Describe. And if you can think of names, who you’d like to see on it.
Here's a good question: either the panel you'd like to see, or…the best you ever saw.
by CJ | Sep 14, 2012 | Journal | 25 comments
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I’ll reiterate what I said in the last post: “I keep throwing out the notion that there should be a panel on governments…and I never get any takers. But the difference in function between, say, an empire and a republic and a democracy and an oligarchy is really quite interesting if you can keep it to what they are and why they are and keep current politics out of it. Cyteen’s government and the Alliance work very differently, and neither is imperial: Cyteen could be argued to be a democratic oligarchy and the other could be argued as an oligarchic democracy. The role of communications is interesting in that light. A time-delayed voting system, because of the light barrier. Etc. There’s a LOT to say in sf about governmental systems and what could work. Decision-making on a space station. etc. These are good topics. But I think concoms are nervous about having people breaking up the hotel furniture if things go wrong.”
And who I’d like to be on that panel with? Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and if he were still with us, Poul Anderson.
unlurk
For a “like-to-see panel”, I’d love to hear a discussion about pen names and projection (or masking) of one’s personal vs authorial identity – – with UK LeGuin, KJ Parker, and of course CJ. UK LeGuin would be on one end of the spectrum, KJ Parker on the other, and CJ covering the middle ground…
But getting KJ Parker to participate would be a bit of a trick…
relurk
Great topic for a panel, and your preferred panelists are certainly good choices. How about David Weber to substitute for Poul Anderson since you are looking for someone still alive…
Also, if you were going to include dead folks, you might consider Bob Heinlein and Isaac Asimov on the topic of government, I think.
Heinlein would have been my first choice for governmental discussions, but also Frank Herbert or Ben Bova. (Now, remember, CJ, YOU’RE on this panel as moderator, right?)
No problems with either of those gentlemen. I’ve shared panels with Ben. Can’t remember, otherwise. Robert Heinlein and I discussed various things, but my keenest memories are in various Green Rooms…bless him, when he went to Antarctica, he remembered one such, and sent me rock and water from a beach near Erebus. I still keep those vials.
Alastair Reynolds and Charles Stoss would make interesting contributions.
Pen names—mine was to some extent course of least resistance: my rubber stamp was made up that way, also my mailbox, from college days, because I didn’t want that much advertisement of my single status in the neighborhood I lived in…as in down the street from one of the nation’s most wanted, and a webwork of fire escapes and windows we could break into with a single blow from a screwdriver—never knew what you’d have to deal with. Even after I got a house in suburbia in another city, we had semi-regular gunfire, police and ambulance calls, and prowling, so, no, I wanted my privacy there, too. I reconsidered after selling a book, because my publisher asked, and I thought, I don’t write male or female sf. So why fly a flag advertising either one.
Actually it’s pretty pointless, after all, since it’s hard to think of any man under his own name who uses initials.
As for the changed spelling, my publisher thought I’d look like a romance writer and might get shelved wrong, so I just made it look foreign.
JRR? 😉
Clive Staples Lewis?
But you’re right, there aren’t many of ’em.
H. G. Wells, A. Merritt, J. T. McIntosh, F. M. Busby …
Notice that all but Merritt and Busby are British. And all but Busby are (at least) a generation older than CJ.
I have read that in this age of privacy concerns, as well as personal safety concerns, that you should not put your name on your mailbox, the front door of your house, the door knocker, etc., simply because it makes it that much easier to track you down, or if you happen to go inside the house, anyone following you can just read your name off the signs. Yes, they could do the same by looking in your mailbox and reading the name on the envelopes.
My concerns about my mailbox where I lived were more direct: our upstairs neighbor had a good one. She had her dad come to visit, she lent him her bedroom, and the neighborhood stalker came through the window and landed in bed with her dad. That was a noisy meeting.
Of course she came to live upstairs from us with her history of admirers. We couldn’t lock the front door, so we just held the line at the apartment door, and we had some bozo come tiptoeing up the stairs, standing a while at one and the other doors, then tiptoe away downstairs, unfulfilled. I told my roomie of that era, Holmes, that it was a bleedin’ shame we didn’t have our recording of the Scots Guard Bagpipe Training Brigade ready to go right then: high volume would have been good.
The guys next to us had a burglar in their apartment via the fire escape window. We had guinea pigs…right near that window…that would sound off like banshees. They never had to. Maybe we were notorious.
Our Saturday night sport was to fling open the front bay window and shout directions to the cops chasing the weekly burglars at the liquor store across the street. [The guinea pigs, incidentally, LOVED the cardboard from there: broken whiskey bottles meant a real good time for the guinea pigs who liked to chew up their bedding.] Of course we had the piranha tank, the mouse it took is weeks to catch, lizards, salamanders, and our downstairs neighbor was terrified that the guinea pigs were going to get loose—she was convinced they were tailless rats.
Did I mention the Feds were investigating the guy in the front half of the basement? He only came out once a week, to get the Sunday paper. He’d scuttle out and then run back.
Oh my…..what a wonderful neighborhood, and never a dull moment…..
It generally lacked gunfire, however. I moved back to Oklahoma and got into one with a LEO on one side of the street, a professional burglary ring operating across the street, and very frequent gunfire. I was very glad to have brick instead of siding at least below the windows.
The exception that proves the rule I suppose! 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._M._Stirling
In forums where gender shouldn’t matter, I go by Ari as it allows people to project onto me whatever gender makes them the most comfortable.
Not a bad notion. There are several names like Sydney or Robin that can do for either gender. As long as you don’t get mistaken for a certain fish! 😀
Too true!!!
On names: I have two different sorts of problems.
One, my last name is *very* prone to be mispronounced and misspelled, even by people who’ve known me for years. It isn’t a very hard or foreign name, yet something about it gives people trouble. Add to that, it’s one letter away from a more common family name and the pronunciation is almost alike. But I’m so used to it, I’m surprised if someone gets it right. (In college, I stopped counting when I reached 20 alternate spellings.)
The other is my given names. I’ve always gone by my middle name, which is a good, solid male name. My first name came from my dad. But almost everyone who sees it thinks female. So I get odd and embarrassing product samples at times, and mail addressed to “Ms./Mrs./Miss” me. Hmm. A bit rough on the ol’ male ego at times. — Except in forums, I began using my name and initial, because I’d either get mistaken (by writing style, I guess) as a female fan, or by given name as possibly the star of the show one forum centers on. Er, no, I’m not him! (I should be so lucky.) And I’m male, and gay. — I’ve seen this enough that I think people have some idea, somehow, of what a male writing style is and what a female writing style is. Yet if someone’s writing style doesn’t fit the usual notion, it’s going to surprise readers. The thing is, there *is* overlap. Some men and women write in a way different than most people expect a man or woman to write. Exactly *what* constitutes those notions of masculine or feminine writing style might be a good question. — In my case, the first couple of times, I was surprised. Then when it had happened often enough (and by then I’d come out) I simply had to accept that some people see my (conversational) writing style as different than who I am.
I had pretty much decided, though, to use my own name for any writing, and let the chips fall where they may. If there were a specific reason to use a pen name, I might. Would I write with a female pseudonym? Well, good question! I suppose if it was expected for the market (genre) …and if I was going to get paid 😉 …then I guess so. I’d never considered that particular wrinkle. Would I use a (male) pseudonym? I suppose the same argument applies. If it sells and I get paid, then all’s fair in print and on screen. 😉 However, unless there were a compelling reason, like safety or anonymity, contractual obligations, genre, then my preference is to write as myself.
At some point, I’ll have something out with ebook vendors.
Speaking of — back to it.
My surname descends from Norman French, but there is a “northern” variant. Two spellings. My way outnumbers the others in most phonebooks by something like 10:1. Should be easy, right? We don’t give it the Francophone pronounciation, but the other way. So people generally try to spell it about 50:50.
My christian name for some reason doesn’t “stick”. Apparently I “look like” someone who should have the christian variant of my surname. Generally I answer to either if it seems like someone means to be talking to me.
(When doing the geneaology stuff and trying to figure out the Welsh “ap” thing, I discovered that the trailing “-s” is the English variation of the Scandinavian “-son”. So “Evans” means “son of Evan”. I never knew that!)
I made up my name here, Raesean, when I was 12 and wanted to have a Scottish Gaelic version of my personal (female & white middle class) name. I then used it when I joined the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). I pronounce it “Rah-Shawn” and realize when people hear it now, they think “young, black male.” Funny the conventions of naming. Mind, a good friend of mine in the SCA used to joke and call me “Raisin.”
By the way, I had an archaeology instructor at Edinburgh University, who was a senior specialist in Etruscan and earlier Mediterranean archaeology, who rumour had it wrote a Harlequin Romance once. I presume under a female pen name.
I thought about using an old variant of my name, but no one can pronounce that one either.
Claims have been made that Star Trek changed our world, and it did inspire some people to go into engineering. Who and what is inspiring the current students? One panel I can remember was on future military tech and there was a person on the panel who blocked the discussions of current testing/use that was still classified.
Going off on a tangent, how about the rejection of tech? We are seeing a back to nature movement with backyard vegetable gardens, raising chickens in the city, etc. At what point will parents decide that board games are more important that Wii, Nintendo DS and other devices? I’m not talking about the Amish and Mennonite groups. I’m thinking average parents.
Games in a closed environment? What will children play on a space station? I can’t wrap my head around the scale and curavture of the ring style space station.
Having been in the military and having had a rather high security classification, I can readily understand why they would block any discussions of current testing/use if it’s still classified. If you were playing chess with someone, would you tell them all of your moves ahead of time? If that person is a good player, you’ve just compromised your game. On a more serious note, if you compromise classified information, especially military tech and capabilities, now you have also placed people in danger. I’d be highly upset if someone divulged information that they weren’t supposed to be divulging, especially if they thought it made them look cool in front of everyone else.
Games on a space station….well, if the kids are restricted like the humans at the star of the kyo, there won’t be many games to play, except what the station directors feel is beneficial to the station. So, probably no games like hide-and-seek, or a variation of any game which uses a ball, and since the whole meaning of kids’ play is to establish themselves within a niche in society, they would be denied this self-establishment because the station would fit them into whatever niche the station felt the child should be in. Your momma was a cook, you’re going to be a cook. What if the child is a whiz at math, are you going to waste that talent making her/him a cook when you could have a first class pilot or navigator right there? I really hated the way Phoenix was run, simply because it goes against the grain of how I grew up. Granted that in the military, you follow orders, you do what is best for the unit, rather than yourself, and you have little say in the matter. Of course, we volunteered for that, and you know you’re giving up some of the things that civilians consider essential to them.
How densely packed will the station be? Will there be a cap on the number of children each family may have, or will it be based on the capacity of the station to make enough food, oxygen, water, and waste disposal available to accommodate a large population of children? If kids don’t have the equipment to play a certain game, well, they have big imaginations, and can come up with some pretty good substitutions, or they just make up new games. I think that if they were sitting in front of an electronic game console, their hand-eye coordination and reaction times might be significantly affected, with games where they have to manipulate things, like throwing a ball, catching the ball, climbing, etc., they learn faster hand-eye coordination, because throwing and catching would be much more involved, climbing a wall would help with problem solving, which is the best path to take? None of this should be in a classroom environment or they won’t consider it play.
If there was someone on the panel who had actual knowledge of classifieds research, yes, he was asking for jail-time to talk about it. Otherwise, I am reminded of a story about John W. Campbell …
It was back during Word War II, and the Manhattan Project was in full swing; although, its very existence was one of our highest military secrets. Supposedly a story in Astounding came a little too close the scientific truth as understood by those involved in the project. Federal Agents visited Campbell to find the security leak. Campbell managed to convince them not only that there was no leak, but that it would look suspicious if Astounding suddenly stopped publishing stories about atomic energy.
That is, shutting down speculation because it’s too close to the truth only tells those listening that the speculation was close to the truth.
“NEW YORK (Reuters) – An appeals court judge on Monday suspended trial court litigation involving Google Inc and thousands of authors pending appeal by the search engine giant of an order granting the authors class-action status. … the appeals court has given Google permission to challenge a May 31 decision by a judge letting authors sue as a group rather than individually. … In March 2001, Judge Denny Chin rejected a $125 million settlement of the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, saying it gave Google too much power to copy books en masse without permission from authors.”
“March 2001”? “Seven years ago”? Let’s not rush into anything, eh?