpinnings beyond the fact that it&#8217;s all part of the backlog. I have met the major honking deadline which resulted in all these weeks of radio silence (and I&#8217;m told I&#8217;ll even be able to talk [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-the-road","category-public-interface","category-writing-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1650"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1660,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions\/1660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}